CHAPTER 26
Laura Swift
Most modern readers or audiences of Greek drama would probably agree with Aristotle, who identified action, plot, and characters as the plays’ most salient features.1 Yet large portions of tragedy and comedy are comprised of lyric poetry, both choral and solo (monodic). The importance of the chorus to Greek drama is embedded in its institutions, funding mechanisms, and terminology, from the use of the term chorēgos (“chorus director”) for the wealthy citizen who provided financial support for the production, to the phrase “bring on your chorus” used as a shorthand for the play as a whole.2 We know little certain about the origins of tragedy or comedy, and Aristotle’s belief that the former grew out of dithyramb and the latter from ritual phallic songs (Poetics 1449a.10–11) has often been questioned by scholars.3 But even if we have no positive evidence for a link with these particular early forms, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the dramatic genres emerged from the wider tradition of choral song and dance that permeated the Greek world. In metrical terms, dramatic lyric deploys and adapts earlier units, while linguistically its debt to existing choral lyric is clear, through the Doric coloring which evokes the lyric tradition of poets such as Pindar and Bacchylides. To fully appreciate Greek dramatic poetry, we must therefore approach it as a form of lyric in its own right, and treat the lyric sections not only as integral to their plays, but also as part of the wider lyric tradition.
This chapter will explore the role that lyric plays in Greek drama, both tragedy and comedy. The majority of scholarship on the dramatic chorus explores its functional role within the plays or its status and authority as a character, while fewer studies treat choral passages as lyric poetry in their own right (as opposed to discussing their thematic or narrative importance within the play). For this reason, this chapter will focus mainly on the poetic aspects of choral song: what is distinctive about dramatic lyric, and how it positions itself within the choral tradition. The chapter will also consider the role that monodic lyric plays in drama, since actors’ song is a feature in our earliest surviving tragedies and becomes increasingly prominent toward the end of the fifth century. As we shall see, the dramatists repay study as lyric poets in their own right, and Greek drama preserves some of the most complex and innovative lyric pieces to survive from the ancient world.
Choral Lyric: Form, Structure, Style
When used of tragedy, the term “lyric” refers to portions of the play which were sung, in contrast to the iambics, which were spoken, and felt to resemble more closely than other metres the rhythms of ordinary speech (Arist. Po. 4.1449a.19–28, Rh. 3.1408b.24–26). There was probably also a third mode of performance, partway between song and speech, which may have sounded like chanting or recitative, and is particularly associated with the metrical form known as the anapaest (⌣ ⌣ –).4 The instrument that accompanied these sung or chanted passages was the aulos, not the lyre. The alternation of lyric with non-lyric sections forms the basic structure of Greek tragedy, and an Athenian audience would expect to hear lyric performed at certain set points in the action. Sections of choral lyric are used to separate dramatic episodes, and these have a function that is both practical (allowing for costume changes by the actors, accounting for the passing of time) and thematic (for example, exploring ideas brought up in the previous scene, foreshadowing events to come). The first such choral interlude is the parodos or entry song, which accompanies the chorus’ first arrival into the orchēstra, and is often in an anapaestic meter. After this, the choral odes are known as stasima or “standing songs,” because the chorus remained in the orchēstra while singing them. The proportion of a tragedy devoted to choral lyric is greatest in the works of Aeschylus, in whose plays we find a range from 34% of the total lines (Eumenides) to 55% (Suppliant Women). After his lifetime, the amount of choral lyric declines, with the average proportion only 17% in the plays of Sophocles and 15% in Euripides.5 However, it would be wrong to think that choral lyric was unimportant to the younger tragedians, and the choral odes continue to play a crucial role in providing commentary, philosophical reflection, and emotional response to the events on stage.
Like the lyrics of Pindar and Bacchylides, tragic stasima usually follow a strophic structure, meaning that a stanza (the strophe, or “turn”) is followed by another one (the antistrophe, or “counter-turn”) which follows the same metrical pattern. This strophic pair is sometimes followed by a single stanza in a different meter known as the epode. The metrical innovation of the tragic poets is that rather than repeating this pattern throughout the ode, the sequence is only repeated once, in the antistrophe; the next pair of stanzas follow a different metrical form, though often makes use of the same rhythms in a different arrangement. The number of strophic pairs in a stasimon varies, but in Sophocles and Euripides the most common pattern is two pairs, while the odes of Aeschylus are much longer, almost always three pairs or more. This system allows poets to showcase their creativity with meter, and the shifts within the ode can contribute to its mood and heighten the impact of its words. For example, the third stasimon of Euripides’ Medea (824–865) begins with praise of Athens, sung in dactylo-epitrite, the meter of epinician poetry. The lilting rhythm suits the peaceful scene imagined, while the choice of meter also evokes the tradition of praise song. In the second strophic pair the chorus move from this idealized fantasy to the horror of infanticide, and question Medea on whether she can bring herself to go through with her plan. The meter here consists of shorter Aeolic measures, and these create a choppier rhythm, which breaks the spell of the first part and better suits the chorus’ direct questions and anxious tone.
As well as a more settled length, the stasima of Sophocles and Euripides also demonstrate a more standardized structure, typically beginning with something removed from the play-world (such as a moral maxim or mythological exemplum) and only later making the connection with the action clear. The Medea ode discussed above is a clear example of this, whereby the first strophic pair, which contains a general celebration of Athenian history and culture, appears disconnected from events at Corinth, but in the second pair the connection becomes apparent: Medea has just announced her intention to kill her children and escape to Athens (764–810), and the chorus is horrified to imagine that a child-killer intends to seek sanctuary in this blessed city (“How will the city of sacred rivers, the land of processions for its gods receive you, the child-killer?” 846–849). The first (410–445) and second (629–662) stasima of Medea follow the same pattern. Both odes open with a first strophic pair consisting of generalizing statements and moral gnōmai. In the first stasimon the chorus claim that nature has been overturned and that the position of the sexes in society has been reversed, while in the second stasimon they warn of the dangers of love and the importance of moderation. The second strophic pair of these odes explains the relevance of these statements, and this consists in both cases of a description of Medea’s plight as an exile and her betrayal by Jason. Although the moral is not spelled out, the audience can draw the connection between the two halves. In the first stasimon, Medea’s situation and Jason’s shameful behavior is what has prompted the chorus to sing that “it is men whose plans are deceitful, and no longer are their oaths by the gods firm” (413–414), while in the second stasimon the implication is that Medea’s passion for Jason has put her in a desperate position. In these examples, the turning point from generalities comes midway through the ode, but this need not always be the case, and both Sophocles and Euripides can leave the connection until the very end. One of the best-known examples is the second stasimon of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, where almost the whole ode is spent on philosophical reflection on the nature of the gods, the dangers of hybris, and the importance of divine punishment (863–910). It is only in the final lines that the relevance to Oedipus’ life is made explicit (906–910):
For the oracles given to Laius are fading and perishing now, and Apollo is nowhere manifest in his honours. The gods are disappearing.
By keeping the connection to the play so brief, and delaying it so long, Sophocles invites the audience to reflect upon the general moralizing reflections, and potentially to reassess them in light of the ode’s ending. The chorus have prefaced these lines by stating that if the gods cannot fulfill their oracles, they no longer deserve worship (900–905). Unlike the chorus, the audience knows that the oracles have not failed, and can appreciate the irony that when they are proved true, it will mean the downfall of the chorus’ beloved king. Once it has become clear that it is the oracles surrounding Oedipus’ birth that have prompted the earlier theological sections, the audience may consider how his fate fits into this picture, and whether they should understand references earlier in the ode to “the tyrant” (τύραννον, 873) or the man who “proceeds arrogantly in deed or word” (883–884) as allusions to Oedipus himself, or whether the irony lies in the mismatch between the chorus’ perception of Oedipus and their beliefs about the type of person they imagine will attract divine punishment.
Conversely, Aeschylean stasima are not only much longer than the other two poets, but also looser in structure, and can move freely between the play-world and more general elements.6 For example, the second stasimon of Agamemnon (681–781) opens with a strophic pair detailing the play’s back-story by telling how Helen brought destruction to Troy through her ill-fated marriage to Paris (681–716). The second pair tells a parable of a shepherd who raised a lion-cub which grew up to destroy his flocks (717–735). The strophe of the third pair returns to Helen at Troy (737–749), but its antistrophe moves to generalizing gnomai about the inevitability of human suffering and how wickedness begets ruin (750–762). The fourth and final strophic pair keeps to this general tone, as the chorus sing of how insolence (hybris) leads to ruin (atē), but the righteous will be rewarded with justice (763–781). The general themes can be understood as connected to the story of Helen, which in turn is connected to the story of Agamemnon and the reasons for his death. Thus one could interpret the lion-cub as an allegory for Helen, in that the Trojans disastrously accept her into their city because of her beauty, or see it as an analogy for Paris, who according to some versions of the myth was raised by a shepherd. Similarly, the suffering of the Trojans can be understood within the broader moral patterns the ode describes, since it is Paris’ insolence in abducting his host’s wife (and his people’s acceptance of his behavior) that led to the fall of Troy. However, these connections are not made explicit but left for the audience to puzzle out for themselves, and the repeated shifts between general and specific, combined with the density of language and metaphor, make the ode as challenging as it is enthralling.
Many aspects of tragic lyric style are familiar to the reader versed in other lyric forms. Most of the rhythms are shared with the earlier lyricists (though some, notably the dochmiac, are newer developments associated with drama: see D’Angour (Chapter 9) in this volume). The style of the lyric sections is distinct from that of the spoken iambics, making greater use of poetic forms, abstract or metaphorical language, and compound adjectives. Unlike the iambic sections, the choral odes rarely narrate a story at length, but hone in on a moment which is portrayed in vivid detail. Rather than a linear narrative, we find leaps in time and sense, and a moment taken from a myth may be juxtaposed with something from the play-world, or used as a starting point for moralizing generalities. This stylistic preference should not be treated as a universal “rule,” and we do possess tragic odes that adopt a narrative style, such as the “Demeter Ode” of Euripides’ Helen (1301–1368), which tells the story of Demeter’s grief at losing her daughter, her search to recover her, and Zeus’ intervention to placate the goddess. Likewise, this narrative style is not unknown in non-tragic lyric, as we see from Bacchylides 5, which tells in relatively linear form the encounter between Heracles and Meleager in Hades (see Fearn (Chapter 24) in this volume), or Stesichorus, who specialized in creating lyric narratives (see Finglass (Chapter 16) in this volume).
Nevertheless tragic lyric is not identical to its ritual predecessors, and many of tragedy’s stylistic peculiarities can be explained in terms of its status as a mimetic genre and the high stakes of its dramatic situations. Tragic odes often use devices designed to create a sense of heightened emotions, such as repetition, sequences of adjectives, or cries expressing anguish, grief or joy.7 The tragic chorus straddles two identities: as a character within the play-world with a fictional identity as old men, slave women, or whatever the poet has chosen, and as a choral group who sing and dance and pass comment on the action.8 Passages involving choral self-referentiality may prioritize one of these identities above the other, or even bring them into contrast. In non-tragic choral song, the chorus often reflect upon their identity or actions, but these self-referential moments (we assume) reflect the reality of what the audience sees, at least in the original performance.9 In tragedy, this type of self-referential statement may be used to help characterize the chorus, as for example in the parodos of Euripides’ Heracles (107–137), where the chorus of Theban elders dwell on their age and incapacity, stressing the difficulty with which they move.10 Their self-presentation as doddery old men, who can barely walk without their staffs and need each other’s help to enter the orchēstra is logically incompatible with their actual identity as a group of nimble young Athenians, and the audience is required to separate their appreciation of the technical role of the chorus from the identity they adopt within the play.
The Tragic Chorus and Its Ritual Heritage
While context is important for the understanding of all lyric poetry, tragic lyric is always rooted in a double context: first its role within the play-world; second its status as choral lyric in a competitive festival. In the latter capacity, it continued to engage with and reflect the wider traditions of lyric. In the fifth century BC the non-tragic choral tradition remained a vibrant part of Greek culture, and even if certain genres (such as epinician) had begun to wane in popularity, an Athenian audience would still be familiar with other types of ritual lyric from their daily lives. Moreover, the importance of poetry in education meant that many audience-members would be familiar (at least in broad terms) with the famous archaic lyricists. It is therefore not surprising that we find allusions to other lyric forms in tragic choral lyric. These can be as overt as a mention of a genre-name or ritual tag, as for example in Euripides’ Children of Heracles where the chorus sing of Heracles’ heavenly wedding to Hebe and include the ritual cry ὦ Ὑμέναιε (“O Hymenaie”) used in wedding song (917). At other times, the allusion is more subtle, and is created through a combination of linguistic detail, characteristic imagery, and (sometimes) metrical resonance. Evoking another genre can create a particular mood associated with the context that prompts the performance of the ritual lyric form (for example, the joy of celebrating a marriage, the sorrow of losing a loved one) and this may reflect what is happening in the play-world. However, tragedy is free from any constraints that might govern the original performance of a piece of real-life ritual lyric. Thus its evocations of ritual lyric not only echo them, but can also subvert or use them in settings that in real life might be considered inappropriate.
One of the most common examples is the tragic use of the choral song known as the paian in contexts of mourning and death. The paian has a range of contexts, but at its core is used either apotropaically, to ward off disaster (which may include disease, war, or other crises), or as a song of celebration.11 When a paian is sung in a context where a lament would be more appropriate, it creates a sense of tension or irony, exacerbated by the knowledge that for a real paian to be performed in a context of grief would be offensive and inappropriate. For example, the chorus of Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes describe the lament that Antigone and Ismene will sing for their brothers as a “hateful paian of Hades” (868–869). Similarly, tragedy frequently uses imagery derived from the wedding song (hymenaios) in contexts of death or rape, both of which could be understood as the opposite of the ideals represented by marriage. Both these meanings come together in Euripides’ Hippolytus, where the chorus distort the typical makarismos of wedding ritual (where the bridal couple are proclaimed as blessed) to proclaim the mythical wedding of Heracles and Iole, which involved the enslavement and rape of the bride and the sacking of her city with “O wretched in her wedding” (553–554).
In the examples above, the allusions to lyric genres take the form of passing references, whose purpose is to create irony and thus color the audience’s understanding of a particular moment. However, entire odes (or even whole plays) can interact with a lyric genre, which can be used to highlight broader themes in the play and further the audience’s understanding of the on-stage action. A clear example is the song the chorus sing over the sleeping hero in Sophocles’ Philoctetes (828–864), which makes rich use of language derived from the paian, and so brings out broader thematic resonances of the paian in the play. This lyric interlude is not a conventional stasimon but a kommos (antiphonal song: see further below) between the chorus and Neoptolemus, who chants four hexameter lines in between the choral strophe and antistrophe. The chorus begin by singing a paian to the god Sleep, but then turn to Neoptolemus and urge him to betray Philoctetes and steal the bow while he sleeps. The allusions to the paian are densest in the opening strophe (828–838):
Ὕπν’ ὀδύνας ἀδαής, Ὕπνε δ’ ἀλγέων,
εὐαὴς ἡμῖν ἔλθοις, εὐαίων,
εὐαίων, ὦναξ· ὄμμασι δ’ ἀντίσχοις
τάνδ’ αἴγλαν, ἃ τέταται τανῦν.
ἴθι ἴθι μοι, Παιών.
ὦ τέκνον, ὅρα ποῦ στάσηι,
ποῖ δὲ βάσηι,
πῶς δέ σοι τἀντεῦθεν
φροντίδος. ὁρᾶις ἤδη.
πρὸς τί μένομεν πράσσειν;
καιρός τοι πάντων γνώμαν ἴσχων
<πολύ τι> πολὺ παρὰ πόδα κράτος ἄρνυται.
Sleep who knows no pain, sleep who knows no suffering, come to us with sweet breath, with good fortune, good fortune, O lord. Hold above his eyes this brightness that is spread before them now. Come, come to me, Paian. Child, consider where you stand, where you go, and what you should be concerned with next. You see how things are. Why are we hesitating to act? The opportune moment has power in all things and swiftly wins a great, great victory.
The stanza acts as a paian in a functional sense, in that it is a prayer for healing of a sickness. The language is also evocative of surviving paianes: for example, the appeal to the god Paian resembles the types of ritual refrain often found in the paian, while the choice of ritually correct and euphemistic words (εὐαής, εὐαίων, εὐαίων, 829–830) and language of brightness and shining (αἴγλαν, 831) is also reminiscent of the genre, where imagery of shining and light is used to evoke the healing power of the god.12 At the beginning of the ode, the chorus’ use of a paian seems sincere and appropriate, since the audience will assume they are responding with compassion to Philoctetes’ agony. Yet after the ritual address to Paian, the ode takes a more sinister turn, as it transpires that the chorus wish for sleep not for Philoctetes’ benefit but so that Neoptolemus can take advantage of it by stealing his bow. Since Philoctetes depends on his bow for survival on the deserted island (a point that has been reinforced by the chorus in their previous ode: 708–711), this is a paian that aims to kill rather than cure. Moreover, the relevance of the paian extends beyond this particular moment. How Philoctetes can be cured and how the Greek army at Troy can be saved are central questions in the play and are connected to two of the paian’s core functions, healing and salvation. At the end of the play, it becomes apparent that the two goals are connected, since Philoctetes will receive a cure from Asclepius when he goes to Troy, and in going he will also assure the Greeks’ victory. Thus the goals of paeanic performance are ultimately achieved, and stand in contrast with the chorus’ flawed paian at this stage. For an Athenian audience, who would be familiar with real performances of the paian, the misappropriation of the genre would be easily grasped. The status of ritual lyric as part of the audience’s cultural heritage and (often) lived experience makes these interactions more than just literary allusions for the educated, while ritual poetry’s status in upholding a normatively correct way of responding to a situation means that seeing these norms distorted or misapplied would have been a powerful way of underscoring the play’s emotional goals.
Actors’ Lyric
Actors’ song is already an important feature in our earliest surviving tragedies: indeed in Aeschylus Persians, the Persian king Xerxes is given no trimeter lines in the play but chants or sings exclusively in anapests and lyrics.13 This lyric register evokes the tradition of sung lament and helps to characterize Xerxes’ desperation and grief. Similarly, an antiphonal lyric song (kommos) forms the centerpiece of Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, and is used to express the hopes and fears of Orestes and Electra as they prepare themselves for their revenge (312–465). However, lyric performed by actors grew in popularity over the fifth century, and it is increasingly prominent in the works of Sophocles and Euripides. Euripides in particular shows a developing interest in the artistic possibilities of solo lyric, and over the course of his career the proportion of lyric sung by actors increases from 13.3% in plays before the middle of the 420s to 47.1% for those at the end of his life.14 Singing in lyrics is reserved for characters of noble birth (even if they are now in reduced circumstances), and is thus a mark of importance.15 However, in Aeschylus and Euripides lyric sections are more commonly sung by characters who are not adult Greek males (women, children, foreigners), and where elite male characters do sing (as for example at the end of Euripides’ Hippolytus, where the young hero laments his fate: 1370–1388), their songs are kept relatively brief.16 This tendency is not observed in Sophocles, who gives his heroes extended lyric passages. These come at moments of extreme physical or emotional pain, such as Heracles’ cries of agony as he is consumed by the poisoned robe in Women of Trachis (983–1043) or Ajax’s distress on realizing that he has humiliated himself by slaughtering the Achaean flocks in his madness (348–427), and the sight of a male hero indulging in such an emotional outpouring emphasizes the gravity of their situation.17 Equally, lyric need not always symbolize grief or despair, and characters sing at moments of joy, such as the recognition scenes of Sophocles’ Electra, where Electra is overcome with emotion on realizing that her brother is alive after all (1232–1287), or Euripides’ Helen, where the heroine is reunited with her husband after many years (625–697). Some actor-songs appear to have no strong emotional overtone at all, such as the opening song performed by the young Ion in Euripides’ play of that name, who sings of his duties at the temple of Apollo (82–183). Here the song is meant to represent a real act of worship, as Ion performs his daily tasks at the sanctuary, but also evokes the everyday types of song that accompany work.18 The song is designed to be charming, and emphasizes Ion’s youth and innocence, and the simple piety of his life, which the audience know from the prologue will soon be complicated as his true identity is revealed.
Actors’ lyric is flexible and can take many forms. Actors can sing as part of an exchange with the chorus, who themselves can either sing, as in Persians 922–1077, or speak, as at the end of Oedipus the King, where the chorus-leader’s iambics contrast with the emotional intensity of Oedipus’ lament (1313–1366). More than one actor may also be involved, as happens in the central kommos of Aeschylus’ Choephori, an extended lament between Orestes, Electra, and the chorus. The most intricate songs by actors, however, belong to the category known as monody, a term which refers to a solo song independent from the chorus. Monodies are frequently astrophic: in other words, they lack the recurring stanzas typical of choral stasima. The metrical variety found in monody is therefore still greater than that of choral lyric, and gives the poets an opportunity to display their skill and creativity as metricians. For example, after the Thracian king Polymestor is blinded in Euripides’ Hecuba, he sings a lament containing six types of meter; the shifts between them reflect the character’s intense emotions, and his changing thoughts as he asks himself a series of questions (1056–1106). The prominence and complexity of monody no doubt relates to the growing importance of the actor during the fifth century, attested in Aristotle’s famous comment that “actors are now more important than poets in the poetic competitions” (Rh. 3.1.1403b), as well as the innovation in the middle of the fifth century of awarding of a prize to the best actor. Separating actors’ song from choral passages drew more attention to it, and so allowed the soloist a chance to shine. It also reflected contemporary musical developments, and in particular the growing popularity of the so-called New Music in the last third of the fifth century (see LeVen (Chapter 25) in this volume), which gave a new outlet for virtuoso and spectacular solo performance. It is no coincidence that the decline in the proportion of choral lyric went hand in hand with the rise of actor song: a solo singer is capable of more flamboyance than is possible for a group, while the increasing celebration of actors may have led to a widening gap between their technical expertise and that of the chorus. As audiences came to expect more poetic and musical fireworks as part of what made a winning tragedy, poets had to respond in kind. There is evidence for a conservative backlash against the trend (see p. 370 of LeVen’s chapter), but this too testifies to the popularity of the new musical style.
The song of the Phrygian slave in Euripides’ Orestes (1368–1502) showcases the innovative possibilities of this trend. Orestes and Pylades have entered the house with the intention of murdering Helen, and the chorus implies that the audience will either see Helen’s corpse (on the ekkyklēma, a wheeled device used for revealing interior scenes), or hear a messenger speech explaining her death (1357–1359). Yet instead of a traditional messenger speech, Euripides presents his audience with a monody sung by a nameless Eastern slave, whose startling style is apparent from its opening lines (1368–1379):19
I have escaped death, the Argive sword, in barbarian slippers, past the cedarwood timbers of the bedchamber and the Doric triglyphs. Gone, gone, Mother Earth, Earth, in my barbarian flight! Alas, where shall I flee, foreign women? Should I fly to the pale upper air or to the sea, which the bull-headed Ocean encircles in his arms as he curls around the earth?
The frequent references to the speaker’s foreignness, and the mentions of the (to him) alien Greekness of his setting immediately establish the otherness of the song. Its exoticism is highlighted by its contorted and sometimes incoherent Greek, its frequent reference to Eastern details, and its variety of meters (which may also suggest a similar variety in its musical style), while the effect would no doubt have been increased by the costume worn by the actor.20 The technical challenges for the performer would have been further enhanced by the song’s great length. From the audience’s perspective, the Phrygian’s narrative is frustratingly incomplete, as the complexities of the language are compounded by parenthetical comments, dense metaphors, and emotional asides, which complicate attempts to reach a straightforward understanding of exactly what happened inside the palace. Indeed, the chorus themselves seem to struggle to comprehend his account, asking him to “tell us clearly what happened inside the house” (1393), in a humorous response that likely reflects the audience’s own. Helen’s unexplained and magical disappearance at the end of the monody adds to the sense of confusion. Whereas a messenger speech is usually a trustworthy and authoritative account of events the audience have not seen, this monody offers an alternative that takes the stylistic differences between lyric and iambic narrative to an extreme.21 Its existence thus showcases the poet’s desire to innovate with the conventions of tragedy, which is apparent throughout Orestes, and compounds the play’s sense of a world distorted.
Lyric in Comedy
Comedy, like tragedy, grew out of the wider tradition of song and performance, and contains both lyric passages sung by the chorus and ones performed by actors. Like the tragic chorus, the chorus of comedy plays a role in the on-stage action, where they adopt the persona of a group of characters within the play-world. The rules for such groupings in comedy, however, are far more flexible, and comedy relishes presenting its audience with fantastical choruses which showcase the poet’s creativity. While some of Aristophanes’ plays contain realistic choruses (such as that of Acharnians, where the chorus is local men from the deme of Acharnae, who have suffered at the hands of the Spartans, or Lysistrata, which contains a chorus of old men and one of old women), we also find choruses of clouds, birds, and wasps in the plays that bear their names. The fragments of lost plays by other playwrights show this was common practice: for example, Aristophanes’ rival Eupolis wrote a play with a chorus of goats, and another consisting of the demes (local administrative units) of Attica, while the poet Cratinus’ works contained choruses of centaurs, Titans, and the laws of Athens.22 This convention too seems to have grown from a pre-dramatic tradition, judging by vase-paintings which show earlier evidence for animal choruses or animal-headed figures who appear to dance and perform.23 The costuming of these choruses must have provided an opportunity to dazzle the judges with spectacle: for example, the text of Aristophanes’ Birds indicates that each chorus-member represented a different type of bird (268–304).
The lyric interludes of Aristophanes are on the whole shorter than the odes of Greek tragedy. It is common, for example, to find a choral strophe and antistrophe separated with a short episode in between them, and some lyric passages are only a few lines long. In two of Aristophanes’ later plays, Assemblywomen (391 BC) and Wealth (388 BC), manuscripts preserve the word χοροῦ (“[song] of the chorus”) instead of the words of a choral passage, which may indicate that whatever was performed here was simply a dance interlude, or that the words were not an integral part of the play (a development criticized by Aristotle with regard to later tragedy: Poetics 1456a.25–32), though it could simply mean that the odes were cut or lost at a later stage. Nevertheless, lyric sections make up a not insignificant proportion of the surviving plays, representing 17% in total (with the fourth-century plays containing less than those written in the fifth century).24
Like tragic lyric, comic lyric is also aware of the wider tradition from which it evolved.25 Thus Aristophanic lyric often imitates or parodies the tropes of ritual and religious song. And while tragedy evokes the traditions of earlier lyric song, comic poets go still further, since we find actual quotations of non-dramatic lyric passages embedded in the plays. The quotation can be part of a joke, as in a banquet scene in Peace, where the main character Trygaeus asks the young son of Cleonymus to perform a song for him, and he chooses Archilochus fr. 5 W (1298–1302), the poem in which the narrator claims to have discarded his shield in battle. The humor derives from the fact that Cleonymus himself was branded a coward for having lost his own shield in battle, but also relies on the audience’s knowledge that this is a famous sympotic piece rather than simply a description of the boy’s own family circumstances. It therefore implies that enough of the audience must have been familiar with the poem for the joke to land reliably. Other quotations are not obviously included for comic effect, and audience members who fail to recognize them will not feel excluded, while those who do can pride themselves on their erudition. For example, in Birds, the Hoopoe sings a lyric song summoning the other birds, one line of which is a quote from Alcman (“you halcyons, who fly over the swelling waves of the sea,” 251 = Alcman fr. 26.3 PMGF), but to the uninformed reader or audience member it appears to fit with the content and style of what surrounds it.
An influential study of Aristophanic lyric posits a spectrum between “high” and “low” lyric in his works: the former are a close imitation of the style of tragic or Pindaric lyric, with high-flown language and serious tone, while the latter contain everyday or vulgar words and a scarcely elevated register.26 Aristophanes’ higher lyrics may be grand, but they are to a large extent derivative of other lyric forms. Many are religious in tone, and out of context could be easily taken for a genuine cultic song, as for example in Women at the Thesmophoria when the chorus open the women’s assembly with a prayer to the Olympians (312–330). The song’s conventionality does not mean that it lacks dramatic function, and there is humor in the juxtaposition of the high religious language and the absurdity of the women’s meeting for which it is deployed.27 At the other end of the scale, Aristophanic lyric can incorporate the type of vulgarity and personal attack found in early iambus (see Lennartz (Chapter 14) in this volume), such as a passage in Frogs which abuses the well-known figures Archedemus, Cleisthenes, and Callias, claiming that the first is not a legitimate Athenian citizen and mocking the sexual proclivities of the latter two (416–430).28 There is no distinction between the high and low forms, and the Frogs passage shows how a lyric form can begin in one register and slide into another. The chorus of initiates into the Eleusinian Mysteries enter singing a hymn in honor of Dionysus under his cult title Iacchus, filled with ritual tags (Ἴακχ’ ὦ Ἴακχε), and cultic detail (323–353). The meter is mostly ionics (⌣ ⌣ ‒ ‒), and this and much of the ritual language echoes the parodos of Euripides’ Bacchae. It is likely that both dramatists drew on genuine hymns to the god. The tone of the Aristophanic chorus is pious and conventional, as can be seen by the opening (323–330):
O much-honoured Iacchus, who dwells here in your seat, Iacchus, o Iacchus. Come to this meadow to dance, to your holy devotees, shaking on your head the myrtle garland abounding with much fruit.
The god is summoned by his cult name and haunts, while the myrtle garlands evoke the traditions of Eleusinian cult.29 Yet as the hymn continues (punctuated by a speech from the chorus-leader), the high register begins to be punctured by comic elements. The chorus continue to sing of their dancing, but the tone becomes less formal with the instruction that they should “mock and play and jeer” (375), which fits the elements of ritual abuse found in Mystery cult, but also hints at their other role as comic performers. An apparently solemn prayer to Athena the Saviour that she will protect Athens for all time is similarly undermined by the jibe “even if Thorycion doesn’t want her to” (381), aimed at a mostly-unknown contemporary politician, which again breaks the dramatic fiction and undercuts the pious language that precedes it. In what follows, the tone falls still lower, as the chorus divide into men and women, and the female group sing to Iacchus “it was you who caused, for laughter and thriftiness, the rip in this little sandal and these rags” (404–406). Far from being an ecstatic experience, participation in the choral dance has ruined their clothing, and this change in register is highlighted by the everyday language of σανδαλίσκον (“little sandal”), a diminutive form used in colloquial speech. The male sub-chorus then become still more vulgar as they imagine using their choral dance as a pretext to look inside an attractive woman’s clothes and catch a glimpse of her breasts (409–413). It is at this point that the ode descends into total vulgarity, culminating in the invective passage discussed above. As Silk notes, it is in this blending of high and low elements that Aristophanic lyric demonstrates its greatest creativity.
In conclusion, the lyric tradition should not be understood merely as tragedy and comedy’s heritage, nor as a static backdrop against which the plays were composed. Rather, fifth-century dramatists are themselves lyric poets, whose innovations and adaptations are an essential part of Greek lyric’s long history. Tragedy and comedy exist in dialogue with the wider poetic culture in which their audiences were steeped, and the spectacle, music, and virtuosity of the lyric sections of drama indicate their importance in winning over an audience and securing first prize. Thus we must read tragedy and comedy not only as drama, but also as song.
FURTHER READING
A good place to begin a study of tragic lyric is Battezato 2005b, while Wilson 2005 offers an accessible introduction to musical aspects of tragedy. For the organization and funding of dramatic choruses, Wilson 2000 remains the most important study, and for evidence and sources see Csapo and Slater 1994.
For tragic lyric’s interaction with ritual lyric, see Swift 2010 and Rutherford 2012. Andújar, Coward, and Hadjimichael 2018 contains much detail on the style and conventions of tragic lyric, both choral and monodic. On comedy, Robson 2013 provides a clear introduction aimed at the beginner, while Silk 1980 remains essential reading on Aristophanes’ lyric style. On late Euripidean musical style, see Csapo 1999–200 and Weiss 2017 (the Further Reading to LeVen’s chapter (25) in this volume also includes more bibliography on later tragedy’s relationship to the New Music).
This chapter has focused on the comic lyric of Aristophanes, but for the relationship between Cratinus and tragic lyric see Bakola 2010 and for Eupolis’ choruses see Storey 2003. For comedy’s relationship to ritual lyric, see Bierl 2009. For more detailed studies on particular points of interest, see the items cited throughout the chapter.
Notes
1 At Poetics 1450a Aristotle makes plot the most important element of tragedy, with character second. Lyric elements (μέλος) are also included in his list but are conceptualised as a feature to enrich tragic language rather than something intrinsic to the genre (1449b.28–31, 1450b.15–16).
2 For this announcement, see Ar. Ach. 10–12. It seems to have either been used for the start of the play, or for the occasion a day or two before the performance when the poet, accompanied by actors and chorus, announced the play’s topic: see Olson 2002: 69. For the funding of dramatic choruses and the role of the chorēgos see Wilson 2000.
3 For recent discussion see Scullion 2005, Battezzato 2013.
4 See Barker 1984: 191, Hall 1999: 106–107.
5 For detailed statistics, see Griffith 1977: 127.
6 See Rutherford 2012: 219.
7 See Hutchinson 2001: 429.
8 The status and authority of the chorus has been a topic of much debate from the nineteenth century onwards, particularly August Schlegel’s theory of the chorus as “ideal spectator.” More recently, opinions have ranged from scholars who see the chorus as “the mouthpiece of the city” (Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988: 311) to those who argue they are marginalized (Gould 2001: 383), though both views share the difficulty that they seek to impose a universalizing approach on a diverse set of texts. For more recent approaches to the issue, see the essays in Gagné and Hopman 2013.
9 On self-referentiality in Greek lyric, see Danielewicz 1990, Calame 2004, and Van Emde Boas in this volume.
10 See Dhuga 2011: 84 on this passage.
11 See Rutherford 2001: 7.
12 On the paian-refrain, see Rutherford 2001: 68–72, Ford 2006. For light and brightness as a paeanic feature, see Swift 2010: 68–69.
13 See Hall 1999: 96–99.
14 Figures from Csapo 1999.
15 Maas 1962: 53–54, Hall 2006: 304–305.
16 See Chong-Gossard 2008: 107.
17 On Sophoclean actor-song, see Nooter 2012, who argues (3) that lyric passages give their performers authority through their assumption of a poetic identity.
18 See Karanika 2014: 146–147, Martin 2018: 151.
19 For a detailed discussion of the monody, see Porter 1994: 173–213.
20 See Willink 1986: 305, Wright 2008: 84–85.
21 On the authority and objectivity of the tragic messenger speech, see Barlow 1971: 61, Heath 1987, Barrett 2002.
22 For a full list see Sifakis 1971: 76–77.
23 See Rothwell 2006 for a study of the iconography and development of these choruses.
24 For figures, see McEvilley 1970: 257.
25 Discussed in detail by Bierl 2009.
26 Silk 1980, revised in Silk 2002: ch. 4.
27 For the primarily functional nature of much Aristophanic lyric, see Parker 1997: 10.
28 For discussion of the passage, see Robson 2013: 146.
29 See Sommerstein 1996: 170–171 and 184–185.