Conclusions

As well as bringing together all the relevant evidence for the quality and activity of the chorus of drama in the fourth century, this monograph has raised certain key questions about the current understanding of the nature and development of Attic drama as a whole. First, it shows that the supposed ‘civic’ quality of the chorus of drama is, in fact, an association loaned, inappropriately, from the genre of circular, ‘dithyrambic’, choral performance. Being attentive to the cultural differences between these two genres should prompt a further re-evaluation of how to read dramatic choruses more generally. Second, the way in which key fourth-century authors such as Plato and Xenophon use the image of the chorus to discuss the concept of leadership has profoundly shaped ways of construing choreia in ancient Greek drama, and the ancient Mediterranean more generally. Armed with this knowledge, it is possible to retell the story and history of the chorus in drama.

The Material Circumstances

Chapter 1 brings together the evidence for when and where dramatic choruses danced in the fourth century, providing an historical base for the later discussions of fourth-century dramatic choral activity. After establishing the certain and likely locations for dramatic performances in Athens, Attica, and the wider ancient Mediterranean (and beyond), the chapter considers the question of who the choral performers were, and what their choral training might have involved. Through this focus on the choral performer, and the practicalities of producing so many dramatic productions in each year, the chapter can begin to draw together a new picture of choral industry in the fourth century, an industry that clearly had its roots in the fifth century. Considering the theory that ‘local’, ‘amateur’ choruses would be recruited for travelling groups of actors, it suggests that the evidence supports, instead, a class of skilled choral performers in line with the industry’s professionalizing turn.

Chorus and Festival

This chapter and the next considers the ‘snapshot’ of choral performance (dramatic and non-dramatic) that is presented by Aeschines, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Plato, comic poets, and historians and other fourth-century artists and writers. This allows for the contextualization of the evidence for fourth-century dramatic choruses in the choral culture of the time, but it also allows the examination of the cultural weight and impact of alluding to ‘a chorus’ in the fourth century. Here the chapter focuses on the chorus’ close associations with festival and how those associations are used by individuals for literary and rhetorical effect. Special attention is paid to the ways in which choral imagery can be separated out from imagery celebrating and commemorating choregoi and, in doing so, the chapter displays how important it is to be sensitive to the tendency in the sources to blur the boundaries between chorus and individual.

An Interlude

There are two phenomena that are most frequently mentioned in discussions of the fourth-century dramatic chorus: the presence of a scribal mark, χοροῦ‎ or χοροῦ μέλος‎, in the traditions of textual transmission of later classical drama, and Aristotle’s criticism of choral odes, labelling them embolima. Chapters 1 to 4 displayed all the positive evidence for the presence and activity of the chorus in fourth-century drama, and Chapter 5 considers these two phenomena in a new light. Returning to the very basics of how both χοροῦ‎ and embolimon might be understood, and noting how and why traditional interpretations of the terms have come about, this chapter seeks to reconfigure current understanding of the development of the fourth-century dramatic chorus. It is seen that it is possible to reinterpret the two phenomena and align their use in antiquity with the rest of the book’s positive evidence.

The Chorus in New Tragedy

This chapter brings together known and possible fourth-century choral tragic texts, analysing and evaluating the chorus’ dramatic activity in the later Classical period. Beginning with the Rhesus once attributed to Euripides, it examines the innovations and dramatic potential of this tragedy’s chorus in performance. In particular it highlights the unique instances of a fragmented choral voice, a striking independence in the chorus’ character, and the use of separated strophic pairs for dramatic structure. There follows an evaluation of the possible fragments of fourth-century tragic choral speech or song, and closer consideration of three such fragments all incidentally linked to the tragedian Astydamas. In these fragments the chapter views further signs of activity, choral interaction with actors, and literary play. A final section introduces a comparison with lyric poetic composition in the fourth century, taking Philodamus’ Paean to Dionysus as an illuminating example of sophisticated and potent choral performance in the fourth century.

The Chorus in ‘Old’ Tragedy

The practice of revival and reperformance of drama in the fourth century, a practice illuminated by recent scholarship, allows for a recalibration of the view of fourth-century dramatic choral practice. Acknowledging the fifth-century plays (and their choruses) that were definitely and possibly revived in the fourth century instantly enriches the picture of fourth-century dramatic choral culture. As well as reviewing the significance of revivals for fourth-century dramatic culture more generally, this chapter considers the sections of tragic text (so-called ‘interpolations’) that seem to have been added to fifth-century plays for, it contends, fourth-century revivals. The reconfigured choruses of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis and Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, indicate what might have been possible and desirable for producers to change for revivals of these plays. The qualities of the additions here analysed add further evidence for varied and valued dramatic choruses in the later classical period.

The Chorus and Society

The chorus is frequently used as an analogue for the dynamics between a leader and those who follow. Chapter 7 focuses on two early ‘political theorists’, Xenophon and Plato, and the way they often reach for the image of a chorus as a means to illustrate and elucidate their arguments about leadership and the ideal society. While Xenophon tends towards a practical application of the dynamics between leader and led, found in choral training and performance, Plato is shown to go much further in his delineation of these dynamics, and their proposed practical use in his construction of the ‘second-best city’ in his Laws. Plato’s peculiar picture of the chorus, as a place where individuals lose their rationality and give themselves over to a child-like, ductile state, suits his overall aims in his construction of the city of Magnesia, but, the chapter argues, necessitates a profoundly distorted picture of ancient choreia.

The Chorus in Comedy

Although greater attention has been paid to the fragments of fourth-century comedy than tragedy, there has been no positive synthesis of what they, and the choral text from Aristophanes’ last two plays, Assemblywomen and Wealth, show about the qualities and variety of comic choral performance during this period. Demonstrating that new conclusions can be drawn from well-known material, this chapter analyses the dramatic, comic, and political impact that these texts manifest. A reading of the chorus in Assemblywomen elucidates the comic effects achieved by their act of double transvestism and their allusions to the civic performance of tribally organized circular choruses. Wealth features a chorus engaged in a high-stakes literary battle. Building on this evidence for continuity of practice, varied choral identities, and interaction with actors, the collection of fragments of comic choruses, including Menander’s, are then shown to provide support for this positive picture of dramatic choral activity.

Introduction

There has been no focused study of the chorus in fourth-century drama. This may be, in part, explained by the difficult and diffuse evidence for its presence and activity. Two phenomena may also have discouraged scholars from attempting any such focused study: Aristotle’s castigation of later dramatic odes as embolima, and the replacement of choral odes in papyri with the mark χοροῦ‎, or χοροῦ μέλος‎—‘song of the chorus’. The notion that the chorus of drama in the fourth century was a pale shadow of its fifth-century self has flourished for well over a century. In order to do so, however, much positive evidence for the quantity and quality of the dramatic chorus has had to be explained away. An examination of the chorus itself, and the way contemporary thinkers used the idea of the chorus, will allow the re-writing of the history of Attic drama and its development.