7. Antiphonal structure and antithetical thought

So far we have considered the lament for the dead both in relation to the funeral ritual of which it is still an integral part, and in relation to other kinds of ritual laments and songs to the dead. The similarities between the ancient and modern material may be explained partly in terms of the common cultural basis of all such ritual beliefs and customs in all parts of the world, irrespective of geographical and national boundaries, but partly also in terms of the cultural and linguistic continuity of the Greek people from antiquity to the present day. By examining in more depth the parallels in structure and thought, poetic conventions and imagery, which are to be found in the scient and modern laments, I hope to define more precisely in this final section first, the nature and extent of this continuity as reflected in our material, and second, the interaction of traditional forms and poetic originality, which enabled the poets to draw on a living vernacular tradition, itself continually enriched by what it had absorbed from a long literary past.

In ancient literature, the lament is presented in a variety of forms: with a soloist, accompanied by chorus only in the refrain; with a chorus alone; with one or more soloists and a chorus, singing antiphonally; and finally, in the form of an imagined dialogue between living and dead. What was the relation between these different forms, and how was each developed in ancient tradition?

The words used in Homer for beginning the dirge are ἐξάρχειν (to lead off) or ἄρχειν (to begin). [1] Their significance is most fully illus{131|132}trated in the laments for Hector at the end of the Iliad, where each of the women leads off in turn, keeping her improvisation to a similar length and structure, and is followed by a refrain wailed by the whole company of women in unison. This gives the simple strophic pattern Ax Ax Ax. [2] Although discarded by the lyric poets in favour of the monodic and triadic forms, its traditional character is indicated by its survival in popular hymns, such as the Hymn of the Kouretes and the Elian Hymn to Dionysos. [3]

Of the thrênoi of Pindar and Simonides, too little has survived to understand more of their structure and form than that they were choral, with an important musical element. [4] It is in tragedy that the greatest diversity is to be found. In addition to the solo lament, which is frequently answered by a threnodic refrain from the chorus, [5] and the antistrophic choral lament, there is the kommós, sung antiphonally by one or more actors and chorus, giving the more complex pattern AA BB CC DD etc. [6]

Although the most flexible, mature and dramatic, and the last to emerge as an art form, this antistrophic, antiphonal lament of tragedy may be shown to contain elements more ancient than either the solo lament with refrain, or the purely choral lament. Traces of antiphony have already been analysed in the Homeric laments for Hector and Achilles, and are perhaps indicated in the laments of Briseis and Achilles for Patroklos. [7] If the antiphonal lament was not an entirely new development in tragedy, but the formal expression of the ritual exchange between two groups of mourners, as I have suggested in chapter 1, then the predominance of the solo laments with refrain and the choral laments in the earlier period could be explained by the tendency of epic to develop the narrative element at the expense of antiphony and refrain, and of lyric to concentrate on the choral and musical elements. The tragedians revived antiphony because of its inherently dramatic potentiality, but all three had grown out of a common tradition.

It is of course impossible to retrace this process in detail. But an analysis of the actual use of these forms in the ancient laments will serve to confirm their common origins, and at the same time to indicate how the subsequent growth of each contributed to the shaping of the basic forms of lamentation in Greek tradition. Taking the solo lament first, an analysis of the three laments for Hector at the end of the Iliad reveals that they not only conform to a similar length and type, but that each is built up on the same three-part form: {132|133} The mourner begins with a preliminary address to the dead, then remembers the past or imagines the future in a predominantly narrative section, and finally renews her opening address and lament. This is ternary form, ABA, in which the opening section, an address or appeal, is reinforced and modified by the intervening narrative of the second section. While by no means every lament conforms to this pattern, there is a sufficient number of examples, early and ate, to establish its traditional basis beyond doubt. [8]

This three-part form was not exclusive to the thrênos, but was shared also by the hýmnos, enkómion and epitáphios. The Homeric Hymns open and close with an address or reference to the name of the god who is to be praised, while the central section contains an ac of the god's genealogy and accomplishments. Sappho’s Ode to Aphrodite (1 L.-P.) begins with an appeal to the goddess, then she {133|134} reminds her of how her prayers have always been answered in the past, and actually sees her coming in her imagination, and finally she repeats her prayer with renewed force and confidence. [9] The same basic pattern was later formalised in the rhetorical epitáphios. The origins of this ternary form, in which the prayer is first stated, then enacted as though fulfilled, and finally repeated, are to be sought in primitive ritual. The form was developed in all kinds of ritual poetry.

In contrast to the hýmnos, enkómion and epitáphios, the development of the three-part form did not in the thrênos lead to the total disappearance of the refrain. The lament was always in some sense collective, and never an exclusively solo performance. There seems to be no example in Greek antiquity of a lament which has lost all traces of refrain. Is there any evidence about the nature of its contents which might help to determine its function and significance? First, the word epodé means not simply after-song, but a song sung over someone, a désmios hýmnos (binding song) or magic incantation, designed in the dirge to bring the dead man back to life. That is perhaps why it disappeared in many of the hymns and odes, but not in the dirge. Its magical function was never quite forgotten.

This is confirmed by the use of both epodoí and ephýmnia in the choral odes of tragedy. The epodós usually comes at the end of the ode (AA BB CC x), while the ephýmnion may be placed either between the antistrophic pairs (AAx BBx CCx) or between strophe and antistrophe (Ax Ax Bx Bx Cx Cx). Both are formal refrains, metrically distinct from the rest of the ode. One of the most striking features of their use is that they occur most frequently in odes which are laments or invocations, at the moment when the dramatic tension within the ode has reached its highest pitch. The three ephýmnia in the párodos of Aeschylus' Suppliant Women all follow an invocation (or reference) to Zeus and culminate in an incantation cursing their enemies (117-21, 128-32, 141-3, 151-3, 162-7, 175a-f). In the Persians, the chorus conclude both their invocation to Dareios and their final ecstatic lament with epodoí (672-80, 1066-77). In the Seven Against Thebes the antiphonal lament that has been attributed to Antigone and Ismene is interspersed with choral ephýmnia and concluded with an epodós (961-1004). The kommós at the end of the Agamemnon is an angry exchange between the chorus an Clytemnestra, in which the chorus interrupt the second, third and fourth strophes and the third antistrophe with four ephýmnia, crying out in the fate of their murdered king in lamentation (1455-61, 1489-96, 1537-50). In the Eumenides, the Furies leap and {134|135} dance round Orestes chanting an ephýmnion after the first strophe and antistrophe which bear all the characteristics of a magic incantation (328-33, 341-6). These and other examples suggest the conscious use of the formal refrain to heighten the impact of an invocation or lament. [10] What were its contents?

The commonest Homeric formula to follow a lament is ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες (and the women wailed in answer). [11] It implies the reiteration of wails and cries. The cry is no less essential to the epodoí and ephýmnia referred to above, sometimes forming the basis of its entire contents, as in the epodós which concludes the Persians:

Besides the metrical refrain of the choral odes, traces of refrain structure may also be found in the repetition of certain lines throughout a lament, whether choral or solo in form. The third strophe and antistrophe of the invocation to Dareios both end with the same command: βάσκε πάτερ ἄκακε Δαριάν, οἴ (Come, guileless father Dareios, οí!) 663, 671. Similarly, the chorus of Euripides’ Elektra open both strophe and antistrophe of their lament with the call: σύντειν’—ὥρα—ποδὸς ὁρμάν·ὤ  ἔμβα, ἔμβα κατακλαίουσα ·  ἰώ μοί μοι (Press on—it is time!—with speed of foot. O go onward, onward, weeping bitterly! Alas for me!) (112-14, 127-9). And in Bion’s Epitáphios, the lines αἰάζω τὸν Ἄδωνιν· ἀπώλετο καλὸς Ἄδωνις  ὤλετο καλὸς Ἄδωνις, ἐπαιάζουσιν Ἔρωτες (Alas for Adonis, I cry, the fair Adonis is dead! The fair Adonis is dead. Alas! cry the Loves in answer) are repeated eight times with slight variation at regular intervals throughout. Finally, in Moschos’ Eptáphios, the appeal Ἄρχετε {135|136} Σικελικαί, τῶ πένθεος ἄρχετε Μοῖσαι (Begin, Sicilian Muses, begin the dirge!) is repeated at short and regular intervals. All these refrains contain or refer to a cry of lamentation.

In addition to repeated lines and phrases, there is also the reiteration of cries. In the kommós at the end of Sophokles’ Antigone, every cry in the strophe is answered by a similar cry in the antistrophe (1261-76, 1284-1300). This balancing of cries is found in many other choral laments, and points to its calculated use at regular intervals, as a in of refrain. [12] Another technique was to build up the emotional tension gradually to a climax by increasing the frequency of cries, as in the long kommós at Agamemnon’s tomb in the Choephoroi. [13] Reiterated cries also established contact with the dead. While Elektra pours her libation to Agamemnon, the chorus of the Choephoroi cry out to him to hear their prayer: Both here and in the invocation to Dareios, the cry accompanies a command. In the latter, it also contains an appeal to the dead by name, which appears to have a special significance, since it was frequently avoided, even in a direct address to the dead. [14] It has been preserved in that part of the lament where the ritual function was strongest.

One more traditional feature of the refrain was the reiterated statement of death. The refrain in Bion’s lament for Adonis contains the phrase ‘the fair Adonis is dead’, and a similar line is repeated in Moschos’ lament for Bion (7, 12, 18). In the Persians the words βασιλεία γὰρ διόλωλεν ἰσχύς (the royal might has perished) close the third strophe of the first stasimon, which laments the destruction of the Persian army (589-90); while the choral ephýmnia lamenting Agamemnon repeat the phrase κεῖσαι δ᾽ ἀράχνης ἐν ὑφάσματι τῷδ᾽  ἀσεβεῖ θανάτῳ βίον ἐκπνέων (You lie in that spider’s web, expiring by a wicked death!) (1492-93 = 1516-17). [15]

The main contents of the refrain, as it has survived in tragedy and in later poetic laments, would therefore seem to include the reiteration of cries, statements of death and appeals by name. Its function was to rouse the spirit of the dead and establish contact, and therefore in keeping with the essential meaning of the word epodé. Further, as we {136|137} have seen in chapter 6, the etymology of both thrênos and góos suggests that this refrain of cries—which, far from being meaningless, was probably a kind of incantation—many once have formed the of the lament. It was only after the role of éxarchos had been developed, with the separation of leader from chorus, that the refrain became subordinate. Even so, its function was not forgotten, and has left important traces both in the choral laments of tragedy, where it was deliberately exploited for dramatic effect, and in Alexandrian poetry, where there are signs that it was beginning to form structural divisions of a new, almost stanzaic type.

If it is correct that the simple solo and refrain grew out of an originally antiphonal tradition, then antiphony may be expected to have left some impact on later development. Some evidence for this is suggested by the use of stichomythic dialogue, which finds its most concentrated and highly developed expression in tragedy, where it is frequently used as prelude or interlude to the laments to heighten tension. In Sophokles’ Trachiniai, the news of Deianeira's death is not told as a simple statement of fact, but revealed gradually, point by point, in a prolonged series of statement and counter-statement, question and answer: This technique of catechistic questions is an integral part of the structure of many tragic laments. [16] In the Persians, the ghost of Dareios appears in answer to the chorus' invocation, and questions Atossa, in a tense passage of stichomythia in trochaic tetrameters, point by point {137|138} about past and present; then, after his intervening lament for Persia's fate, they question him in turn about the future (702-38, 787-800). Stichomythia is here the medium of expression for the dialogue between living and dead.

Had it any basis in Greek tradition outside tragedy? In epigrams and funerary inscriptions from the fifth century on, the use of dialogue is extremely common, usually in the form of a swift exchange of question and answer, through which the interlocutor learns step by step of the dead man’s family, his life and manner of death, as in the following terse couplet attributed to Simonides: [17] It is true that developed stichomythic form is not found in non-literary inscriptions before tragedy, and literary influence cannot therefore be excluded; but the imagined dialogue between living and dead, on which its use in he lament was based, can be traced much further back. The statement to the passing traveller by the dead man or his tomb is found in some of the earliest extant inscriptions from the seventh century, and became increasingly common during the sixth century. [18] Sometimes the address is reversed, and it is the traveller who speaks to the dead man, or probably even to Charon himself, as in the following inscription from Phokis (c. 500 B.C.): In general, the use of the formulaic greeting χαῖρε (hail) and of the vocative [19] indicate that these two modes of address were in fact complementary aspects of an imagined dialogue, in which the dead man or his tomb informed the passer-by of who he was and of his death, and the traveller in turn gave an assurance of his pity and concern. After, the relaxation of the austere brevity of the archaic style, both {138|139} addresses are found together in the same inscription, and the interlocutor is no longer an impersonal passer-by but a relative or friend. [20]

Further, the formulaic greeting which is found in the funerary inscriptions occurs for the first time in Greek literature in a highly significant ritual context. In the Iliad, Achilles leads off the lament for Patroklos with a solemn oath that he will avenge his friend’s death: Later, Achilles’ oath is answered by a reproach from the soul of Patroklos that he has neglected his funeral rites (ibid. 69-70). That the formula ‘Hail, though in Hades …’ was traditional to the address to the dead, and not merely a literary borrowing, is indicated first by its frequency in inscriptions from all parts of the Greek-speaking world throughout antiquity, and secondly by the number of variations in which it is found. [21]

D. L. Page has held that the use of the voice of the dead man or his tomb in the funerary inscriptions is an indication of a later sophistication, asking ‘whether in any case a thrênos can properly be uttered by the dead man or his tomb’ and concluding, with characteristic logic, that it cannot. [22] Lattimore, more cautiously, comments that the convention is appropriate to the inscribed epitaph and nothing else, and presents a unique example of the influence of inscriptions on literature. [23] If, however, the convention arose out of the dialogue between living and dead, it belongs to one of the oldest and least sophisticated elements of the lament. It is generally accepted that belief in the intercourse between the world of the living and the world of the dead is extremely primitive. Some traces of this belief have survived in the form and structure of later laments, particularly in popular tradition of funerary inscriptions. And the dialogue between living and dead, performed by two antiphonal groups of mourners, is still a significant element in the modern moirológia, many of which are, precisely, laments ‘uttered by the dead or by his tomb’.

By the end of antiquity, the three-part form had been reduced by literary convention to mere formalism, satirized by Lucian in his de Luctu (second century A.D.) as follows: {139|140} This lament was intended as a parody. The symmetrical arrangement, first analysed by Reiner, with the opening and closing address neatly balanced with three finite verbs, and the corresponding pairs of participles in the central section forming a pattern with their endings abc cba, is rhetorical—one might almost say mathematical—rather than literary in character. [24] But although a caricature, the features of the formal lament have been distorted, not invented, as may be seen by comparing Lucian’s parody with the highly stylized planctus from Achilles Tatius’ romance Leukippe and Kleitophon (second century A.D.). [25]

In theses circumstances it is natural to expect certain changes in the structure of the lament in Byzantine literature. The three-part form continued to play a dynamic part not in the archaizing laments of secular poetry, but in the more popular pagan hymns, such as the magic incantations and Orphic Hymn to Physis of the fourth century. [26] In the archaizing laments which have come down to us, divorce as they were from ritual or religion, it was first reduced to a perfunctory convention, and then discarded altogether. Was there any attempt to introduce new forms? {140|141}

In the fifteenth book of Nonnos’ Dionysiaka (fifth century), there are two short laments for the dead Hymnos. First the bulls, cows and heifers weep for their dead herdsman in a lament of eight lines, with the repetition of a refrain at the first and fifth lines, ‘the fair herdsman has perished, slain by the fair girl’ (15.399, 403). Then follows the lament of the wild animals—wolf, bear and lion—with a similar refrain at the first and sixth lines and half-line echoes at the third and eleventh. Nonnos, modelling himself perhaps on Bion's lament, is carrying the incipient stanza-refrain one stage further towards a regular pattern. By the eleventh century, Christophoros of Mytilene has completely regularised this structure in his planctus for his sister Anastasia, which although formal, is not without a touching sincerity: The poem contains four eight-line ‘stanzas’, each followed by two longer lines of invocation, like a refrain. The metre is Anacreontic, one of the more popular of classical metres among Byzantine poets, perhaps because it permitted them to adhere to the rules of classical prosody while maintaining a regular number of eight or twelve syllables in each line, thereby combining quantity with stress. Some of the later Anacreontics are almost indistinguishable from the stressed eight- and twelve-syllable metres of modern folk song. [27] Christophoros’ Anacreontic planctus therefore provides an important link with Byzantine popular and religious poetry. {141|142}

On the whole, however, the Byzantine archaising lament shows a stagnation of form and a decline in the dynamic use of structure. The three-part form had fallen into disuse; while instances of stanza and refrain reflect, to a greater or lesser degree, some imitation of Alexandrian poetry, with little added beyond what had to be conceded to the changes in the language and the development of stress. The dialogue form of the ancient funerary inscriptions was imitated in the later epigrams, [28] but it had lost its vitality and immediacy, nor was it adapted to other kinds of lament.

In striking contrast, the religious laments of the early church show considerable experimentation with form. Many of the kontákia, kanónes and tropária begin and end with an invocation, although the three-part form is no longer basic to the structure as it was in the ancient hymns. Structurally and poetically among the most exciting compositions of this type is Romanos’ kontákion, Mary at the Cross, whose strophic and melodic construction is a koukoúlion of four lines followed by seventeen tropária of the same elaborate metrical pattern, forming the acrostic TOY ΤΑΠ[Ε]ΙΝΟΥ ΡΩΜΑΝΟΥ (by the humble Romanos). Each tropárion ends with a refrain. Without attempting to enter into the controversy about the origins of the kontákion, it is worth pointing out that not all these features were entirely new. There are several examples of both linear and strophic acrostic from the pre-Byzantine period, in pagan hymns and secular songs, thus suggesting that even if the immediate origins of the kontákion are to be sought in Syriac religious poetry, one of its most prominent features had already existed in Greek tradition before the advent of Christianity. [29] Similarly, the elaborate strophic construction finds a general parallel in the choral odes of tragedy, and coincides with some tendencies already noted in the archaising poetry, where eastern influence is negligible. Thus, even if the particular combination of forms in the kontákion was new, its immediate assimilation into Greek may be explained in terms of the history of Greek verse forms.

Further, a closer analysis of Romanos’ kontákion reveals that there is more to its structure than the melodic or strophic pattern. Besides the invocation of the poem and final tropárion, with the intervening dramatic dialogue between Mary and Christ, both Mary’s first lament and Christ’s reply show traces of artistically balance three-part form: After Mary's opening lament and Christ’s reply, both three strophes in length, the pace quickens, as in answer to his Mothers protests that Christ has no need to die to save mankind, having performed so many miracles in the past, Christ points to the past sins of Adam and Eve and their present misery as proof of the necessity of man's redemption through the Crucifixion (7-10). Then, in answer to Mary's single strophe of short, anxious questions, he assures her that she will see him again after he has risen from the dead, and describes the future joy and hope of the Resurrection (11-14). The dialogue ends with a short, dramatic exchange, in which Mary's grief is contrasted with Christ’s hope in a series of parallel antitheses (15-16).

In a single kontákion, Romanos has exploited all available forms, strophe-refrain, dialogue and three-part form. Nor is his artistry ever static, developed for the sake of form alone. At every stage it reinforces the depth of insight with which Mary’s gradual and painful realisation that her son must be crucified is described. As in the best of the ancient laments, the three-part form reflects a dynamic change: the {143|144} final strophe is a reappraisal of Christ in the light of Mary's suffering, described in the central section. The refrain at the end of each strophe, ὁ υἱὸς καὶ θεός μου (my son and God), itself a terse expression of Mary’s conflicting emotions for Christ, who is at the same time her son and God, is used in a variety of ways—questions, statements, appeals—and with a wide range of feelings—affection, despair, triumph. It is never purely perfunctory. But it is above all the dialogue which sustains the dramatic tension, swiftly moving as it does from the personal to the universal, from despair at Christ’s death to hope in the future life of mankind. And it is through his use of dialogue that Romanos achieves the interweaving of corresponding planes of time and place—past, present, future, Hades, earth, Paradise—which both widens and deepens our whole conception of the theme. This close integration of form and content, typical of the best of Romanos, is not an abstract convention, but a poetic response to the diversity of forms actually current in Greek liturgical singing of the time. [30]

In a similar context, we find elements of refrain, possibly deriving from Romanos, both in the ninth-century Stavrotheotókia and in the later and more popular Thrênos Theotókou, where there are also traces of three-part form. [31] In the latter, besides the repetition of the familiar line ‘where are your fine looks, my son, where is your beauty?’ (40, 67), the cry of refrain occurs fifteen times in all, six times in the form υἱέ μου καὶ Θεέ μου (my son and my God), and nine times in the form υἱέ μου (my son). Its position in the line is of some metrical interest, since it is always found in the second half of the politikòs stíchos, the full form on syllables 9-15 (8, 41, 61, 65, 85 [in the genitive], 106), and the shorter from usually on the last three syllables (13, 22, 37, 49, 102, 108), but also on 9-11 (18, 27) and once on 11-13 (74). This kind of usage suggests the irregular but indispensable refrain of oral tradition.

Turning now to the laments for the fall of Constantinople, we find, in addition to the predominantly narrative ballads which open and close with a direct address, rather in the self-conscious manner of a Broadside ballad, an important development in the use of dialogues. In the more popular Anakálema, the news of the city’s capture is told in stichomythic dialogue between a ship coming from Constantinople and a galley which it meets near the island of Tenedos. Although the dialogue conforms to a formulaic pattern common in Greek folk song, there is evidence that the meeting of the ships was a historical event: it was at Tenedos that the Venetian galleys on their way to Constantinople had planned to meet an escort from the Greek fleet on 20 May {144|145} 1453; but while anchored at Chios awaiting a favourable wind, Genoese ships from Pera arrived and told them that the city had already fallen. [32] Another lament takes the form of a dramatic dialogue between the fallen Constantinople and the still prospering city of Venice; [33] while in the Thrênos of the Four Patriarchates, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch each laments in turn the passing of her glory, a device which finds some parallels in ancient epigrams. [34]

The Virgin’s lament and the thrênoi for the fall of Constantinople provide a useful link between Byzantine and modern popular tradition; but they are not folk songs, and it might therefore be argued that the signs of formal structure we have noted are due to literary influence. In order to determine whether the old forms had survived independently, and what their function was, we must look at the modern moirológia. There are two types of lament which show traces of three-part form. First, in a historical ballad from Karpathos about the earthquake which ravaged the island on 26 June 1924, the poet begins with an appeal to his mind and heart to prove equal to the task of telling the terrible story—which he proceeds to relate in detail—and concludes with a brief prayer to God to avert such catastrophe in the future and a strengthened appeal to his own mind and heart (Michaelidis-Nouaros 317A). Although presented in a more lively manner, this technique is not essentially different from that of numerous Byzantine historical and religious laments. Among the ritual laments, however, there are several which show a more dynamic use of this form. A Maniot woman opens her lament by addressing the dead directly, ‘Yiannaki, tell me, what shall I do with my love for you?’, then goes on to elaborate in the central, narrative section the theme of her grief for her dead son, returning at the end to a direct address, more passionate than the first, ‘Yiannaki, water of life, my royal ship …! (Theros 686). This structure is not fortuitous, since it can be paralleled elsewhere, and the divisions are further emphasised by a change in metre from the fifteen-syllable politikòs stíchos to rhyming couplets in eight-syllable verse. [35]

More universal and fundamental than the three-part form is the refrain. Like the ancient epodé, it frequently contains reiterate cries, commands, appeals by name, and statements of death. [36] In a passionate lament from Karpathos, a young girl implores her lover to awake and embrace her, repeating the cry ‘awake!’ with a crescendo of emotion: A mourner from Crete repeats the fact of her daughter’s death over an over to herself, with mesmerising effect, ἐπόθανες, ἐπόθανες, μηλιά μου … (you are dead, you are dead, my apple-tree …!) (Lioudaki 420).

Unfortunately, a complete analysis of the refrain in the modern moirológia is at present precluded by the usual practice of editors, which is to print texts without music and to omit all cries and repeated syllables and phrases which are extra metrum. When sung, each fifteen-syllable line of these laments may be followed by a refrain of eight or five syllables. Usually the number of syllables in the refrain is constant throughout, while the actual phrase may be varied, as in the following verse from a narrative lament from the island of Astypalaia in the Dodecanese, recorded by Baud-Bovy—one of the few collectors of Greek folk songs to have published the music as well as the texts in full: Frequently, short cries and appeals by name are inserted within the line, sometimes dividing words, or one or more syllables of the same word may be repeated. This kind of flexible melismatic decoration is still indispensible to certain types of lament, where variety is achieved not through the melody (which to the unaccustomed ear at first resembles a monotonous drone), but through the skillful manipulation of ornamentation and refrain.

But the most significant and characteristic feature in the structure of the modern folk laments is use of dialogue and antiphony. Often, the lament takes the form of an imagined dialogue, in which the {146|147} mourner asks the dead when he will return, and the dead replies that he cannot, begging the mourner not to weep excessively but to accept his departure, as in the ancient funerary inscriptions. [38] Rarely, he may promise to return in the spring, as in this lament from the Peloponnese: Sometimes the mourner may address the tomb or the black earth, instructing them to care tenderly for the dead, or telling them in which order to rot his limbs and features. [39] Or it may be a more general appeal to the whole company of dead in Hades, and, especially to kinsmen, to look after the newcomer. [40] Nor do the dead speak only in reply to persistent questions and lamentation; sometimes they and their tombs address the casual passer-by, and reproach him for trampling upon him. [41] It may even be the dead man’s weapons which tell the passer-by the story of his bravery: Sometimes a macabre scene takes place within the tomb itself, as the dead man pleads with the two-headed snake which threatens to eat away his flesh. [42]

The variety is infinite, showing how vital the belief still remains in the intercourse between the world of the dead and the world of the living. But the dialogue is not restricted to this type of dirge. It may involve two mourners, like the following version of a well-known Epirot lament which I recorded from Alexandra Tsipi in 1963, in which a mother urges her daughter, five days a bride and then widowed, to stop weeping and marry again, and receives an angry refusal in reply. The concise antitheses give expression to a situation so commonly found in the ancient inscriptions: {147|148} Α common means of expression in these dialogue laments is stichomythia. It may also be used to vary the narrative of a long ballad, or to increase the dramatic tension. In the ballad The Young Girl and Charos, Kostandis, riding to the house of his betrothed, sees a crowd gathering as if in funeral procession outside her house, and suspects bad news. Passing the churchyard, he sees the grave-digger, and asks whose grave he is preparing. The news that it is Evgenoula’s has to be extracted point by point, first in riddling phrases, and finally in grim reality: [43] Sometimes, stichomythia takes the form of catechistic questions, which may be asked and answered by the mourners themselves. It is a {148|149} popular technique, serving the same ritual function of counting the dead and assessing the loss as was found in Aeschylus’ Persians: [44]

Finally, in a Tsakonian lament already referred to in chapter 6, of penetrating quality and power, we find a rare combination of antiphony and choral refrain. One woman takes the part of the girl, another the part of the mother, while the rest form the chorus; they enact a kind of drama at the girl's wake. Each line is followed by a refrain of cries, wailed by the whole company in unison:

Antiphony, dialogue and refrain, among the oldest structural features of the Greek lament, are still vital and dynamic elements of the modern moirológia. They have survived, not because they have been consciously preserved—in the archaising laments of Byzantine learned poetry they were almost extinct—but because antiphony is still imbedded in the ritual performance, with more than one group of mourners, sometimes representing the living and the dead and singing in response to each other. The collective rather than individual performance also explains the continued importance of the refrain; and why the three-part form, as belonging primarily to the soloist, is the least universal today. Continuity has been strongest and most spontaneous in popular tradition.

Antithetical style is a fundamental and integral part of the structure and thought of the lament, though by no means exclusive to it. A study of its use and function will provide an opportunity to trace developments through a cross-section of archaising, religious and popular laments both in poetry and prose, and thereby to determine to what extent it became a literary affectation, and to what extent it remained rooted in the vernacular language and popular tradition.

In an antiphonal lament at the end of the Seven against Thebes, it is possibly Antigone and Ismene who together weep for the fate of their brothers, Eteokles and Polyneikes, each slain by the other. While the following lines illustrate all the most characteristic qualities of Greek antithetical style, antithesis is not a mere stylistic affectation, but is determined both by the antiphonal structure and by the underlying thought: Such contrast of thought, sometimes expressed antiphonally, is extremely frequent in the tragic laments. [45] In a highly inflected language like Greek, the result is inevitably alliteration, assonance and homoioteleuton. Far from being avoided, these devices are exploited to the full, and the rhythm is further intensified by the use of parallelism and asyndeton, as in the chorus’ opening lines from the kommós in the Persians, ἄνι᾽ ἄνια κακὰ νεόκοτα  καὶ δάι᾽. αἰαῖ, διαίνεσθε, Πέρ-  σαι, τόδ’ ἄχος κλύοντες (Grievous, grievous disaster, distressful and destructive! Alas, Persians, weep at the news of this calamity!) (A. Pers. 256-8). [46] A similar effect is achieved by the repetition of an emotive word in different cases, as in the kommós sung after the suicide of Ajax, where the chorus sing πόνος πόνῳ πόνον φέρει (tοil upon toil and trouble upon trouble) (S. Aj. 866). In Aristophanes’ Frogs, Aeschylus is made to ridicule Euripides for abusing this device; but the point is hardly a fair one, since it is extremely common in the laments of tragedy, not excluding Aeschylus’ own. [47] Another favourite technique is the allusive play on the tragic associations of proper names. [48] Further, antithesis may coincide with metrical diaeresis, dividing the line into two contrasting and balancing kôla. [49] Their cumulative impact, when reinforced with incremental repetition, may best be illustrated from the lines which open the first strophe and antistrophe of the first stasimon from the Persians: Ξέρξης μὲν ἄγαγεν, ποποῖ,  Ξέρξης δ᾽ ἀπώλεσεν, τοτοῖ,  Ξέρξης δὲ πάντ᾽ ἐπέσπε δυσφρόνως  βαρίδεσσι μοντίαις … (Xerxes led forth, alas!, Xerxes laid low, alas!, Xerxes managed all things rashly with his sea-faring ships), νᾶες μὲν ἄγαγον, ποποῖ,  νᾶες δ’ ἀπώλεσαν, τοτοῖ,  νᾶες πανωλέθροισιν ἐμβολαῖς … (the ships … led forth, alas!, the ships laid low, alas!, the ships, under the fatal attack) 550-3, 560-3. [50]

All these stylistic features find more formalised expression in the rhetorical funeral oration and in the later prose laments. A fragment from a funeral oration by Gorgias of Leontinoi (fifth century B.C.), who is regarded as the founder of Greek rhetoric, is almost entirely composed of antithetical clauses, which, although elaborated for the sake of form rather than content, give the piece distinctive rhythm and shape. Even more flamboyant are the stylized planctus in Achilles {151|152} Tatius’ prose romance Leukippe and Kleitophon (second century A.D.). Charikles’ father is mourning his son’s death in a riding accident, developing and repeating the antitheses of love and death, marriage and funeral rites: This kind of rhetorical display, characteristic of Greek prose style in late antiquity, has led E. A. Norden to conclude that the principal distinction between antithetical style in Greek and Hebrew is that in Greek, the form is the most important factor, and that clarity of thought is frequently sacrificed for the desired stylistic effect, whereas in Hebrew, there is a real contrast of ideas—Gedankenparallelismus {152|153} rather than Satzparallelismus. [51] While it is true that the antithetical style of the New Testament, which influenced the style of the liturgy and of Byzantine religious poetry, conforms more to Hebrew than to Greek type, it should be pointed out that earlier, in the writings of Herakleitos, antithetical style is inseparable from the essence of his thought: the unity of opposites and the opposition of unities find perfect expression in antithetical clauses, where words and phrases opposite in meaning but similar in sound are juxtaposed. [52] The same is true of the laments from tragedy, where the conflicting emotions of the mourner are expressed and developed by means of a series of antitheses.

If we turn now to the prose style of the early Paschal homilies, of the Byzantine funeral oration, and of the liturgy, we shall see that it owes much to the rhetorical style of the classical and late antique periods. Gregory of Nyssa has preserved for us a lament for the death of Makrina, performed by the holy sisters at her wake, where the sense of bereavement is conveyed by antitheses which are sharpened by the use of parallelism and asyndeton: [53] In the Paschal homilies and in the liturgy, Christ’s victory over Hades and the triumph of life over death are acclaimed with antitheses hardly less striking than Herakleitos’ own: [54]

Of the early Christian hymns, Wellesz has remarked that ‘it is the frequent use of antitheses, characteristic of Semitic poetry, which adds a new element to that of Greek thought’. [55] But, as we have seen, there seems little evidence to support his suggestion that Greek thought as not expressed by means of antitheses before the influence of Semitic. The most sustained and perhaps the finest example of antithetical style in Byzantine hymns is to be found in the Akáthistos Hýmnos, of uncertain date and authorship but tentatively attributed by Wellesz to Romanos, where it is a perfect expression of the apparently profound contradictions inherent in the mystery of Christ's birth, and complementary to the complex structure of the hymn as a whole. [56] In the context of the Virgin’s lament, it is again by means of antitheses that Christ’s greatness through the sufferings of the Virgin is expressed: It is true that parallels to this style can be found in the poetic homilies of Ephraem (A.D. 306–73), and in Melito’s Homily on the Passion (second century), which is thought to have been written originally in Syriac and then translated into Greek. [57] At the same time, antithetical style is no less important a feature of some pagan hymns as well as those of Apollinarios and Gregory Nazianzen, both of whom were writing before the significant influence of Syriac on Byzantine hymnography. [58] It would therefore be more cautious to conclude that the style of Byzantine hymns in the period of their maturity (sixth to seventh centuries) is neither exclusively Semitic nor exclusively Greek in origin. The contribution of Hebrew and Syriac was to restore the seriousness of thought and content which was in danger of becoming obscured in some of the learned and rhetorical Greek writers; that is why the style is at its best in the religious and not in the archaising poets. But its poetic treatment is essentially Greek, as is shown by the untranslatable quality of the closing strophe of Romanos’ Mary at the Cross quoted above.

The independent survival of antithetical thought and antithetical style in a different context, associated with a more popular tradition of lamentation, is attested by the funerary inscriptions. Contrasts are expressed antithetically: especially common are the topoi ‘instead of the wedding chamber, the tomb' and ‘not marriage, but death …’. [59] In a late inscription from Teos, the fate of a girl who died in childbed is emphasised by a series of balancing, antithetical kôla, further heightened in the final couplet by the use of the same formula to introduce contrasting ideas: [60] Sometimes, an emotive word is repeated, with cumulative impact, either within the line or at the beginning of successive lines, as in the following inscription from Rome (second to third century A.D.): [61] Finally, the use of assonance, alliteration and word-play is no less prominent a feature of this style in the inscriptions than in the laments of tragedy. [62]

In Byzantine secular literature, some of the most remarkable laments are to be found in Eustathios Makrembolites’ prose romance Hysmine and Hysminias, written in the second half of the twelfth century. Although closely dependent on the love novels of the late antiquity in structure, theme and tone, it stands out among the Greek romances, ancient as well as Byzantine, both for its bold eroticism—which, conveyed largely through the dream sequences of the narrator, Hysimias, has the effect of overshadowing the conventional intricacies of plot—and for its extravagant imagery, which has flashes of brilliance not unlike the imagery of the folk songs. In particular the dual antitheses of death as marriage and marriage as death are interwoven in the dreams and in the laments throughout the romance, matched by {156|157} powerful and rhythmic, if rhetorical, use of antithetical style. Hearing of the marriage planned for Hysmine by her parents, Hysminias vows that he will kill himself and wed in Hades. He embraces her, then laments his fate: [63]

The same style, although less rhetorical and effusive, is evident in some of the later vernacular laments in politikòs stíchos, as in the following lament for absence from home preserved in a manuscript of the seventeenth century, where each line divides into two balancing or contrasting parts. Here, as in the funerary inscriptions, the effect is frequently achieved by the repetition of emotive words at key points in the line: [64] In a modern lament from Epiros, the conflicts and tensions of a mother’s attempt to measure her grief for her son’s death in terms of nature’s universal lamentation, and his reply that it is only her grief which concerns him, are lyrically sustained by the repetition of a traditional formula, similar to the one found in the second/third-century inscription from Rome discussed above: [65] Another common technique of the modern laments which was also found in the inscriptions is emphasis by contrast, as in the following Kleftic lament, where the harsh freedom afforded by the mountains is contrasted with the easy, but subject, life of the plains: [66] In a lament from Athens mourning the death of a husband, the effect is sharpened by simple contrasts rather than by prolonged repetition: [67] A Maniot mother laments the death of her only daughter in terse antitheses, with little external connection or sentence construction, heightened by internal assonance and alliteration as well as by the rhyme:

These few examples, while far from exhaustive, serve to illustrate that antithetical style remains a dynamic feature of the folk laments; as in the best of the ancient and Byzantine literary laments, it is not external to, but dependent upon, the structure and thought. At the same time, the close stylistic affinities of the folk songs with the funerary {159|160} inscriptions suggest the possibility that the inscriptions were drawing on a living vernacular tradition as well as on an established literary technique. Certainly, the long history of artistically developed antithetical style in Greek, together with the interdependence of literary and popular tradition (which can be attested in some detail from the late Byzantine period), has ensured not merely its survival, but its poetic quality.