12. Authority and Authorship in the Lyric Tradition

§1. Having compared the authority of Pindar’s traditions in song with the authority of traditions in poetry and prose, we are ready to consider the actual medium of Pindaric song as a key to understanding the concept of authorship in lyric poetry. So far we have concentrated on the epinician tradition represented by Pindar. But now we must situate this tradition within the broader framework of Archaic Greek lyric poetry.

§2. Let us begin with the concept of choral lyric poetry, which is the specific medium of Pindar. The khoros ‘chorus’ of choral lyric is a group that represents, by way of singing and dancing, a given community. [1] In Archaic choral lyric poetry, the community can be represented as the city-state, the polis itself. [2] This is not to say, however, that the representation of the polis by the chorus does not aim at Panhellenic prestige. [3]

§3. As a representative of the polis, the chorus is concerned partly with local interests, and it can therefore serve as a formal vehicle of ritual, as in the case of the epinicians of Pindar, which constitute part of the ritual chain of athletics. [4] The range, however, of choral self-expression in matters of ritual is certainly not limited to the Games. Besides epinician odes, a given chorus in a given polis may perform a wide variety of other kinds of compositions related to various local or civic rituals. The range of this variety is apparent from the book titles in the Alexandrian editions of Pindar. [5] There are, for {339|340} example, the maiden songs or parthenia, related ultimately to local/civic rituals of coming of age. [6] This type of song is also attested in compositions from earlier times, as we see in the upcoming discussion of Alcman and the choral traditions of Sparta. There are also, of course, choral odes connected directly with cults of the gods, such as Pindar’s paiānes ‘paeans’ in honor of Apollo. [7] The list could be extended, but the point has already been made: choral lyric is public, a thing of the polis. [8]

§4. Within the general category of song or lyric poetry, however, we have also had occasion to take note of another medium besides choral lyric: monody, that is, solo singing. [9] In studying the traditions of Archaic Greek monody, we have already examined the eventual differentiation of a composer/performer into a mythical protocomposer on the one hand and a contemporary professional performer, the kitharōidos ‘lyre singer’ or aulōidos ‘reed singer’ on the other. [10] But this type of differentiation in monody is just one of many possible patterns of evolution.

§5. So also with choral lyric, there are many different patterns of evolution in the traditions of composition and performance. The basic difference between monody and choral lyric is on the level of performance. Whereas monody accommodates a single professional or nonprofessional performer, choral lyric requires a group of strictly nonprofessional polis dwellers as represented by the khoros ‘chorus’, who both sang and danced the song. [11] So much for distinctions between monodic and choral modes of performance.

§6. Let us turn our attention to distinctions between monody and choral lyric on the level of composition. In the choral medium of Pindar the composer of the performances was clearly a professional, as we see explicitly in Pindar’s own words, Isthmian 2.1–13. [12] In this sense, Pindar’s medium was in fact professional, and it contrasts itself with the good old days when love songs were sung to the lyre, spontaneously and without pay, in the setting of symposia (Isthmian 2.1–5). Pindar’s diction, describing the lyric poetry of the good old days, is suggestive of monody, in particular the grand old masters of sympotic love lyric, such as Alcaeus, Anacreon, and Ibycus (cf. Aristophanes Women at the Thesmophoria 160–163; Athenaeus 600d on Anacreon). [13] But the spontaneity of nonprofessional performance by these figures of the past {340|341} turns out to be an idealization, once we take fully into consideration the special skills needed for the traditions of performing this and other kinds of monodic poetry. These skills were transmitted professionally, through the medium of professional kitharōidiā ‘lyre singing’, either directly in performance or indirectly in the professional teaching of performance.

§7. As a premier example of professional performance in monodic lyre singing, I cite the story of Arion in Herodotus 1.23–24. [14] This figure Arion, who is described as the most prestigious kitharōidos ‘lyre singer’ of his era (Herodotus 1.23), is represented as giving a monodic performance of lyre singing, in a ploy to save his life, for an audience of greedy sailors who had captured him in order to rob him of his great wealth (1.24.5); it is specified that Arion had amassed his riches, designated as khrēmata ‘property’, on a musical tour through Italy and Sicily (1.24.1–2).

§8. In Pindar’s Isthmian 2, this same word khrēmata ‘property, possessions’ is used in a context where one of the Seven Sages, in reaction to his personal loss of both property and friends (11) exclaims bitterly: χρήματα χρήματ’ ἀνήρ ‘Man is nothing more than khrēmata! Yes, khrēmata!’ (ibid.). [15] Another variation on this bitter reaction is quoted in the monodic poetry of Alcaeus (F 360 V), again in a context where the Sage is bewailing the equation of self-worth with purely material value. [16] In other words the ethic of sympotic monody, as presented by Alcaeus and represented by Pindar, is the transcendence of purely material value. But the anecdote about Arion suggests that the art of sympotic monody is nevertheless founded on the dynamics of material value. So too with choral lyric poetry, as dramatized in Pindar’s Isthmian 2: the poem is admitting that its art is founded on the dynamics of material value, but it proclaims the intent of transcending the purely material, claiming the ethic of old-fashioned sympotic monody as a model. Pindaric song fuses the contemporary art of monody, which is professional, into the transcendent ethic of monody, which rejects the superficial equation of khrēmata ‘possessions’ with self-worth. Pindar’s fusion of the professional with the ethical—so that the professional aspect of monody is no longer evident—is itself an ethical gesture, corresponding to a parallel fusion that is ongoing within his own choral medium. This ideology of {341|342} fusion should not lead to our own confusion about professionalism and non-professionalism in monody.

§9. Having recovered the reality of professional performance in the art of lyre singing, we may turn to the professional teaching of performance in lyre singing. Again I cite the explicit reference in Aristophanes Clouds 961–989 to the schooling of young boys by professionals in the art of lyre singing, back in those “good old days” of the generation that had fought at Marathon. [17] The comic allusions in this passage to an atmosphere of aristocratic pederasty that pervades such schooling (e.g., 966) is indicative of a common theme, typical of not only monodic song but also elegiac poetry, linking aristocratic paideiā ‘education’ and aristocratic paiderastiā ‘love of boys’ in the context of the symposium. [18] In the comic vision of Aristophanes, even the schooling of the boys is pervaded by this dominant theme. In Pindar’s idealized vision of nonprofessional monodic performance at the symposium, the songs being sung are called paideioi humnoi ‘songs of boyhood’ (παιδείους … ὕμνους Isthmian 2.3), an expression that suggests paideiā and paiderastiā simultaneously. [19] The passage from Aristophanes about the old-fashioned schooling of nonprofessionals by professionals in this art helps put the spontaneity of the monodic moment into perspective.

§10. The most we can say for nonprofessionalism in Archaic Greek song-making is that the monodic medium, in contexts like the symposium, may at least allow for composition on a nonprofessional as well as professional level, whereas the choral medium of a figure like Pindar, according to his own words, has become restricted to the composition of professionals. Also, the monodic medium allows for performance on a nonprofessional as well as professional level, whereas the choral medium, as performed by the khoros ‘chorus’, is restricted to performance by nonprofessionals. Moreover, even choral compositions can be reperformed by nonprofessionals at symposia as solo pieces, but then these nonprofessionals are expected to accompany themselves on the lyre, and that in turn requires professional education in the specialized art of kitharōidiā ‘lyre singing’. [20] In fact such solo performance was the ultimate sign of education, of direct access to the old traditions of song. [21]

§11. In a word the symposium was a last stand for nonprofessional performance of both monodic and choral compositions. Still the choral medium was already professionalized in the dimension of composition, and the monodic, in the dimension of transmission through such specialized skills as kitharōidiā ‘lyre singing’. {342|343}

§12. Given these patterns of differentiation between the choral and monodic media, we may ask about their diachronic relationship to each other. As the discussion proceeds, we encounter a series of indications that the direction of long-range development proceeded from choral lyric to monody as a differentiated offshoot. Further, monody can be seen as a midstage in the differentiation of song into poetry.

§13. Let us observe more closely the patterns of restriction, in the Archaic choral lyric form, to performance by nonprofessionals, for whom such performance was a ritual act of community. This restriction is a fundamental indication that we are dealing with a less differentiated institution. [22] From the standpoint of later standards in the more differentiated world of poetic and musical professionalism, the inherited necessity of performance by a chorus of nonprofessionals imposed limitations on the virtuosity of both performance and composition (cf. “Aristotle” Problems 19.15). Moreover, as we shall now see, the references to nonprofessional choral performance in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, combined with cross-cultural comparative evidence, make it clear that the social institution of what we call the chorus even antedates the institution of the polis. [23]

§14. In the songmaking traditions of choral lyric poetry, one of several possible patterns of evolution results in the attested differentiation between a protocomposer who is grounded in myth and a succession of contemporary nonprofessional performers, selected by age groupings, who sing and dance a protocomposition grounded in the ritual of seasonally recurring festivals. Such a protocomposition would be subject to potential ongoing recomposition with each seasonally recurring performance. Striking examples of this pattern of evolution can be found in the available testimony about the festivals of Sparta, which were the occasion for seasonal reperformances, in a ritual setting, of the lyric “protocompositions” of Terpander, Thaletas, Alcman, and others. [24]

§15. The first katastasis ‘establishment’, that is, the ostensibly first phase of lyric traditions at Sparta, is traditionally attributed to Terpander (“Plutarch” {343|344} On Music 1134b). This composer of the so-called ‘first katastasis’ was reputedly a singer from Lesbos who moved to Sparta, where he was the first of all winners at the reputedly oldest festival of Sparta, the Feast of Karneia (Hellanicus FGH 4 F 85 by way of Athenaeus 635e). [25] The second katastasis is attributed to Thaletas of Gortyn, Xenocritus of Locri, Polymnestus of Colophon (On Music 1134bc). [26] These composers of the so-called second katastasis are associated with the Feast of the Gumnopaidiai at Sparta, as well as the Feast of the Apodeixeis in Arcadia and the Feast of the Endumatia at Argos (On Music 1134c). [27] I draw attention to the opposite notions of ritual undressing and dressing inherent in the names Gumnopaidiai (henceforth “Gymnopaidiai”) and Endumatia native to the traditions of Sparta and Argos, respectively. As for the Arcadian Apodeixeis, plural of the noun apo-deixis ‘public presentation’, we shall appreciate the significance of this name better at a later point, when we consider the related verb apodeiknumai ‘make a public presentation’ in the context of a report by Herodotus about a local festival where female choral groups perform (5.83.3). [28] Earlier, we have seen the same word in a different but ultimately related context, the first sentence of the Histories of Herodotus, in referring to the ‘public presentation’, apo-deixis, of his historiā ‘inquiry’. [29] For now, however, it is enough to stress that such festivals are a key to our upcoming consideration of the process of ongoing choral recomposition. There is a striking description, in Sosibius FGH 595 F 5 by way of Athenaeus 678bc, of choral events at the Spartan Feast of the Gymnopaidiai, featuring reperformances of compositions attributed to Thaletas, Alcman, and Dionysodotus.

§16. It has been observed, on the basis of this and similar testimony, that “some at least of Alcman’s compositions were still being reperformed well into the Hellenistic era.” [30] What I argue, further, is that such patterns of sustained seasonal reperformance entail parallel patterns of sustained seasonal recomposition, affecting not only the content of the compositions but also the very personification of the archetypal composer.

§17. In order to understand the progressive reshaping over time of the persona who claims the composition of a choral lyric performance in societies like that of Archaic Sparta, we must explore in greater detail the fundamental characteristics of the Archaic Greek khoros, the singing and dancing {344|345} ensemble or chorus. To begin, I stress that the khoros is by nature a microcosm of society. [31] The Spartans, for example, actually referred to the interior of their civic space as the Khoros (Pausanias 3.11.9). [32] As a microcosm of society, it is equally important to note, the khoros is also a microcosm of social hierarchy. Within the hierarchy that is the chorus, as the detailed investigation of Claude Calame has shown, a majority of younger members act out a pattern of subordination to a minority of older leaders; this acting out conforms to the role of the chorus as an educational collectivization of experience, including various forms of institutionalized or stylized homosexual experience serving as an initiation into the heterosexual status of marriage. [33] The concept of older leaders, within the hierarchy of the chorus, is in most instances embodied in the central persona of the khorēgos ‘chorus leader’. There is a pervasive choral convention of emphasizing the superiority of the khorēgos and the subordination of the “I” that speaks for the choral aggregate; while the collectivity of the choral aggregate is egalitarian, the superiority of the khorēgos is a fundamental model of hierarchy. [34] In this connection Calame has observed in detail how various patterns of institutionalized homosexual sentiment as expressed by the choral “I” tend to center on the person who occupies superior status in the choral group. [35]

§18. As a particularly striking example of the choral form as a hierarchical construct, I cite the Spartan song that is sung and danced by the chorus of Spartan girls as dramatized in Alcman PMG 1, where a chorus leader called Hagesikhora (verses 53, 57, 77, 79, 90), focal point of admiration for the aggregate (e.g., 45–57), [36] is described as khorēgos (44); [37] her very name, Hāgēsikhorā, recapitulates the meaning ‘leader of the chorus’. [38] Similarly in Aristophanes Lysistrata 1296–1321, a choral song of the Spartan women, Helen in her role as major cult figure of Sparta is pictured by the chorus as the leader of their group, as the ultimate khorēgos (1315). Likewise in Theocritus 18, a composition known as the Epithalamium for Helen, a chorus of Spartan girls pictures Helen as a resplendent chorus leader, in terms that resemble strikingly the description of Hagesikhora in Alcman PMG 1. [39] It is clear from such evidence that a figure like Hagesikhora, as leader of the {345|346} chorus, is represented as performing a reenactment, a mimesis, [40] of a given divinity in a given role. [41]

§19. Although the specific divinity that matches the choral figure of Hagesikhora seems at first sight to be the local Spartan version of Helen, a strong argument can be made for a variant identification. The real referent for Hagesikhora seems to be one of two less well-known cult figures native to Sparta, that is, a female pair known from other reports as the Leukippides (Pausanias 3.16.1), where the component leuko- means ‘radiant, white’ while hippo- means ‘horse’; these Leukippides are themselves associated with the cult of Helen (Euripides Helen 1465-1466). [42] In the same composition the other of the two Leukippides may possibly be equated with another dominant choral personality, called Agido (Alcman PMG 1.40, 42, 58, 80), who is dramatized as the rival of Hagesikhora (e.g., PMG 1.50–59). [43]

§20. It seems then that the two characters of two choral leaders in Alcman PMG 1, Agido and Hagesikhora, are acting out, on the level of the ritual presented by the chorus, the roles of the two Leukippides, who are cult figures that exist on the level of myth. [44] There is in fact independent evidence for such acting out: there is a report about an institution, at Sparta, where girls ‘serve as priestesses’ (ἱερῶνται) to the Leukippides and are in that capacity explicitly called Leukippides themselves (Pausanias 3.16.1). [45] It is crucial to stress this explicit identification here, by name, of distinct human and superhuman characters. The human characters are acted out by ‘priestesses’ who are the variable element in the identification, in that they are continually being replaced by upcoming generations, in the progression of time, while the immortal superhuman characters are the constant, with an unchanging identity that provides the ultimate model. [46] Just as the human Leukippides {346|347} are not, from our standpoint, real people but instead characters filled by different real people at the different times of seasonally recurring ritual events, so also the figures named as Agido and Hagesikhora in Alcman PMG 1 are for me not real people per se but choral characters. Specifically I suggest that Agido and Hagesikhora are characters in a sacred mimesis, through the ritual of choral performance, of the cult figures known to Pausanias as the Leukippides (3.16.1). [47]

§21. The actual forms of the names given to these characters, Agido and Hagesikhora, may have been subject to changes over time, but the function of these names, that is, identification with sacred models in the process of mimesis, can be expected to have remained a constant. [48] Such cult names are variables, and the constant element is to be sought in the context of the mimesis, the actual identification of the human character with the sacred model. There is a particularly striking illustration of such an ideology in a passage from Xenophon of Ephesus (1.2.2–7), a narrative describing a local festival of Artemis at Ephesus (ἤγετο δὲ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος ἐπιχώριος ἑορτή 2), where the leader of a procession of marriageable maidens, a girl of fourteen called Antheia (5), is viewed by the festive crowd as the incarnation of the goddess Artemis (7). [49]

§22. Like Hāgēsikhorā, the feminine name Agidō seems to be generic: in this case it fits into the naming pattern owned by the Spartan royal lineage of the Agiadai, as best known from the name of a particularly distinguished member of this lineage, Agēsilāos. [50] From this example we can see that the role model defined by a choral leader can be expressed in terms of royalty as well as divinity. An analogous case is to be found in Alcman PMG 10(b), where the figure of a yet-beardless youth (19–20) called Agēsidāmos (3), meaning ‘leader of the local population [dēmos]’, [51] is addressed specifically as khorēgos ‘chorus leader’ (11; cf. 15). There is a striking semantic parallel in the case of the choral leader Astumeloisa at Alcman PMG 3 (64, 73), where this generic name is actually translated in the song itself (74) as μέλημα δάμῳ ‘an object of care and affection [melēma] to the local {347|348} community [dēmos]’—which is exactly what the name means. [52] As with the feminine name Agidō, designating the counterpart of the Hagesikhora figure, the masculine name Agēsidāmos, by way of its semantic components, seems to fit into the naming pattern of the Spartan royal lineage of the Agiadai. [53]

§23. That the roles of choral leadership indicated by names such as Agido or Agesidamos demand to be filled, in performance, by real royalty or aspiring royalty is shown indirectly: narrative traditions tell of aberrant situations where an individual Spartan of genuine royalty is denied a prominent position in a choral group, thus affording him the opportunity to assert a wise saying to the effect that it is after all the man in question who determines the status, not the status the man. In one such story, Plutarch Sayings of Spartans 208de, the focus of the story is none other than King Agēsilāos of Sparta, of the royal lineage of the Agiadai, who is pictured as still a boy when, one day at the Spartan Feast of Gymnopaidiai, [54] he is assigned an inconspicuous (a-sēmos) choral position. [55] The narrative emphasizes that, at this moment, as Agesilaos utters the wise saying about man and status, it is not yet clear that he will indeed become the king of Sparta; as Plutarch notes elsewhere, the young Agesilaos was brought up as a private citizen before he became king (Life of Agesilaos 596a, 597b). [56] The fact that other variants of this story are {348|349} assigned to other kings of Sparta [57] is yet another indication that kingship could and did determine preeminence of status in the choral groups of Sparta.

§24. In short I infer that whoever performs the role of a choral leader in a given seasonally recurring Spartan festival would be performing a mimesis of a mimesis. The performers in the here and now would be experiencing a personal mimesis of choral characters with choral names like Hagesikhora and Agesidamos. Such characters or characterizations would be in turn part of a seasonally recurring institutional mimesis of authoritative role models like divinities or royal ancestors. [58] I see no justification for treating a text like Alcman PMG 1 as if it were a composition intended for a given group of historically verifiable persons at one and only one occasion in time. [59]

§25. The more generic and impersonal the content of such a composition, in the eyes of the local Spartan community, the more Panhellenic prestige the presentation of this composition can have in the eyes of whatever Hellenes from the outside may be looking in, as it were, on Sparta. The local community’s public self-esteem, in order to live up to the proper degree of admiration from both outside and consequently from within, must seek the least occasional and most catholic aspects of its seasonally recomposed choral self-presentation. The impulse of Panhellenism in Archaic Greece begins at home. [60] {349|350}

§26. The preceding sketch of Spartan choral performances is not without interesting ethnographic parallels. Among the Tiv of Nigeria, for example, there is a strong tradition of formal acceptance or rejection, by society, of choral compositions in the context of their performance: [61] “The most important type of song is called the Icham; this is sung by a soloist with chorus, frequently the soloist being the composer. A new song is submitted to the tribe by its composer for approval, even new words to an old setting can prompt a ‘Royal Academy Sitting’!”

§27. It remains to ask what relationship exists between the authority of the role model who is represented as leading the choral group and the authority of the composer who is credited with the representation. To put it another way: how does the authority of the khorēgos ‘choral leader’, as the focus of potential Panhellenic prestige for the local community, relate to the authority of the composer, real or re-created, who speaks through this persona? The answer should help define the concept of authorship that emanates from such authority.

§28. To begin, it is important to notice that, in a choral composition like Alcman PMG 1, the two chorus leaders represented, Agido and Hagesikhora, seem not to have speaking parts: rather it is the aggregate that speaks about them, represents them, in all admiration. It is as if the chorus leaders were mainly dancing, while the choral group was all along singing and dancing.

§29. The potential differentiation of the chorus leader, the khorēgos, from the singers and dancers, the khoros, can in fact proceed in various different directions. The khorēgos may become specialized as a virtuoso singer, a virtuoso dancer, or a virtuoso player of a musical instrument. The ultimate model is the god Apollo himself, who is conventionally represented by poetry as the leader of the choral group as he performs, in his capacity as leader, various combinations of the three components of choral lyric, that is, song, dance, and instrumental music. Perhaps the most undifferentiated picture can be found in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (475–476), where Apollo is represented as simultaneously singing, dancing, and playing the lyre. [62] Elsewhere the specialties become clear. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (182–206), Apollo dances and plays the lyre (201–203), while the Muses sing {350|351} (189–193) and the rest of the gods dance (194–201), most notably the Kharites ‘Graces’ (194). [63] The emphasis here is on Apollo’s specialty, the lyre. In other references, as in Iliad I (603–604), only the specialties are mentioned: Apollo plays the lyre and the Muses sing. A similar situation holds in the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles (201–206), where again Apollo plays the lyre while the Muses are described as choral leaders in song, by way of the verb exarkhō ‘lead the chorus’ in combination with aoidē ‘song’ (205). [64]

§30. These different patterns of specialization are indirectly reflected in the semantic vicissitudes of a form of choral lyric that is classified in later times as the huporkhēma, where the component of dancing is specified as an accompaniment to the component of song, as indicated by the elements hupo- in the sense of ‘in support’ and orkh- meaning ‘dance’. [65] The supporting role of a given component of choral lyric can entail an intensification of virtuosity for the performer of the supporting component. In Lucian On Dance 16, for example, it is specified that the huporkhēma is composed for a stratified type of chorus where the group in general executes one level of dancing while some of the best dancers stand out from the rest in executing a higher level of dancing to the words being sung. There is similar testimony from Polycrates FGH 588 F 1 by way of Athenaeus 139e on the dancing at the Spartan Feast of Huakinthia: it is specified that dancers who stand out from among the singing khoroi ‘choruses’ of youths perform an ancient form of dance that is hupo- ‘in support’ to the playing of the aulos ‘reed’ and to the singing of the song. [66] We may compare the picture on a Corinthian aryballos where a virtuoso dancer leaps ahead of four other boys and is labeled προχορευόμενος ‘dancing in the forefront’ (CEG 452). [67] A stylized {351|352} example occurs in Odyssey viii 256–265, with a description of a performance of dancing that leads into the description of a song that the blind singer Demodokos sings about Ares and Aphrodite (266–366), followed by yet another description of virtuoso performance, this time, of “ball dancing” by soloists (367–380). It has been observed that “the seated blind bard in all this seems to be a leader with voice and lyre presiding over some kind of elaborate mime.” [68] There is a compressed version of such choral lyric performance in Iliad XVIII 603–606, where the group dancing by the chorus is a backdrop to a higher level of dancing by two virtuosi, described as exarkhontes ‘leaders’ (606); also at Odyssey iv 17–19, where again there are two virtuosi described as exarkhontes (17). In the world of post-Classical scholarship, the description of the virtuoso dancers as exarkhontes was considered incongruous, in that the singer/lyre player was expected to be the leader (Athenaeus 180de). [69] Still, the application of exarkhōn ‘leader’ could be legitimately reassigned to a lead dancer so long as the singer/lyre player continued to be the real leader, in that his singing or lyre playing controlled the enactment performed center stage, as it were, by the dancers.

§31. This topic brings us back to the choral lyric traditions of Archaic Sparta. In a composition like Alcman PMG 1, the figures of the choral leaders Agido and Hagesikhora may not necessarily have a speaking part, that is, singing part, in the song (to be contrasted with the reference at line 99 to singing by an ensemble of ten). Even if they do not have a speaking part, they are in the forefront of the dancing. Meanwhile, it is explicitly the choral aggregate who speaks for the chorus leaders, and it is implicitly the composer who speaks through the chorus members. In another example, Alcman PMG 39, the chorus members actually identify the composer of their song: they refer to the figure of Alcman by name, in the third person, as the one who composed what they sing. Further, in Alcman PMG 38, the chorus members praise the kitharistēs ‘lyre player’, a performer on the musical instrument who may or may not be visualized as distinct from the composer.

§32. There are, however, other situations where the singer/lyre player may differentiate himself from the choral group by speaking in his own persona instead of theirs, as most dramatically illustrated by the declaration in Alcman PMG 26, where the singer says that he is too old and weak to dance with the chorus. [70] Such conventions of stylized separation and self-introduction may help explain the distribution of roles in Iliad XVIII 567–572, the description of a lyre playing boy who sings the Linus song in the midst of a festive chorus of boys and girls: here the singing is apparently in accompaniment to the lyre playing and dancing, as we see from the expression λίνον δ’ ὑπὸ {352|353} καλὸν ἄειδε ‘he sang, in accompaniment [hupo-], the Linus song’ (570). So also in Hymn to Hermes 499–502: Apollo first struck up the lyre, and then ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄεισεν ‘he sang beautifully, in accompaniment [hupo-]’ (502). Just as dancing in accompaniment required heightened virtuosity and could be described in terms of choral leadership, so also here the singing of Apollo in support, in accompaniment, is a virtuoso performance. The distinction between the patterns of accompaniment in Iliad XVIII 567–572, where the boy’s song responds to the lyre, and in Odyssey viii 256–265/367–380, where the dancing responds to the song, seems to be missed by later generations in the post-Classical era, as, for example, in Athenaeus 15d (though his explanation of huporkhēma at 628d takes note of the actual fact of support or accompaniment implied by hupo- in this word). [71]

§33. The archetypal virtuoso performance of Apollo, where he first struck up the lyre and then ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄεισεν ‘sang beautifully, in accompaniment [hupo-]’ (Hymn to Hermes 502), is morphologically a prooimion, which can be translated roughly as ‘prelude’ but which I prefer to render with the more neutral Latin borrowing, ‘prooemium’. [72] The prooimion is a framework for differentiated virtuoso singing by the individual kitharōidos ‘lyre [kitharā] singer’, and it literally means ‘the front part of the song [oimē]’ (just as pronāos means ‘the front part of the temple [nāos]’). [73] The prooimion or prooemium took the form of a prayer sung to a given god who presided over the occasion of a given seasonally recurring festival where the song was performed in competition with other songs. A clear reflex of this form can be found in the actual structure of the Homeric Hymns. [74] In fact Thucydides (3.104.3–4) uses the word prooimion in referring to the version of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo that he knew. [75] That the dramatized context of these Hymns is one of seasonally recurring festivals where contests in song are held is clear from the use of hōrā ‘seasonal time’ in Hymn 26.12–13 and of agōn ‘contest’ in Hymn 6.19. [76] That these Hymns are morphologically preludes, with the inherited function of introducing the main part of the performance, is illustrated by references indicating a shift to the performance proper, such as μεταβήσομαι ἄλλον ἐς ὕμνον ‘I will shift to the rest of the song [humnos]’ at Homeric Hymns 5 (verse 293), 9 (verse 9), and 18 (verse 11). [77] To sum up the essence of the prooimion, I quote the wording of {353|354} Quintilian (Institutio oratoria 4.1.2): quod οἴμη cantus est, et citharoedi pauca illa, quae antequam legitimum certamen inchoent, emerendi favoris gratia canunt, prooemium cognominaverunt… ‘that oimē is song and that the kitharōidoi refer to those few words that they sing before their contest proper, for the sake of winning favor, as prooimion…᾽. [78]

§34. Quintilian’s reference to ‘those few words’ sung by the kitharōidoi ‘lyre [kitharā] singers’ is belied by the proportions of some of the larger Homeric Hymns, which had evolved into magnificent extravaganzas that rival epic in narrative power, as in the case of the Hymn to Apollo. It is in fact legitimate to ask whether the Homeric Hymns, especially the larger ones, were functional preludes. [79] For now, however, it is enough to stress that they were formally just that, preludes. As we have seen, Thucydides refers to the Hymn to Apollo as a prooimion (3.104.4–5). Even the Hesiodic Theogony, with its even more imposing proportions, is morphologically a prooimion. [80] So also is the representation of the first theogony ever sung, an archetypal performance of lyre singing by the god Hermes, as described and paraphrased in Hymn to Hermes 425–433. [81] The crucial concept here is anabolē ‘prelude’, closely parallel to the concept of prooimion. Hermes sings his theogony ἀμβολάδην ‘in the manner of a prelude [anabolē]’ (426), just as the song started by Apollo’s lyre is elsewhere described in terms of ἀγησιχόρων (…) προοιμίων ἀμβολάς ‘the preludes [anabolē plural] of chorus leading [hāgēsikhora] prooemia [prooimion plural]’ in Pindar Pythian 1.4. [82]

§35. Still, the medium of the Homeric Hymns, which is poetry recited in dactylic hexameter, is several stages removed from the medium of kitharōidiā, that is, song. We have to step back and ask what form the prooimion ‘prelude’ would have had in the context of kitharōidiā ‘lyre singing’ and, further, what kind of performance can be expected to have followed the prooimion in this same context of kitharōidiā. {354|355}

§36. Part of the answer is to be found in the lyric traditions ascribed to Terpander, reputedly the founder of the first katastasis ‘establishment’ of traditions in songmaking at Sparta (again “Plutarch” On Music 1134b). [83] We have seen that the figure of Terpander is credited with “inventing” the melodic patterns of kitharōidiā, which were called nomoi in this context (On Music 1132d). [84] Moreover, we have seen that a figure like Arion, the archetypal kitharōidos ‘lyre singer’ for the polis of Corinth (Herodotus 1.23), is specifically represented as performing a nomos when he sings a monodic performance to the accompaniment of his lyre (Herodotus 1.24.5). [85] The traditional association of kitharōidiā with the concept of nomos, which we may interpret most generally as a lyric composition that followed a set mode or melodic pattern, [86] must be compared with a traditional saying, variations of which are strikingly attested in the idiom of Plato, that a prooimion ‘prelude’ presupposes a nomos (Plato Timaeus 29d; Republic 531d, 532d). [87] This association is made explicit in Plato Laws 722d and following: the prooimion is a ‘prelude’ to the nomos in the specific context of kitharōidiā. [88]

§37. Another part of the answer to the question about the actual form of the prooimion can be found in the diction of Pindar. So far we have examined the association of prooimion and nomos in the general context of kitharōidiā, but we have yet to see a reference to this association in a specifically choral context of kitharōidiā. The references in Plato clearly presuppose a monodic rather than choral context. Turning to the choral context, however, let us examine two passages taken from Pindar, Nemean 5.21–26 and Pythian 1.1–4. In Nemean 5, we see the representation of a khoros ‘chorus’ of Muses (23) who are specifically singing (ἄειδ’ 22), and in their midst is the god Apollo himself, taking control as he strikes up a lyre that is heptaglōssos ‘having seven languages’ (24), leading the choral performance of ‘all sorts of nomoi’ (παντοίων νόμων Nemean 5.25). We have seen that the seven-string lyre, supposedly the “invention” of Terpander, could fit a wide variety of set melodic patterns, called nomoi, within a new interrelated system reflecting Panhellenic synthesis. [89] Here too, in the passage from Pindar, these melodic patterns are explicitly called nomoi. But in this case the nomoi that are represented as being performed are not monodic, which was the case when Arion sang his nomos (again Herodotus 1.24.5), but clearly choral: it is the khoros ‘chorus’ of Muses who are actually {355|356} singing the nomoi (again Nemean 5.21–26). Moreover, this ensemble of Muses is represented here as actually singing the words of the prooimion. Although the word prooimion is not used in this passage, the phraseology of the Muses’ paraphrased words (Nemean 5.25–26) is perfectly in accordance with the proper syntax and rhetorical strategy of attested prooemia. [90] The chorus of Muses is represented as performing not just the subsequent nomoi but also the prooimion that is expected to introduce a nomos, with Apollo’s overall control being represented simply by his act of striking up the lyre.

§38. We may now supplement the testimony of Pindar Nemean 5.21–26 with that of Pythian 1.1–4. [91] This passage, another tour de force in descriptive compression, pictures the lyre of Apollo, as the player strikes up a tune (4), straightaway being heard by the chorus, which starts dancing (2), as soon as the lyre gives off its sēmata ‘signals’ that are heeded by aoidoi ‘singers’ (3), thus creating the anabolai ‘preludes’ (4) of prooimia ‘prooemia’ (4) that are described as hāgēsikhora ‘chorus-leading’ (4). In short the diction of Pindar gives indications that even in terms of choral performance the prooimion ‘prooemium’ precedes what is being consistently called the nomos.

§39. This Pindaric picture, however, of a prooimion as if performed by the chorus is idealized. Another example of such idealization is Pindar Nemean 3.1–12, where the chorus members are described, five lines into the composition, as if waiting for the voice of the Muse, which is to be their cue to start their performance; then, at lines 10–11 of the composition, the Muse is invoked to start (ἄρχε 10) the humnos ‘song’ (11), while the “I” of the lyre player, the persona of the composer, distributes the song to the chorus members and to the lyre (11–12). [92] The word for “lyre” here is twelve lines into the composition, and yet the context itself presupposes that it had started the whole performance, just as the chorus has been presumably performing the entire composition ever since the first line. Still another example is Pindar Nemean 2.1–3, [93] where the beginning of the composition describes the prooemium of a performance without being a prooemium itself in that no {356|357} divinity has been directly invoked to start the performance. The prooemium being represented in Nemean 2.1–3 is specifically the prelude of a Homeric performance: the Homēridai ‘Sons of Homer’ (2.1), who are described as the aoidoi ‘singers’ (2.2.) of ‘stitched-together words’ (ῥαπτῶν ἐπέων 2.2), are said to ‘start’ (ἄρχονται) their performance by invoking Zeus Prooimios, the “Zeus of prooemia” (2.3). [94] The first word of Nemean 2, ὅθεν ‘starting at the point where…’, is transitional, to be expected after the given divinity has already been invoked. Then, at the very end of the composition, the chorus as polītai ‘polis-dwellers’ (24) are called upon to ‘lead’, as conveyed by the verb exarkhō (25), in celebration. In a functional prooemium this verb could be expected at the beginning of the performance. [95]

§40. The stylized prooemia in Pindar then are idealizations. It is as if the traditions of differentiated monodic composition and performance had never happened. Yet the context of monody had already developed the form of the prooimion far beyond its native choral context of striking up the lyre for the chorus. There is evidence that what we call the prooimion had already undergone, by Pindar’s time, a vast stretch of evolution in traditions of composition and performance in monodic song and even in poetry. This evolution serves as backdrop for the use, in Thucydides (3.104.4–5), of the word prooimion in referring to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The entire tradition of kitharōidikoi nomoi ‘citharodic nomes’, as attributed to the “invention” of Terpander, presupposes a corresponding tradition of monodic prooimia or “preludes” that literally led into these “nomes,” and it was within the framework of these “preludes” that the kitharōidos ‘lyre singer’, set apart from the chorus, could speak about himself in his own persona. We have already noted the declaration in Alcman PMG 26, where the singer says that he is too old and weak to dance with the chorus. Elsewhere too, although it may well be the chorus itself that is speaking in the persona of the chorus leader, we can still see that this persona is set apart from the rest of the chorus in the context of self-introduction, the prooemium:

§41. In the case of Terpander, however, the nomoi with which he is credited are no longer a choral medium. We have seen that he is the traditional “inventor” of these nomoi in the specific context of kitharōidiā ‘lyre singing’ (“Plutarch” On Music 1132d), and that he likewise “invented” the genre known as the kitharōidikos nomos ‘citharodic nome’ (1132c). [99] This genre is monodic, as we have seen in the anecdote about the nomos orthios performed by Arion (Herodotus 1.24.5). [100] In this connection I cite a rare surviving quotation from Terpander: in Suda s.v. ἀμφιανακτίζειν, it is reported that Terpander ‘sang’ a nomos, specified as orthios, with a prooimion that began as follows: Moreover, according to “Plutarch” On Music 1140f, Pindar himself attributed the “invention” of the skolion to Terpander, [103] and we have already seen that the word skolion, as used in the time of Aristophanes, is an appropriate general designation for the specifically monodic performance, self-accompanied on the lyre, of compositions by the great lyric masters (as in Aristophanes F 223 Kock = 325 KA, with reference to the performing of compositions by Alcaeus and Anacreon). [104]

§42. From the standpoint of a later source, the compositions attributed to Terpander are not just monodic but simply a collection of monodic preludes: it is reported in “Plutarch” On Music 1133bc that the compositions of Terpander were prooimia, supposedly serving as preludes simply to poetry, including specifically the poetry of Homer and the like. This formulation, though it has {358|359} a validity with respect to etymology, is false with respect to function, as I now argue. [105] We have observed that the Homeric Hymns, as they have come down to us, are indeed prooimia with respect to etymology in that they presuppose, with such phrases as μεταβήσομαι ἄλλον ἐς ὕμνον ‘I will switch [from the prooimion] to the rest of the song [humnos]’, that the performance proper is to follow. [106] This performance to follow is to be imagined as Homeric poetry itself, as we see from the internal evidence of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo: here the self-characterization of the speaker, within the framework of a prooimion, as a blind singer from Chios whose songs will win over all others in the future (172–173) corresponds to the idealized character of Homer himself. [107] Similarly with Terpander: in a relatively late source like the one that we are considering, “Plutarch” On Music 1133bc, the corpus of Terpander could legitimately be considered a collection of monodic prooimia, composed predominantly in dactylic hexameter and therefore deemed suitable as preludes to Homeric poetry. From the standpoint of such a late source, it is as if the nomoi of Terpander, as introduced by the prooimia, had never existed. [108] Further, it is as if all the prooimia of Terpander had been composed in dactylic hexameter, as suggested in “Plutarch” On Music 1133c and more explicitly in 1132d. Such fragments as Terpander PMG 697 contradict this distorted view. [109] True, the meter of this fragment is closely related to the dactylic hexameter, and there may indeed have been a majority of hexametric prooimia in the Terpander tradition. Still the point is that the medium of kitharōidiā ‘lyre singing’ attributed to Terpander is not necessarily a functional prelude, as it is understood in “Plutarch” On Music 1133c. Rather it is a monodic form of lyric composition that evolved out of the morphology of the prooimion.

§43. The solo performance of quasi-lyric monody, as in the case of Terpander, and the solo performance of nonlyric poetry, as in the case of the Homeric Hymns, are not the only media that evolved out of the prooimion ‘prooemium’ of the kitharōidos ‘lyre singer’. The same could be said of the Hesiodic Theogony, which displays all the signposts of a prooimion. [110] The first theogony ever sung, as archetypally performed by Hermes in the Hymn to Hermes 425–433, is likewise a prooimion: Hermes sings his theogony ἀμβολάδην ‘in the manner of a prelude [anabolē]’ (426), just as the song started by Apollo’s lyre is described in terms of ἁγησιχόρων (…){359|360} προοιμίων ἀμβολάς ‘the preludes [anabolē plural] of chorus-leading prooemia [prooimion plural]’ in Pindar Pythian 1.4. [111] There are even traces of the prooimion in the solo performance of epic, nonlyric poetry par excellence. Aside from such examples as the second performance of the blind singer Demodokos in Odyssey viii, where the singer assumes a choral personality [112] and where his performance starts with an anabolē ‘prelude’ (ἀνεβάλλετο viii 266), [113] there are such clearly monodic scenes as the first performance of the singer Phemios, where he too starts his performance with an anabolē ‘prelude’ (Odyssey i 155; cf. xvii 262). [114]

§44. We can perhaps go one step further. It has been argued persuasively that the entire body of Archaic poetry as composed in dactylic hexameter, including Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, evolved out of the monodic medium of the prooimion in kitharōidiā ‘lyre singing’. [115] For such an argument to be taken further, we would have to look back to the close formal affinities between the Homeric and Hesiodic hexameter on one hand and on the other the meters of such figures as Stesichorus, Sappho, and Alcaeus. [116] It so happens that these figures are in fact forerunners of the medium of kitharōidiā ‘lyre singing’. Before we can turn to Stesichorus and the others, however, it is important to explore still further the question of the chorus and the relationship between choral and monodic forms. In particular we must ask how poetry may have become differentiated from monodic song, much as monody had earlier become differentiated from choral performance.

§45. We started our survey of the prooemium with the vision of Apollo as he struck up the lyre for the very first time and then ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄεισεν ‘sang beautifully, in accompaniment [hupo-]’ (Hymn to Hermes 502). [117] Yet singing in response to the musical instrument of Apollo is a feature not only of Apollo himself as archetypal player of preludes. There are also specialists in the art of the prelude. I mean those supreme experts in song, the Muses, as they execute their special skills: as we have seen in the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles (201–206), the Muses are described as choral leaders in song (exarkhō ‘lead the chorus’ in combination with aoidē ‘song’: 205) by virtue of their responsiveness to the lyre of Apollo. [118] Paradoxically the subordination of the Muses to the choral leadership of Apollo in the overall domain of {360|361} choral performance, where Apollo controls all three components of song, dance, and musical instrumentation, is a key to the choral leadership of the Muses in the specific domain of song. Apollo generally dances and plays the lyre, while the Muses’ function is more specifically that of singing or reciting. It is after all a Muse, not Apollo, who inspires the “song” of the Iliad (I 1), the “song” of the Odyssey (i 1). To put it another way: the specialization of the Muses as experts in the words of song, as differentiated from Apollo, who is overall master of all the components of song, is comparable to the specialization of Greek song as differentiated from a general category that I have been calling SONG. [119] As the generalist of SONG, Apollo is the ultimate chorus leader of the Muses, their authority in the choral integration of singing, dancing, and instrumentation. [120] As for the Muses, they are specialized chorus leaders of song, in stylized descriptions such as we have seen in the Shield of Herakles (205).

§46. These divine models for the role of chorus leader are formalized, to repeat, in the noun khorēgos ‘chorus leader’: in the case of Alcman PMG 1, for example, we have seen that the character Hāgēsikhorā ‘she who leads the chorus’ is described as a khorēgos ‘chorus leader’ (44) and that, as such, she functions on the level of ritual as a substitute for a cult figure on the level of myth. There is a corresponding verb-plus-object combination that expresses the same model: it consists of verb histēmi ‘set up, establish’ plus the object of khoros, as in the expression θεῶν | ἵστησι χορούς ‘he sets up [= verb histēmi] the choruses [khoros {plural}] of the gods’ at Aristophanes Birds 219–220, with a lyre-playing Apollo as subject. [121] This combination recurs as the compound formation stēsi-khoros ‘he or she who sets up the chorus’, as in the expression στησίχορον ὕμνον ἄγοισαι ‘introducing a stēsikhoros song [humnos]’ inscribed on a kylix found at Naukratis (PMG 938[c]), where the understood subject of ἄγοισαι is apparently “Muses,” in the context of a choral presentation. [122] The same compound stēsikhoros recurs on the François Vase, where one of the Muses, whose name elsewhere is Terpsikhorē ‘she who delights in the chorus’ (e.g., Hesiod Theogony 78), is instead labeled Stēsikhorē ‘she who sets up the chorus’. [123] Finally, the {361|362} name of the poet Stesichorus is identical with this epithet stēsikhoros, the mark of divine choral leaders (cf. Suda s.v. Στησίχορος). [124]

§47. Another way of expressing the divine model of choral leadership is the verb exarkhō ‘lead, lead off, lead the chorus’ and its derivatives. We have seen it applied to the Muses in their role as specialists in singing at a choral performance (Hesiodic Shield of Herakles 205). The word conveys the fundamental theme of a differentiated individual initiative, followed by an undifferentiated response or reinforcement by the group that joins in. [125] This theme helps explain the choral metaphor built into the extended meaning of the Greek verb hēgeomai, which means not only ‘take the lead’ (e.g., Iliad IX 168) but also ‘think, have an opinion’, in the sense of ‘think authoritatively’ (e.g., Herodotus passim); it is from this verb that the name Hāgēsikhorā ‘she who leads the chorus’ is derived. The verb exarkhō can take as its object the given genre in which the performance is happening, as in Iliad XVIII 51, where Thetis begins her goos ‘lament’. [126] In such instances of spontaneous individual initiative as dramatized by the narrative, we can see an ultimate model for the khorēgos as the organizer of the spontaneous occasion, the one who gives it a form, a format, for the group to follow and join. To the extent that the khorēgos gives the occasion its form, the occasion is the genre. [127] {362|363}

§48. With these divine models of individual initiative in mind, it is now time to extend the proposal, articulated in the specific case of Alcman PMG 1, that a lead character like Hāgēsikhorā ‘she who leads the chorus’ is a substitute on the level of ritual for a corresponding cult figure who exists on the level of myth. The analogous name of a figure like Stesichorus, Stēsikhoros ‘he who sets up the chorus’, implies that a poet, like a lead character in a chorus, may somehow function as a ritual stand-in for the divine models of choral lyric poetry, Apollo and the Muses. As I have argued in another work, the generic poet in Archaic Greek traditions is by definition a ritual substitute, as conveyed by the word therapōn, in relation to the Muses explicitly and to their leader Apollo implicitly. [128] Further, the concept of ritual substitute is closely associated with that of cult hero. [129] Since this subject has been treated at length in the work just cited, I mention here only the essentials: that there is a pervasive symmetrical pattern of god-hero antagonism on the level of myth and of god-hero symbiosis on the level of cult. [130]

§49. A premier example is the figure of Archilochus. The compositions ascribed to Archilochus take the form of a specialized kind of poetry that is differentiated from song: he belongs to the repertoire of a rhapsōidos ‘rhapsode’, not a kitharōidos ‘lyre singer’. [131] Still the figure of Archilochus retains a choral personality, as evidenced by his self-description as an exarkhōn ‘choral leader’ of the specific genres known as the dithurambos ‘dithyramb’ (Archilochus F 120 W) and the paiēōn [= paiān] ‘paean’ (F 121 W). [132] Again we see that the genre is the occasion in such instances of dramatized individual initiative. The choral personality of Archilochus is also evident in the Life of Archilochus tradition as preserved by the Mnesiepes Inscription (Archilochus T 4 Tarditi). This inscription, of a relatively late date (ca. third century B.C.), is highly Archaic in theme: it narrates the life of Archilochus, giving context to “quotations” of the transmitted compositions that were attributed to him. The Life of Archilochus tradition, as memorialized by the Mnesiepes Inscription, motivates the hero-cult of Archilochus; in fact the setting for the Mnesiepes Inscription was the Arkhilokheion, the sacred precinct at Paros where Archilochus was worshipped as a cult hero. [133] The Mnesiepes Inscription gives explicit testimony about a {363|364} traditional myth, native to the island of Paros, that represented Archilochus as a chorus teacher of his community (T4 III 16–57). [134] Given that the figure of the poet Archilochus remains a choral personality, we may now move on to observe the tradition that represents Archilochus as a ritual substitute of his divine choral models: the story has it that Archilochus is killed through the indirect agency of Apollo, who at the same time promotes his status as cult hero, pronouncing the dead poet to be the ‘therapōn of the Muses’ (Delphic Oracle 4 PW). [135]

§50. The theme of the poet as ritual substitute could be pursued further, but we must stay on track with the topic at hand, which is, the role that the poet—let us call him or her the author—actually plays in the chorus. What needs to be shown is that the authority of Apollo over song, as formalized by his function as khorēgos, is the fundamental model for the concept of authorship in choral lyric, as embodied in figures like the poet Alcman. A crucial passage in this regard is Herodotus 5.83, a precious glimpse of a local festival on the island of Aegina, where female choral groups perform in worship of two daimones ‘spirits’ (5.83.3), [136] called Damia and Auxesia (5.83.2), whose wooden statues or agalmata ‘cult representations’ (5.82, 5.83.2) are the centerpieces of the ritual event. From independent evidence, we know that both these names reflect epithets applied in the cults of the goddess Demeter. [137] We may compare in this regard the name Hāgēsikhorā in Alcman PMG 1, which is an appropriate epithet for visualizing, through a choral substitute, a cult figure as the focal point of a choral group. Even more important, we must take note of a significant detail in the description of the Aeginetan festival concerning the nature of the leadership over the female choral groups who perform at the Feast of Damia and Auxesia: χορηγῶν ἀποδεικνυμένων ἑκατέρῃ τῶν δαιμόνων δέκα ἀνδρῶν ‘and there are ten men who are chorus leaders [khorēgoi], making public presentation [= verb apodeiknumai] for each of the daimones [= Damia and Auxesia]’ (Herodotus 5.83.3). The noun that corresponds to the verb apo-deiknumai ‘make a public presentation’ is apo-deixis, which we have seen is the name of a premier festival of choral song in Arcadia. [138] Ι infer that this seasonally recurring festival featured the public presentation of ten presumably competing female choral performances, each one being ‘presented’ by a male khorēgos whose relationship to the female group corresponds to the stylized relationship of {364|365} Apollo to the Muses. [139] Such a relationship also corresponds to the relationship of the male figure Alcman to the female choral groups at Spartan festivals who sing and dance “his” compositions. [140] In the description of the Aeginetan festival, it is specified that the worship of the cult figures takes the form of ritual strife, where the characters in the chorus engage in mutual mockery (cf. κερτόμοισι: Herodotus 5.83.3). [141]

§51. It seems that each of the ten choral performances at this local festival on the island of Aegina entailed two rival choral subdivisions, assigned to each of the two figures Damia and Auxesia: I draw attention to the force of ἑκατέρῃ ‘to each’ in Herodotus 5.83.3. We may compare the internal dramatized rivalry of Agido and Hagesikhora in Alcman PMG 1. We may also compare the “setting up” (verb histēmi ‘set up, establish’ plus the object khoros) of two choruses in worship of two distinct female cult heroes, Hippodameia and Physkoa, by a collegium of sixteen women at the Feast of Heraia at Olympia in Elis, as reported by Pausanias (5.16.6–7). [142] Tradition has it that this feast in worship of the goddess Hera, along with the collegium of sixteen women who organize it season after season, was established by Hippodameia to celebrate her marriage to Pelops (Pausanias 5.16.4). [143]

§52. Another detail in this tradition bears special emphasis: the number sixteen here stems from the fact that two women are chosen from each of the eight phūlai ‘tribal divisions’ of Elis (Pausanias 5.16.7). Perhaps we are to understand that each of the two representatives of each phūlē ‘tribal division’ {365|366} was assigned to one or the other of the two cult figures, Hippodameia and Physkoa. It may well be then that there were eight choral performances entailing two rival choral subdivisions, assigned to each of the two figures Hippodameia and Physkoa, with each of the sixteen women assigned as khorēgos to each of the sixteen choral subdivisions. Whatever the precise nature of these configurations may have been, I draw attention to the actual patterns of division, modeled on the patterns of division that make up the whole society, that is, the eight phūlai. [144] Such patterns of division in the setting up of the rival choral performances, where the notion of “setting up” is expressed by the traditional combination of verb histēmi ‘set up’ plus the object khoros ‘chorus’, can be connected with the attested negative meanings of stasis as ‘conflict’. This noun stasis, derivative of histēmi ‘set up, establish, take a stand’, means not only ‘setting up, establishment, standing, station, status’ both in general applications (e.g., Herodotus 9.21.2, Euripides Bacchae 925) and in more specific applications to the chorus (e.g., Suda s.v. χοροδέκτης) [145] but also ‘division, conflict, strife’ in general applications to the community at large (Theognis 51, 781; Herodotus 3.82.3). The negative theme of conflict is associated with stasis in the navigational sense that we see in the expression ἀνέμων στάσιν ‘stasis of the winds’ at Alcaeus F 208.1 V, where the ship’s pilot must contend with the contrary ‘lie’ or ‘setting’ of the winds. [146] I would argue that stasis in the negative sense of ‘conflict’ is a {366|367} metaphor, within the larger metaphor complex of the Ship of State in the crisis of a seastorm (as in Theognis 667–682), [147] for the ritualized interpersonal divisions that are acted out in the process of establishing or constituting choral performance; this constitution is in turn achieved through the literal divisions into which chorus members are systematically assigned when the chorus is organized. [148]

§53. In this context we may note a variant tradition, again recorded by Pausanias (5.16.5–6), that the same collegium of sixteen women who are charged with organizing the Feast of Heraia at Elis was “originally” selected to settle the internal conflicts of Elis after the tyranny of one Damophon of Pisa in Elis; by extension the prototypical collegium of sixteen women took charge of a female athletic contest, as well as other rituals associated with the Heraia, including the choral events (5.16.6). [149] We may note also a variant tradition, native to Trozen, [150] about Damia and Auxesia: these figures were stoned to death in a setting that is described in terms of stasis ‘social conflict’ (στασιασάντων, ἀντιστασιωτῶν: Pausanias 2.32.2). This myth is cited as background for a festival that is named after its central event of ritualized conflict, the Lithobolia ‘stone throwing’ (ibid.). [151]

§54. In sum, the ritual essence of the choral lyric performance is that it is constitutive of society in the very process of dividing it. For this reason, the concept of stasis is simultaneously constitution and division. [152] The notion of constitution is the unmarked member of the opposition, in that it includes and integrates division, which is the marked member. [153] Constitution is integration, and this unmarked-marked opposition can be rephrased in terms of unmarked integration and marked division. The inclusiveness of the unmarked category is the key to understanding the etymology of stasis. The etymology can in turn be correlated with the normal dynamics of collective performance, which is characterized by a gradual progression from dissonance at the beginning to relative consonance at the end. [154]

§55. The very constitution of society, as visualized in the traditions of a polis like Sparta, is choral performance. We have already seen that the name for “civic space” in Sparta is in fact Khoros (Pausanias 3.11.5). [155] Moreover, {367|368} Spartan myth insists that Chorus had to precede Constitution: in Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus (4.2–3), we see that Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, who is the culture hero credited with the institutional totality that is the Constitution of Sparta, brought his laws from Crete to Sparta only after he had already sent ahead the lyric poet Thales/Thaletas, whose songs had in them the qualities of kosmos ‘order’ (τὸ κόσμιον 4.3) and katastasis ‘establishment’ (καταστατικόν ibid.). [156] This same Thaletas figures in the so- called second katastasis of Spartan traditions in songmaking (“Plutarch” On Music 1134bc). [157] The Spartan tradition stresses that the social effects of the lyric poet are like those of the most powerful nomothetēs ‘lawgiver’ (Plutarch Life of Lycurgus 4.2). In this particular tradition, poet and lawgiver are differentiated as Thaletas and Lycurgus respectively. But in other traditions, the two roles are represented by one persona, as in the case of Theognis: he speaks not only as a choral lyric personality, singing and dancing to the lyre (Theognis 791) [158] or singing to the lyre and reed (531–534), [159] but also as a lawgiver (Theognis 543–546, 805–810). [160] In the case of a differentiated choral lyric personality like Thaletas, his affinities with the constitution of his community are made explicit.

§56. The metaphor of the chorus, as conveyed by the concept of stasis, helps explain the use of the word koruphaios ‘top person, leading figure’ in the Debate of the Constitutions, Herodotus 3.82.3, where the Great King of the Persians is represented as cynically restating the poetic tradition, according to which the unmistakable mark of oligarkhiā ‘oligarchy’ is the spontaneous generation of stasis, which in turn leads to phonos ‘killing’, which in turn {368|369} leads to monarkhiā ‘monarchy’, that is, tyranny. The same sequence is attested in Theognis 51–52, where stasis (plural, 51) leads to phonoi ‘killings’ (51), which lead to monarkhoi ‘monarchs’ (52). [161] In the description of the oligarchy that generates stasis, it is pointed out that each and every member of the society, in his private pursuit of aretē ‘excellence’, is in effect competing to become the koruphaios, the ‘top person’ or ‘leading figure’ (Herodotus 3.82.3); this same word, koruphaios, is the technical term for ‘leader of the chorus’ as used by Aristotle Politics 1277a11, in the context of arguing that not every citizen of a polis has the same degree of aretē ‘excellence’, just as a koruphaios in a chorus has more aretē than the other members. [162] This vision of stasis can be compared with the description, in Herodotus 1.59.3, of the division of early Athenian society into three constituencies, each called a stasis and each having a prominent Athenian ‘standing in the front’ (cf. προεστῶτος). These three are Peisistratos, the once and future tyrant of Athens; Megakles of the lineage of the Alkmaionidai; and one Lykourgos (ibid.). In such a context the word stasis is conventionally translated as ‘faction’, and the story as retold by Herodotus reinforces the initial impression that these three “factions” were spontaneously generated by the society of Athens in the era that preceded the tyranny of the Peisistratidai. It can be argued, however, that the three constituencies described here are a reflex of a preexisting institution, a constitutional mechanism of tripartition where the principle of rotating power is expressed by the concept of trittus ‘third’. [163]

§57. The key to choral performance, then, as we have seen primarily with the help of the description of an Aeginetan festival by Herodotus, is the public presentation of the khorēgos, where the notion of ‘public presentation’ is conveyed by the verb corresponding to the noun apo-deixis (5.83.3). [164] With further help from such actual compositions as Alcman PMG 1, we have also seen that the authority of the khorēgos is presented through the performance of the “I” that is the chorus. It is from this authority that the authorship of the khorēgos emanates. The presentation through the chorus is the representation that is mimesis. The “I” of the choral ensemble is not just the collectivization of persons who are singing and dancing at the ritual: it is also the impersonation of characters that belong to whatever myth is being represented in the ritual. [165] {369|370}

§58. We have seen how, in compositions like Alcman PMG 1, a differentiated khorēgos who is composer and who is offstage, as it were, makes the collectivized “I” of the chorus speak about another differentiated khorēgos, the alter ego of the composer, who is the mute virtuoso dancer and who is center stage, the focus of collectivized experience, either male or female. But there are other kinds of “I” besides the collectivized “I” of the chorus. Given that the khorēgos is the choral expression of the individual who momentarily stands out from among the collective, we have yet to see how the persona of the khorēgos itself would speak if it found a voice to go with the role of chorus leader as a composer and performer, on the model of Apollo as he simultaneously sings, dances, and plays the lyre.

§59. One way for such a voice to be present can be found in the “I” of a khorēgos who engages in a dialogue with the rest of the chorus. I cite Bacchylides 18 SM, which represents a dialogue between Aigeus, the father of Theseus, and the chorus. It seems that it is the khorēgos here who represents Aigeus.

§60. Another way for the voice of the khorēgos to be activated can be found in the “I” of a personality like Sappho, whose persona speaks as a khorēgos both to and about members of an aggregate of female characters who are bound together by ties that correspond to the ties that bind a chorus together. [166] In such a reversed situation, the “I” is not the group through whom the authority of the khorēgos finds a voice: rather the “I” who now speaks is the individual whom we have seen in another situation, at center stage, as the mute virtuoso dancer. In that other kind of choral situation, as illustrated in Alcman PMG 1, the “I” is spoken by the aggregate while the “I” of the khorēgos as individual and as composer is potentially mute. But as soon as the “I” of the khorēgos as individual starts singing, as it were, this same figure stops dancing and, even more, the aggregate stops both singing and dancing. This figurative and diachronic scheme of reassigned parts is the essence, I submit, of what we have been calling monody.

§61. Even in choral performance, the singer/lyre player may differentiate himself from the choral group whenever the chorus speaks through his own persona instead of theirs, as most dramatically illustrated by the declaration in Alcman PMG 26 where the singer says that he is too old and weak to dance with the chorus. [167] Such an image reflects what I would call the {370|371} tradition of diachronic teaching, in that the tired old persona of the protopoet, as seasonally re-created in the here and now of choral performance, is visualized as ever-returning, albeit in a stylized and distanced manner, to teach yet another crop of new choral ensembles as the season of the festival comes round yet again. [168] There is an analogous tradition as evidenced in the poetry of Theognis. The poet is dramatized as being present at crucial stages in the history of his city, Megara, though the local color is consistently screened out in favor of a generalized Panhellenic highlighting. [169] “By implication the undying noos [‘consciousness’] of Theognis the poet is ever testing, by way of a timeless poetry that keeps adapting itself through the ages, the intrinsic worth of the citizens of Megara.” [170]

§62. It should be clear then that I understand the monodic form to be not antithetical to the choral but rather predicated on it. A figure like Sappho speaks as a choral personality, even though the elements of dancing and the very presence of a choral group are evidently missing from her compositions. Still, these compositions presuppose or represent an interaction, offstage, as it were, with a choral aggregate.

§63. As for the corpus of Stesichorus, it has been argued that it too is representative of monodic rather than choral performance. [171] There is a strong counterargument, however, in the triadic structure of Stesichorean compositions, which points to a persisting choral medium. [172] Moreover, even the name Stēsikhoros ‘he who sets up the chorus’ projects a choral personality. [173] True, such a characterization is not in itself decisive, as we see from the example of Archilochus, where the poet refers to himself as an exarkhōn ‘chorus leader’ in a medium that is apparently not even sung but recited. [174] It may also be true that the compositions that are credited to Stesichorus are of such enormous dimensions that we might expect them to defy any sustained singing and dancing by a choral aggregate. [175] Still our expectations may well {371|372} have to shift, especially if we consider the varying conditions of aristocratic as distinct from democratic settings for choral performance. [176] It is safer to say, then, that the corpus of Stesichorus represents the medium of choral performance, though we may make allowances for the evolution of a derivative medium that entails the monodic mimesis of choral performance. In fact we have already examined a reference to a tradition of monodic performance of Stesichorus, in the Clouds of Aristophanes (967). [177]

§64. The repertoire of Stesichorus, as also most of the repertoire attributed to Ibycus, Sappho, Alcaeus, and Anacreon, can find expression in the monodic medium of kitharōidiā ‘lyre [kitharā] singing’. [178] Alternatively the monodic medium of lyric is aulōidiā ‘reed [aulos] singing’. [179] Just as the protocomposer of a choral performance can be impersonated by the chorus leader (e.g., in Alcman PMG 26), so also the protocomposer in nonchoral lyric is impersonated by a contemporary performer such as the kitharōidos.

§65. The varieties of mimesis in monody correspond to what we have already seen in the choral form. To begin, the monodic form can have the performer impersonate individual figures other than the composer or protocomposer. A clear example is the first-person feminine in Alcaeus F 10 V. As for cases of direct self-presentation, there are particularly arresting examples in Sappho and Alcaeus. Alternatively, self-presentation in the form of first-person interaction and narrative can step backstage, as it were, while the self simply tells a third-person narrative, as in numerous examples from Stesichorus. Moreover, the lyric poetry or song of monody is not far removed from the ultimately differentiated forms of poetry, as in the compositions attributed to Archilochus or Theognis. Here singing is replaced by stylized speaking, but the choral personalities persist. We may note again that the characterization of a khorēgos ‘chorus leader’, which persists even in poetry, fits the pattern of ritual substitution. Just as the chorus leader in the song of choral performance enters a force field of antagonism with the divinity who is being represented in choral performance, so also the author in poetry is ultimately locked into a forcefield of antagonism with the god Apollo himself. [180]

§66. There are traces even in Homer and Hesiod of choral personalities. The very name of Hesiod, Hēsi-odos ‘he who emits the voice’, [181] corresponds to the characterization of the Muses as ossan hieisai ‘emitting the voice’ (Theogony 10, 43, 65, 67), which applies to them in a choral context (7–8, 63). So {372|373} also the name of Homer, Hom-ēros ‘he who fits the song together’, corresponds to the characterization of the Muses as arti-epeiai ‘having words [epea] fitted together’ (Theogony 29) and phōnēi homēreusai ‘fitting [the song] together with their voice’ (Theogony 39), again in the same choral context. [182] We have already considered the quasi-choral performance of Demodokos in Odyssey viii. Further, the contest won by the figure of Hesiod at the Funeral Games of Amphidamas, described in Hesiod Works and Days 654–658, is presented as if it were a choral competition. [183] The performance with which Hesiod won is actually called a humnos (Works and Days 655).

§67. Alternatively the self-characterization of the poet in Homer and Hesiod can suit the more differentiated figure of the kitharōidos ‘lyre [kitharā] singer’, appropriate to the differentiated format of poetry. Such is the description of generic poets at Hesiod Theogony 94–95. [184] Another example is the image of Hesiod holding a lyre, as attested by a statue seen by Pausanias at Helikon (9.30.3). [185]

§68. Earlier, we had examined various possible stages of distinction between performer and composer in poetry. [186] Now we may add that once the performer and the composer become distinct in poetry, as also in both monodic and choral song, the persona of the composer can be reenacted by the performer. In other words the performer may impersonate the poet. The word for such reenactment or impersonation, as we have seen, is mīmēsis. [187] By extension, as we have also seen, mīmēsis can designate not only the reenacting of the myth but also the present reenacting of previous reenactments. [188] In that the newest instance of reenacting has as its model cumulatively all the older instances of performing the myth as well as the “original” instance of the myth itself, mīmēsis is a current ‘imitation’ of earlier reenactments. [189]

§69. The concept of mīmēsis, in conveying a reenactment of the realities of myth, is a concept of authority as long as society assents to the genuineness of the values contained by the framework of myth. Correspondingly the speaker who frames the myth, or whose existence is reenacted as framing the myth, is an author so long as he or she speaks with the authority of myth, which is supposedly timeless and unchanging. The author has to insist on the {373|374} timelessness and unchangeability of such authority, which resists the pressures of pleasing the interests of the immediate audience by preferring the pleasure of timeless and unchanging values transmitted to an endless succession of audiences by way of mīmēsis.

§70. These thought patterns are particularly evident in two passages from Theognis of Megara. In the first the persona of Theognis declares that only the one who is sophos, that is, ‘skilled’ in the decoding and encoding of poetry, [190] can execute a mīmēsis ‘reenactment’ of Theognis: In the second and related passage, we see that the notion of mīmēsis is an implicit promise that no change shall occur to accommodate the interests of any local audience in the here and now, that is, of the astoi ‘townspeople’. The reperformance of a composition, if it is a true reenactment or mīmēsis, can guarantee the authenticity of the “original” composition. In the second passage, where the persona of Theognis actually identifies himself by name, thereby authorizing himself, there is an explicit self-description of the author as someone who practices sophiā, the ‘skill’ of decoding or encoding poetry, {374|375} and as one who therefore possesses the authority of timeless and unchanging value, resisting the necessity of having to please merely the audience of the here and now: The composer must risk alienation in his own here and now in order to attain the supposedly universal acceptance of the ultimate audience, which is the cumulative response of Panhellenic fame, [194] achieved through the authority and authenticity of mīmēsis. Implicitly, only the pleasure of exact reperformance, the ongoing achievement of mīmēsis, is truly lasting. [195] The pleasure elicited through changes in response to an immediate audience is ephemeral.

§71. Before we leave the topic of solo singers or poets who speak as choral personalities even though their persona has become detached from the chorus, I draw attention to a remarkable case where the solo singer is represented as potentially becoming attached to a chorus as their khorēgos, only to stay detached in the end. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo 150, there is a description of a festival on the island of Delos where contests in choral performance take place. [196] In this context, the figure of Homer describes a choral ensemble on the island of Delos, known as the Deliades, who can mīmeisthai ‘make a mimesis’ (Hymn to Apollo 163) of anyone who comes {375|376} to the festival where they perform (162–164). [197] By implication they could make a mimesis of Homer as well. By performing Homer they could represent Homer. That is, they could be the speakers, the “I” of the performance, with Homer as their khorēgos and speaking through their identity. They would be like the girls in Alcman PMG 1, through whom Alcman speaks when they sing his words in choral ensemble. More fundamentally they would be like the Muses, through whom Apollo speaks when they sing the words of choral performance. But the figure of Homer indirectly declines the occasion, calling on the good will of the Deliades in the same way that the performer of a prelude calls on the good will of the god who is the subject and occasion of the prelude, so that the same performer may go on to the rest of the performance (Hymn to Apollo 166). He promises to sing about them as he proceeds on his way to give performances throughout the various cities of the Hellenic world (174–175). [198] Instead of staying in Delos as a choral personality who finds expression through the local quasi-Muses, the Deliades, he will be a Panhellenic personality whose “I” speaks for itself, and it will be through him that the Panhellenic Muse of the Iliad and Odyssey finds her own self-expression. [199]

§72. Although the “I” of Homer is not taken over by the Deliades, it is their voice that is quoted in the glorification of Homer. Asking the Deliades to keep him in mind even as he moves on (Hymn to Apollo 166–167), the figure of Homer instructs them about what to say to anyone who comes to Delos and should ask the question: of the aoidoi ‘singers’ who have come to the island, which one has delighted you the most (169–170)? What the Deliades should ‘answer’ in this hypothetical dialogue is expressed as a direct quotation of what they would indeed say: he is a blind man, from Chios, whose songs will win universal approval in the future (172–173). The word here for ‘answer’ is hupokrīnomai (ὑποκρίνασθ’: 171), from which the agent-noun hupokritēs ‘actor’ is derived. [200] In this way the Deliades are true to their choral function of serving as speakers, mouthpieces, as it were, of the composer, even though the composer declines in this case to stay as their chorus teacher.

§73. Similarly with the figure of Hesiod, it is through him that the Panhellenic Olympian Muses find expression, transforming themselves from the local Helikonian Muses that they had once been at the beginning of the {376|377} Theogony. [201] It is through the encounter of Hesiod with the Helikonian Muses that he gets his power to speak alēthea ‘true things’, that is, to speak with a Panhellenic authority that reciprocally transforms the Helikonian into the Olympian Muses. [202] Similarly it may be that Homer gets his own Panhellenic authority through his encounter with the Deliades, who can represent anyone who comes to Delos. The centripetal model of the Deliades, who assimilate all the different languages that come their way from all the Hellenes converging at their festival at Delos, is the foundation for the centrifugal model of Homer, who leaves the island to spread their fame, their kleos. The kleos of the Deliades is not only what Homer sings about them but also, reciprocally, what they themselves say through Homer about Homer, which turns into the kleos of Homer. Their repertoire is that of all the Hellenes, who have come to Delos and who have all been represented by these most versatile Muses.

§74. It is time to sum up what we have observed so far about the khoros ‘chorus’ as a formal expression of the simultaneity of hierarchy and egalitarianism in the polis. It is implicit that the khorēgos ‘chorus leader’ is diachronically a combination of composer and leading performer, while the rest of the khoreutai ‘chorus members’ are performers. The key to choral performance is the public presentation, the apo-deixis, of the khorēgos. The authority of the khorēgos is presented through the performance of the “I” that is the chorus, and it is from this authority that his authorship emanates. It is useful to cite a particularly interesting ethnographic parallel, taken from the following description of choral composition and performance in Andamanese society: [203]

§75. In what precedes, I have also stressed that the presentation through the {377|378} chorus is the representation that is mimesis. The “I” of the choral ensemble is not just the collectivization of persons who are singing and dancing at the ritual: it is also the impersonation of characters that belong to whatever myth is being represented in the ritual. We have seen in compositions like Alcman PMG 1 how a differentiated khorēgos who is composer and who is offstage, as it were, makes the collectivized “I” of the chorus speak about another differentiated khorēgos, the alter ego of the composer, who is the mute virtuoso dancer and who is center stage, the focus of collectivized experience, either male or female.

§76. With these observations in mind, let us move away from the patterns of evolution in choral lyric as attested in a polis like Sparta and shift the emphasis to another possible pattern of evolution, within the highly complex institution of the dramatic festivals, especially the Feast of the City Dionysia, in the polis of Athens. [204] Here, to begin, the khorēgos ‘chorus leader’ has become ultimately differentiated as a contemporary nonperformer, who organizes and subsidizes both the composition and the performance. [205] Meanwhile, the differentiated function of a performing chorus leader is further differentiated by another split in functions, with a marked “first actor” on one hand and an unmarked chorus leader on the other. This further differentiation is represented in the story that tells of Thespis’ “invention” of the first actor (Aristotle in Themistius Orations 26.316d; Charon of Lampsacus FGH 262 F 15). [206] A dialogue between the differentiated “first actor” and the undifferentiated chorus leader would be a further differentiation of a dialogue between the khorēgos and the chorus (cf. Aristotle Poetics 1456a25). [207] Finally, there are yet further stages of differentiation with the “invention” of the “second actor,” attributed to Aeschylus (Aristotle Poetics 1449a15), and of a “third actor,” attributed to Sophocles (ibid.). [208] The first actor, of course, is diachronically the composer. Such was the situation with Aeschylus, [209] whereas with Sophocles there is further differentiation between composer and actor, in that Sophocles, tradition has it, ceased to act in the later stages of his career. [210] It is in the interaction between first and second actor, I {378|379} suggest, that the singular form of poetry in dialogue, iambic trimeter, probably becomes differentiated out of the plurality of various different forms of song in choral presentation. [211]

§77. After this overview of complex patterns of differentiation, in Athenian drama, of the traditional interaction of khorēgos ‘chorus leader’ and khoreutai ‘chorus members’, we may turn back to the simple point of departure, that is, the fundamental component of performance by the chorus. As is still evident in the idiom of Attic Greek, the words tragōidoi ‘performers of tragedy’ and kōmōidoi ‘performers of comedy’ refer not only to the choruses but also to the actual performances of tragedy and comedy respectively. [212] These terms, in all their categorical inclusiveness, are parallel to kitharōidoi and aulōidoi as well as rhapsōidoi. [213]

§78. Turning from this most differentiated and complex pattern of developments in choral traditions at Athens, I shift to my last example, a less differentiated but comparably complex pattern of choral tradition, as best represented by Pindar. In this case the khorēgos as protocomposer/performer remains a contemporary composer: he is a professional whose compositions are occasional, ostensibly performed by a chorus consisting of contemporary nonprofessionals. Here again the chorus as a group serves as the impersonator, the actor, of the khorēgos. Such is the case with the epinician or victory odes of Pindar, commissioned as choral compositions/performances that celebrate the victories of athletes in Panhellenic Games, notably, the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian Games. [214] In this case, as in other examples, the composer is no longer necessarily a performer, although his persona keeps speaking of himself as not only a composer but also a group of performers, maintaining the impersonation of his choral function as khorēgos. In this way the “I” of Pindar speaks in a diachronic mode that reflects in content the evolution of the khorēgos from “protocomposer”/performer into a differentiated contemporary composer.

§79. In Pindaric as in other choral poetry, it is the chorus who performs the “I,” but this “I” can at will refer to the composer. For example, since the {379|380} chorus at any given epinician occasion consists of local polis dwellers, the references in Pindaric song to an “I” who comes to the polis from afar must be the mark of the poet. [215] Moreover, there are six Pindaric compositions addressed to non-Thebans that bear clear “signatures” of Thebes as the poet’s native polis, [216] just as Bacchylides of Keos is surely referring to himself in attributing one of his choral compositions to ‘the nightingale from Keos’ (Bacchylides Epinician 3.96 SM). [217]

§80. Such references to the self in the compositions of Pindar and Bacchylides should help solve the problem of a reference in Pindar Pythian 5.75 to the Aigeidai, a lineage orginating in Thebes and extending into important offshoots at Sparta and its colonies. [218] In the case of Pythian 5, a composition in honor of a chariot race victory of Arkesilas, king of Cyrene, the Aigeidai are described as participating in the colonization of Thera, from where the polis of Cyrene was in turn colonized (76 and following). In this context, the Aigeidai are described as ἐμοὶ πατέρες ‘my ancestors [pateres]’, and the problem is whether the word ἐμοὶ ‘my’ here refers to Pindar or to the chorus. [219] The second choice is unlikely if the body politic of Cyrene, as ostensibly represented by the chorus, is not ideologically derivable from the single lineage of the Aigeidai, even by way of ellipsis. And it would be special pleading to posit a Cyrenaean chorus consisting exclusively of members of the Aigeidai. It seems more plausible, then, to interpret ἐμοὶ πατέρες ‘my ancestors’ as a proud reference by the poet Pindar to his own lineage. [220] From the standpoint of Panhellenic prestige, the lineage of the Aigeidai can rival in distinction the corresponding lineage of any of the historical personages whom Pindar praises. If we can take Pindar’s pride in his own Theban ancestry as a given, we can better understand the ideology of a Pindaric composition like Isthmian 8, which extends the symmetry in the reciprocal {380|381} relation between the giver of praise, the poet, and the receiver of praise, the victor, to an overarching symmetry between their respective cities, Thebes and Aegina: since the nymphs Thebe and Aegina were twin sisters, as myth has it, the noble populations that were generated from them are in turn related to each other (Isthmian 8.15–23). [221] The metaphor of a genetic affinity between poet and victor has force, I suggest, if Pindar’s lineage is comparable in status to that of the athletic victor from Aegina.

§81. In Pindaric song, as a choral medium, not only the references to the “I” of the occasion reveal the control of the figure who is diachronically the khorēgos and synchronically the poet. Even the references to the occasion itself reveal that control, in that they all are orchestrated to convey what has been called the absolute present of the performance. [222] We have seen, for example, a self-reference, at the end of Pindar’s Nemean 2, to the prelude that is supposedly getting under way at the poem’s beginning. [223] This kind of time warp absolutizes the occasion, as also in general the numerous conventional futures and imperatives in Pindaric diction, the purpose of which is “to collapse into themselves the whole temporal sequence of the epinician occasion.” [224]

§82. At the end of this rapid survey of different patterns in the development of traditions in the composition and performance of song, it is time to recapitulate. These different patterns reveal different models for the distinction or potential distinction of performer and poet. We have noted not only the model of the rhapsōidoi in the realm of poetry but also the various different models of kitharōidoi, aulōidoi, tragōidoi, and kōmōidoi in the realm of song. [225] In all these models, the common point of departure is that the persona of the composer can be reenacted by the performer or performers. In other words the performer may impersonate the composer as well as the characters represented as speaking within the composition. Such reenactment or impersonation is the essence of mīmēsis. [226] {381|382}