Why Should I Dance - Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy

Trustees of Boston University
Trustees of Boston University through its publication Arion: A Journal of Humanities and
the Classics
"Why Should I Dance?": Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy

Author(s): Albert Henrichs
Source: Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Third Series, Vol. 3, No. 1, The
Chorus in Greek Tragedy and Culture, One (Fall, 1994 - Winter, 1995), pp. 56-111
Published by: Trustees of Boston University; Trustees of Boston University through its
publication Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163565
Accessed: 15-12-2016 12:05 UTC
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163565?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Trustees of Boston University, Trustees of Boston University through its publication

Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics
This content downloaded from 187.183.37.24 on Thu, 15 Dec 2016 12:05:55 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
"Why Should I Dance?":
Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy
ALBERT HENRICHS
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

?Yeats
An the beginning, there was the "chorus"?a collec

tive of khoreutai performing the dance-song {khoreia).1 Greek
musical culture is defined by khoroi whose performance combines
song and dance, a feature which characterizes numerous forms of
cultic poetry and which choral lyric, whether cultic or not, shares
with drama. The polymorphous Dionysiac chorus forms the
nucleus of Greek comedy and satyr-play, in historical as well as
structural terms. But what about tragedy? How strong are its Dio
nysiac credentials? Should we give credence to the anonymous Hel
lenistic wit who declared that tragedy had "nothing to do with
Dionysos" (ou??v jtq?? t?v Ai?vuoov)?2
On the contrary, Dionysos is very prominent in a large number
of extant tragedies, in Sophocles no less than in Aeschylus or
Euripides, but the complexity of his presence within the dramatic
and religious structures of these plays has only recently begun to
receive the attention it deserves. For the past two hundred years,
the vast majority of scholars interested in Attic tragedy and its
antecedents has proceeded on the plausible assumption that the
tragic chorus, like the chorus of comedy and satyr-play, originated
in choral performances connected with the cult of Dionysos.3
Many scholars believed, with Aristotle and Nietzsche, that Dio
nysos had more to do with the question of origins and with the
primitive archetype of the tragic chorus than with the full-fledged
genre as we know it. In their quest for origins, they even con
structed hypothetical rituals, which they imposed on, or extrapo
lated from, extant plays. Fortunately the study of the Dionysiac
dimension of tragedy has moved into an important new phase. In
recent years, the concept of ritual continuity and of a tragic chorus
defined as a replica of its remote ritual ancestors has been chal
lenged by a growing number of critics who prefer to situate trag
Albert Henrichs 57
edy and its chorus more concretely in the contemporary

framework of the polis religion and of actual Dionysiac cult. In an
influential article, Simon Goldhill in particular has emphasized the
complex social "context for performance"?the competing civic
identities of poet, performers, and audience; the conflict between
the political values encoded in the "preplay ceremonials" and their
problematization in the actual plays; and the polarity of Dionysos
as reflected in the transgressive mood of the Dionysiac festivals,
which provided the cultic setting for dramatic contests in Athens.4
More relevant to my concerns is yet another approach, that
which explores the dramatic representation of Dionysos and his
worship within the actual plays, as distinct from their external set
ting in Dionysiac cult. Charles Segal, Froma Zeitlin, and Richard
Seaford have all emphasized the ambivalence of Dionysos as a fun
damental concept behind the tensions and ambiguities of certain
plays.5 In a series of related studies, Renate Schlesier has focused
on the role of Dionysiac ritual and of maenadic identities in the
construction of dramatic character.6 Most recently, in the first
comprehensive treatment ever of the presence of Dionysos in
Greek tragedy, Anton Bierl has produced a cohesive synthesis inte
grating the tragic Dionysos with the Dionysos of Attic cult and of
theater.7 The combined work of these scholars represents a radical
reassessment of the ways Dionysos and his religion are brought
into play by all three tragedians. From now on, students of tragedy
will have to reckon with the fact that in their efforts to connect
tragedy more directly with its cultic context (and to revitalize the
Dionysiac roots of Attic drama?), the tragic poets set individual
characters, entire plays, and indeed the tragic genre as a whole in a
distinct Dionysiac ambience. As Bierl has abundantly demon
strated, this tendency gained momentum in the course of the fifth
century. In Aeschylus, Dionysos is most prominent in plays that
dramatize Dionysiac myth.8 Sophocles expands the Dionysiac
frame of reference, but tends to confine Dionysos to choral lyr
ics?a reminder of the ritual connection between choral perfor
mance in tragedy and in Dionysiac cult.9 But it is not until the late
plays of Euripides that the tragic Dionysos emerges as a full
fledged symbol of tragic ambiguity and dramatic self-reflex -
iveness.10 Far from suppressing Dionysos, as Nietzsche claimed,
Euripides takes advantage of every conceivable dimension of the
god and deserves to rank as the most Dionysiac of the three
tragedians.
58 "WHY SHOULD I DANCE?"
In this paper I propose to apply this new understanding of the

tragic Dionysos to a fundamental aspect of tragedy as performa
tive poetry which Bierl, Schlesier, and Segal have touched upon
only tangentially, namely the intricate interplay of choral dance,
choral voice, and ritual performance. All tragic choruses sing as
well as dance. I am concerned with the relatively few choruses
who, in their song, refer to their own dancing. Choruses who draw
attention to their ritual role as collective performers of the choral
dance-song in the orchestra invariably locate their performance
self-reflexively within the concrete dramatic context and ritual
ambience of a given play. An integral aspect of this practice is the
pivotal role assigned to Dionysos in the articulation of choral
identity.
For lack of a better term, I call this phenomenon choral self-ref
erentiality?the self-description of the tragic chorus as performer
of khoreia.11 According to Goldhill, dramatic "self-reflexiveness"
or "self-reflexivity" takes place when tragedy?or, for that matter,
comedy?reflects on its own raison d'?tre as theater, something it
achieves most poignantly in Euripides.12 Whereas Goldhill does
not apply this concept to the chorus, Bierl is fully aware that choral
self-referentiality is a central aspect of the larger picture of ritual,
as well as "metatheatrical," self-reflexivity in Attic drama.13
Choruses addressing their own performance as dancers can be
found in comedy and satyr-play14 as well as in tragedy. But self
reflexivity in its various forms, including that of choral self-refer
entiality, is more common, and more emphatic, in comedy than in
tragedy.15 As in tragedy, self-referential comic choruses often refer
to their dancing in the ritually marked context of divine invoca
tion, of Dionysiac cult, or of extra-dramatic khoreia on a ritual
occasion.16
Dramatic choruses who refer to their own dancing while invok
ing divinities associated with khoreia?such as Apollo, Artemis,
and especially Dionysos?engage in the most explicit form of rit
ual self-referentiality available to them. Since some comic and
many tragic choruses perform other rituals such as prayer, lament,
supplication, and the conjuration of ghosts in the course of their
dance-songs, the concept of ritual self-referentiality in the choral
odes of Attic drama clearly possesses a much wider application
than can be explored in this paper. Rites reenacted within the dra
matic framework of a particular play may be perceived as "ficti
tious rituals for mythical characters," but it is also the case that
Albert Henrichs 59
every ritual performed verbally by a tragic or comic chorus takes

place within the concrete ritual ambience of the dance-song.17
Choral dancing in ancient Greek culture always constitutes a form
of ritual performance, whether the dance is performed in the con
text of the dramatic festival or in other cultic and festive settings.
The external setting in the sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus and
in the distinctly cultic ambience of the City Dionysia reinforces the
ritual function of choral dances in tragedy.
Choruses who comment self-referentially on their own perfor
mance as dancers do so not only in their capacity as characters in
the drama but also as performers: while emphasizing their choral
identity, they temporarily expand their role as dramatic characters.
In fact they acquire a more complex dramatic identity as they per
ceive their choral dance as an emotional reaction to the events
onstage and assume a ritual posture which functions as a link
between the cultic reality of the City Dionysia and the imaginary
religious world of the tragedies. Far from "breaking the dramatic
illusion" outright and unconditionally, as some scholars have sug
gested, such choruses invite the audience to participate in a more
integrated experience, one in which the choral performance in the
orchestra merges with the more imaginary performance of the rit
uals of polytheism that take place in the action of each play.18
Choral self-referentiality can be found in all three tragedians,
but the frequency with which they employ it varies a great deal, as
does their handling of it.19 Despite its relevance, it has not been
recognized as a defining aspect of the tragic chorus, and no sys
tematic treatment exists. To be sure, the term "hyporcheme" has
been widely used to characterize those self-referential choruses in
Sophocles who verbally recognize their choral performance while
being physically engaged in the dance.20 But as A. M. Dale has
shown, doing so is to perpetuate a misnomer from late antiquity,
when huporkh?ma was understood as an antonym of stasimon on
the mistaken assumption that stasimon implies a stationary
chorus.21 All tragic choruses dance, and if dancing alone were the
criterion, all choral odes could be described as huporkh?mata. It is
highly unlikely, however, that the choral odes of tragedy were ever
classified as huporkh?mata prior to late antiquity.22 Despite its
problems, the term huporkh?ma has the virtue of focusing atten
tion on choral dancing as an accompaniment to choral song and on
the unity of voice and movement as constitutive aspects of choral
identity and discourse.23 The huporkh?ma ascribed to Pratinas by
6o "WHY SHOULD I DANCE?:
Athenaios recreates an ambience of animated choral performance

(XOoevuxxTCt) characterized by shouting (xetax?e?v), stamping
(jiaTayeiv), and pipe-playing (ouX?c) that is closely related to the
prevailing mood and the Dionysiac associations of the "hypor
chemes" found in tragedy and discussed in this paper.24 In the
absence of reliable information on the rhythmic movements of
tragic choruses as well as on the music that accompanied them,
choral odes that emphasize choral dancing, whether or not we
choose to call them huporkh?mata, are particularly revealing as
they dramatize a fundamental function of the tragic chorus that
remains otherwise inaccessible to us.
While extremely rare in the extant plays of Aeschylus, choral
self-referentiality in the specific sense that concerns us can be
found in four of the seven plays of Sophocles. This phenomenon
becomes even more frequent, and grows more complex, in Euripi
des. For the purposes of the present paper, I must proceed selec
tively, with the main emphasis on Sophocles, who fully develops
this choral convention. What is more, Sophocles invariably assigns
explicit Dionysiac identities to choruses who comment on their
own performance.25 The god of the theater, of the mask, of ritual
madness, and of ecstatic dancing is thus represented as the divine
paragon of choral identity. In Euripides, too, choral self-referen
tiality is more prominently connected with Dionysos and his ritu
als than with any other deity, not only in the two plays that are
patently Dionysiac, Bakkhai and Kyklops, but also in plays whose
Dionysiac ambience is less obvious, such as Herakles, Ion, and
Phoinissai. A full discussion of Euripidean choruses who associate
their dancing with Dionysos will be presented elsewhere.26 By way
of example, however, I will conclude with a chorus from the Elek
tra in order to show how Euripides experimented with the conven
tion of ritual self-referentiality in deliberate departure from his
predecessors.
I.
Aeschylus: The khorostasia of the Erinyes
Unlike Sophocles, Aeschylus invested some of his choruses with

a ritual identity that is not predicated on the choral dance.27 In Per
sians, for instance, the Queen pours chthonian libations to conjure
up the ghost of Dareios, while the chorus assists her verbally by
chanting hymnic invocations addressed to the heroized king and
Albert Henrichs 61
the powers of the underworld (623-80). In Seven against Thebes

(265-70), Eteokles asks a disheartened female chorus to stop sup
plicating the statues of the gods, to adopt a more aggressive ritual
stance and to raise "the sacred ololugm?s" (268 oko\vy\ibv leoov
ev\ievf\ Jiauovioov), the shrill triumphant cry that accompanied
the sacrificial slaughter of animals, but the sacrifice never takes
place.28 The choruses of Suppliants and Libation Bearers sustain
even more distinct ritual roles and enact them onstage, but they do
so without making reference to their own dancing.
In the Eumenides, however, Aeschylus does make use of choral
self-referentiality to enhance the chthonian character and ritual
identity of the Erinyes who form the chorus. Orestes, still on the
run, has taken refuge in Athens and, as a suppliant, clasps the
image of Athena. When they finally catch up with him, the Erinyes
make their move and declare that neither Apollo nor Athena can
save Orestes from becoming the victim of their devouring wrath.
Orestes, polluted and marginalized, is drawn into the polarization
between Olympian and chthonian forces so that his ritual status is
defined in opposite terms by the two opposing groups of divini
ties: in the eyes of the Olympians, he is a suppliant fearing for his
life and desperately in need of divine assistance {Eum. 79f., 92,
242f., 409); for the Erinyes, however, he is a criminal who must die
as the ritual victim of a corrupted sacrifice, to be eaten alive rather
than "slaughtered by the altar" {Eum. 304-05).29 It is at this point
that the Erinyes launch an intense verbal and physical attack on
Orestes, an attack combining the two basic modes of choral per
formance {khoros 307, mousa 308), the song {humnos 306, 331,
344) as well as the dance {orkh?smoi 370), in an agitated display of
ritualized violence.
In an anapestic prelude (307-20) to the first stasimon (321-96),
the Erinyes begin their dance-song with an emphatic articulation
of choral self-referentiality, the earliest in extant tragedy (307-11):
aye ?f] xai %oqov ?i|>a)|i?v, ercei

\xovoav OTvyzQ?v
ajto(|>aiv??9ai ?e?oxnxev,
?iâi te X?%r] xa xax' ?vGocojrov?
cb? ?mvcau? oxotoi? ?\xr\.
Come let us join in the dance {khoros),

for we are ready to perform
our grisly song

and to tell how our ensemble {stasis)
apportions lots among mortals.
The Erinyes initiate their provocative choral performance by

announcing their intention "to join in dance"; they do so emphati
cally, in a first person utterance that combines the performative
force of the hortatory subjunctive with the equally performative
exhortation aye ?f|.30 By characterizing their song as \iovoav
oTuyep?v, they alert the audience to the intimidating, monstrous
nature of their dance-song, with its emphasis on the spilling of
blood, black magic, and the total otherness of the infernal realm
and its inhabitants.31
Two lines later, the Erinyes refer to their own choral ensemble
as "our stasis" (oxao?? aur|). Exceptionally, the term stasis here
describes a collective of divinities represented by a group of choral
performers. Apart from a possible parallel in Pindar's third Dithy
ramb, the closest analogues can be found in the Choephoroi.32
At Ch. 114 Elektra's xfj?e . . . ox?oei refers to the female chorus
who only moments before had entered the orchestra carrying
libations for the dead king and positioned themselves next to his
tomb to assist Elektra in her ritual chores; similarly, at Ch. 458
(choral) oxao?? ?? Jiayxoivo? ??e is "a collective self-reference"
to the chorus performing the conjuration of Agamemnon's
ghost.33 In all three instances, most commentators render stasis
as "our band" or "our company."34 As an indicator of choral self
referentiality, however, the word is much more poignant. In the
Eumenides, the phrase oxcxot? ?\xr\ harks back to %oqov ch|KDU?V
and has the same performative force. By emphasizing the here
and now of the choral performance, the first person possessive
auT|, much like the deictic rj?e in xfj?e . .. ox?oei and oxao?? ...
??e, applies the chorocentric conventions of choral song to the
tragic chorus and reinforces the performative connotation of
oxao??. In choral lyric as well as in the choral odes of tragedy
and comedy, choral self-referentiality is always expressed in the
first person.35 The term stasis specifically recalls the conventional
language of choral formation, in particular such expressions as
khorostatis ("she who sets up, or positions, the chorus") and
khorostasia ("the positioning of a chorus").36 Through their
words as well as their action, the Erinyes thus affirm the most
conspicuous ritual aspect of their dramatic identity?their role
Albert Henrichs 63
as performers of the khoreia in the orchestra. What follows is

the first stasimon, the dance-song signaled by the phrase oxao??
?uT| and performed by the Erinyes once "they had reached their
station (oxao??) in the orchestra."37
It appears from the phrase %oqov chpcouxv that the Erinyes
actually joined hands and may have formed a magical circle
around Orestes.38 Here as elsewhere in the lyrics of tragedy, the
explicit reference to choral dancing serves as a prelude to other
ritual activities performed verbally by the chorus in the course
of their stasimon. In this case the ritual takes the form of an
incantation designed to incapacitate Orestes before the murder
trial. The same type of destructive magic is attested for classical
Athens by dozens of curses known as "binding spells"
(xaxa?eouxn) inscribed on lead tablets and found in wells, tombs,
and even private homes.39 How sinister the "musical skills" of
the Erinyes really are, and how destructive their power, becomes
manifest after their invocation of Nyx personified, "the mother
who gave birth to me, mother Night" (321f.). Thus fortified,
their avenging power culminates in the sinister performance of
the "Binding Song" (306, 331f., 344f. iSfxvo? ??ouxo?) imbedded
in the first stasimon (328-33=341-46):
?m ?? xa> xeOuuivcp
xo?e fx?Xo?, Jiaoaxojr?,
jtaoa(|)OQ? cj)Qevo?a?f|?,
i3|xvo? ?? 'Eqivikov
??ouxo? c|)Qev?)v, ck|)?q
uxyxxo?, a?ov? ?ooxoic.
Over our victim

this is the chant {melos), striking him mad,
out of his mind, harming his brain,
a hymn {humnos) from the Erinyes,
binding the brain, lacking
the lyre, withering to mortals.40
Combined here with the ritual dance is the theme of the perverted
song, first introduced in the Agamemnon, where the choral func
tion of the Erinyes is also anticipated.41 There the prophetess
Kassandra envisages the Erinyes as a cacophonous X0Q?? and
a bloodthirsty X(b|Lio? of revellers drunk on human blood and

occupying the royal palace while singing a baleful song {Ag.
1186-93, culminating in v\ivovoi ?' i5|ivov ... jto xaQXOV ?xrrv).
In the "Binding Song" of the Eumenides, that prophetic vision
becomes dramatic reality. As the Erinyes pronounce their curse,
they stamp the floor of the orchestra with their feet and claim that
the highest aspirations of men are destroyed "by the onslaught of
our black raiment and the malicious dancing of our feet" (371
oqxôu.o?? x' ?m(|)6ovoi? jio?o?). The feet of the Erinyes thus
epitomize their choral identity as performers of the dance; at the
same time, their feet function as instruments of destruction that
physically perform the incantation in an act of sympathetic
magic.42 Ritual performance and choral self-referentiality thus go
hand in hand, reinforcing each other. As we shall see, similar
patterns recur in Sophocles and Euripides, who tend to endow
their self-referential choruses with a distinct Dionysiac identity.
The Aeschylean Erinyes seem to foreshadow this trend. As per
formers of the binding song they exemplify the kind of frenzy?
"a fury not of wine" {Eum. 860)?which they threaten to inflict
on Orestes; like maenads, they dance wildly and carry snakes
{Ch. 1049E); and at Eum. 500, they even refer to themselves as
uxxiva?e?, "mad women," a word that connotes Dionysiac ritual
not only in tragedy, but already in Homeric epic.43
Still, the Erinyes ultimately dance and curse in vain. Their
binding song is followed by the stage epiphany of Athena at the
beginning of the next scene. Her intervention to save Orestes
persuades the Erinyes to transform their curses into blessings,
and, in the closing scene of the trilogy, magic is replaced by
cult and bloodshed by the homicide court. Again, the pattern
established by Aeschylus is paradigmatic. Invariably in tragedy,
ritual remedies employed to gain undue advantage, to enhance
one's social status, or to redress one ill by the commission of
another ultimately prove ineffective and lead to a transformation
of those who turn to them.44 This applies not only to tragic
characters who perform rituals but also to choruses who get
carried away and place excessive confidence in their dancing. The
Erinyes, although divinities, exemplify the pattern; Sophoclean
choruses will develop many variations on it.
But, before leaving Aeschylus and turning to Sophocles, we
would do well to reexamine the ritual atmosphere that surrounds
the only case of choral self-referentiality in Aeschylus. In the
Albert Henrichs 65
Eumenides, the dramatic scenario that precedes the intervention

of Athena is designed to build the ritual momentum. The succes
sive rituals focus on Orestes qua matricide, who seeks refuge as
a suppliant first at Delphi, then in Athens. At Delphi, Apollo
purifies Orestes of his bloodguilt by means of animal blood. In
Athens, Athena responds to Orestes' prayer and rescues him from
the Erinyes' incantations and sacrificial violence. Against this
highly ritualized background, the dance-song of the Erinyes
becomes the dramatic vehicle for choral self-definition. At the
same time, their ritual remedies?including the choral dance?
fail, as the fate of the ritual victim is reversed and the status of
the victimizer is ritually redefined in the final scene of the play.
The failure of ritual to effect remedy is an essential tragic motif,
not only in the Oresteia, but also in post-Aeschylean tragedy. In
the Eumenides, however, this motif is used for the first time to
articulate the tragic ambivalence of choral performance.
II.
"Why Dance?": Choral Voice and Performance
I now come to what is arguably the best remembered and least

understood case of choral self-referentiality in all of tragedy?
the second stasimon of Oidipous Tyrannos, which culminates,
significantly, in a formal prayer. In the preceding scene, Iokaste
has ridiculed and rejected Apollo's oracles concerning the murder
of Laios (707-25, 851-58). By discrediting the veracity of the
Delphic oracle and of its human ministrants, she precipitates a
ritual crisis at the very moment Thebes is threatened with extinc
tion and the voice of Apollo appears to be the city's only hope.
The implications of the crisis are addressed by the chorus in terms
intimately linking the challenge to divine authority with their
own dancing and choral identity.
The close correlation between polis religion and choral perfor
mance is underscored by the parallel pattern of metrical respon
sion and verbal repetition that connects two startling
pronouncements of the chorus. In the closing lines of the second
strophe, the Theban elders, concerned about the ascendancy of
the impious, call their own dancing into question?"If such
actions are held in honor," ei y?o ai xoiai?e Jio?êic x?uxai, the
chorus asks, "why should I dance?" xi ?e? (ie xooe?eiv; (895-96).
In the corresponding lines of the antistrophe, the scope of their
66 "WHY SHOULD I DANCE?^
concerns broadens as their sense of religious crisis intensifies. So

long as the oracles given to Laios are discredited and Apollo
is "nowhere manifest in his cultic honors," xo??auxxu xuxa??
Ajt?Mxdv ?ux|)avf|?, the chorus fears the worst?"the divine order
has perished," ?ooei ?? x? Oe?a (909-10) .45
The laconic locution x? Oe?a epitomizes the sum total of poly
theism, including the entire range of divine and human interaction
and reciprocity: the divine world order, the observance of cult,
and the performance of ritual, down to the consultation of oracles
and to the very dance performed by the khoreutai in the orchestra
as they sing. Khoreia did not take place in a religious vacuum;
it meant "to serve the gods through the medium of the dance."46
Divinities such as Dionysos, Apollo, and Artemis are integral to
choral dancing, in the choral songs of tragedy as well as in actual
cult. In the wake of an impiety that abrogates Apollo's oracles
and neglects his worship, the chorus worries that the entire poly
theistic system may be disintegrating.
Still, it comes as a surprise that the Theban elders question
their status as performers of the choral dance?"Why should I
dance?" As Jeffrey Rusten puts it, this is "an odd question coming
from the old men of Thebes, who as characters in this play (rather
than performers) are not really dancing at all."47 Nothing in the
play has prepared the audience for this question; only the dancing
of the chorus in the orchestra gives it context. Generations of
interpreters have been intrigued by the implicit collapsing of past
and present, of illusion and reality, of the choral voice echoing
the distant past and the citizen chorus performing in and for
the present.48 Among recent commentators, Dawe is reluctant to
accept Sophocles' fusion of the dramatic character and performa
tive function of the chorus: "Xope?eiv is precisely what the
Chorus who are acting in this play are doing, and there are some
who feel that at this moment Sophocles is in a sense breaking
the dramatic illusion, like Aristophanes in a parabasis."49 Yet
scholars of the caliber of Wilamowitz and Dodds had no doubt
that this chorus is "dropping its mask" or "stepping out of the
play" by commenting self-referentially on its own performance
in the orchestra.50
As early as 1889, Wilamowitz observed that while modern
theatergoers lack imagination and expect the playwright not to
tamper with the "dramatic illusion," the Athenian audience was
more flexible and had no problem with O. T. 896 or other
Albert Henrichs 67
instances of choral self-reference: "They are completely involved,

accept the stage action as truth, yet are mindful of the real world?
that the chorus is their chorus and that the festive occasion belongs
to their god."51 Thirty years ago, Dodds spelled out what this
means for the chorus in Oidipous Tyrannos: "If by this they
mean merely 'Why should I, a Theban elder, dance?' the question
is irrelevant and even slightly ludicrous; the meaning is surely
'Why should I, an Athenian citizen, continue to serve in a chorus?'
In speaking of themselves as a chorus, they step out of the play
into the contemporary world, as Aristophanes' choruses do in
the parabasis."52
Do they really? The matter is perhaps slightly more complex
for the tragic chorus?whose identity is more integrated with the
dramatic action?than is the case in comedy, where the chorus
can function as the explicit mouthpiece and alter ego of the poet.
Stinton insisted, opposing Dodds, that far from requiring "extra
dramatic reference," xi ?e? u.e xooe?eiv; "can be accommodated
within the dramatic convention: dancing is a normal part of
worship, so the phrase simply anticipates the other acts of worship
mentioned in the following stanza."53 But it isn't quite so simple.
One could argue, against Stinton, that the specific "acts of wor
ship" envisaged by the chorus qua dramatic character consist
exclusively of oracular consultation and prayer (897ff.), neither
of which requires ritual dances or choral performance. Further
more, one might ask why Stinton seems to think that the khoreu
ein in the orchestra was not an integral part of the dramatic
convention, or of this particular play's drama. It seems to me just
as narrow to confine the xi ?e? u.e x?QBêiv; exclusively to the
mythical past as it is to insist that this chorus could be oblivious
to the dramatic action, or even alienated from it.
Dodds and Stinton are both right, or, rather, half right?their
positions are not mutually exclusive, but each emphasizes one
side of the equation at the expense of the other. Dancing is indeed
"a normal act of worship," in the mythical as well as the real
world. But the dancing to which the Theban elders refer is more
properly, and more immediately, a function of their choral identity
than it is of their dramatic character?it takes place in the concrete
space of the orchestra where they perform, yet it is simultaneously
projected into the imaginary past of the dramatic action, as if
this chorus were dancing in Thebes as well as in Athens.54 This is
not an isolated instance of a chorus of Athenian citizens imagining
themselves to be singing and dancing in another time and place,

while actually performing before an Athenian audience. As I
shall argue later, choral projection is a device frequently used by
Sophocles and Euripides to integrate choral performance in the
orchestra with the world of the drama onstage.55 It illuminates
the paradox of how the conditions threatening to undermine the
ritual status of this chorus can be located in mythical Thebes,
while the festival of Dionysos, which provides the setting for
their dancing, is an integral part of the polis religion of fifth
century Athens.
Is it at all conceivable, as some critics believe,56 that the religious
concerns expressed by the chorus qua character reflect the poet's
perception of the chorus qua performer? In other words, was the
ritual status of Athenian tragic choruses jeopardized by changes
in the religious climate during the early years of the Peloponnesian
War? Only Sophocles and his audience would know the answer,
but the very ambivalence that gives xi ?e? u,e xooeiieiv; its poi
gnancy suggests that the boundaries between the realm of the
imagination and the realm of the polis were more fluid than we
might think. The Athenian audience was better equipped than
we are to move easily without qualms between the two realms.
Much of the polis of the here and now was a construct of the
imagination, composed of the fictional fragments of the past, and
conversely, the mythical past was perceived as a primordial image
of the polis. Tragedy functioned as one of the most effective
mediators between the two realms, at least in Athens.
What does this mean for the tragic chorus? Choral performance
takes place in both worlds. The dramatic role of the chorus is
acted out in the highly ritualized realm of myth, a world inhabited
by gods and mortals who interact through the medium of cult;
at the same time, however, the dancing of the tragic chorus, its
ritual function, occurs in the contemporary world of Athens and
within a cultic framework rooted in Panhellenic as well as local
Athenian cult.57 Throughout tragedy, ritual and cult function as
common denominators which mediate between the dramatic past
and the present.
The identity of this particular chorus, as presented by Sopho
cles, is defined by their ability to perceive their performance as
an integral part of the polis religion, both past and present.58 If
a central aspect of that religion is called into question, the ritual
identity of the tragic chorus becomes equally questionable, and
Albert Henrichs 69
its dramatic status doubtful. For a Greek audience, a world with

out ritual dancing would be an empty place indeed, and a tragedy
without a khoros would be a trag?idia akhoros?a contradiction
in itself.59 Uvo H?lscher once suggested that the self-doubts of
the Theban elders stem from their innate fear of the ultimate
sources of the pollution afflicting Thebes?parricide and incest?
and from their concern with ritual purity, that "revered purity
in all words and deeds" (864f. e?oejrxov ayve?av X?ycov ?oy v
xe jr?vxoov).60 He argues that since ritual purity is the prerequisite
for any ritual performance, including choral dancing, the Theban
elders are reluctant to dance because the mere thought of such
crimes has rendered them impure and thus ritually unfit for the
dance. According to H?lscher, this concern for ritual transcends
the dramatic action and collapses the distance between the dra
matic character and the ritual function of the chorus.
While doing justice to the uniqueness of the only chorus in
extant tragedy which questions its own status as performer of
the choral dance, H?lscher's interpretation fails to locate the
exceptional self-scrutiny of this chorus within the broader conven
tion of choral self-referentiality. Like the vast majority of inter
preters of xi ?e? u? xooe?eiv; before and after him, he too ignored
the fact that the choruses of more than a dozen tragedies, from
Eumenides to Bakkhai, comment self-referentially on their own
dancing. Yet H?lscher was demonstrably on the right track when
he identified the concern for ritual expressed by the Theban elders
as the conceptual link connecting their dramatic character with
their self-awareness as choral dancers. I propose that this connec
tion reflects a more general truth and that the entire range of
ritual performance, as dramatized by the tragedians, functions as
the common denominator that underlies all instances of choral
self-reference in extant tragedy.
Ritual takes many forms, such as sacrifice, libation, purification
from pollution, suppliancy, divination, and dancing, including
choral dancing in the orchestra. Regardless of the occasion, ritual
always provides continuity through repetition and the prescribed
rhythm of the ritual process, which follows its own immutable
timetable. Ritual as dramatized in tragedy thus creates its own
space, its own temporality, whether it is performed in the past
or in the present.61 More than any character onstage, the tragic
chorus in the orchestra collectively embodies that continuity of
ritual performance; it does so not as a voice in the drama, nor
70 "WHY SHOULD I DANCE?
as a citizen of the polis, but as a self-conscious performer of the

Dionysiac dance in the orchestra and as an active ritual participant
in the festival of Dionysos. The convention of choral self-referen
tiality, which recognizes the performative role of the chorus,
enables the audience to cross the boundaries between the chorus
qua tragic character and qua performer, between the drama acted
out in the theater and the polis religion that sustains it, and
more specifically between the cults of the polis and the rituals
performed in the plays.62 This convergence of drama and ritual
in the context of role-playing, make-believe, and shifting identities
is epitomized by the mask, which transforms the self into the
Other and integrates the choral performance with the Attic cult
of the "mask god" Dionysos.63
As a performer of the ritual dance, the chorus exists simulta
neously inside the dramatic realm of the play and outside of it
in the political and cultic realm of the here and now. These two
roles are inseparable, and as we shall see, under certain conditions
they become one and the same. These conditions become much
clearer if we replace the question "Why should I dance?"?which
carries a threat to abandon the choral performance?with a more
confident statement along the lines of "Let's join in the dance!"
{Eum. 307 XOQ?V ch|)CDU?v) .64 Affirmative choral self-reference of
this type is common in Sophocles and Euripides; the self-doubt
of the chorus in the Oidipous Tyrannos is the sole exception.65
The Salaminian sailors who form the chorus in Aias exclaim:
"Now I am bent upon dancing" (701 vi5v y?o e\i?i \x?Xei xooe?oai,
the positive equivalent of xi ?e? [xe xoQe?eiv;), while, similarly,
the chorus of old men in the Herakles insists: "We will not yet
abandon the Muses, who set me dancing" (685f. oimo)
xaxajiaijoofxev Mouoa? a? \i9 ?xooeuaav). Invariably, perform
ative choral utterances such as these underscore the fact that
tragic choruses, whether old or young, male or female, reluctant
or enthusiastic, are not only characters in the drama but also
khoreutai in the orchestra who are sometimes empowered by the
playwright to recognize their ritual role and identify with it.
It is no accident that the question xi ?e? u.e xooe?eiv; comes
at the end of a strophe and near the end of the dance-song as
well.66 The sudden pause of the chorus thus gives visual point to
their words. But even this chorus cannot and does not seriously
reject their role as khoreutai?they resume their choral dancing
in the orchestra even as the dramatic crisis intensifies and their
Albert Henrichs 71
dancing is overtaken by the revelations onstage, which confirm

the validity of Apollo's oracles. Without the choral dance, the
play cannot go on. In the third stasimon in particular, the Theban
elders reflect once more on their ritual function and imagine
a choral role for themselves which allows them to escape the
confinement of the theater and the constraints of the dramatic
convention?they will dance on Mount Kithairon "tomorrow,"
that is outside the dramatic time, in an imaginary, hopeful
future.67 At this moment of renewed self-reflection, the syntax
of the choral voice becomes uncommonly intricate, even by Sopho
clean standards, as the chorus of elders address Mount Kithairon
and make the delicate journey from the orchestra, the locus of
their former ritual doubts, to the mountain, the place of their
future choral dance, in a truly performative utterance (O. T.
1086-97):
e?jteo ?yo) (x?vxi? ei

ux xai xax? yvcouav ??qi?,
ov xov "OXvujtov ajreiQoov,
cb KxOaiQobv, ovk eor\ x?v a?Qiov
jcava?^Tjvov urj ov o? ye xai Jiaxoicoxav O?o?jtou
xai xqo(|>?v xai fxax?o' au?eiv,
xai xooei3eo0ai jtq?? f|
\i?)v (b? ?mnoa (|>?QOvxa
xo?? ?^xo?? xuo?vvoi?.
?f|ie Ooi?e, aoi ??
xa?jx' ?o?ax' e?r|.
If indeed I am a prophet
and discerning in my judgment,
O Kithairon, I swear to you by Olympos,
you will not be unaware that tomorrow's
full moon exalts you as fellow-countryman,
nurse and mother of Oidipous,
and that you are honored by us in the dance {khoreuesthai),
because you were of service to our kings.
Phoibos of the i?-cry,
may this be pleasing to you.68
The same chorus who, in the parodos, invoked Dionysos as "the

eponym of this land" (210) and "companion of the maenads"
(212) to make his epiphany and who raised the question xi ?e?
(xe xooeveiv; now adopts a dubious prophetic stance and promises

to dance in celebration of Kithairon, the personified Dionysiac
mountain that came to the rescue of Oidipous and, we might
add, witnessed the deaths of Pentheus and Aktaion. The ritual
dancing will take place during a pannukhis, on the next full
moon, a favored occasion for major religious festivals.69 In looking
to the immediate future, the Theban elders thus situate their
dancing in a cultic context that is, through its locale, connected
with the fate of Oidipous but is otherwise detached from the
dramatic action. At the same time, they self-consciously subordi
nate their dramatic character to their generic role as a group of
choral dancers, and reassert their identity as choral performers
by projecting themselves into another time and another place.
Instead of asking "Why dance?" they are now saying, in effect,
"tomorrow we will dance in your honor," a?oi?v ae
Xooeuaojxev?not here, in the orchestra, but elsewhere; not today,
but "tomorrow."70
Their promise is fraught with ambiguity. While supported by
their choral performance in the here and now, their pledge is
completely discredited by the past and future events of which
they are ignorant. As they look back to the time when Oidipous
was born, they envisage Kithairon erroneously as an idyllic moun
tain where gods like Pan and Apollo?two divine champions of
the choral dance?mate with "long-lived" females, one of whom
might be the mother of Oidipous, and where perhaps Hermes or
Dionysos received baby Oidipous from the nymphs who found
him (1098-1109) .71 But a dozen lines later the Theban shepherd
arrives to reveal the truth about Oidipous' birth and his exposure
on Kithairon. Instantly, the Dionysiac mountain appears in a
different light, as a place of grief rather than choral celebration,
and reminds us of the polarities inherent in the tragic perception
of Dionysos.72 Ironically, the chorus's choice of ill-fated Kithairon
as the place for their future dancing is both flawed and eminently
suitable. To complete the irony, the time chosen by the chorus
is even more ambiguous: as always in tragedy, "tomorrow" will
be too late.73 In reflecting on the conditions of their own perfor
mance, the members of this chorus thus transcend their own
ignorance and repeatedly allude to the truth of the dramatic
situation even though its full impact still eludes them.74
Aware of their place in the larger order of things, which includes
the gods and their cult, the chorus of Oidipous Tyrannos, more
Albert Henrichs 73
than any other chorus in tragedy, represents the close interconnec

tion among choral performance, choral projection, and dramatic
crisis.75 As witnesses to the unfolding drama, as well as performers
of the tragic dance-song, they move effortlessly, though not unerr
ingly, between past and present, hope and fear, the mythical and
the real world, and between their own multiple identities.
III.
Sophocles: Euphoric Choruses, Dionysos, and Choral Projection
It has long been recognized that the other Sophoclean choruses

who refer to their own dancing are more optimistic, and more
blind to the events onstage, than the chorus of Oidipous Tyr
annos. Near the dramatic climax, the choruses of Aias, Antigone,
and Trakhiniai get their hopes up prematurely and are carried
away with joyful exultation. Their upbeat mood finds physical
expression in a particularly agitated form of dancing. It is here,
at the climactic turning point of the action, that these choruses
comment self-referentially on their performance as dancers, and
compare their own exuberant dancing to the dancing associated
with Dionysiac ritual. In Aias and Trakhiniai in particular, the
dramatic climax is underscored by an increased ritual self-aware
ness of the chorus, whose choral aspirations are then deflated by
the dramatic action. These odes have in common the tragic tension
between the exuberant self-expression of the chorus?epitomized
in the agitated dance?and the disillusionment and sense of
impending catastrophe felt by the audience. The dance as an
expression of joy, expectation, and hope is emotionally and factu
ally at odds with the characters and events onstage. These
choruses have been variously described as "cheerful choruses,"
"joy-before-disaster odes," or "euphoric odes," and although they
are often referred to as a group, they have not been examined
en bloc for their shared structural features.76
The basic pattern can be found in the Aias. In the opening
stanza of the second stasimon, the chorus reacts enthusiastically
to Aias' "deception speech" (693-705):
?(f)Qi^' ?ocoxi, jteoixaofj? ?' ?vejrx?uxxv.

id) id) n?v n?v,
?a n?v n?v ?MjiXayxxe, KvX
Xavia? xtovoxximov
Jtexoaia? ?jr? ?eio??o? ^?vrjO', cb

Oe v xoQOJio?' ?va?, oj?goc uoi
M?aia Kvoboi' oq
Xf||xax' avxo?afj ?uvcbv l?aprjc*
vf3v y?p ?uoi [x?Xei xooe?aai.
Txaoi v ?' vt?eq ^neXayewf
jxoX,(bv ?va? Aji?Mxdv
? A??xo? evyv oxo?
?\ioi ^vve??] ?i? Jiavx?? ei5(|)Qa)v.
I thrill with excitement, I take wings for joy.

I? i? Pan, Pan!
Oh Pan, Pan, sea-roamer,
appear from the rocky ridge
of snow-struck Kyllene,
oh Lord, dance-master {khoropoios) of the gods, so that
you may be with me and set in motion
your self-taught Mysian, Knosian dances {orkh?mata):
Now I am bent upon dancing {khoreusai).
And coming over the Ikarian sea
as a god easy to recognize
may Apollo, the Lord of Delos,
be with me always in kindness.77
The Salaminian sailors, overjoyed by what they perceive as

Aias' change of mind and salvation from himself, take wings, as
it were, and perform an enthusiastic dance in the orchestra. As
if to magnify their performance, they call upon Pan, the compan
ion of Dionysos, to make his epiphany as the "dance-master of
the gods" and to teach them his exotic dances. The transformative
power of the dance, here represented by Pan, thus becomes the
vehicle for choral performance. For once the separate worlds of
gods and mortals appear to be in perfect harmony, as Apollo too
is invoked to add his benevolent presence to that of Pan.78 But
the rejoicing of the chorus is premature. The second stasimon is
followed by the entrance of the messenger, who reveals the emerg
ing dramatic crisis and sets the stage for Aias' suicide speech.
As the khoreutai project their own performance as dancers on
Pan, "the dancer {khoreut?s) most consummate,"79 the focus
shifts, significantly, from the performative to the epiphanic mode,
from the chorus to their divine role model, and from the orchestra
Albert Henrichs 75
to a ritual setting at once more distant and imaginary. Similar

shifts in ritual emphasis can be found in other choral odes of
Sophocles, as well as in Euripides; I refer to them as choral
projection.80 Each time a tragic chorus emphasizes its own danc
ing, the tragedians go out of their way to incorporate the choral
self-reference into the imaginary setting of the drama. They do
so by separating the choral dancing from the orchestra and pro
jecting it into a different time and place, as in Oidipous Tyrannos
and Antigone, or by projecting it on another performer, whether
human or divine, as in Aias, Antigone, Trakhiniai, and Euripides'
Elektra.81 Invariably, choral projection serves as the matrix for
choral self-referentiality and allows it to be given full rein in the
here and now of the actual performance?"now I am bent upon
dancing," vvv y?o ?uoi (x?Xei xooe?aai.82
At the height of their enthusiasm, the sailors simultaneously
realize their dramatic character as Salaminians as well as their
choral identity as performers of the choral dance. Their dual role
is reflected in the dual identity of their divine role model. The
Athenian cult of Pan commemorated his role in the victory at
Marathon; but the Arcadian Pan was also connected with Salamis:
in his description of the battle of Salamis, Aeschylus calls him
"lover of dances" ((j)iX,oxoQO?) and makes him a resident of the
island of Psyttaleia off Salamis.83 Apart from being a figure of
local cult, the Pan of this stanza also represents the realm of
Dionysos and Dionysiac enthusiasm in the same way that Mount
Kithairon stands for the Dionysiac world and its tensions in the
third stasimon of the Oidipous Tyrannos.84 Here as elsewhere,
Sophocles locates the khoreuein of the chorus in a concrete Diony
siac ambience, thus recalling one of the most conspicuous features
of Dionysiac ritual?"to dance in the thiasos" (E. Ba. 379
Oiaoeueiv xe xoqo??)?and perhaps the distant origins of tragedy
itself. This connection will be confirmed by a consideration of
equally self-referential and Dionysiac choruses in Antigone and
Trakhiniai.
In both plays, the structure of choral self-reference is more
complex than in Aias, while the Dionysiac associations are more
explicit. The Antigone is set in Thebes, the hometown of Dio
nysos, who figures prominently in the play as the pivot of tragic
reversals and as a focus for the choral dance.85 At the very end
of the parodos, in a mood of victory and relief from recent civil
strife, the chorus pledges to approach the temples of all the gods
76 "WHY SHOULD I DANCE?!
in nocturnal dancing, while giving pride of place to Dionysos

(152-54):
Oe v ?? vao?? %oqo??,
jravvijxoi? Jt?vxa? ?jt?X
O u.ev, ? 0f|?ac ?' ?XeXi
XOodv B?xxio? ?pxoi.
Let us approach all the temples

of the gods with dances (khoroi)
that last all night,
and let him who shakes up Thebes,
the Bacchic god, take the lead.
The choral performance, located in the orchestra and projected

simultaneously into the realm of dramatic illusion, is placed under
the authority of Dionysos, who "shakes up" his native city with
the enthusiasm he inspires and the dancing he requires. Dionysos
thus functions as the initiator of the choral dance, as the divine
khor?gos, a role comparable to that of Pan in the Aias. But the
device of choral projection is carried even further. Here, as in
the third stasimon of the Oidipous Tyrannos, the choral dancing
is envisaged once again as a future performance, at a pannukhis,
while it is simultaneously enacted by the same chorus in the
orchestra. Thus the boundaries of chorus and citizen, divine and
mortal dancer, and of myth and cult begin to shift again in an
intricate pattern of changing ritual identities associated with the
name of Dionysos.
Some eight hundred lines later, Dionysos appears again in the
fourth stasimon. This time, however, he does not preside over
festivities but punishes Lykourgos, who in his madness taunted
the god (955-61) and intruded on the ritual dancing of the mae
nads (963-65):
jia?eoxe uiv y?o ?vO?ou?

yuva?xa? em?v xe jujq,
(jnâuXovc x' f|Q?0i?e Mo?oac.
For he tried to stop the divinely inspired

women and the Bacchic fire,
and incited the pipe-loving Muses.
Albert Henrichs 77
The enthusiastic women associated with the "Bacchic fire" are

of course the torch-carrying maenads of myth and cult, who
dance for Dionysos in nocturnal rites synonymous with the x?Q?i
jr?vvDxoi of the parodos. Their dances are accompanied by the
pipe, an instrument often associated with Dionysos and with the
kind of choral dancing that is epitomized in the phrase
fyikavXov? . . . Mouoa?. Although the Muses ordinarily have no
place in the Lykourgos myth, Sophocles has incorporated them
metonymically as divine champions of musical and especially
choral performance.86 By interfering with the dance-songs of the
maenads, Lykourgos incurred the wrath of both Dionysos and
the Muses. Mention of the Muses thus adds force to the portrayal
of Lykourgos as an enemy of the gods.87 From the perspective
of this chorus, Lykourgos did not merely persecute Dionysos and
his nurses, as he does in the Iliad. His attempt to put an end to
maenadic dances also threatened the very existence of Dionysiac
khoreia as such, including the "all-night dances" (152) envisaged
earlier by the same chorus and the dancing of the khoreutai in
the orchestra.88 As an opponent of the Dionysiac dance, the figure
of Lykourgos thus serves as a subtle link between the mythical
memory and the performative function of the chorus.
Choral dancing in the name of Dionysos is again in full swing
in the fifth stasimon, which takes the form of a hymn to Dionysos,
one of the longest in surviving Greek or Latin poetry.89 Kreon
has just decided to bury Polyneikes and release Antigone. Their
hopes raised, the choral dancers invoke Dionysos "to come with
cathartic foot" (1142 fxoê?v xaOaoo??) jto??) and save Thebes.90
But, ironically, Dionysos never appears. Instead, the suicides of
Antigone and Haimon are announced by the messenger just
moments after the ode comes to a close.91 As in the Oidipous
Tyrannos and in the Aias, where the call for a Dionysiac epiphany
is equally premature (697f.), the chorus's ineffectual recourse to
Dionysos serves to intensify the dramatic tension, and to drama
tize the god's ambivalence. In the final stanza, however, the hopes
of the chorus are still high and crystallize into a mythical vision
of divine epiphany and of Dionysiac dancing on a cosmic scale
(1146-52):
l(b JT?Q jtveovxcav

Xoo?y' ?oxQcov, vvxi v
(|)0ey[x?x(Dv ?moxojie,
jta? A?o? y?veOXov, jipoâvriO',

(bva?, aa?? ?fxa jteQur?Xoic
0maaiv, a? ae umv?u.evai jt?vvvxoi
Xooe?ovoi xov xauxav "Iaxxov.
I?, chorus-leader {khor?gos) of the

fire-breathing stars,
overseer of the voices of the night,
child born of Zeus, make your epiphany,
Lord, together with your attendant
Thyiads, who in their madness dance {khoreuousi)
all night for you, Iakkhos the Dispenser.92
The juxtaposition of tcvq Jtve?vxcov x?p?y' ?oxQi?v and vvx???v

(|)9ey|x?xG)v emoxorce recalls the xoQoi ji?vvvxoi of the parode
and the eihov jtuq of the fourth stasimon, while Dionysos is again
recognized as the divine role model and archetypal khor?gos who
leads his khoreutai in the dance.93 In the closing lines of the
stanza, the god is asked to make his epiphany along with his
maenad-nymphs, the Thyiads, who "dance for you all night"
(jmvvuxoi xoQeiJODOi). Not only does the last chorus of the play
join hands here in dance with the first, but the stars of the sky
join the sacred women on the Delphic mountain, and the choral
performance becomes part of a much larger cultic endeavor, one
that takes place only in the imagination. In a cascade of choral
projection, Dionysos himself leads the astral chorus of stars, while
the mythical maenads perform their dances under the night sky
and the tragic chorus of the here and now follows suit in the
orchestra.94 All of the projected dancing takes place at night, and
appropriately so. The nocturnal setting recalls the night with
which the play begins; the interplay of light and darkness in
particular reminded the Athenian audience of the sacred night
of the Eleusinian Mysteries, of the light revealed and the hope
proclaimed in the Telesterion, and of the Eleusinian Iakkhos
Dionysos, who is invoked in the Frogs as "the fire-bearing star
of the nocturnal initiation rite" (342ff. "Iaxx' "Iaxxe, vuxx?oou
xeXexfj? ())tt>a<j)OQO? aaxf|o); and finally, the Dionysiac night also
evokes the darkness of the chthonian realm, to which Dionysos
is no stranger, and which Antigone embraces progressively in the
course of the action, until she too ends her life in a dark tomb,
to join her parents and brothers in the netherworld.95
Albert Henrichs 79
Although the members of this chorus verbally engage in Diony

siac dancing in three of their six songs, they do not refer directly
to their actual performance in the orchestra. Rather, they project
their own dancing into a cultic future (152ff.), into the remote
mythical past (963ff.), and finally into a distinct Delphic and
Eleusinian ambience which subsumes myth and cult in a vision
of a world transformed by Dionysos, the divine chorus leader
(1146ff.).
As we turn to the Trakhiniai, we see that the connections
between choral self-definition and maenadic dancing are more
direct and more emphatic than in the Antigone. What is more,
choral self-referentiality acquires a distinct polytheistic dimension
as non-Dionysiac rituals, and divinities other than Dionysos, enter
to play subsidiary roles in defining choral performance. Herakles
returns home unexpectedly after a long absence, and an overjoyed
Deianeira invites all the womenfolk (yuva?xe?, here used generi
cally regardless of age or social status)?"those within the house
and those outside the courtyard"?to raise their voice in song
and to celebrate the news of her husband's victorious return
(202-04). Jubilant at the prospect of a happy reunion of Herakles
and Deianeira, the chorus of young Trachinian women, "those
outside," oblige her at once. In the first movement of an astrophic
choral interlude, their jubilation finds a ritual outlet as they in
turn invite the young men of Herakles' household, as well as the
young women {parthenoi), themselves included, to sing and dance
for Apollo and Artemis (205-15):
?voX,o^??xo) ?ojxo?
?4>eaxioi? ?XaXaya??
? \ieIXovv\i<\)O? ?v ?? xoiv?? ?oa?v v
?xo) xXayy? x?v exiâp?x?av
Aji?Mxd JiQoox?xav,
?jio?j ?? Jtai?va Jtai
?v' ?v?yex', d> JtaoO?voi,
?o?xe x?v ?fxoajiooov
Aoxeuxv 'Opxuy?av, etaxâ?oXov, ?uxjnnruQov,
yeixov?? xe NuuxJ)a?.
Let the house raise a cry of exultation {anololuxat?)

with shouts of alalai by the hearth,
the house soon to be united in wedlock.
8o "WHY SHOULD I DANCE?
And therein let the collective

shout of the men go up to the one of the fair quiver,
Apollo the protector,
while you, maidens, raise the paian,
the paian-cry and call upon his twin sister
Artemis the Ortygian, deer-shooter,
carrier of the double torch,
and upon the neighboring Nymphs.96
The language of ritual performance is very marked in these lines

and those that follow. The imperative mood (205, 208, 211, 212)
and the self-referential first person present combined with the
"performative future" (216f. aioouxxi ova' ?jrc?oouxxi x?v avX?v)
constitute "action descriptions" typically found in ritual contexts
and in choral self-reference.97 At the same time, the conventional
boundaries between gods and mortals, males and females, and
between the individual and the group are drawn with paradigmatic
precision. Men and women are addressed separately, but their
separate choirs are expected to perform their ritual tasks in uni
son. Song seems to take precedence over the dance, which the
chorus will soon claim as their own province (216ff.). The shrill
sound of the ololug? and alalag?, here used as ritualized expres
sions of collective cheer, gives way quickly to the paian-cry
(echoed at 221) and to the more measured rhythms of the paian
song in praise of Artemis.98
The alternation of Apollo and Artemis mirrors the separate
identities of the two sexes. Still, the female chorus appropriates
the male paian, at least for the time being, and Artemis is included
in their song.99 Thus ritual finally mediates gender divisions, as
befits the reenactment of a wedding, and the choral voice tran
scends the imaginary cultic occasion by invoking an Artemis who
hunts, carries torches, and is joined by the Nymphs?the mythical
counterparts of the parthenoi. Once again, however, the note of
triumph and celebration suggested by the paian and the prospect
of sexual harmony represented by the integrating function of
Apollo and Artemis turn out to be premature; these elements
merely set the stage for the tragic reversal associated with Dio
nysos, who is often represented in tragedy as the subverter of
marriage.100
This song has been recognized as a highly imaginative synthesis
of different ritual forms, performative modes, and generic fea
Albert Henrichs 81
tures. Critics have noted the mixture of alalag? and ololug?, of

ololug? and paian, of paeanic and dithyrambic elements, of victory
song and wedding choir, and of an Apollonian and a Dionysiac
emphasis.101 This overall fluidity of ritual categories also affects
the status of the chorus and their relationship to the "women
within the house" (202). Most scholars recognize ob Jtao?evoi
(211) as a self-address of the chorus, although others hold that
the young women of the chorus outside are addressing their age
mates within the house.102 But, coming as it does shortly after a
reference to the ?ooeve? inside, the address cb JtaoO?voi is general
enough to include the young women of the household as well as
the chorus.103 By addressing this socially marked age group, the
female chorus in the orchestra projects its own dramatic gender
and status on an imagined choir of parthenoi offstage. Once they
have paid their respects to Artemis, the divine model of the age
group they represent, the khoreutai turn to Dionysos at the mid
point of their dance-song (216ff.) and assert their true ritual
identity as a Dionysiac chorus carried away in the dance. It is
this carefully orchestrated transition from Apollo and Artemis to
the realm of Dionysos, as well as the parallel progression from
choral projection to direct choral self-referentiality, that makes
this chorus so special.
The shift to Dionysos seems abrupt, but it is facilitated by
avoXoXvâxio, a word that accommodates Dionysiac associa
tions.104 As soon as the women of the chorus begin to emphasize
dance over song, they adopt a Dionysiac stance and perceive their
own dancing as a choral competition under the aegis of Dionysos
{Tra. 216-21):
allouai ov?' ajroaaouxxi

xov avX?v, (b x?oavve x?? ?ua? (|)Qevo?.
l?ou [x' ?vaxaoaaaei,
euo?,
? xiao?? ?oxi Baxxiav
i)7tooxQ?(t)cov ?uxMtav.
i(b i(b Jiai?v.
I am lifted up {airomai), nor shall I reject

the pipe {aulos), O master of my mind.
See, the ivy {kissos) shakes me up,
euoi!,
whirling me round now

in the Bacchic contest {hamilla).
I?, i?, paian.
Nowhere else in Sophoclean tragedy does choral self-referentiality

find such vivid and agitated expression. The khoreutai are literally
rising to the occasion?they feel "lifted up," in both their bodies
and their souls. Emphatically placed at the beginning of their
utterance, a?QOjxai describes the initial impetus of their rapid
dance movement in self-referential terms while simultaneously
drawing attention to their ecstatic state of mind.105 Aiqouxxi thus
corresponds emotionally as well as structurally to the JteQixaofj?
avejrx?uxxv of the equally euphoric and Dionysiac chorus in
Aias (693).
Apart from a?oofxai, the Dionysiac spirit of this chorus is
reflected more tangibly in the double-reed pipe {aulos), the ivy
{kissos) and the notion of a "Bacchic contest" {hamilla). All three
terms combine a Dionysiac reference with an emphasis on choral
performance. The reed pipe and wreaths of ivy characterize mae
nadic thiasoi in vase painting as well as literature.106 Intensely
excited women in tragedy are often portrayed as maenads; as the
chorus of Trachinian parthenoi reach the height of their frenzy,
they too adopt a quasi-maenadic identity by associating them
selves with two of the most conspicuous paraphernalia of the
Dionysiac thiasos.107 At the same time, however, the pipe and the
ivy function as visual tokens of choral performance that connect
this chorus with the agonistic here and now of the City Dionysia.
Commentators from Jebb to Davies have tended to emphasize
the broader Dionysiac and maenadic connotations of the pipe
and the ivy over their choreutic function, but Sophocles clearly
meant his audience to appreciate both.108 Dithyrambic choruses
wore ivy wreaths during their choral competitions, and their
dance-songs were accompanied by the pipe-player {aul?t?s) .109
Tragic choruses also danced to the tune of the aulos, but it is
unlikely that they were ivy-wreathed as a general rule.110 Yet the
khoreutai of this particular chorus claim to be wearing ivy while
dancing to the pipe, features assimilating them to the dithyrambic
chorus as well as the maenadic thiasos. Along with the pipe and
the ivy, the exclamation euoi has both maenadic and choreutic
associations, thus reinforcing Sophocles' dual emphasis on Diony
Albert Henrichs 83
siac role-playing and choral performance.111 By exhibiting an

ambivalent Dionysiac identity that allows a female as well as a
male interpretation, the members of this chorus assert their
choreutic role as male dancers in the orchestra without abandon
ing their dramatic character as women of Trachis. The potential
conflict between their dramatic and their ritual identity is avoided
by integrating both in a shared Dionysiac ambience.
The anonymous "master of my mind" (217 (b x?oavve x??
?jx?? (|)Qevo?), or the mastermind who stirs up (218 avaxaoaooei)
this chorus to the point of ecstasy, has been variously identified
with the pipe, with Dionysos, and with Apollo.112 Despite its
orgiastic connotations and its close association with Dionysos, the
aulos does not fit the apostrophe very well; its wording strongly
suggests an addressee who is both personal and divine.113 In
addition, the tragic use of xao?ooeiv for mental agitation implies
"supernatural interference" or, in other words, divine agency.114
Apollo is prominent in the earlier part of the same ode, but in
the present context of Dionysiac possession he is a less likely
candidate than Dionysos himself, the god of ecstatic dancing and
"Lord of the maenads."115 In Greek and Roman poetry, no other
god invades the minds (cj)Q?ve?, mens) of mortals to more powerful
effect; even the ravings of prophetic figures such as Kassandra
and the Sibyl, who owe their inspiration to Apollo, are described
in Dionysiac terms.116 Although Dionysos is not mentioned by
name in this ode, he is represented indirectly by the pipe and the
ivy, while his role as the god of the City Dionysia and its choral
contests is acknowledged in the phrase Baxxiav auxXAav.
The concept of choral competition has not been sufficiently
explored in connection with this chorus and its literary anteced
ents. The earliest poetic evocation of a chorus being "uplifted"
can be found in Alcman's Partheneion?"the Doves/Pleiads com
pete (uxxxovxai) with us as they rise (?fnoofx?vai = aeiQOîevai)
like the dog-star through the ambrosian night."117 Most interpret
ers now agree that jx?xovxai implies choral competition, not
between two choruses but between rival members of the same
chorus. The meaning of afnoouivai is more controversial, but I
suggest that Alem?n compared the exaltation of the competing
maidens as they were dancing during a night-festival while holding
torches in their hands to the rising of a brilliant star.118 On this
reading, the notion of an "uplifted" and exalted chorus appears
as early as Alem?n, and it does so, significantly, in the context

of choral competition and of choral toil (jt?voi). References to
hamilla occur not only in Pindar and in the context of athletic
competition but also in poetic as well as prose descriptions of
tragic and dithyrambic choruses.119 Yet most scholars commenting
on Baxxiav ?uxMuxv in recent years have been inclined to recog
nize a reference to speed rather than competition.120 Speed there
is, but there is also the collective toil of choruses competing with
each other in the "Bacchic contest"?the Jt?voi xoqcdv of Pindar's
third Dithyramb come to mind.121 The spirit of such a physical
exertion on behalf of the god of the dance is well captured in
the self-referential opening statement of the first chorus in the
Bakkhai: "I move swiftly in my sweet labors for Bromios, in a toil
that is well toiled" (65ff. Oo??o) Bqouxco jtovov f|?i3v, x?uxxx?v x'
eiJx?fxaxov). The notion of a Bacchic hamilla can thus be seen
as an integral element of the strategy of choral self-reference
employed by this chorus. Like the ivy and the pipe, it articulates
the maenadic as well as the choreutic dimension of this
chorus's identity.
The chorus of young women conclude the Dionysiac part of
their dance-song with the ritual exclamation id) id) Jtai?v (221),
which recalls their initial role as performers of the paian and
reminds us of the principle of choral projection that has allowed
them to oscillate between Apollo and Dionysos, between their
own khoreia in the orchestra and the more imaginary khoroi
offstage, and between their dramatic character and their choral
identity.
In the Trakhiniai Sophocles chose to employ the device of
premature choral jubilation at a much earlier stage of the action
than in any of the other plays discussed so far, but the effect is
even more dramatic. Once again the upbeat Dionysiac note struck
by the chorus marks the tragic reversal, and so does their intona
tion of the paian with which they close their performance.122
Their exuberance serves as a reminder that such optimism is an
unmistakable sign of worse to come?it sets the stage, antiphrasti
cally, for the veiled revelations of Likhas and, more ominously,
for the silent presence of Iole, who will soon be revealed as the
source of the tragedy that is about to unfold.
The Dionysiac music itself suffers a complete reversal several
hundred lines later, in the second stasimon, where the pipe reap
pears in what is by now a familiar pattern of choral projection
Albert Henrichs 85
designed to mark a change in the dramatic mood by a shift in

ritual emphasis {Tra. 640-43):
? xaMx?oac x?x' vuxv a?X?? o?x avaoa?av

?%(bv xavax?v ?jx?veioiv, ??l? Oeia?
?vxiXuoov uxruaa?.
Soon will the lovely voice of the pipe {aulos) rise again
for you,
not resonating with a dissonant shriek, but with the sound
of divine music responding to the lyre.123
The chorus awaits the imminent return of Herakles after his

victory over the city of Eurytos and looks forward to the joyous
music of the pipe and the lyre, reminiscent of Dionysos and
Apollo, that will greet the hero at his arrival. But implicit in the
litotes and the language of denial is the fear of a tragic reversal
and the sinister foreboding that the music might turn into its
opposite, that the Dionysiac aulos might become an instrument
of mourning.124 Indeed, in the meantime the fate of Herakles has
been reversed offstage, where the victorious hero is dying a slow
and painful death. The description of the poison consuming his
body is couched in Dionysiac metaphor, and his demise is ritual
ized as a corrupted sacrifice.125 The circumstances of his death
thus subvert the efficacy of ritual performance and dampen the
exuberant spirit of the Dionysiac dance performed earlier by the
chorus; at the same time, however, the elaborate Dionysiac image,
which describes the destructive violence of the poison that marks
the moment of reversal, verbally dramatizes the dark side and the
ambivalence of the tragic Dionysos.126
The last choral song (947-70) is a lament for Herakles and a
wish for escape from a painful sight?the silent procession that
carries the poisoned Herakles onto the stage. Throughout the
final scene of the play, the pipe too is silent, muted by the shrieks
of pain which accompany the agony of the suffering hero. In its
silence, the pipe functions as a self-referential symbol of the
dramatic and emotional constraints that control choral perfor
mance. When the pipe falls silent at 970, the chorus stops dancing
for good?a dozen lines before Herakles fills the stage with his
cries, and three hundred lines before the play ends.127
IV.
A Euripidean Chorus
Sophoclean choruses who define their choral identity self-refer

entially never act in a ritual vacuum. Rather, their choral perfor
mance, verbally supported by self-referential terms such as
khoros, khoreuein, or aulos, corresponds closely to other types
of ritual performance that are integral to the action but are also
projected on participants located outside the orchestra, in the
realm of the dramatic imagination. Comparable patterns of choral
self-definition through choral projection can be found in several
plays of Euripides, of whose work I choose the Elektra as a
particularly apt example.128 In this play the chorus of Argive
women refer to their own choral performance in the first person?
"my dance" (865 euxp X00(p) and "our dancing" (874f. xo ?'
?fx?xeoov . . . %?Qev\ia). The same chorus twice invites Elektra
to join in the dance; twice she declines (167-80; 859-79). Every
time the members of this chorus refer to choral dancing, whether
Elektra's or their own, they relate it to imaginary ritual events
that are integral to the dramatic action?an Argive festival and
the celebration of Orestes' victory. While choral performance and
choral projection thus provide the context for the interaction
between the chorus and Elektra, they also prove instrumental in
blending the dramatic and performative identities of the chorus.
Closer scrutiny of El. 859ff. reveals the intricacies of this pattern,
as well as some of the differences between Euripides and Sophocles
in their dramatization of ritual performance.129
At the first dramatic climax of the play, a messenger reports how
Aigisthos is slaughtered by Orestes while the two are sacrificing a
young bull to the country Nymphs. In this graphic display of
ritual violence, the human victim is literally superimposed on the
sacrificial animal, and the Aeschylean metaphor of the perverted
sacrifice becomes a ritual reality?its performance takes place
offstage and is verbally reenacted onstage. As Aigisthos lies in
his blood, Orestes reveals his own identity. The palace servants
are jubilant, raise the ritual cry of triumph and crown Orestes
with a wreath (854f. ox?fyovoi.. . xcxioovxe? ?taxXxx?ovxe?). The
wreath and the akakayr] have sacrificial as well as epinician
connotations and mark the transition from the violence of the
contaminated sacrifice to the communal celebration of Orestes'
victory, in which the chorus is about to take an active part.130 As
Albert Henrichs 87
soon as the messenger has left the stage, the chorus performs a
victory dance and invites Elektra to join in their dancing and
singing (859-65, the strophe):
O?? ?? x?Qov> d) (j?a, ?xvo?, ob? ve?poc ouo?viov

jrf|?r||xa novtyiCovGa ovv ?yXa?a.
vixa oxec()ava(()?Qa xoe?aaoo x?rv jrao' AXx|)eio?>
Qe?Ogoi? xeX?oa?
xaoiyvrjxo? a??ev ?Kk' im?ei?e
xaMxvixov (b??v ?îcp xoqcd.
Set your foot dancing {khoros), dear friend, fawn-like

nimbly leaping sky-high in festive joy!
Your brother has won, has completed a crown-contest
surpassing those by Alpheios' stream. Come, accompany
my dance {khoros) with a song of glorious victory.131
The prevailing poetic mode of this chorus is epinician rather

than Dionysiac, with emphasis on a victory song, wreaths, and
dancing in honor of Orestes. The invitation to celebrate Orestes'
"victory"?and what an ambivalent, costly victory that was?is
passed on like a torch from the messenger to the chorus, who in
turn pass it to Elektra. But Elektra is less than fully cooperative:
she will fetch a wreath for her brother but leaves the khoreia to
the chorus (866-72). The two ritual tasks, the dancing and the
wreathing, will be divided between Elektra and the chorus, so
that "the chorus' performance of the dance provides a ritual
context for the crowning."132 In the corresponding antistrophe,
the women of the chorus acquiesce in Elektra's choice to crown
Orestes (873f.) and to nobody's surprise claim the dance-song
for themselves (874f.): "Our dancing will proceed, dear to the
Muses," xo ?' ?fx?xeoov xcDof|aexai Mo?oaiai x?Qev\ia <|)?k)v.
By using the performative future to signify their ritual intent, they
reassert their own choral identity.133 In retrospect, the messenger's
invitation to celebrate Orestes' victory and Elektra's refusal to
dance prove to be patent vehicles for choral self-referentiality. At
the end of the antistrophe, after an approving nod to Orestes
and his victory, the khoreutai add the choreutic pipe and the
ecstatic shout to their choral credentials: "Let shouts of joy be
raised in unison with the pipe," oXV ?xco ?waiAo? ?oa %a.QQ
(879). As soon as they have completed the process of choral self
definition, Euripides brings the performance of the chorus to an

abrupt end and moves on with the action.
But what about Dionysos? In two of the Sophoclean choruses
discussed earlier, Dionysos and Pan are invoked as "dance-mas
ters" {Aias 698 xoQOJioi?, Ant. 1147 xopay?) who lead and inspire
the choral dance. In the Trakhiniai and the Oidipous Tyrannos
as well, choral dancing is represented as Dionysiac dancing. Like
Sophocles, Euripides connects choral self-referentiality routinely
with Dionysos, but his connections tend to be more allusive.134
The pattern of allusion in the Elektra involves both the use of
Dionysiac metaphor and the suppression of any direct reference
to Dionysos. Instead of invoking Dionysos directly, the chorus
refers to its own dancing as "dear to the Muses." Outside tragedy,
in the poetry of the archaic period, the choral dances of the Muses
are more often associated with Apollo than with Dionysos.135 In
the fourth stasimon of the Antigone and the second stasimon of
the Herakles, however, the Muses appear side by side with Dio
nysos as divinities in charge of maenadic as well as choral dancing.
In both plays, the striking association of the Muses with Dionysos
forms part of a more comprehensive pattern of choral self
referentiality.136
The choral dancing "dear to the Muses" in the Elektra is equally
self-referential, and through a typically Euripidean combination
of metaphor and choral projection, it is ultimately also connected
with Dionysos. When, at the beginning of the strophe, the chorus
invites Elektra to join the dance, the khoreutai project their own
dancing on Elektra and compare her?and implicitly themselves?
to "a fawn lifted sky-high as it leaps in festive joy" (859-61).
The fawn and the fawnskin belong in the realm of Dionysos, and
the metaphor of the leaping fawn recurs in one of the choral odes
of the Bakkhai as an image of maenadic freedom and escape from
oppression.137 The use of this maenadic metaphor as well as the
reference to the aulos (879) establish a distinct Dionysiac ambience
for the performance of this chorus and reinforce similar allusions
to the realm of Dionysos and to Dionysiac ritual in other parts
of this play.138
In Sophocles we found the tendency to imbed choral self
referentiality in the structure of one ode and to echo it in
another.139 Such echoes are usually accompanied by shifts in
ritual emphasis?the nature of the ritual or the identity of those
performing it undergoes a significant transformation in the wake
Albert Henrichs 89
of choral projection. Euripides adopted this technique in the

Elektra. The two parallel references to choral dancing discussed
so far complete a more complex pattern of choral projection set
up at the beginning of the play.140 In the lyric exchange that
replaces the parodos, the Argive women of the chorus invite
Elektra to participate in the Heraia, a local women's festival
whose rituals are "tragically negated" by the characters as well
as by the action of this play.141 Elektra not only declines but
expressly refuses to take part in choral dancing (175-80):
otjx ?jr' ?yXa?ai?, (|)?Xai,

0vu.?v oi)?' ?m XQô?oi?
OQfxoi? ?xjrejtoxafxai
x?Xaiv', o??' iax?oa xoqo??
Aoyeiai? ?u<x vuux|)ai?
eiXixx?v xqo?ooo jto?' ?uov.
Dear friends, not for shimmering robes,

not for twisted bracelets of gold
does my heart take wing in delight.
I am too sad, I cannot set up choral dances {khoroi)
with the Argive maidens
or beat the tune with my whirling foot.142
Elektra informs the chorus that she is not in the mood to adorn
herself with jewelry, or to preside as khor?gos over the dance,
activities incompatible with the rigor of her mourning. This
renunciation of one kind of ritual performance (dance) for the
sake of another (mourning) anticipates Elektra's later refusal to
perform the victory dance for Orestes, although she does crown
her brother; her attitude also recalls the Sophoclean Elektra who
stops Chrysothemis from carrying libations to the tomb of Aga
memnon. Elektra's aversion to dancing locates the dance all the
more squarely within the ritual realm of the chorus. We recall
that later in the play the same khoreutai will lay claim to the
dance as their own province in a performative assertion of their
choral identity: "Our dance will proceed," x? ?' auixeoov
X?)of|aexai Mo?oaiax x?oeuuxx fyikov (874f.). The device of choral
self-referentiality thus serves to articulate the fragility of ritual
remedies, but also their centrality to the life of the drama and
the life of the audience. Ritual dancing in tragedy becomes a
crucial link between the religion of the polis expressed in cult

and the realm of the imagination embodied in myth made visi
ble onstage.143
A final point: closer study of other Euripidean choruses would
reveal an even greater complexity of choral self-referentiality and
of a technique characterized by highly imaginative recourse to
choral projection and the disruption of choral convention. In fact,
because Attic drama privileged the choral voice over more action
oriented aspects of choral performance, the tragic chorus was
always in danger of losing its ritual identity. As dancers in the
orchestra, the khoreutai relied on their feet and their dancing to
assert their ritual role. But as actors in the drama and as "agents
of narrative," to adopt a phrase introduced by Claude Ca?ame,
tragic choruses were more prominently defined by their choral
voice and dramatic character than by their ritual role.144 This
dichotomy makes the rather rare instances in which they verbalize
their own dancing all the more precious. Each time it occurs,
choral self-referentiality beneficially integrates the performance
of the khoreutai with the performative power of the choral voice
and helps reduce the distance between the orchestra and the
imaginary space of the drama. By the same token, the very exis
tence of choral self-reference as a self-conscious performative
mode also acknowledges the fact that drama has come a long
way since its ritual beginnings, and that ritual as action and
reenactment is now controlled and systematically called into ques
tion by the dynamics of the spoken word, by performative utter
ance and verbal performance. Still, each time tragic choruses
relate their own dancing to Dionysos, they not only locate their
performance in the cultic setting of the Dionysiac festival but also
recall and reenact the distant origins of tragedy.145
NOTES
1. The Greek semantics of khoros include both elements, dance as well as

song. For lack of a more suitable word, I shall occasionally use "dance" as
shorthand for the choral performance of the "dance-song" ("Tanzlied," see n.
23). Recent studies of khoreia in Greek culture emphasize its broad performative
function, the interplay of dance and song, and the relationship of poetics to "song
culture"; see C. Ca?ame, Les ch urs de jeunes filles en Gr?ce archa?que, 2 vols.,
Rome 1977; W. Mullen, Choreia: Pindar and Dance, Princeton 1982; J. Herington,
Poetry into Drama: Early Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition, Berkeley/Los
Albert Henrichs 91
Angeles/London 1985; A. P. Burnett, The Art of Bacchylides (Cambridge, Mass./

London 1985) 5-14; G. Nagy, Pindar's Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic
Past (Baltimore/London 1990) 339-81; S. H. Lonsdale, Dance and Ritual Play
in Greek Religion, Baltimore/London 1993. Earlier works tend to define the
chorus more one-dimensionally in dramatic, artistic, or cultural terms: A. W.
Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (reissue of 2d ed., Oxford
1988) 246-57; H. Koller, Musik und Dichtung im alten Griechenland, Bern/
Munich 1963; G. Prudhommeau, La danse grecque antique, Paris 1965 (a choreo
graphic study of ancient images and texts); L. B. Lawler, The Dance in Ancient
Greece, London 1964; A. M. Dale, "Words, Music and Dance," in Collected
Papers (Cambridge 1969) 156-69; T. B. L. Webster, The Greek Chorus, London
1970; J. W. Fitton, "Greek Dance," C. Q. n. s. 23 (1973) 254-74.
2. See A. F. H. Bierl, Dionysos und die griechische Trag?die. Politische und
'metatheatralische' Aspekte im Text (Classica Monacensia 1, Munich 1991) 5-7.
3. On the question of the ritual origins of Greek drama, its current status as
well as its history, see A. W. Pickard-Cambridge and T. B. L. Webster, Dithyramb,
Tragedy and Comedy, 2d ed., Oxford 1962; B. Vickers, Towards Greek Tragedy:
Drama, Myth, Society (London 1973) 33-42; H. C. Payne, "Modernizing the
Ancients: The Reconstruction of Ritual Drama 1870-1920," Proc. Am. Philos.
Soc. 122 (1978) 182-92; M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cam
bridge 1981) 142-50; R. Friedrich, "Drama and Ritual," in J. Redmond (ed.),
Drama and Religion (Themes in Drama 5, Cambridge 1983) 159-223; R. P.
Winnington-Ingram in P. E. Easterling and B. Knox (eds.), The Cambridge
History of Classical Literature, vol. 1: Greek Literature (Cambridge/New York
1985) 258-63; A. D. Napier, Masks, Transformation, and Paradox (Berkeley/
Los Angeles 1986) 30-44. The evolutionist ritual model has been applied para
digmatically to Attic drama by W. Burkert, "Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual,"
GRBS 7 (1966) 87-121, and R. Seaford, Euripides: Cyclops, Oxford 1984.
4. S. Goldhill, "The Great City Dionysia and Civic Ideology," JHS 107 (1987)
58-76, expanded version in J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to Do
with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton 1990) 97-129.
More specialized explorations of the intersection of the festival setting, political
environment, and social meaning of tragedy include J. J. Winkler, "The Ephebes'
Song: Trag?idia and Polis," Representations 11 (1985) 26-62, revised version in
Nothing to Do with Dionysos? 20-62; W. R. Connor, "City Dionysia and Athenian
Democracy," Classica et Mediaevalia 40 (1989) 7-32, who takes issue with both
Winkler and Goldhill; D. C. Pozzi, "The Polis in Crisis," in D. C. Pozzi and J.
M. Wickersham (eds.), Myth and the Polis (Ithaca/London 1991) 126-63; J.
Aronen, "Notes on Athenian Drama as Ritual Myth-Telling within the Cult of
Dionysos," Arctos. Acta Philologica Fennica 26 (1992) 19-37 (Attic tragedy as a
collective rite of passage organized by the male citizens of the polis).
5. C. Segal, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' Bacchae, Princeton 1982; F. I.
Zeitlin, "Mysteries of Identity and Designs of the Self in Euripides' Ion" PCPhS
35 (1989) 144-97, "Euripides' Hekabe and the Somatics of Dionysiac Drama,"
Ramus 20 (1991) 53-94, and "Staging Dionysos between Thebes and Athens,"
in C. A. Faraone and T. H. Carpenter (eds.), Masks of Dionysus (Ithaca/London
1993) 147-82; R. Seaford, "Dionysos as Destroyer of the Household: Homer,
Tragedy, and the Polis," in Masks of Dionysus 115-46, and Reciprocity and
Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Oxford 1994) 328-67.
6. R. Schlesier, Die tragischen Masken des Dionysos. Bakchische Metamor

phosen bei Euripides, unpublished Habilitationsschrift, Berlin 1987, with chapters
on Hipp., Hek., SuppL, Herakles, Tro., and ?/.; "Die Bakchen des Hades. Dionys
ische Aspekte von Euripides' Hekabe," Metis 3 (1988) 111-35; "Mixtures of
Masks: Maenads as Tragic Models," in Masks of Dionysus (n. 5) 89-114.
7. Bierl, Dionysos und die griechische Trag?die (n. 2), preceded by Vorkommen
und Funktion des Gottes Dionysos bei den griechischen Tragikern au?erhalb der
'Bakchen' des Euripides. Eine Stelleninterpretation unter Ber?cksichtigung der
Fragmente (unpublished master's thesis, Munich 1986). Bierl is keenly aware that
the most ambitious interpretations of the tragic Dionysos always entail a distinctly
theoretical dimension; his own approach owes much to the work of H. Foley, S.
Goldhill, C. Segal, J.-P. Vernant, and F. I. Zeitlin.
8. Bierl (n. 2) llf., 24, 75-79, 119-24, 223f., 228-33.
9. Bierl (n. 2) 54-67; 100-03; 124-37, esp. 126f. and 129; 233-35, esp. 224.
10. Bierl (n. 2) 67-99, 103-10, 137-218, 224-26.
11. For the purpose of my argument, "choral" means specifically "relating to
the dance-song {khoreia)" in addition to its broader meaning "belonging to a
chorus" (as in "choral voice"). P. E. Easterling suggests "choric self-referentiality"
as an alternative term that would resolve any ambiguity. As used by M. R.
Lefkowitz, First-Person Fictions: Pindar's Poetic T' (Oxford 1991) 11?25, "choral
self-description" covers all first person statements in which a chorus addresses
its own identity and performance (below, n. 35).
12. S. Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1986) 244-64, implicitly
modifying the conclusion of O. Taplin, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford
1977) 132f.: "Nowhere in Greek tragedy are there, in my view, specific references
to the theatre." More recently, however, Taplin has acknowledged the presence
of "theatrical self-referentiality" in Greek tragedy (P. Wilson and O. Taplin, "The
'Aetiology' of Tragedy in the Oresteia," PCPhS 39, 1993, 169-80).
13. On metatheatrical "Selbstreferentialit?t" (123) in general and on Dionysos
as its "Referenzpunkt," see Bierl (n. 2) 20-25 and 111-226. Bierl draws attention
to particular instances of choral self-referentiality (below, n. 62), but he does not
discuss the overall pattern.
14. A. Prom. Pyrk. fr. 204b Radt and E. Kykl. 63ff.
15. On "metatheatrical" self-reflexivity in comedy, the matrix for choral self
referentiality, see most recently Bierl (n. 2) 27-44, 172-76 and "Dionysus, Wine,
and Tragic Poetry," GRBS 31 (1990) 353-91, esp. 358f., 370-76, 384-86; S.
Goldhill, The Poet's Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge
1991) 167-222, esp. 196-222; C. W. M?ller, "Aristophanes und Horaz. Zu einem
Verlaufsschema von Selbstbehauptung und Selbstgewi?heit zweier Klassiker,"
Hermes 120 (1992) 129-41, esp. 135-40; K. Dover, Aristophanes Frogs (Oxford
1993) 58-60. Some of the less obvious ways that comedy dramatizes the conditions
of its own performance self-referentially have now been explored by O. Taplin,
Comic Angels and Other Approaches to Greek Drama through Vase-Painting
(Oxford 1993) 69-78 and 105-10.
16. Choral self-referentiality occurs in conjunction with all three modes at Ar.
Clouds 264-313 (below, n. 105), Lys. 1279-1321 (below, nn. 82, 105), Thesm.
947-1000 (see Ca?ame [n. 1], vol. 1, 245; Bierl [n. 2] 174f.; below, n. 38), and
Frogs 324?415. On dance-songs performed by comic choruses see Koller (n. 1)
17?20 and M. Kaimio, The Chorus of Greek Drama within the Light of the Person
Albert Henrichs 93
and Number Used (Societas Scientiarum Fennica, Commentationes Humanarum

Litterarum 46, Helsinki 1970) 127f.
17. C. Segal, in Part II of this double issue (forthcoming), concludes: "Because
of this distance from an actual ritual, the dramatist can use ritual forms with
greater freedom and even reflect on the nature of ritual. Hence at the end of the
second stasimon of the Tyrannus the chorus can raise the question of its ritual
performance of the ode: T? ?E? \ie XOQE?81V;"
18. On several occasions, P. E. Easterling has drawn attention to the ease with
which Greek tragedy moves between the "world of the theatre" and the "'here
and now' of the performance," and to the shifting boundaries that separate the
dramatic construct from the real world of the audience. See her "Women in Tragic
Space," B/C534 (1987) 15-26, at 17f.; "Constructing Character in Greek Tragedy,"
in C. B. R. Pelling, Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature (Oxford
1990) 83-99, esp. 84-87, and "Euripides in the Theatre," Pallas 37 (1991) 49-59,
at 49f.
19. Contrast H. W. Smyth, Greek Melic Poets (London 1906) lxxiv n. 1:
"Sophokles is the only tragic poet who makes use of this form of choral." This
continues to be a widespread misconception. In the surviving plays, Sophocles
uses self-referential choral dance-songs much more frequently than Aeschylus,
and with greater structural consistency than does Euripides.
20. For instance by R. C. Jebb, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments. Part V:
The Trachiniae (Cambridge 1892) 34 on Tra. 205ff. (discussed below); P. Vicaire,
"Place et figure de Dionysos dans la trag?die de Sophocle," REG 81 (1968) 351-73,
at 354f., 358f., 361, 363-67; R. W. B. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies
(Oxford 1980) 50, 59f.; T. C. W. Stinton, Collected Papers on Greek Tragedy
(Oxford 1990) 404 ("a short lyric outburst or hyporcheme," on S. Tra. 205ff.);
Zeitlin, "Staging Dionysus" (n. 5) 155, 160.
21. Dale (n. 1) 34-40 ("Stasimon and Hyporcheme"); Pickard-Cambridge (n.
1) 251f. and 255-57; M. di Marco, "Osservazioni sull'iporchema," Helikon 13-14
(1973/74) 326-48, esp. 344ff.; C. P. Gardiner, The Sophoclean Chorus: A Study
of Character and Function (Iowa City 1987) 6f. The ancient misconception that
stasima are stationary is well illustrated by the scholiast on S. Tra. 216 (one of
the Sophoclean huporkh?mata discussed below): x? y?g [leXibaQiov ovn ?cm
crc?au?ov, oXk' vno Tfj? fj?ovfj? ?oxo?vTai ("The songlet is not a stasimon,
but rather they dance out of joy"). In his lecture on the Greek lyric poets (1878/
79 version), Friedrich Nietzsche summarized the prevailing nineteenth-century
definition of the term crt?oifAOV: "The designation OTO?ifia does not refer to
the standing [of the chorus]; the word means "standing songs," not standstill
songs, because the chorus has reached its station, where it may indeed dance.
Many ar?oi|ia were performed as a dance." (Nietzsche, Werke. Kritische Gesamt
ausgabe, part 2, vol. 2, Berlin/New York 1993, 378: "Die OTOtotfia dr?cken
dem Namen nach nicht das Stehen aus; der Name hei?t "Standlieder," nicht
Stillstandlieder, weil der Chor seinen Standort erreicht hat, auf dem er wohl
tanzen kann. Viele GTa?uxa wurden getanzt.") According to M. L. West, Studies
in Aeschylus (Stuttgart 1990) 21, the earliest tragic choruses "were going round
the demes performing at one site after another. Led by their aulete, they sang . . .
as they approached the waiting public, they sang as they departed, and the
ox?oi\iov uiXo? was the song they performed where they stopped."
22. Cf. A. M. Dale, The Lyric Metres of Greek Drama (2d ed., Cambridge
1968) 210; Pickard-Cambridge (n. 1) 256 n. 4. The term VJi?QXr\\ia is first attested
in Plato's Ion (534c) as part of a list of distinct modes of poetic composition that
includes the dithyramb and the enkomion as well as epic and iambic poetry. Plato
clearly did not associate the huporkh?ma with tragic choruses.
23. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Euripides, Herakles (Berlin 1889 and
1895, repr. Darmstadt 1959), vol. 1, 77, recognized the interaction of dance and
song as the defining feature of several related forms of choral performance when
he described dithyrambs, huporkh?mata and dramatic choruses generically as
"Tanzlieder." On the semantics of huporkh?ma, see Nagy (n. 1) 351-53.
24. Pratinas fr. 3 Snell/Kannicht (TrGF vol. 1, 82) = fr. 1 Page (PMG 708).
Cf. R. Seaford, "The 'Hyporchema' of Pratinas," Maia 29 (1977/78) 81-94, esp.
87f. assigns the fragment to a satyr-play, defends the early date (ca. 500 B.C.)
implied by Athenaios, and notes the emphasis on choral identity; he is followed
by R. Kannicht et alii, Musa Tr?gica: Die griechische Trag?die von Thespis bis
Ezechiel (Studienhefte zur Altertumswissenschaft 16, G?ttingen 1991) 50-52 and
272 n. 9. Unlike Seaford, H. Lloyd-Jones, Greek Epic, Lyric and Tragedy: Aca
demic Papers I (Oxford 1990) 228f. as well as B. Zimmermann, Mus. Helv. 43
(1986) 145?54 and Dithyrambos. Geschichte einer Gattung (Hypomnemata 98,
G?ttingen 1992) 124?26 recognize the text as a specimen of the New Dithyramb
composed in the second half of the fifth century. Cf. M. J. H. van der Weiden,
The Dithyrambs of Pindar: Introduction, Text and Commentary (Amsterdam
1991), 5-7, who leaves both options open.
25. The Dionysiac tenor of the Sophoclean choruses discussed in this paper
was first emphasized by V. de Falco, "Osservazioni sull'iporchema in Sofocle,"
Rivista Indo-Greco-Italica 8 (1924) 23?46, repr. in his Studi sul teatro greco (2d
ed., Naples 1958) 56?88. De Falco was not interested, however, in choral self
reference as such, even though the phenomenon is inseparable from the Diony
siac ambience.
26. A. Henrichs, "Dancing for Dionysos: Choral Performance and Dionysiac
Ritual in Euripides" (presented at the APA panel on "Performance and Ritual
Context in Early Greek Poetry," New Orleans, December 29,1992), is in prepara
tion for publication.
27. In general, see G. F. Else, "Ritual and Drama in Aischyleian Tragedy," ICS
2 (1977) 70-87, esp. 75ff. ; T. G. Rosenmeyer, The Art of Aeschylus (Berkeley/
Los Angeles/London 1982) 145-87, esp. 152ff.
28. L. Deubner, "Ololyge und Verwandtes," Abh. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. 1941.1,
reprinted in Kleine Schriften zur klassischen Altertumskunde (Beitr?ge zur klas
sischen Philologie 140, K?nigstein/Ts. 1982) 607-34, at 22f. = 628f.; F. I. Zeitlin,
Under the Sign of the Shield: Semiotics and Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes
(Rome 1982) 164-68; L. K?ppel, Paian. Studien zur Geschichte einer Gattung
(Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 37, Berlin/New York 1992)
45, 81f. (on the ritual affinity of ololug? and paian), 301 test. 15.
29. Orestes as a suppliant: C. Macleod, Collected Essays (Oxford 1983) 36
(Orestes' suppliant status "distinguishes him from the other murderers of the
trilogy"); as a sacrificial victim: F. I. Zeitlin, "The Motif of the Corrupted Sacrifice
in Aeschylus' Oresteia" TAPA 96 (1965) 463-508, at 485-88; A. Lebeck, The
Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure (Cambridge, Mass. 1971) 60-63,
146f.
30. On the grammar of performative utterances, see nn. 82, 97, and 133.
Albert Henrichs 95
31. Cf. Od. 2.135 oxvyeo?? . . . 'Eqiv??, 20.78 OTvy?QY\oiv 'Eqlvvoiv. On the
sinister chthonian connotations of words like oxvy?i?, oxvyeg??, and aruyvo?,
including the Styx herself, see my comments in ZPE 78 (1989) llf. Elsewhere in
the Oresteia, oxvyo? is associated with reciprocal violence and bloodshed (Ag.
1308L; Ch. 80-83, 386-92, 532f., 1028).
32. Pindar fr. 70c3 ]iTO \i?v crc?oic, followed by references to conventional
markers of the Dionysiac dance-song such as "foot" (4 jjto?a), "singing" (6
(lieX?Coi), "ivy wreaths" (7 o[TE()>?]va)V xi?oivoov; see nn. 109-10) and Jt?voi
XOQCov (line 16; see the discussion at n. 121). Zimmermann, Dithyrambos (n.
24) 50 and van der Weiden (n. 24) 113 dispute the choral connotation of oxao??
here on the grounds that it would be unparalleled in Pindar, and opt for the
common meaning "civil strife," which is difficult to reconcile with the context.
They do not mention the choral use of oxao?? in Aeschylus. On choral oxao??
in Aristophanes see n. 36.
33. A. F. Garvie, Aeschylus: Choephori (Oxford 1986) 168 on Ch. 458.
34. Most recently Garvie (n. 33) 73,168 on Ch. 114,458, and A. H. Sommerstein,
Aeschylus: Eumenides (Cambridge 1989) 137. N. Loraux, "Le m?taphore sans
m?taphore: A propos de VOrestie," Revue philosophique 180 (1990) 247-68 at
266f. translates oraai? ?\ir) more suitably as "ma position de ch ur" and com
ments: "nom technique de l'installation d'un ch ur dans Yorkhestra."
35. Cf. Lefkowitz (n. 11) 13: "The chorus's first-person statements deal only
with choral activities, with dancing and singing (xoqeUe?Ocu), with communal
ritual, with the performance, but never with the composition of song, since that
is the concern of the poet." On the use of the first person and the pronoun o?e
as deictic markers in the "'chorocentric' reference system" of choral poetry see
J. Danielewicz, "Deixis in Greek Choral Lyric," QUCC n. s. 34 (1990) 7-17.
36. See Ca?ame (n. 1) vol. 1, 88f. n. 91, 94-99, and Nagy (n. 1) 361-69 on
XOQ?V ?oT?vca (A. fr. 204b 7=16 Radt; S. El. 280; E. Alk. 1155, El. 178 [discussed
in the final section of this paper], ?. A. 676; Ar. Birds 220) and its derivatives
XOQO?Tcmic (IG XII 2, 645(a)36, honorary decree from Nesos, Aiolis, 4th c.
B.c.), xoQOordiTi? (attested as early as Alem?n fr. 1.84), xoq?dv xaTCtOTCt?iv (A.
Ag. 23; Ar. Thesm. 959, quoted below, n. 38), %OQOOXaoia (A. W. Bulloch,
Callimachus: The Fifth Hymn, Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries
26, Cambridge 1985, 174f. on Callim. Lav. Pall. 66), and ornoixoooc (PMG fr.
adesp. 20c [938c] Page), as well as on the choral use of oxao?? (Ar. Frogs 1281,
Plutos 954).
37. For this definition of OT?oijiov, which assumes a mobile as opposed to a
stationary chorus (n. 21), see Pickard-Cambridge (n. 1) 251f., and Nagy (n. 1)
366 n. 145. Sommerstein (n. 34) 136f. does not connect ox?oic ?uT| with choral
formation, but he comments on Eum. 307-20: "Chanting in anapests, the chorus
regroup themselves in the formation in which they will dance and sing the
ensuing ode."
38. Pickard-Cambridge (n. 1) 239 n. 2 considers Eum. 307ff. "the likeliest place
for a round dance in extant tragedy," and O. Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action
(Berkeley/Los Angeles 1978) 188 n. 6 agrees. Sommerstein (n. 34) 136f. compares
Ar. Thesm. 954f. xox)(|)a Jioaiv ?y' ?? x?xXov, %eiQ? a?vajtTE xs?oa. The
subsequent lines are equally relevant (956-59): qu9u.?v xoQE?a? vjcayE jt?aaV
?aivE KaQKa\?\iow jto?o?v./?maxojte?v ?? navxaxi] / hvkXovoclv ?\i\ia xqt)
XOQOiJ XdT?crcaaiv (see n. 36). Much has been made of the rectangular formation
of tragic choruses (Winkler [n. 4] 42-58), but in at least two tragedies female
choruses formed a circle around an altar while praying (A. fr. 379 Radt) or
dancing (E. /. A. 1480f., cf. 1467-72), in much the same way that the Erinyes
surround their sacrificial victim. These instances suggest that circular dances in
tragedy were linked to sacrificial ritual and performed around the orchestral altar
(on which see R. Rehm, GRBS 29, 1988, 263-307, esp. 271f., 297f.). Circular
dances mentioned self-referentially by comic choruses tend to be connected with
the cult of Demeter (Ar. Frogs 445, Thesm. 954, 968).
39. The curse tablets from Attica range in date from the second half of the
fifth century B.c. to late antiquity; as many as two hundred tablets are estimated
to date to the fifth and fourth centuries (C. A. Faraone, TAPA 119 [1989] 155f.).
For the most recent inventory of curse tablets from Attica, see D. R. Jordan, "A
Survey of Greek Defixiones Not Included in the Special Corpora," GRBS 26
(1985) 151-97, esp. 155-66, and Jordan, "New Archaeological Evidence for the
Practice of Magic in Classical Athens," in Praktika tou XII diethnous synedriou
klassik?s archaiologias (Athens 1988) 273-77. On their format, mentality, and
relevance to the Eumenides, see C. A. Faraone, "Aeschylus' ftjivoc ??ajAio? {Eum.
306) and Attic Judicial Curses," JHS 105 (1985) 150-54 and "The Agonistic
Context in Early Greek Binding Spells," in C. A. Faraone and D. Obbink (eds.),
Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion (New York/Oxford 1991)
3-32, esp. 4-10. Cf. J. A. Gager (ed.), Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from
the Ancient World (New York/Oxford 1992) 116-50, a collection and discussion
of judicial curse tablets in translation.
40.1 have borrowed freely from the translations of H. Lloyd-Jones, Aeschylus:
The Oresteia (Berkeley/Los Angeles 1993) 230, and Y. Prins, "The Power of the
Speech Act: Aeschylus' Furies and their Binding Song," Arethusa 24 (1991) 177-95,
at 185.
41. Cf. Wilson/Taplin (n. 12) 171?74. The choral performance of the Erinyes
has been discussed, with emphasis on perverted song rather than dance, by E.
Fraenkel, Aeschylus: Agamemnon (Oxford 1950), vol. 3, 543f.; Lebeck (n. 29)
56, 77,146f.; Macleod (n. 29) 33. On the inversion of normal choral and komastic
performance in Kassandra's characterization of the Erinyes see M. Heath, "Receiv
ing the x jxo?: The Context and Performance of Epinician," AJP 109 (1988)
180-95, esp. 186 and 194. The association of khoros and k?mos is conventional;
the shared performative elements include singing as well as dancing (Heath 182f.,
185f., who is overly concerned, however, with separating the k?mos from the
khoreia).
42. The interplay of dance and song, of physical coercion and performative
utterance, in this chorus has been fully and imaginatively treated by Prins (n. 40)
183-88. Sommerstein (n. 34) 146 comments on Eum. 372-76: "Here again the
words may indicate the dance-movements. First the dancers leap high (uxxXa . . .
aXouiva) and come down hard (?aptmeTTJ xaTa(j)?Q(0 jio??? axji?v) as if
stamping the life out of their victim. . . . After this they may perhaps extend a
leg as if to trip up a runner (o((>a?,?Q? xai TavD??ojAO?? xcotax)."
43. N. Loraux (n. 34) 265 recognizes in the maenadic self-description of the
Erinyes an allusive reference to "la pr?sence absente de Dionysos." On Erinyes
represented as maenads see W. Whallon, HSCP 68 (1964) 320-22; J.-P. Gu?pin,
The Tragic Paradox: Myth and Ritual in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam 1968) 21-23
Albert Henrichs 97
and 27-28; Bierl (n. 2) 90 n. 146, 120, and 122 n. 30; R. Seaford, "Destroyer of
the Household" (n. 5) 140f. and CQ n. s. 39 (1989) 303; Schlesier, "Mixtures of
Masks" (n. 6) 98 n. 38. On tragic articulations of the destructive madness embod
ied by the Erinyes see R. Padel, In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the
Tragic Self (Princeton 1992) 162-92. On uttiva? in Homer, see A. Henrichs,
"Der rasende Gott. Zur Psychologie des Dionysos und des Dionysischen in Mythos
und Literatur" {Antike und Abendland 40, 1994, 31-58).
44. Rituals particularly susceptible to tragic redefinition, restructuring, or sub
version include animal sacrifice (e.g., in Ag., Aias, and Ant., E. El. and Ba.),
rites involving ritual liquids (either libations as in Ch., Ion, and O. K., or rites
of purification by ablution as in the Aias and O. K.), wedding rites (e.g., Ant.
and /. A.) and maenadism (Hek., Tro., and Ba.). Their tragic ambivalence, includ
ing their ultimate failure as ritual remedies, has been explored in particular by
P. E. Easterling, "Tragedy and Ritual," Metis 3 (1988) 87-109; H. P. Foley, Ritual
Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides, Ithaca/London 1985; C. Segal, Tragedy
and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, Mass. 1981), and
Dionysiac Poetics (n. 5); R. Seaford, "The Tragic Wedding," JHS 107 (1987)
106-30, and Reciprocity and Ritual (n. 5) xiv-xvi, 328-405; R. Schlesier (n. 6);
F. I. Zeitlin, "The Argive Festival of Hera and Euripides' Electra," TAPA 101
(1970) 645-69, and especially "The Motif of the Corrupted Sacrifice" (n. 29),
with the postscript in TAPA 97 (1966) 645-53.
45. Cf. R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge
1980) 197-200. Taplin (n. 38) 89 paraphrases poignantly "religion is dead." In
one of the most penetrating and provocative discussions of this stasimon, U.
H?lscher, "Wie soll ich noch tanzen? ?ber ein Wort des sophokleischen Chores,"
in E. K?hler (ed.), Sprachen der Lyrik. Festschrift f?r Hugo Friedrich (Frankfurt
a. M. 1975) 376-93, translates eqqel ?? Ta GE?a as "divinity is distant" ("und
fern ist die Gottheit," 380) and concludes that the very presence of the gods is
called into question by the chorus (389): "Der Tanz scheint fragw?rdig geworden,
weil die G?tter sich entziehn." Sophoclean gods may be inscrutable, but they are
not beyond reach. The same chorus who enunciates EQQEi ?? Ta OE?a reaffirms
its basic belief in ritual remedies by invoking Zeus as an omnipotent god attentive
to the actions of mortals (903-05).
46. R. Dawe, Sophocles: Oedipus Rex (Cambridge 1982) 186, who is echoed
by Lefkowitz (n. 11) 206.
47. J. Rusten, Sophocles, Oidipous Tyrannos: Commentary (Bryn Mawr
1990) 46.
48. The modern discussion is summarized in J. Bollack, UOedipe roi de
Sophocle. Le texte et ses interpr?tations (Lille 1990), vol. 3, 582-84. Bollack does
not believe that T? ?E? \l? x?QE?Elv; connects the action of the play with the actual
dancing of the chorus (see n. 49). Among those critics who do are Wilamowitz (nn.
50-51), Knox (n. 58), Dodds (n. 52), Lesky (n. 52), H?lscher (n. 45), Segal (n.
57), Burkert (n. 66), and most recently Rusten (n. 47).
49. Dawe (n. 46) 186; similarly Bollack (n. 48), vol. 3, 584 ("Le "moi" du
Ch ur est celui du sujet lyrique, form? par les citoyens de Th?bes, et il ne quitte
pas son r?le."). Although he does not say so, Dawe's criticism is aimed at Dodds
(n. 52).
50. Wilamowitz (n. 23), vol. 3,148, on E. Herakles 685f. (ovjio) xaTajia?oojAEV
Mo/?oa? a? \i' ?xOQEuaav, a choral self-reference preceded in line 682 by an
evocation of Dionysos as the wine-god): "Da ist es der attische B?rgerchor, der
am Dionysosfeste zum Klange der Musik den Reigen tritt. Gerade wo so ernste
allgemeine Worte fallen, wird die Maske am ehesten fallengelassen." On Dodds
see below, at n. 52.
51. Wilamowitz (n. 23), vol. 3, 148 on O. T. 896: "Wir Modernen sind darauf
erpicht, im Theater immer in ?ngstlich geh?teter Illusion gehalten zu werden,
nicht weil wir uns lieber und vollkommener in das Reich der Phantasie entr?cken
Hessen, im Gegenteil, wir tun das nie, sondern treiben ein Spiel des Verstandes
und stellen den Poeten auf die Probe, ob er die selbstgew?hlten Voraussetzungen
festhalten kann. Davon ist in Athen keine Spur. Da sind sie bei der Sache, nehmen
die Handlung als Wahrheit und vergessen die Wirklichkeit nicht, da? der Chor
ihr Chor ist und das Fest ihrem Gotte geh?rt." In Griechische Verskunst (Berlin
1921) 527, Wilamowitz makes the same point in connection with S. Tra. 216ff.
(one of the choral odes discussed below).
52. E. R. Dodds, "On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex" (1964), published
in Greece & Rome 13 (1966) 37-49 (quotation at 46) and reprinted in The
Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief
(Oxford 1973) 64-77 (at 75). Dodds continues: "And in effect the question they
are asking seems to be this: 'If Athens loses faith in religion, if the views of the
Enlightenment prevail, what significance is there in tragic drama, which exists
as part of the service of the gods?'" He is echoed by A. Lesky in K. Gaiser (ed.),
Das Altertum und jedes neue Gute. F?r Wolf gang Schadewaldt zum 15. M?rz
1970 (Stuttgart 1970) 93 and Die tragische Dichtung der Hellenen (3d ed., G?t
tingen 1972) 228.
53. Stinton (n. 20) 253f. n. 45. The tendency to reduce the xoqe?eiv in T? ?E?
U.E XOQETJEIV; to a general act of worship in the distant past of the Theban myth,
and to separate it from the choral performance in the Athenian orchestra, has
been a staple of Sophoclean criticism for more than a century: F. Ellendt, Lexicon
Sophocleum (Berlin 1872) 785 s. v. xoqe??) ("tanquam pars cultus deorum to
XOQEiJEiv memoratur"); R. C. Jebb, Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments. Part
1: The Oedipus Tyrannus (3d ed., Cambridge 1893) 122 ("Why maintain the
solemn rites of public worship?"); G. M?ller, "Das zweite Stasimon des K?nig
?dipus," Hermes 95 (1967) 269-91, at 275 ("dann kann ich nicht mehr fromm
sein"); J. C. Kamerbeek, The Plays of Sophocles, Part 4: The Oedipus Tyrannus
(Leiden 1967), 179f. (who concedes, however, that "the ambiguity of the words
is possibly deliberate"); Fitton (n. 1) 263; H. Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus
(2d ed., Berkeley/Los Angeles/London 1983) 110; Taplin (n. 12) 133 n. 3 ("but
XOQEiJEiv carries the general association of observing religious ritual"); Burton
(n. 20) 167; Winnington-Ingram (n. 45) 196, 198 n. 58; Gardiner (n. 21) 104;
Bollack (n. 48), vol. 3, 583 ("La danse figure ici l'acte religieux par excellence,
incluant tous les autres rites dont l'observation incombe aux citoyens de Th?bes,
selon les lois qui r?glent la vie des cit?s"). However, at O. T. 896 XOQE?EIV has
the same concrete meaning as everywhere else in tragedy, namely to "dance."
54. Cf. H?lscher (n. 45) 390: "Wir kommen nicht darum herum, dass die
Trag?die in ihren lyrischen Formen die M?glichkeit hat, die aller Chorlyrik eigen
ist, n?mlich auf sich selber hinzuweisen, nicht indem sie die Mimesis aufhebt,
wohl aber transzendiert." For the opposite view, see M?ller (n. 53) 275 n. 1:
"Wir befinden uns im mythischen Theben, nicht im historischen Athen. Die
beiden Schaupl?tze sind nicht vertauschbar."
Albert Henrichs 99
55. Below, sections III and IV. Cf. J. F. Davidson, "The Circle and the Tragic
Chorus," Greece & Rome 33 (1986) 38-46, esp. 39f. and 42.
56. Especially W. Schadewaldt, "Zum zweiten Stasimon des 'K?nig ?dipus',"
Studi italiani di filolog?a classica 27-28 (1956) 489-97 = Hellas und Hesperien.
Gesammelte Schriften zur Antike und zur neueren Literatur (2d ed., Z?rich/
Stuttgart 1970), vol. 1, 476-83, Dodds (n. 52), and H?lscher (n. 45). M?ller (n.
54) denies that the words of this chorus had any Athenian reference whatsoever,
but he fails to explain the relevance of T? ?E? pie xoqe?eiv; to the action of the
play and to its Theban setting.
57. Emphasized by Segal, Tragedy and Civilization (n. 44) 235f. on T? ?E? U.E
XOQE1JEIV; ("The ritual act of the choral dance in the orchestra includes and
symbolizes all the rituals performed in the play"), and Pozzi (n. 4) 131-33 ("The
vehicle of the sacrality of drama was the chorus," 131).
58. Cf. B. M. W. Knox, Oedipus at Thebes (New Haven 1957) 47. Knox refers
to V. Ehrenberg, The People of Aristophanes (3d ed., New York 1962) 23 n. 7,
who ingeniously recognized Phryn. Com. fr. 9 Kassel/Austin ovt)q X0Q?Uei KaL
Ta xov 0EO?3 xatax as a positive comic expression of the same ritual concerns
conveyed by the correlation of T? ?e? U.E xoqe?eiv; (O. T. 896) and eqqel ?? Ta
BE?a (910).
59. On the tragic connotations of axoQO? (A. Suppl. 681, S. O. K. 1222)
and axooEUTOC (S. El. 1069, E. Tro. 121) see C. Segal, "Song, Ritual, and
Commemoration in Early Greek Poetry and Tragedy," Oral Tradition 4 (1989)
330-59, at 343-46.
60. H?lscher (n. 45) 390f. Oidipous voices a similar concern for ritual purity
in the immediately preceding scene (813-33).
61. Cf. Easterling, "Tragedy and Ritual" (n. 44) 90 and 100, and from a different
perspective, "Anachronism in Greek Tragedy," JHS 105 (1985) 1-10.
62. Segal (n. 5) 215-71, esp. 242-47; Bierl (n. 2) 1-25, 35f., 83f., 99 n. 179,
106f., 129, 142, 155 n. 131, 174, 190f., 224, and 242f. V. Turner, From Ritual
to Theatre (New York 1982) 112, observes that "ritual, unlike theatre, does not
distinguish between audience and performers." Greek ritual in particular invites
participation and tends to neutralize the individual identities of the performers.
This explains why in Attic tragedy the boundaries between dramatic and civic
identities as well as between representation and reality are particularly fluid when
tragic choruses comment on their own performance as dancers or when rituals
are dramatized onstage.
63. Cf. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley/Los Angeles
1951) 94 n. 82: "It was, I take it, as Master of Illusions that Dionysos came to
be the patron of a new art, the art of the theatre. To put on a mask is the easiest
way of ceasing to be oneself." On the dramatic and cultic aspects of the mask,
see most recently C. Ca?ame, "Facing Otherness: The Tragic Mask in Ancient
Greece," History of Religions 26 (1986) 125-42 (English version of Le r?cit en
Gr?ce ancienne, Paris 1986, 85-100), and "D?masquer par le masque. Effets
?nonciatifs dans la com?die ancienne" Revue de l'histoire des religions 206 (1989)
357-76; F. Frontisi-Ducroux, Le dieu-masque. Une figure du Dionysos d'Ath?nes
(Images ? l'appui 4, Paris/Rome 1991); A. Henrichs, "'He Has a God in Him':
Human and Divine in the Modern Perception of Dionysus," in Masks of Dionysus
(n. 5) 13-43, at 36-39.
64. Wilamowitz (n. 23), vol. 3, 148f., was the first scholar who interpreted T?
?E? jlE XOQE?EIV; against the background of the positive instances of choral self
referentiality discussed in this paper. He is followed by K.-D. Dorsch, G?tterhym

nen in den Chorliedern der griechischen Tragiker: Form, Inhalt und Funktion
(diss. M?nster 1982) 225 n. 144, and Davidson (n. 55) 39.
65. Michael Haslam has remarked to me on the singularity of T? ?E? [AE XOQE?EIV;
in comparison with the affirmative instances of choral self-reference: "In all the
other cases the reference to dancing is much more 'in character,' is quite intelligible/
plausible within the terms of the play's fictive 'here and now' (i.e. the dramatic
illusion), and so does not force the chorus's identity as theater-khoreutai to the
surface in quite the same way."
66. So W. Burkert, Oedipus, Oracles, and Meaning: From Sophocles to Umberto
Eco (The Samuel James Stubbs Lecture Series, University College, Toronto 1991)
22, who adds: "At this moment, all of a sudden, the chorus breaks out of the
world of illusion and makes the audience reflect on the chorus dancing in the
theatre, a chorus dancing in honor of Dionysus."
67. The close correlation between O. T. 896 T? ?e? [IE xoQE?Eiv; and 1092
XOOEiJEOOai JtQ?? fjficov has been noted before, most recently by Bollack (n. 48),
vol. 3, 711 and 713, who rightly emphasizes the ritual connotations of the dance
in both places while denying the choral self-reference (above, n. 53).
68. On the controversial syntax of this passage, see H. Lloyd-Jones and N.
G. Wilson, Sophoclea: Studies on the Text of Sophocles (Oxford 1990) 104, as
opposed to Bollack (n. 48), vol. 3, 698-714; the intricate use of negatives is
discussed by A. C. Moorhouse, The Syntax of Sophocles (Leiden 1982) 329
and 336. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson follow Wilamowitz, who replaced o? YE xai
jraTQiarcav with o? ye t?v JiaTQidrcav because he did not believe that Kithairon
could be described as "nurse and mother" of Oidipous {Hermes 34, 1899, 74-76,
repr. in Kleine Schriften VI, Berlin 1972, 227-29). But to introduce Oidipous'
unknown mother at this point and to invent a putative wet-nurse for him would
thoroughly spoil the irony of the chorus's excessive praise of Kithairon.
69. On full-moon festivals and all-night dancing see Lloyd-Jones/Wilson (n.
68) 104. Both the time (night) and the setting (mountain) envisaged by the chorus
are distinctly Dionysiac (E. Ba. 116, 485f., 1105f.).
70. Most commentators and translators interpret axjÊiv and xoQETJE?Oai in
a future sense (cf. Rusten [n. 47] 54, Bollack [n. 48], vol. 1, 265, and vol. 3,
705-11; below, n. 73).
71. My paraphrase is based on the highly plausible but heavily restored text
adopted by H. Lloyd-Jones and N. Wilson in their Oxford edition of 1992.
According to Bollack (n. 48), vol. 3,714-19, who defends the transmitted readings,
the mother of Oidipous would be a daughter of Pan or Apollo. But it is more
likely that the chorus would speculate on Oidipous' parents than on his grandpar
ents, giving him a nymph for a mother and a god for a father.
72. Segal, Tragedy and Civilization (n. 44) 236, and his discussion of the third
stasimon in "The Chorus and the Gods in Oedipus Tyrannus" (forthcoming in
part II of this double issue).
73. Interpreters disagree on the meaning of auQlOV (see Bollack [n. 48], vol.
3, 702-04). Its use elsewhere in Sophocles suggests that it represents an ironic
application of the tragic time frame, which concentrates the crucial events in a
single day: tragedy will strike today (A. Th. 21-29; S. Aias 749-57, 778f., cf.
131f., O. T. 438, Tr. 740; E. Alk. 20f., 27, 320-22, Med. 340, 373-75, 1231,
Hipp. 22, 726, Andr. 803, Hek. 44, Or. 48f., 656, and Phoin. 1579; cf. Arist.
Albert Henrichs ioi
Poet. 5, 1449b12f.); tomorrow's remedies will be too late (cf. S. Tra. 710-13, O.
K. 567f.; E. Alk. 782-84). Despite their prophetic stance, this chorus cannot
predict the future because unlike Teiresias they don't even understand the tragic
events of today (cf. S. Tra. 943-46). As soon as they focus on the present (1204
Ta v?v), they acknowledge the pivotal role of "all-seeing time" (1214).
74. Cf. D. Sansone, CP 70 (1975) 112-17.
75. The status of the chorus in Ba. is unique in that their dancing, wherever
emphasized (as in the parodos and again in the third and fifth stasimon), reflects
a complete fusion of their performative function as dancers in the orchestra and
their dramatic character as a maenadic thiasos. Unlike the chorus in O. T.,
however, the maenads of the chorus in Ba. never call their own dancing into
question.
76. Smyth (n. 19) lxxiiif.; V. de Falco, La t?cnica c?rale di Sofocle (Naples
1928) 148f., and Studi (n. 25) 56-88; W. Kranz, Stasimon. Untersuchungen zu
Form und Gehalt der griechischen Trag?die (Berlin 1933) 182-85 ("Kontrast zur
Szene"), 213 ("k?nstliche Retardierung"); Pickard-Cambridge (n. 1) 256; G. M.
Kirkwood, "The Dramatic Role of the Chorus in Sophocles," Phoenix 8 (1954)
1-22, esp. 8f. ("odes of suspense"), and A Study of Sophoclean Drama (Ithaca
1958) 199-201 ("contrastive-effect"); T. B. L. Webster, An Introduction to Sopho
cles (2d ed., London 1969) 105 ("the cheerful choruses"); W. B. Stanford, Sopho
cles, Ajax (corr. repr. Bristol 1981) 150 (Sophocles' "technique of introducing a
sudden burst of hopeful rejoicing followed soon afterwards by sad disillusion
ment"); Burton (n. 20) 28 n. 42; T. C. W. Oudemans and A. P. M. H. Lardinois,
Tragic Ambiguity: Anthropology, Philosophy and Sophocles' Antigone (Leiden
1987) 159 ("songs of gladness which are counterpoints to the ensuing disaster");
Gardiner (n. 21) 66f., 95f., 143 n. 11 ("joy-before-disaster odes"); M. Hose,
Studien zum Chor bei Euripides, vol. 2 (Beitr?ge zur Altertumskunde 20, Stuttgart
1991) 41 n. 27 ("Freudenlieder"); Bierl (n. 2) 126f., 224, 242f. In an unpublished
study, J. S. Scullion refers to them as "euphoric odes," a tribute to their Dionysiac
spirit and emotional intensity.
77. The Greek text follows the edition of Lloyd-Jones/Wilson (n. 71); parts
of the translation are adapted from John Moore's (Chicago 1957). On the metrical
problem posed by JtEA,ay?cov, which otherwise makes excellent sense, see Lloyd
Jones/Wilson (n. 68) 23f. At line 699, the M?oia attested by POxy. 1615 and
echoed by the Suda seems slightly preferable to the manuscript reading N?aia
(L. Lehnus, L'inno a Pan di Pindaro, Milano 1979, 96f.). The "Mysian" dances
associate Pan with the Great Mother (n. 79), whereas "Nysian" (S. Ant. 1131,
fr. 959 Radt) would link Pan more explicitly to Dionysos (n. 84). On the hymnic
and choric conventions of this stasimon see Dorsch (n. 64) 79-84, 222-28.
78. Stanford (n. 76) 152: "Presumably [Apollo] is invoked here as another god
of dancing and of festive joy." He compares Pindar fr. 148 Snell/Maehler boyfyox'
?ytaxta? ?vaoocov, evqixôqetq' 'AjioXXov for Apollo as dancer, and Ar. Frogs
230f. for the association of Pan and Apollo (cf. E. /. T. 1125-31). At S. Tra. 205-21
(discussed below) Apollo is more directly associated with choral performance, but
there too the dominant mood is Dionysiac.
79. Pindar fr. 99 Snell/Maehler xoqevttvv TEte?VcaTOV (cf. Lehnus [n. 77]
189-204). In Aristophanes' Birds, the chorus of birds performs "sacred songs for
Pan and solemn dances for the Mountain Mother" (745f. Ilavi vofAOU? Ieqov?
ava(|>a?v?) OEfXv? te [A^to? xoqe?juxxt' ?QE?a). On Pan as both khor?gos and
khoreut?s, see Lonsdale (n. 1) 261-75.
80. I discuss Euripides' complex use of choral projection in "Dancing for

Dionysos" (nn. 26 and 128). Similar patterns can be found in nondramatic lyric
poetry (e.g. Pindar J. 1.6-10, on which see E. L. Bundy, Studia Pindarica, repr.
Berkeley/Los Angeles 1986, 41, and Lefkowitz [n. 11] 206; Bacch. 11.10-12,
32, 110-12).
81. Recognized by Kranz (n. 76) 183. The interplay of choral voice and ritual
performance in Pindar, Aeschylus, and Euripides has been studied by C. Ca?ame,
"From Choral Poetry to Tragic Stasimon: The Enactment of Women's Song" (in
this issue, 136-154, see nn. 82 and 97). From a different perspective, he explores
some of the same concerns that I have tried to articulate here?the fluid boundaries
of time and space in choral utterances whose emphasis is on ritual performance;
ritual self-referentiality as a choral mode; and the related concept of ritual projec
tion and its distancing effect in tragedy.
82. Cf. E. Hkld. 892f. (opening words of the fourth stasimon) ?fxoi X?Q??> M-8V
?)bv?, Herakles 763-65 (chorus) xopoi, xoQol xai Q?k?ai \iekovoi @r|?ac ?eqov
xot' dorn, and Ar. Lys. 1304f. (b? ZjtaQTav v\iviu)\i??, x? oi v xopoi \iekovxi
(the first passage is self-referential, the other two are preceded by a choral self
reference). On the use of the self-referential present, reinforced by the deictic
v?v (Danielewicz [n. 35] llf.), in the context of choral performance see Ca?ame
(n. 81), section 2.2. Similar "markers of urgency" (Ca?ame) such as v?v, aiopa
and the ritual imperative (n. 97) occur also in other ritual contexts, for instance
on the gold tablets from Pelinna, where they function as verbal indicators of
"funerary performance"; see C. Segal, GRBS 31 (1990) 414, and D. Obbink,
"Poetry and Performance in the Orphic Gold Leaves" (forthcoming).
83. A. Pers. 448f. On Pan in Attica and in Sophocles, see P. Borgeaud, The
Cult of Pan in Classical Greece (1979, English trans. Chicago/London 1988) 94f.
and 133-62, esp. 150f.; Lehnus (n. 77) 96f., 183f.
84. Sophocles' Pan serves as a choral substitute for Dionysos (Bierl, Vorkommen
und Funktion des Gottes Dionysos [n. 7] 53f.). On the affinity of Panic and
Dionysiac possession, see Borgeaud (n. 83) 111-13. In fifth-century Attic vase
painting, Pan is occasionally associated with maenadic dancing (Borgeaud 212 n.
102) and Dionysiac myth (as on the Boston bell-krater of ca. 470 B.c., the name
piece of the Pan Painter, which shows the death of Aktaion on one side and an
ithyphallic Pan on the other). On a red-figure volute krater (unknown to Bor
geaud), a dancing Pan and a stately Dionysos are shown in an Eleusinian context
(Stanford University Museum of Art 70.12, ca. 430 B.C.; published by A. E.
and I. K. Raubitschek, "The Mission of Triptolemus," in Studies in Athenian
Architecture, Sculpture and Topography Presented to Homer A. Thompson,
Hesperia Suppl. 20, Princeton 1982, 109-17, with pi. 15b = A. E. Raubitschek,
The School of Hellas: Essays on Greek History, Archaeology, and Literature,
New York/Oxford 1991, 229-38, with pi. 22; cf. K. Clinton, Myth and Cult: The
Iconography of the Eleusinian Mysteries, Skrifter utgivna av Svenska Institutet i
Athen, 8o, XI, Stockholm 1992, 26 and 166 fig. 11).
85. For a fuller discussion of the climactic sequence of Dionysiac references in
the choral odes of Ant. I refer to Zeitlin, "Staging Dionysos" (n. 5) 154?64 and
A. Bierl, "Was hat die Trag?die mit Dionysos zu tun? Rolle und Funktion des
Dionysos am Beispiel der 'Antigone' des Sophocles," W?rzburger Jahrb?cher f?r
die Altertumswissenschaft 15 (1989) 43-58.
86. The Muses are commonly associated with Dionysos (Bierl [n. 2] 99 nn.
181-82) as well as choral dancing (below, nn. 93, 135-36). Yet many interpreters
Albert Henrichs 103
have been puzzled by their presence in the Sophoclean version of the Lykourgos
myth. C. Sourvinou-Inwood, BICS 36 (1989) 149 takes Mouoa? as a "metaphor"
for the maenads, but Sophocles clearly differentiates between the two groups
here and elsewhere (O. K. 679f., 691f., on which see n. 136).
87. Some editors print Mouoa? with a small initial, but the verb eqeO?C?d
requires a personal object, as in E. Ba. 147f. xopo?oi JttaxvciTa? eqe9???)V (cf.
Pindar fr. 140bl3 Snell/Maehler). In the parodos of Ba., however, the subject is
Dionysos, who, far from interfering with the ritual activities of his worshipers,
incites them to dance.
88. The self-referential thrust of Ant. 965 is recognized by H. Rohdich, Anti
gone. Beitrag zu einer Theorie des sophokleischen Helden (Heidelberg 1980) 191;
Winnington-Ingram (n. 45) 103 n. 38 on O. K. 678ff. and Ant. 965 ("There may
well be a reference to the dramatic choruses at Athens."); Bierl (n. 85) 48.
89. Discussed by Dorsch (n. 64) 66-78, who ignores the choral self-reference,
and Bierl (n. 2) 127-32, who emphasizes it.
90. An emphasis on a god's ambulatory faculties is conventional in poetic
accounts of divine epiphany (E. Fraenkel, Horace, Oxford 1957, 204f. n. 4; C.
Brown, GRBS 23, 1982, 306 n. 7); it is harder to see, however, why Sophocles
invested the foot of Dionysos with the power to purify Thebes from pollution.
Scullion (n. 76) has shown that the cathartic power is not a function of the divine
foot per se, but an effect produced by the dancing associated with Dionysos and
with the Dionysiac chorus.
91. Many interpreters have argued that it is precisely in the violence of the
final scene that Dionysos makes his epiphany, reveals his power, and cleanses the
city; see most recently Dorsch (n. 64) 78, Bierl (n. 2) 130f., and Bierl, "Antigone"
(n. 85). For a different perspective see A. Henrichs, "Between Country and City:
Cultic Dimensions of Dionysos in Athens and Attica," in M. Griffith and D. J.
Mastronarde (eds.), Cabinet of the Muses. Essays on Classical and Comparative
Literature in Honor of Thomas G. Rosenmeyer (Scholars Press 1990) 257-77, at
264-69; cf. Seaford, Reciprocity and Ritual (n. 5) 363-67.
92. At Ant. 1149 I reluctantly reproduce the text of the MSS (defended by
Jebb). Dawe's Teubner edition opts for Jia? Ztvvo? y?v?8?,ov to restore complete
responsion with 1140 xai v?v (b? ?iaiac. Lloyd-Jones and Wilson (n. 71) delete
Jta? as a gloss and print Zrrvo? y?vE6X,ov; their remedy necessitates an undesirable
change in the corresponding line of the strophe, where they replace xai v?v
(idiomatic in formal prayer, for instance Horn. //. 1.455, Sappho fr. 1.25, A. Eum.
30f., S. O. T. 167, E. Alk. 224, I. T. 1084, cf. Pindar P. 5.20) with the less
attractive v?v ?(?).
93. Here as well as at its only other occurrence in tragedy (E. Hel. 1454, a
conspicuous case of choral projection, see n. 128), XOP^YO? retains its pre-Attic
literal meaning of "chorus leader," first attested in Alem?n, on which see Ca?ame
(n. 1) vol. 1, 92-94, and Taplin (n. 15) 58. Dionysos is invoked as'laxxE Gpiau?E,
oi) tc?v?e xopay? in an anonymous lyric fragment (PMG fr. adesp. 109d [1027d]
Page); similarly, the Athenian in Plato's Laws (665a, cf. 653d-654a) characterizes
Apollo, the Muses, and Dionysos as cnjyxopEUTa? TE xai xopr]yoi)?. See Ca?ame
(n. 1) vol. 1, 102-08.
94. The homology between the imaginary choruses, maenadic as well as astral,
led by Dionysos and the equally Dionysiac chorus of the dramatic performance
is well emphasized by C. Segal, "Sophocles' Antigone: The House and the Cave,"
Rivista di cultura classica e medioevale 20 (1978) 1185-87 = Tragedy and Civiliza

tion (n. 44) 204?06 and Dionysiac Poetics (n. 5) 247, and more recently by Bierl
(n. 2) 129. On clusters of stars described poetically as khoroi dancing in the sky,
as at E. El. 467, see J. Diggle, Euripides: Phaethon (Cambridge 1970) 99; for
other Dionysiac applications of this image see Zeitlin, "Mysteries of Identity"
(n. 5) 168 on E. Ion 1074-86 (choral projection), and Dover (n. 15) 238 on Frogs
342f. (quoted above).
95. On the Eleusinian connotations of the fifth stasimon see Henrichs (n. 91)
266f.; R. Seaford, JHS 110 (1990) 87f. and Reciprocity and Ritual (n. 5) 381f. The
invocation of Iakkhos-Dionysos at Frogs 343 is followed by 345 y?vu JtaXXETai
yEpovTOOV and 351/2 xopOJioi?v; both expressions are used self-referentially by
the chorus of the Eleusinian initiates, thus confirming the shared tendency of
comedy and tragedy to connect choral self-referentiality with Dionysos, and to
locate it in a cultic setting.
96. I reproduce the text of Lloyd-Jones/Wilson (n. 71). On alternative restora
tions of lines 205-07 (including E(()EOT?oioiv aK?kalc, which some editors prefer),
see Stinton (n. 20) 417-21; Lloyd-Jones/Wilson (n. 68) 156f. My translation here
and below is indebted to Stinton 404. *Ev ?? (207) means, exceptionally, "within
[the palace]" (Stinton, Easterling), not "and besides" (Davies). For commentary,
see P. E. Easterling, Sophocles: Trachiniae (Cambridge 1982) 104ff.; M. Davies,
Sophocles: Trachiniae (Oxford 1991) lOlff.
97. Cf. Ca?ame (n. 81) section 2.2, whose terminology I employ. On ritual
imperatives used self-referentially by dramatic choruses, see Kaimio (n. 16) 121-29
and B. Zimmermann, Untersuchungen zur Form und dramatischen Technik der
Aristophanischen Kom?die. Band 2: Die anderen lyrischen Partien (Beitr?ge zur
klassischen Philologie 166, K?nigstein/Ts. 1985), 193-96, on Ar. Thesm. 947ff.
(cf. n. 38). Such imperatives are a standard feature of cult-hymns (N. Hopkinson,
Callimachus: Hymn to Demeter, Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries
27, Cambridge 1984, 78 on Callim. Dem. 1). On the self-referential use of the
first person in choral poetry, see n. 35; for a discussion of the choral connotations
of aipojiai, see n. 105. Despite the future tense, ov?' ajic?ooâi refers to the
present occupation of the chorus (Davies [n. 96] 104). First person futures of
this type are performative futures, which "describe an ongoing performance, be
it verbal or non-verbal," such as singing, dancing, and the casting of magical
spells (C. A. Faraone, "The 'Performative Future' in Three Hellenistic Incantations
and Theocritus' Second Idyll," forthcoming in CP 1995, with full bibliography;
cf. K?ppel [n. 28] 95f.). This convention occurs in cult hymns, choral lyric, and
epinician as well as in ritual texts.
98. On the ritual cries, see A. Fairbanks, A Study of the Greek Paean (Ithaca
1900); L. Deubner, "Paian," Neue Jahrb?cher f?r das klassische Altertum 22
(1919) 385-406, at 406 n. 2, reprinted in Kleine Schriften (n. 28) 204-25, at 225
n. 2, and "Ololyge" (n. 28), esp. 10f.=616f. on S. Tra. 205ff. I benefited from
the systematic treatment of these ritual forms by Ian Rutherford in the introduction
to his forthcoming book Pindar's Paianes: A Study in the Fragments and Their
Generic Context (Oxford 1996).
99. K?ppel (n. 28) 81f., 147, 342f. test. 122. Cf. A. Th. 268, Ag. 245-47, Ch.
150f., E. Herakles 687ff., /. A. 1467f{., where tragic women are also associated
with the Jiai?v. Outside tragedy, however, the Jtaiav is performed by men, while
the oXoXvyr) is raised by women (so at the wedding of Hektor and Andromache in
Albert Henrichs 105
Sappho fr. 44.31ff.; cf. Deubner, "Paian" [n. 98] 390 = 209; D. E. Gerber, ZPE
49 [1982] 4f.; K?ppel 50, 8 If.); in contrast to the female oXoA.uyr|, the akakayr)
is properly a male war-cry (Deubner, "Ololyge" [n. 28] 4 = 610; J. Diggle,
Euripidea: Collected Essays [Oxford 1994] 477-80). But ?XoXuyfj and oXaXay^
can be used interchangeably in tragedy to signal the reversal of gender roles (E.
Ba. 23f. [n. 104] versus Ba. 1133 as discussed by R. Seaford, "The Eleventh Ode
of Bacchylides: Hera, Artemis, and the Absence of Dionysos," JHS 108 [1988]
118-36, at 134; cf. Reciprocity and Ritual [n. 5] 290f.); on the social status of
the chorus in Tra. 205ff., see Ca?ame (n. 1) vol. 1, 149f., Stinton (n. 20) 418-20
and especially Gardiner (n. 21) 120-22.
100. On the wedding theme in Tra., see R. Seaford, Hermes 114 (1986) 50-59
and "The Tragic Wedding" (n. 44) 119 and 128f.; on its Dionysiac subversion,
Seaford, "Destroyer of the Household" (n. 5) 126-28, who compares Euripides'
characterization of Iole as a destructive maenad {Hipp. 548f.). Apart from its
association with the wedding (K?ppel [n. 28] 50f.), the tragic paean here and
elsewhere reflects the unresolved tension between inevitable catastrophe and hope
against hope. See C. Segal, "Time, Oracles, and Marriage in the Trachiniae,"
Lexis 9-10 (1992) 63-92, on Tra. 205ff.; K?ppel 46-49 on the tragic paian; I.
Rutherford, "Paeanic Ambiguity: A Study of the Representation of the Jiai?v in
Greek Literature," QUCC n. s. 44 (1993) 77-92, esp. 89f., and Pindar's Paianes
(n. 98) Introd. A12 on tragic paianes marking dramatic reversals and opposite
emotional states; and "Apollo in Ivy: the Tragic Paean," in this issue, 112-135.
101. De Falco, Studi (n. 25) 69, 74-79; Easterling (n. 96) 104, 106; Davies (n.
96) 101-03; Rutherford (n. 98) Introd. A10; K?ppel (n. 28) 85f. on the contrast
between the Apollonian paean and the Dionysiac dithyramb.
102. Choral self-address: Jebb (n. 20) 35 on Tra. 205f.; Kranz (n. 76) 183, 305;
Kaimio (n. 16) 122; Stinton (n. 20) 420; Davies (n. 96) 103 on S. Tra. 211, 196
and 266 on 821 (D Jta??E?. Chorus addressing other parthenoi: Wilamowitz,
Verskunst (n. 51) 527; Gardiner (n. 21) 120 n. 3. The second person plural ritual
imperative supports either interpretation. It is significant that the specific address
(0 Jiap?EVOL, with its emphasis on a socially marked age group, occurs only here,
in the context of ritual performance under the aegis of Artemis; in several other
places the women of the chorus are addressed generically as yuva?XE? (202, 225,
385, 663, 673). IlapG?vE in the closing anapests (1275) must be addressed to the
chorus, but the identity of the speaker remains an open question (P. E. Easterling,
1CS 6, 1981, 71; Lloyd-Jones/Wilson [n. 68] 177f.; Davies [n. 96] 265f.).
103. Burton (n. 20) 50f. and, apparently, Easterling (n. 96) 104.
104. Deubner (n. 28) 23f. = 629f., who refers to A. P. 13. 28, 1-3 JioMaxi
?t] <$>v\r)? AxaîavT??o? ?v xopo?oiv TQpai ?v(oXoX,x)?av xiaao<|)opoi? ?m
oi0Dpa|i?oic ai Aiovuaia?E? (an anonymous fifth-century epigram on a dithy
rambic victory, ascribed to Antigenes by U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Sap
pho und Simonides: Untersuchungen ?ber griechische Lyriker, Berlin 1913,
218-23; D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams, Cambridge 1981, 11-15; D. F.
Sutton, Dithyrambographi Graeci, Hildesheim 1989, 19f.), E. Ba. 23f. (Dionysos
speaking) Jip Ta? ?? ?r|?ac Taa?E yf\? eEXX,T]vi?o? ?vcoXoXu?a (on which
see E. R. Dodds, Euripides: Bacchae, 2d edition, Oxford 1960, 66), and Ba. 689
(of Agaue) ?)X?Xu?;EV. On the juxtaposition of Apollo, Artemis, and Dionysos,
De Falco, Studi (n. 25) 76, compares the prayer that concludes the parodos at O.
T. 203?15. In this instance, however, the three divinities are not explicitly associ
ated with the dance-song, but are invoked as potential helpers against the plague.
I06 "WHY SHOULD I DANCE?"
105. A?poum refers to a flightlike elevation {Od. 8.375, Anacr. fr. 31 Page
[PMG 376], E. Hipp. 735f., Hel. 605f., Ba. 748) and uplifted spirits (A. Ag. 592
a?pEOOai x?ap; on the tragic metaphor of emotions that are "flying in the mind"
see Padel [n. 43] 96-98) rather than fancy footwork (a?pEiv ?fjîa or Jto?a, as
at E. Tro. 342, Ba. 943f.). Cf. E. Tro. 325f. Ji?Xke jio?' a?G?piov, <?vay'>
?vayE x?p?v, E??v ev??, 545f. JiapG?voi ?' ?Eipov a\ia xp?TOV Jto?wv. For
atpOfiai used absolutely in choral self-referentiality, see Ar. Clouds 276/7
?p6(?fi?V (j)avEpa? (sung by the chorus of Clouds, and preceded by 266 ap0T]TE,
(|)?vr|TE), Lys. 539 a?pEoB' dv?) (followed by 541/2 oiJJtOTE x?uoux' ?v
?pxouî?vri) and 1291-94 akaka?, If] Jtaic?v. aipEoG' ?vco, ?a?, cb? ejc? v?xt],
?a?. ?i)O? Ei)O?, E?ai ?i)a? (cf. S. Tra. 205f., 210f., 219, 221), Ekkl. 1180 al'pEo9'
?vco. tai eva?; cf. J. Henderson, Aristophanes' Lysistrata (Oxford 1987) 137.
On a red-figure astragalos signed by the Sotades Painter (British Museum E804,
ca. 460 B.C.), three groups of young female dancers literally take wing, rise above
the ground and float like clouds across the surface of the vase (M. Robertson,
A History of Greek Art, Cambridge 1975, vol. 2, plates 91a-d; Lonsdale [n. 1]
xxi, fig. 1(b)).
106. On the Dionysiac aulos as a passionate and "orgiastic" instrument (Arist.
Pol. 1341a21f.) whose sound "stirs up" (Pindar fr. 140bl7 Snell/Maehler ?x?VTjOE)
and is "inducive of madness" (A. Edonians fr. 57.5 Radt jiav?ac EJiaywy?v),
see M. Linforth, The Corybantic Rites in Plato, Univ. Calif. Publ. in Class.
Philol. 13 Nr. 5, 1946, 121-62 = Linforth, Studies in Herodotus and Plato (New
York/London 1987), 157-200; Dodds (n. 104) on E. Ba. 126-29 and 379f.; E.
Roos, Die tragische Orchestik im Zerrbild der altattischen Kom?die (Stockholm
1951), 216-18; R. Schlesier, "Das Fl?tenspiel der Gorgo," in R. Kapp (ed.),
Notizbuch 5/6: Musik (Berlin/Wien 1982) 11-57; J. Bremmer, ZPE 55 (1984)
278f.; Bierl (n. 2) 83 n. 121 On the Dionysiac status of the ivy, see Dodds on
Ba. 81; M. Blech, Studien zum Kranz bei den Griechen (RGW 38, Berlin/New
York 1982) 185-210; Segal (n. 82) 414f.; K?ppel (n. 28) 223 n. 68a, 246 and 270.
107. The quasi-maenadic identity of this chorus has been stressed by Jebb (n.
20) with regard to Tra. 218ff., as well as by Schlesier, "Mixtures of Masks" (n.
6), 105-08, who observes "that apart from Euripides' Bacchae, this passage is
the only one in extant tragedy in which the maenadism is actually performed
onstage and is not simply alluded to" (105). However, as Schlesier notes, the
most conspicuous maenadic implement, the thyrsos, is not mentioned. Unlike
the pipe and the ivy, the thyrsos had no place in the convention of choral
competition. Had Sophocles introduced the thyrsos here, he would have jeopard
ized the delicate balance between the overall dramatic identity of this chorus and
their fleeting Dionysiac aspirations.
108. The choreutic function of the ivy and the pipe at Tra. 216ff. has been
emphasized by Wilamowitz (n. 23) vol. 3, 148f., considered by Jebb (n. 20) 37
on Tra. 218ff., and ignored by more recent commentators.
109. Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals (n. 1) 75-77; above, n. 104. On
a bell-krater by the Kleophon Painter in Copenhagen (ca. 425 B.C.) four khoreutai
dance around a pole draped with ivy leaves while another man plays the pipe; all
five men wear tainiai and ivy wreaths (Beazley, ARV2 1145.35; CVA Copenhagen 8,
pis. 347-49; Pickard-Cambridge/Webster [n. 3] 35, 37f., 301 no. 4, with pi. lb;
Blech [n. 106] 207f., fig. 29a). The dancers have been tentatively classified as a
dithyrambic chorus at the City Dionysia by M. Schmidt, "Dionysien," Antike
Albert Henrichs 107
Kunst 10 (1967) 80; H. Froning, Dithyrambos und Vasenmalerei in Athen, Beitr?ge

zur Arch?ologie 2, W?rzburg 1971, 27f.; E. Simon, Festivals of Athens: An
Archaeological Commentary (Madison 1983) 98f.; and van der Weiden (n. 24)
27. Similarly, all but two of the satyric khoreutai as well as the aulos-plzyer
Pronomos on the vase named after him wear ivy wreaths (Blech 311). Dionysiac
(dithyrambic or paeanic?) choruses wore ivy wreaths according to Philodamos of
Skarpheia, Delphic Paian to Dionysos 144-47 ?lX? ??xEoOE Baxx[ia]crc?v
Ai[?]vuo[ov, Ev ?' ?ym]a?? ?îa ovv [xop]o?ai x[ixXt|oxete] xiaa[ox]a?Tai?
(ca. 340 B.C.; text and commentary in K?ppel [n. 28] 207-84, 375-80, and B.
L. Rainer, Philodamus' Paean to Dionysus: A Literary Expression of Delphic
Propaganda, diss. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1975).
110. The aulos "typifies choral celebration" (M. J. Cropp, Euripides: Electra,
Warminster 1988, 158), and so does the wreath (Plut. Nik. 3A?.). Tragic choruses
were wreathed for the proagon {Vita Eurip. 2 p. 3.1 Iff. Schwartz = Soph, testim.
54 Radt = DID C 20 in TrGF I 48 Snell/Kannicht), but the ivy wreaths referred
to by the chorus at Tra. 216-20, and E. Herakles 677, were hardly standard
equipment for tragic khoreutai performing in the orchestra (J. C. Kamerbeek,
The Plays of Sophocles, Part II: The Trachiniae, Leiden 1959, on 218-20). It is
impossible to tell, and hardly important, whether the members of this particular
chorus actually "wreathed themselves at the start of the song" (so Kamerbeek)
or whether the ivy wreaths existed merely in their imagination (as Jebb [n. 20]
on Tra. 218ff. seems to think). Every dramatic chorus had its aulos-phyer (cf.
nn. 108-09, 112-13), but here too the evidence, much of it from vase-painting,
is more abundant for comedy (Taplin [n. 15] 69-78), the dithyramb (n. 109) and
satyr-play (n. 109) than for tragedy (Taplin [n. 15] 7, 71); see Pickard-Cambridge
(n. 1) 165-67,182-88. Still, the "official ??w/os-player" lurking behind the reference
to the aulos at Tr. 217 is the closest tragic analogue to the "metatheatrical pipers"
of comedy discussed by Taplin 105-10. It may be relevant, given the importance
of the sacrificial theme in Tra. (below, n. 125), that wreaths and pipes were also
among the regular paraphernalia of animal sacrifice; sacrifices X^P1? atuXxov xai
OTE(|)?v(DV were considered abnormal ([Apollod.] Bibl. 3.(210)15.7.4; R. Pfeiffer
on Callim. Aitia fr. 3).
111. The maenadic use of euoi is illustrated by E. Ba. 141 (exclamatory E150?),
157 (Dionysos as Emo? 9eo?), and 68 (eikx?co, cf. S. Ant. 1135). For its self
referential use by tragic and nontragic choruses, see above, n. 105, and Philodamos,
Paian (n. 109) 5, 18, 31, 57, etc., where EtJO? alternates with the paian-cry, as in
S. Tra. 218/221. Cf. Bierl (n. 2) 136 n. 71; K?ppel (n. 28) 223.
112. As Dionysos by T. Zielinski, Philologus 55 (1896) 504 n. 7 (with reference
to the parodos of E. Ba.), Vicaire (n. 20) 354, Stinton (n. 20) 404 ("an ecstatic
dance inspired by Dionysos"), and Schlesier, "Mixtures of Masks" (n. 6) 105; as
Dionysos or the Dionysiac aulos by Easterling (n. 96) on Tra. 217 and Bierl (n.
2) 135f. (the pipe "als Metonymie f?r die Gottheit"); as the aulos by the ancient
scholiast, who is followed by Ellendt (n. 53) 747, Jebb (n. 20) 37 on S. Tra. 217
and Segal (n. 59) 342 n. 24; as Apollo by A. Nauck and F. W. Schneidewin,
Sophokles, vol. 6 (6th ed., Berlin 1891) 52 on Tra. 216f., as well as by LSJ s.
v. TUpawo?.
113. The reed-pipes that accompany choral performances are described else
where as "faithful witnesses of the khoreutai" (Pindar P. 12.27 mOToi xopEUT?v
^lapTUpE?) and "attendant of the Muses" (E. El. 717 Movo?v 0Ep?jt?)v), descrip
tions which assign a less dominant and more auxiliary role to the aulos.
I08 "WHY SHOULD I DANCE?"
114. Dodds (n. 63) 51 n. 3, cf. 95f. n. 89; K. Siers, Die lyrischen Partien
der Choephoren des Aischylos: Text, ?bersetzung, Kommentar (Palingenesia 23,
Stuttgart 1988) 114 on A. Ch. 331. The divine origin of the Tapayjio? is clearly
indicated in passages such as S. fr. 684.3 Radt, E. Hipp. 969 and esp. A. Ag.
1215f. vjt' av \ie ?eiv?? ?p9op,avTE?a? jtovo? OTpo?Ei Tap?aocov (preceded
by 1084 ji?vEi t? 9e?ov ?ouAia JtEp ?v (()p?vi and 1140 4>pEVon,avr|? ti? e?
9EO(|)opT]TO?), on which see Lloyd-Jones (n. 24) 392.
115. Maiva?wv ?va occurs in a Hellenistic epigram on Dionysos from Thasos;
cf. Henrichs (n. 63) 40f. Regarding dance and trance on the tragic stage and in
the cult of Dionysos see the contributions by A. B?lis and M.-H. Delavaud-Roux
in P. Ghiron-Bistagne (ed.), Transe et th??tre (Cahiers du GITA 4, Montpellier
1989) 9-53.
116. E. Tro. 408 ei \ki\ o' ?JioXXcov EÊ?axxEV?EV (|)p?va?, of Kassandra,
who is also characterized as a "maenad" (172, 307 and 349); Vergil Aen. 6.78
bacchatur vates (the Sibyl). Apart from ecstatic states of mind induced by rapid
dancing and Dionysiac instruments such as the pipe (n. 106) and the tympanon,
other means by which Dionysos was believed to affect or transform the human
psyche include wine (Archil, fr. 120.2 West o?vo) ouyxEpauv?)0E?c 4>p?va?, in
connection with the performance of dithyrambs for Dionysos), ritual "madness"
(E. Ba. 33 Jtap?xojioi (|>pEV<?>v, cf. 1122-24, 1269L, 1295), divine epiphany
(Horace, Odes 2.19.5-8, esp. recenti mens tr?pid?t metu), and poetic inspiration
(Horace, Odes 3.25.1-3, esp. velox mente nova). See E. Rohde, Psyche: The Cult
of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks (trans, by W. B. Hillis,
London 1925) 259f., 273-76.
117. Alem?n fr. 1.60-63 Tai IlE?,T]a??? y?p ?ujv . . . v?xTa ?i' aji?pooiav
ote Zripiov ?oTpov ?fTjpouivai jAaxovrai. On the agonistic connotations of
âxovrai, see M. Puelma, Mus. Helv. 34 (1977) 36 n. 66; C. Segal, Mnemosyne
36 (1983) 268 ("a mock-contest... including the toil [line 88 Jt?vcov] of nocturnal
dancing"); Herington (n. 1) 21 (a "lyric contest"); G. Dunkel, "Fighting Words:
Alem?n Partheneion 63 ??axovrai," Journal of Indo-European Studies 7 (1979)
249-72 (who argues for poetic rather than choral competition); D. Clay, QUCC
n.s. 39 (1991) 58-63. C. Ca?ame, Alem?n (Rome 1983) 332, suggests an athletic
or erotic contest, in other words, a footrace or a beauty contest.
118. Cf. E. Alk. 450f. ?eiQO\i?va? Jtavv?xou OEXava?. Lonsdale (n. 1) 202
too connects ?pr|pOjA?vai with the "superior movement of the chor?gos and her
assistant" and notes "the indirect language of the dance."
119. Pindar O. 5.6, N. 9.12, cf. 10.31L, /. 5.6. Choral ?uiMa: [A.] Prom. 129f.
jiTEpijywv 9oa?? ?\iiXkai?; E. /. T. 1143/1147 xopo?? ?' ioTa?Tyv . /. ?? ?\i\Xka?
Xap?TCDV (cf. Lonsdale [n. 1] 194); Philodamos, Paian (n. 109) 132-34 (Apollo)
ETaÊ B?xxou Oua?av xopcov te Ko[Xk(bv] xvxXiav ?\iik\av; Plat. Leg. 834e
?oai ?v ?opTa?? ?fw??ai xop v ?vayxa?ai yiyvE?Gai; schol. Ar. Clouds 311b
(p. 77.20 Koster) oi Aiovuaiaxoi ?ycovE?, ?v o?? ai ?\i\Xkai tujv xopwv; Xen.
Mem. 3.3.12 xop?? . . . tovt?? (se. T?) xop?J) ?c))a^dXo?.
120. Easterling (n. 96) 107; Lloyd-Jones (n. 24) 396; Lloyd-Jones/Wilson (n.
68) 157. Nauck/Schneidewin (n. 112) 52 as well as Jebb (n. 20) 37 rightly insisted on
having it both ways, but they too privileged speed: "die im Tanz geschwungenen,
gleichsam mit einander in Raschheit wetteifernden F??e," and "the Bacchic compe
tition of eager dancers, i.e. the swift dance itself." Kranz (n. 76) 183 fully acknowl
edged the choral and agonistic connotation when he rendered Baxxiav ?fAiXXav
Albert Henrichs 109
as "den bakchischen Wettanz der F??e." While recognizing the reference to choral
dancing, Bierl (n. 2) 136 regards the phrase as a mere "metaphor" for the dance,
as if choral competition had no place in tragedy. Schlesier, "Mixtures of Masks"
(n. 6) 106f., connects Baxxiav au.iXX.av both with competitive choral dancing
and with the "competition" between Deianeira and Iole for the love of Herakles;
she compares E. Hipp. 1140f. vvu^toia . . . AixTpcov auiM,a xoupai?.
121. Pindar fr. 70cl6 ]av Jt?voi xopc?v. Cf. Zimmermann, Dithyrambos (n.
24) 50f. and 62f.
122. Schlesier, "Mixtures of Masks" (n. 6) 107f.; cf. Bierl (n. 2) 136f. On
"paeanic ambiguity" in tragedy see above, n. 100.
123. The phrase avapo?av . . . xavax?v refers "to the use of the aulos on
sad occasions" (Easterling [n. 96] 153). Most interpreters connect ?vapoio? ("not
fitting") either with war ("hostile," the Homeric usage) or with mourning (as
suggested by the scholiast, who comments otJX ?xGp?v ot>?? 9pr|V(DV ?ofjv).
124. G. Markantonatos, "'Tragic Irony' in the Trachiniae of Sophocles," Platon
26 (1974) 73-79, at 78; Segal, Tragedy and Civilization (n. 44) 68, 71f., 93, and
"Time, Oracles and Marriage" (n. 100); Stinton (n. 20) 404, 409.
125. In the scene which follows the celebration of Herakles' victory by the
chorus, Deianeira compares the foaming "love potion" turned poison to must
spuming "from the Bacchic vine" (701-04, an allusion to the grape harvest rather
than to libations of wine). As Hyllos reports fifty lines later, Herakles is consumed
by the poisoned robe while sacrificing a hecatomb of oxen and sheep to Zeus
Kenaios; the slaughter of animals thus functions as the anomalous ritual beginning
(xaTapxeo?at) of the violent death of a human victim, and the sacrificer is in
turn sacrificed (see W. Burkert, GRBS 7, 1966, 116-21, and "Opferritual bei
Sophocles. Pragmatik?Symbolik?Theater," Der altsprachliche Unterricht 18,
1985, 5-20, at 15-17; Segal, Tragedy and Civilization [n. 44] 65-73).
126. A point made by Schlesier, "Mixtures of Masks" [n. 6] 108.
127. The choral performance proper ends at 970; the chorus continues to
intervene twice in the dialogue (1044L, 1112f.; on the closing anapests see Lloyd
Jones/Wilson [n. 68] 177f.). In the Aias (see above) and Herakles, plays in which
choral self-referentiality marks the dramatic crisis, the "choral silence" in the
final scene is even more pronounced (Foley [n. 44] 187).
128. Cf. E. Herakles 673-95, 761-89, 871-98, 1025-28, cf. 925-27, 1303-04;
Tro. 544-59, cf. 325-42, 1071-76; /. T. 427-29, 1143-52; Ion 463, 492-502,
1074-86; Hel. 381-83, 1312-14, 1338-68, 1451-70; Ph. 226-38, 649-56, 784-92,
cf. 1265; and the choral odes of Ba. In all of these choruses, which I have treated
as a group in a related study (n. 26), choral self-referentiality and choral projection
occur in an explicitly Dionysiac context.
129. For a more detailed discussion of the choral dance as a ritual that defines
Elektra's ambivalent status throughout this play, see my "Dancing for Dionysos"
(n. 26).
130. On the "violent contrast" between the sacrifice of Aigisthos and the ritual
crowning of Orestes, see Easterling (n. 44) 101-08.
131. I adopt Diggle's Oxford text, which incorporates the emendations of
Henri Weil and F. H. M. Blaydes. As an alternative, Diggle considers vix?i
OTE(|>ava<|)op?av xpE?oooo Jtap' AX.(()Eio?> pE?Gpoi? teXec?vc?ov, "your brother
has won a crown-winning victory greater than those who have performed crown
winnings by the Alpheios" {PCPhS n. s. 15, 1969, 52f.). The translation follows
IIO "WHY SHOULD I DANCE?"
Cropp (n. 110) 63, except for vnaei?e (Blaydes: EJt- codd.), which he renders
as "sing with my dance." But the connotation of VJtaE??Eiv in epic and choral
poetry is more specific (Ca?ame [n. 1], vol. 1, 154-56; J. Diggle, Studies on the
Text of Euripides, Oxford 1981, 39f.; Nagy [n. 1] 351-53). The chorus invites
Elektra to "sing in support" or "in accompaniment" to its dance-song; ?JiaEiOE
differentiates the supporting role assigned to Elektra from the dominant perfor
mance of the chorus.
132. P. E. Easterling {per litt.).
133. On the performative future, see n. 97.
134. Above, n. 128.
135. For instance, at h. Herrn. 450-52, h. Ap. 188-206. See W. F. Otto, Die
Musen und der g?ttliche Ursprung des Singens und Sagens (Darmstadt 1954)
55f.; Koller (n. 1) 25-35, 58-78; Ca?ame (n. 1), vol. 1, 102-08.
136. S. Ant. 955-65 (discussed above); E. Herakles 673-86 (n. 50); cf. O. K.
668-93 (Kolonos visited by Dionysos and his "divine nurses," and by the "khoroi
of the Muses"), Ba. 409-15, 560-66. On the association of Dionysos and the
Muses, see W. F. Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult (1933, English transi. Blooming
ton/London 1965) 144; Dodds (n. 104) 126 on Ba. 409ff.; Winnington-Ingram
(n. 45) 103 n. 38; K?ppel (n. 28) 243-49, esp. 246 n. 157.
137. E. Ba. 862-76; R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Euripides and Dionysos: An
Interpretation of the Bacchae (Cambridge 1948) 106-08; Segal (n. 5) 34f.
138. E. El. 167-70, 323-31, 494-99, 509-15, and 573f. The Dionysiac associa
tions of most of these passages are discussed by Schlesier, Die tragischen Masken
des Dionysos (n. 6), final chapter.
139. S. O. T. 896~1086ff., Ant. 152ff.~963ff.~1146ff., and Tra. 216ff.~640ff.,
all of which are treated above.
140. The projection of choral dancing continues in the first and second stasimon
with choral dancing of the Nereids (434 xopE?uxrca Nr|pr|t?u)v), choruses of the
stars (467 ?oTpcov t' aiG?pioi X?P??> Qf- l?n 1078-80, S. Ant. 1146f., ), and
dances at Mycenae (712 xopoi).
141. Seaford, "The Eleventh Ode of Bacchylides" (n. 99) 135f. and Reciprocity
and Ritual (n. 5) 384f. Elektra suffers from a fatal lack of ritual remedies?she
is, in her own words, "missing the sacred festivals and deprived of choral dances"
(310 ?v?opTO? LEp v xai xop v TTrccou.?vr|). At the end of the play, she asks:
"Where shall I go, to what choral dance (T?v' e? xop?v), what wedding? What
husband will take me to his marriage bed?" (1198ff.). Her questions suggest that
her isolation from the social roles incumbent upon her age and sex is now
complete; it will take divine intervention to remedy her situation and to find her
a more suitable husband (1249, 1340ff.). Cf. Zeitlin (n. 44) 658f.
142. Translation (adapted) by Emily T. Vermeule, in the Chicago series.
143. Cf. Connor (n. 4) 21 on the self-referential mode of E. El. 859ff., 873ff.
and Herakles 763t?., 781ff.: "In passages such as these Greek tragedy may adapt
and reflect its festival setting."
144. Ca?ame (n. 81) 142.
145. I am grateful to Claude Ca?ame, Eric Csapo, Patricia Easterling, Herbert
Golder, Gregory Nagy, Michael Haslam, Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Hayden Pelliccia,
Renate Schlesier, Stephen Scully, Richard Seaford, Charles Segal, Bernd Seiden
sticker, Florence Verducci, and Froma Zeitlin for numerous suggestions, of which
I have made ample use; to Anton Bierl, C. A. Faraone, and Scott Scullion for
Albert Henrichs 111
sharing their unpublished work with me; and to Carolyn Dewald for generous
criticism and support throughout the writing of this paper.

Why Should I Dance - Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Why Should I Dance - Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Trustees of Boston University

"Why Should I Dance?": Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy

Trustees of Boston University, Trustees of Boston University through its publication

How can we know the dancer from the dance?

An the beginning, there was the "chorus"?a collec

edy and its chorus more concretely in the contemporary

In this paper I propose to apply this new understanding of the

every ritual performed verbally by a tragic or comic chorus takes

Athenaios recreates an ambience of animated choral performance

Unlike Sophocles, Aeschylus invested some of his choruses with

the powers of the underworld (623-80). In Seven against Thebes

aye ?f] xai %oqov ?i|>a)|i?v, ercei

Come let us join in the dance {khoros),

our grisly song

The Erinyes initiate their provocative choral performance by

as performers of the khoreia in the orchestra. What follows is

Over our victim

a bloodthirsty X(b|Lio? of revellers drunk on human blood and

Eumenides, the dramatic scenario that precedes the intervention

I now come to what is arguably the best remembered and least

concerns broadens as their sense of religious crisis intensifies. So

instances of choral self-reference: "They are completely involved,

themselves to be singing and dancing in another time and place,

its dramatic status doubtful. For a Greek audience, a world with

as a citizen of the polis, but as a self-conscious performer of the

dancing is overtaken by the revelations onstage, which confirm

e?jteo ?yo) (x?vxi? ei

The same chorus who, in the parodos, invoked Dionysos as "the

(xe xooeveiv; now adopts a dubious prophetic stance and promises

than any other chorus in tragedy, represents the close interconnec

It has long been recognized that the other Sophoclean choruses

?(f)Qi^' ?ocoxi, jteoixaofj? ?' ?vejrx?uxxv.

Jtexoaia? ?jr? ?eio??o? ^?vrjO', cb

I thrill with excitement, I take wings for joy.

The Salaminian sailors, overjoyed by what they perceive as

to a ritual setting at once more distant and imaginary. Similar

in nocturnal dancing, while giving pride of place to Dionysos

Let us approach all the temples

The choral performance, located in the orchestra and projected

jia?eoxe uiv y?o ?vO?ou?

For he tried to stop the divinely inspired

The enthusiastic women associated with the "Bacchic fire" are

l(b JT?Q jtveovxcav

jta? A?o? y?veOXov, jipo^avriO',

I?, chorus-leader {khor?gos) of the

The juxtaposition of tcvq Jtve?vxcov x?p?y' ?oxQi?v and vvx???v

Although the members of this chorus verbally engage in Diony

Let the house raise a cry of exultation {anololuxat?)

And therein let the collective

The language of ritual performance is very marked in these lines

tures. Critics have noted the mixture of alalag? and ololug?, of

allouai ov?' ajroaaouxxi

I am lifted up {airomai), nor shall I reject

whirling me round now

Nowhere else in Sophoclean tragedy does choral self-referentiality

siac role-playing and choral performance.111 By exhibiting an

as early as Alem?n, and it does so, significantly, in the context

designed to mark a change in the dramatic mood by a shift in

? xaMx?oac x?x' vuxv a?X?? o?x avaoa?av

The chorus awaits the imminent return of Herakles after his

Sophoclean choruses who define their choral identity self-refer

O?? ?? x?Qov> d) (j?a, ?xvo?, ob? ve?poc ouo?viov

Set your foot dancing {khoros), dear friend, fawn-like

The prevailing poetic mode of this chorus is epinician rather