across the whole earth. The Theban elders reminisce how they were taught to sing and dance by the Muses at a remote time long before Heracles’ apotheosis. The difference between these representations and Plato’s version in the Laws is that there the Athenian projects the choral interaction of the Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus with young and old choreuts to a future set in (fictional) Magnesia. This envisaged interaction in an imaginary city was not totally novel, however, but was rooted in religious belief and inspired by cultic practice. Festivals such as the Theoxenia where mortals were hosting the gods and choruses were singing and dancing in their honor evoked and reenacted the times when mortals enjoyed the company of the gods. Some of Pindar’s theoxenic songs have survived: the Third Olympian that conjures up the celebration of Theron’s Olympic victory at the Theoxenia of Dioscuri in Acragas, the Sixth Paean for the Delphic Theoxenia, and Dithyramb 75, evoking the xenismos of Dionysus in his small sanctuary in the Academy. In what follows we shall look briefly at the paean and the dithyramb.
Pindar’s Sixth Paean was composed for performance in the Delphic Theoxenia. The song-dance begins with the Chorus’ prayer to golden Pytho to welcome them along with the Charites and Aphrodite in this most holy time:
Πρὸς Ὀλυμπίου Διός σε, χρυ[σέ]α
κλυτόμαντι Πυθοῖ,
λίσσομαι Χαρίτεσ-
σίν τε καὶ σὺν Ἀφροδίται,
ἐν ζαθέωι με δέξαι χρόνωι
ἀοίδιμον Πιερίδων προφάταν.
(Pae. 6.1–6)
In the name of Olympian Zeus, I beseech you, golden Pytho famous for seers welcome me along with the Graces and Aphrodite in this holy time, the songful prophet of the Pierians.
(trans. Race modified)
In the light of the theoxenic occasion, I suggest that the arrival of the Charites and Aphrodite retains here its literal meaning as well.56 In other words the male chorus imagine that they arrive at a holy time, when divine guests, in this instance the Charites and Aphrodite, are also invited and expected. The simultaneous arrival and reception conjures up the image of choral interaction of Pindar’s male chorus with the Charites and Aphrodite. After a reference to the recurrent performances of Delphian priestesses and a lacuna of about 30 lines, the choreuts sing a brief praise of the Muses’ omniscience and ask them to hear their song (58). In the missing lines (19–49) the chorus sang of a divine strife, if we are to judge from l.50, “whence the immortals’ strife began…” The gods who were said to have quarreled were probably thought to be present in the Theoxenia, as were also the Muses, despite the absence of any indication other than the chorus’ request κλῦτε νῦν. Be that as it may, the nature of the festival leaves no doubt that the paeanic chorus performed for a mixed audience, human and divine, who gathered together at Delphi.
A dithyramb that Pindar composed for the Athenians begins with an invitation to the Olympians and come and join the chorus who are dancing for Dionysus (Dithyramb 4, fr. 75.1–19):
Come to the chorus, Olympians, and send over it glorious grace, you gods who are coming to the city’s crowded, incense-rich navel in holy Athens and to the glorious, richly adorned agora. Receive wreaths of plaited violets and the songs plucked in springtime, and look upon me with favor as I proceed from Zeus with splendor of songs secondly to that ivy-knowing god, whom we mortals call Bromios and Eriboas as we sing of the offspring of the highest of fathers and of Cadmeian women. Like a seer, I do not fail to notice the clear signs, when, as the chamber of the purple-robed Horai is opened, the nectar-bearing flowers bring in the sweet-smelling spring. Then, then, upon the immortal earth are cast the lovely tresses of violets, and roses are fitted to hair and voices of songs echo to the accompaniment of pipes and choruses come to Semele of the circling headband.
(trans. Race)
There is broad consensus that Pindar composed this song-dance for the Dionysia, but various reconstructions have been offered concerning the timing of this performance within the festival and its locale in Athens.57 The invitation of the gods to come and join the chorus suggests that Pindar may have had Dionysus’ xenismos in mind, which took place in the god’s small sanctuary in the Academy.58 Most scholars think of the great Dionysiac procession as the performance context, and specifically the altar of the twelve gods in the old Agora, whose location before the Persian wars, however, has now been suggested to be east of the Acropolis.59 It is possible that Pindar telescoped two different events and venues, i.e., the arrival and the xenismos of Dionysus in the Academy and the great procession that opened the festival in the Agora. Whether the chorus performed this song-dance at the sanctuary of Dionysus in the Academy, or in the old Agora, or even in the theater, Pindar conjured up a beautiful image where the Olympians were invited to join the mortal choreuts in song and dance in the most relaxing occasion, the spring festival in honor of Dionysus. As the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Pindar’s dithyramb offers yet another precious representation of mortals and immortals as united in choral dance and feasting as συγχορευταὶ and συνεορτασταί.
Epilogue
The preceding discussion focused on the great masters of the archaic and early classical period and their choral compositions for female and male choruses at the apogee of the song-dance culture. Choral activity does not of course die with Pindar. As Ewen Bowie has argued, choral activity remains a marker of Greek identity well into the Roman period.60 What survives however suggests that by the end of the fifth century Pindar’s compositions were already “silent” (according to Eupolis because of people’s indifference to beauty).61 The fractures through our scant and fragmentary evidence suggest that women had a more important role both as choreuts and chorodidaskaloi in the artistic and cultic life of the Greek cities than our surviving evidence allows us to establish. There must have been countless gifted women who, like Andaisistrota, trained young girls but only one, Sappho, made it to the canon of the nine lyric poets and was considered the tenth Muse. The various angles on the theme of the aging poet/chorodidaskalos must have reflected the anxiety professional poets felt at the prospect of reaching an age when they could no longer teach and lead choruses. It was not simply an anxiety at quitting a profession. We have seen that comparisons of the performance of female choruses with the irresistible appeal of the Sirens revealed the inspiration and the pleasure that the chorodidaskaloi derived from their interaction with choruses, and that inspiration and pleasure is something they would miss. In the archaic and early classical period choral instruction had a divine model, on the pedagogical significance of which Plato capitalized later. The Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus were believed to be the mortals’ fellow-choreuts and fellow-celebrants. This privileged relationship of human choruses with the gods had important implications for their cultic authority and musical virtuosity, for like the poets, choruses could also claim that their art had divine origin.
FURTHER READING
Claude Calame’s work on choruses is still the basic work of reference (2001). Mullen 1982 focuses on Pindar, but the first two chapters are of interest to students of choral performance in general. Stehle 1997 is a reading of poetry performed on communal occasions and at the symposium and is informed by gender and performance theory. Kowalzig 2007 is a demonstration of the importance of the choral performance of myth and ritual for the life of the polis, and its power to effect social change on the local and Panhellenic level. Athanassaki 2009b, an extensive part of which has been subsequently published in English in the form of updated articles, considers the art displayed
