SOURCE: Adrados, Francisco R. “From Agricultural Festival to Theatre.” In Festival, Comedy and Tragedy: The Greek Origins of Theatre, pp. 319-68. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1975.

[In the following excerpt, originally published in Spanish in 1972, Adrados contends that tragedy developed from agricultural rituals and festivals and that Thespis, if he ever existed, was more of a refiner than an inventor of the genre.]

1. FESTIVAL AND LYRIC. UNITY AND DIFFERENTIATION OF LYRIC. THESPIS

1.

Greek Lyric as a whole was influenced by Epic, a profane genre from a remote epoch, though not without traces, which will not concern me here, of a religious origin. But Lyric directly originated from those elements of ritual in which dance, words, and music played a part. In several of its genres the dance was lost, and so too, to a large extent, was the mimesis which at first often accompanied it. A greater and greater emphasis was given, especially in genres like Elegy and Iambic Poetry, to words at the expense of music. The lyric genres arose from hymns and threnoi and fragments of verse dialogue of different kinds, from exhortation to insult and sarcasm. It arose in Agricultural Festival, and continued in celebrations derived from that, like the sporting celebrations and the symposium.

It is not possible to go into the details of this process here. It could not indeed be reconstructed in detail except conjecturally. It was a process of differentiation, in which certain forms and certain contents tended to combine. In some cases, it is true, the association of special forms and contents must undoubtedly have taken place at the very beginning.

2.

Ancient Lyric was pervaded by a whole collection of elements, revelry and eroticism, attack and violence, exhortation of various kinds, hymnody, thoughts on human conduct—misfortune and its causes in man and city, behaviour under misfortune—and made its selection among them according to the genre and the circumstances and the poet's temperament. They are the same elements we have found in Theatre, classified according to genre, though sometimes with transitions between the genres.

So the individual personalities did play their part in the process of specialization of the genres in form and content, but they operated from a large traditional groundwork. This is what we must bear in mind in forming an opinion on the ‘inventions’ of Arion and Thespis. Not only the scholars of literary history, but also the Alexandrian scholars have at one time or another made a strong point of the ‘inventors’. All that this word means is that a certain genre or type of poem or metre is found attested for the first time in the writings of a certain author. He is called ‘inventor’, though all he did was to give a literary character to elements already existing in popular tradition. Sometimes, it is true, he introduced definite modifications or combinations of the elements. But probably the more usual case was that the Alexandrian critic simply failed to reckon with the possibility that the genre or element in question may have existed in literature before he knew of it. The science of the theoreticians of ‘invention’ is purely negative. They note the author in whose work, so far as they know, a certain element made its first literary appearance. These theoreticians were of great authority in Hellenistic scholarship. There are treatises ‘On Inventions’ (Peri heurematon) by Ephorus, Heraclides Ponticus, Theophrastus, and Straton of Lampsacus.¹

The passage of the Suda on Arion, derived ultimately from this type of scholarship, must be understood in this sense. Nothing could be more mistaken than to combine its entries into one in the manner of Wilamowitz. The Suda says Arion was ‘the first to make the chorus stationary’ (khoron stesai), ‘and sang the Dithyramb, and gave a name to what was sung by the chorus, and introduced satyrs speaking verses’. It is quite clear that what was attributed to him were choruses of satyrs who spoke or sang, which means that before him the satyr chorales were not literary, not that they did not exist, much less that they were satyr plays in the sense that they also involved the appearance of heroes. As for the phrase we are considering, there is nothing to tell us that it really referred to a simple invention. In that case, the ‘invention’ would have consisted in Arion's making the Dithyramb literary by means of two innovations, first, by transforming it into the song of a stationary chorus, not a processional one such as the primitive Dithyramb seems to have been …, and secondly, by giving a name to each dithyramb, which presupposes independent themes and therefore the adoption of heroic legend. But perhaps his ‘stopping the chorus’—making it stationary—refers to the introduction of choruses which sang without movement, and were not circular. Perhaps it should be combined, as Patzer requires, with the record that Arion invented ‘the tragic mode’. … What is quite clear is that both the ‘stationary chorus’ (that which sang stasima) and the satyr dances were more ancient than Arion (despite Herodotus I 23). Arion may have given a literary character to the satyr dances or written chorales for ‘stationary’ choruses, which adopted a mode called tragic from its likeness to that of later Tragedy, or he may likewise have written dithyrambs on heroic themes, to be sung perhaps by ‘stationary’ choruses. That is all. To attribute to him the invention of Tragedy, and beyond that of the Dithyramb and Satyric Drama, is more than the data warrant. His innovations in traditional dance and poetry were much more limited than that.

3.

The same must be said of Thespis, the ‘inventor’ of Tragedy (Diogenes Laertius III 56). The truth is that our sources presuppose the previous existence of the chorus and tell us that Thespis introduced the first actor, or introduced the rhesis and the prologue. He himself played the hypokrites or actor.² But also we are told that Thespis, like his successors Pratinas and Phrynicus, was called orkhestes ‘professional dancer’, like the members of the chorus.³ Another source⁴ speaks of a hypokrites at an earlier date than Thespis, someone who ‘responded’ to the chours raised upon an eleos, perhaps an altar. Where are we then? What was in fact the ‘invention’ of Thespis, who by others is connected in some way with the festival of Icaria?

The fixed datum is that Thespis, whether this is a proper name or, as claimed by Koller, the generic name of the kitharoidos, the one who sang to the kithara, was attested as the first winner of the tragic contest. Another sure datum is the existence in Tragedy of elements which separate it from choral lyric—a fixed actor, one, that is, who did not sing (except in lyrical dialogue, of course) but only spoke, and within these spoken lines two types of passages consisting of long stanzas, the actor's prologue and the rhesis (especially that of the Messenger). This is not incompatible with the possibility that in ritual choruses the exarkhon and even several chorists might on occasion assume an individuality and ‘respond to’ or question or address the chorus, and this either as detached members of the chorus or as independent mimetic characters. Hence the confusion in calling Thespis ‘dancer’ or his predecessors ‘actors’. What was really new was that the ‘actor’ was no longer a chorist, and was never reabsorbed into the chorus, and that his speeches were much longer than those of the exarkhon or chorist, who in the rituals could simply detach himself momentarily from the chorus and confront it. The innovation was no doubt influenced by the iambographoi and Epic. But to disregard the phase in which there was dialogue chorus/exarkhon (or several exarkhontes) and reduce it all to a synthesis of choral Lyric not in dialogue and Ionic non-choral speech is to lose historical perspective. This loss of perspective is certainly to be explained in part by the virtual disappearance of dialogue from literary lyric.

The ‘invention’ of Thespis is thus the retouching of an already existing tradition, nothing more. Therefore, if we wish to study the origins of Tragedy, we must first of all try to reconstruct that tradition, which is what I have tried to do …. Once we have achieved this, we shall see, paradoxically, that though on the one hand the ‘inventions’ of Thespis were not of such wide range as they were held out to be, there were, on the contrary, inventions without which Tragedy is unthinkable, and to which the authorities have scarcely called attention. To see what is common to Theatre and Ritual, and the points of difference between the Theatre genres and the ritual combinations is the best way to answer the question of origins. It will answer not only the question of origins but also what characteristics of form and content were to be found in Theatre and the ritual genres, how much they had in common, and how far they were distinct.

2. FROM AGRICULTURAL FESTIVAL TO TRAGEDY: DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

1.

Out of the vast multitude of the agricultural rituals a new kind of contest, Theatre, emerged. The model, without doubt, was that of the musical competitions of choral lyric and the source of its content was the same lyric, competitive or not, after it had been progressively invaded by epic and heroic material. The Dithyramb itself, of Arionic type, was in this sense a model. More and more the festivals tended, apart from their religious nucleus of sacrifices, pompai, or common meals, to centre on sporting or musical contests in which the competitors were specialists. Thespis or Peisistratus devised for the Great Dionysia something which, while on these general lines, was substantially different—Tragedy. But to create anything new we must necessarily draw on traditional sources. Out of the agricultural rituals there arose, in a first phase, Literary Lyric, and in a second, Theatre. In Theatre, Tragedy was first, and once invented could count on the continued supporting influence of Literary Lyric and Epic. There was, moreover, as I think, an intermediate phase, the performance of the tragoidoi ….

The creation of a new genre involved a double process. On the one hand, a series of elements was assembled and made homogeneous; on the other, they were differentiated from the great mass of those preceding them. This mass, or parts of it, could later become polarized in respect of the genre thus created, so as to be not only its foundation but in a certain sense its opposite, complementary to it. This is what happened with Comedy.

The whole of Theatre, in respect of the agricultural festivals from which it arose, presents certain distinctive features. Their origin may be either that the very idea of Theatre itself occasioned a selection from the rituals or that the first genre to be created, Tragedy, imposed itself subsequently as a model. Either solution may be correct, according to the case, or it may remain doubtful which is correct. It may also happen that there was one feature common to both, but present in one genre without exceptions and in the other with exceptions. Thus Tragedy and Comedy were mimetic, but there were exceptions in Comedy (the parabasis, the chorus addressing a member of the audience or the operator of the stage machinery). In the Festival the non-mimetic part was much more extensive. On the other hand, the theatre genres had distinctive features. But these features had greater or less generality according to the case. For instance, there was a predominance of the lyre in Tragedy and of the flute in Comedy. This predominance was not, so far as we know, a law without exceptions. In such cases the phenomenon is easily interpreted diachronically. Tragedy selected from among the numerous rituals the lyre accompaniment and Comedy selected the flute, by polarization. But as a contrary example, the threnos was by definition a song that could not be accompanied by the lyre and was accompanied by the flute.

2.

Let us begin our account of the differences between Agricultural Festival and Theatre from the point of view of Tragedy, the first to be instituted. In that context we will put references to Comedy. It is partly a matter of things already noted which we now set in order.

The Festival contained human and non-human elements, mimetic and non-mimetic, spoken or unspoken. Mimesis was sometimes heroic, sometimes not; sometimes komoi of specialists took part, sometimes the whole populace. There might be one or more komoi, with professional dancing, circular or ‘stationary’, with lyre or flute. Sometimes it was mournful, sometimes joyous, licentious, burlesque. For their recently instituted contest Peisistratus or Thespis abstracted certain elements from among these, rejected others. But the general sense of search for the salvation of the city continued. And there continued also certain general schemes, like that of the breaking of bounds and the looking-glass world, and others more specific, like the combination of the themes of marriage and death or death and resurrection, and that both in Tragedy and in Comedy. And there were also, of course, the agones or confrontations. In Comedy there always appeared two principles in confrontation. In Tragedy, too, this was usual (though one of them remained off stage in the Persae and the Seven), while the role of the chorus was reduced in these agones. Comedy, being simpler, scarcely (except in the theme of rejuvenation or cure) offered the ambiguity which we find in Tragedy and which was inherited no doubt from Festival—heroes who triumph and then die or are ruined, like Agamemnon and Oedipus. Hence came the ambiguity in the function of the chorus. Comedy, in return, had a greater wealth of themes, and exploited the possibility of creating hypostases and using non-mimetic elements.

While in Festival there was this whole range of possible alternatives, in Tragedy we find a komos composed of specialists called tragoidoi, and in more ancient times doubtless, tragoi. If there was a people to be represented, it was they who represented it. This komos sang and danced and its members could also speak, in dialogue of the type coryphaeus/chorus or actor/chorus. But while in the rituals we must imagine one or more exarkhontes occasionally impersonating, by mimesis, various beings, or even the same exarkhon several in succession, here we have an actor who was that only, an actor. Then, with Aeschylus and Sophocles, there were two or three actors. It need hardly be said that every non-human, non-mimetic element, not directly linked with the complex dance-song-music, had been eliminated.

It is important to realize the extraordinary limitations which had to be overcome in transforming the agricultural rituals into competitive plays interpreted by a chorus and an actor who was already not a member of it. The rites involving an intrachoral action (chorus/coryphaeus or Leader of Chorus) were not difficult to incorporate in such a scheme. Nor were those of agon chorus/Opponent (extrachoral action), since the chorus, led by the exarkhon, was confronted with the actor. If there were two actors, the Leader of Chorus, too, or else a secondary character, could be brought on stage with a personality distinct from that of the chorus. But even with two actors (in Aeschylus) the opposition of two choruses was impossible to bring on stage. One of them had to remain at a distance and be known solely from the Messenger's narratives, as the besiegers of Thebes in Aeschylus' Seven. At most the chorus could be divided into two, but this happened only sporadically, in a few special scenes …. This was a handicap which Tragedy was born with, by reason of its parallelism with musical competitions between choruses. That of having only one actor was due, at the very beginning, to the fact that it was the poet, split off from the exarkhon, who filled this role. Moreover, the same chorus might have to perform four successive actions one after the other, an inheritance from the versatility of the festival komoi.

3.

Yet other limitations were the following. The chorus entered and left the theatre in a processional march, which for the Greeks was a dance, called respectively parodos and exodos, ‘entrance’ and ‘exit’ as we might translate them. This was normal. A komos—which the chorus of Tragedy was—was a chorus which changed place to perform a ritual action. Then, once inside the orchestra, the chorus sang stasima, songs, that is, performed by a square chorus which did not change place, and which at the time of Aeschylus, we are told, was made up of twelve chorists. Evidently the very idea of competition implied some regimentation. Moreover there was a tendency for Tragedy to become distinct from Dithyramb, the latter becoming, despite its origin, non-mimetic, while Dithyramb was danced in a circle (an innovation attributed to Lasus) and Tragedy in stasima.

Moreover I believe the very meaning of stasimon must be subject to some doubt. As far back as the archaic period, dances are known in which a circular chorus danced, without changing place, dances which have been called stasima.⁵ We know also of square choruses (Athenaeus 179 F, on the Lakonistai of Sparta). It is no less certain that the immense majority of Greek dances, with the exception of the individual dances of orgiastic or acrobatic type, and of the pyrrhike, were circular, both the threnoi and the dances in honour of a deity (around the altar, the statue, or the exarkhon representing the deity), and many of the Dionysian dances. The term khoros was used primarily of circular dances.⁶ It is easy to suppose, indeed, that the generalization of the stasimon had something to do with an increase in the singing role, which is difficult to reconcile with an agitated circular dance. But on the other hand it can happen that the term stasimon, used only by Aristotle in the Poetics, simply contrasts the dances inside the orchestra with those of entrance and exit (parodos and exodos). There is nothing certain about our interpretation of the khoron stesai of the Suda or the name of the poet Stesichorus, which has also been quoted in support of it. And there is no doubt that at least some of the dances inside the orchestra, threnodic dances like that of Agave (Bacchae) or Heracles (Heracles), agones of pursuit or search like those of the Ajax or Rhesus, must have had elements of movement. Nor do I think that the circular dance, also with movement, can be excluded entirely. The dance of the Satyrs round the flame in the satyr play of Aeschylus, Prometheus Fire-Bringer, cannot be thought of in any other way. In Tragedy, when the centre of the orchestra was occupied by an altar or grave, this was evidently the archaic practice—for an instance of a funeral we may recall the march of the Achaeans around the pyre of Patroclus—and it would not be strange that it should have continued.⁷

4.

Another characteristic of Tragedy is that it seems to have dispensed with the hyporchematic chorales, known from the time of Homer, in which a chorus danced and a separate performer⁸ sang. Another was the predominance in it, we are told, of a kind of dance called emmeleia (by contrast with the kordax of Comedy and the sikinnis of Satyric Drama), a dance that Plato Laws 814 e ff. includes among the spoudaia or ‘serious’ dances which he opposes to those of Comedy. Some authors have sought to identify the emmeleia with the tragikos tropos or ‘tragic mode’ the invention of which was attributed by the Suda to Arion (and which Patzer, p. 58, understands, by rather a stretch of meaning, as ‘tragic genre’). But the attribution of the three kinds of dance to the three kinds of theatre, which derives from Lucian,⁹ seems to err on the side of precision. A peaceful dance, as Plato characterizes the emmeleia without connecting it with Tragedy, certainly could not be adapted to all its passages. Alongside the tendency of the Theatre genres to become opposed to one another by the generalization of certain internal features of each, there is an exaggerated tendency of Theatre critics, ancient and modern, to consider these generalizations as having no exceptions, and to lay down rigid boundaries against all the evidence.

But let us continue with the chorales of Tragedy. One great innovation, shared in this case with the other Theatre genres, was the generalization of strophic responsion. We find it also at times in the Dithyramb, as in Pindar. What Theatre did was to generalize it, though not without exceptions. In Tragedy we find specifically traces of an epodic structure and another equivalent to it but more archaic, in which the strophe and antistrophe were followed by a refrain sung by the whole chorus—both especially in Aeschylus. From K. Münscher's investigation¹⁰ it follows that strophic responsion, with or without a refrain after strophe and antistrophe and sometimes with an epode at the end of the whole series, was more ancient in Aeschylus, together with the epirrhemata of strophic type. An independent triad appears for the first time at the end of the Seven, and this type was found also in the Agamemnon. It gives the impression of having been an innovation, as of course too were the compositions based on a mesode, that is, of type a b a', sometimes complicated in different ways.

Apart from this, there are isolated strophes, especially at the beginning of an agon chorus/actor and in those I have called agones of presence …. The impression given is that strophic responsion was an innovation originating in agones between two choruses or semichoruses, whether of real confrontation, purely ritual or playful confrontation (epithalamia, flower dances), or competition. The same can be said of the epodic structure. Theatre generalized the first, no doubt in its exploitation of the reduced role of dances of circular movement.

5.

Features which characterize Tragedy in opposition to other genres concern the stage appearance of the actors—mask, cothurnus, and flowing tunic down to the feet.

In regard to the mask, it is clear that the absence, so far as we know, of masks of heroes and gods in rituals of ‘serious’ type, threnodic or not, is the most serious difficulty encountered in linking the heroic cult with Tragedy. When we do find the masks of Dionysus or Demeter, they are objects of cult with a reduced role. Around the mask of Dionysus the Lenai danced, they offered it drink in the Lenaea. The mask of Demeter Cydaria was used by the priest in an annual ceremony of evocation …. Hence Patzer's solution, deriving Tragedy from a heroic, non-mimetic dithyramb which adopted mimesis and the mask from Satyric Drama.

My position … has been that a strict distinction must be made between mimesis and the use of the mask. We know rituals of heroic type in which there was mimesis and others which could easily be interpreted as mimetic. What is not found in them is the mask. Nor was the mask obligatory in rituals of non-heroic type, far from it. Neither the Maenads, nor the ‘fat men’, nor the dancers in the many Peloponnesian dances wore the mask. The innovation of Thespis was therefore as follows: he generalized the mimetic komoi, expanding those which already existed with elements taken from Lyric and Literary Lyric and Epic, and he visualized this mimesis with the help of the mask. But he did not necessarily or exclusively take the mask from the satyrs—from them, of course, but also from divine masks like those mentioned and human masks like those we know from the Peloponnese. Certainly the mask is linked in its origins with the half terrible, half grotesque nature of the dead and the underworld deities, divinities of life renewed in due season. Once given to the Olympian deities and the heroes of Epic, it was bound to lose these features and ‘become serious’.

From as early as 470 b.c. we have a fragment of an Attic vase figuring a boy holding one of these ‘serious’ masks.¹¹ Ancient tradition attributes the ‘invention’ of the mask to Thespis. According to the Suda he first made up his face with whitelead, then covered it with purslane and finally introduced masks of linen. The Suda also attributes other innovations to Cherylus and Phrynicus, crediting the first with the introduction of masks of women.¹² Once more we see what the ‘inventions’ of Thespis and his successors consisted of, the generalization of already existing elements, even the use of whitelead, which we are told was used by the choruses of Titans. Starting from the fact that the tragic komoi were mimetic and that certain mimetic komoi used the mask, the mask was also attributed to the tragic komoi, by suitable modifications of existing types. That of the old woman, the old man, and the young man already existed, for instance, in the sanctuary of Orthia.

6.

Other distinctive features concerned the cloak and the cothurnus of tragic actors. The long flowing cloak with sleeves undoubtedly derived¹³ from its use in the festivals of the time of Peisistratus. Hence came its use also by the priests of Eleusis. The cothurnus came from the cult of Dionysus. It was no doubt adopted when Tragedy was included in the festival of Dionysus and considered as a Dionysian genre, in order to emphasize the intimacy of this connection.

Let us consider for a moment, as we are discussing the distinctive features of Tragedy, its language.¹⁴ We have seen that a distinctive trait may come either from the generalization of one among many existing in the agricultural rituals, or from the retention of an archaism (the tragic actor's cloak), or from the introduction from outside of some element considered suitable for the new genre (the cothurnus and the mask). The same thing happens with language.

The language of the spoken lines of Tragedy is, as we know, fundamentally Attic, but with certain special features sometimes designated as Ionic, doubtless owing to the theory that the iambics of Tragedy derived from the Ionic iambographoi. In an article published some years ago¹⁵ I showed that, so far as vocabulary was concerned, Tragedy continued to use a series of terms that were customary in Athens at the end of the sixth century. Archaism served, as so often, as a mark of distinction and elevation of style. If in some cases these archaisms continued in later use in Ionia, this would only strengthen the character of remoteness, distant from the colloquial, in Tragedy. The theory can easily be generalized to morphological and syntactical features which also were simply archaisms.

Against this the chorales of Tragedy were written, as is well known, in the language, more or less authentically pure Doric, of choral Lyric. It is quite clear that when, on the creation of Tragedy, the chorales of the agricultural ritual were expanded into the grand, majestic chorales of Tragedy of Aeschylean type, the model taken was Doric or dorizing choral Lyric. This was entirely logical, since no other model existed.¹⁶ Thus was achieved, once again, a character apart, elevated and sacred, for the new genre.

A parallel case was that of metre. For the iambic trimeter and stichic verses in general, Tragedy and Comedy developed characteristics which separated them from one another and from the Ionic lyricists. As for the chorales, … it was made clear that there were starting points common to Tragedy and Comedy which without any doubt derived from ritual, but that the two genres developed choral structures peculiar to themselves.

7.

The distinctive features of Tragedy, whatever their origin, cannot be explained solely by the necessity of characterizing the form and content of a new-born genre. The differentiation, in this case, tended to confer on Tragedy a character more elevated, apart, to establish it as the highest manifestation of the splendour of the city, a meditation on the ultimate problems of humanity focussed in the light of religion. Heroes and gods are met with again, at the end of time, in Athens, at the festival of Dionysus. Tragedy is an act of cult of the city, it deals with city themes, it teaches the Athenian people and seeks, implicitly and even explicitly, abundance, peace, and happiness for it. It is already a ‘Ludus’, literature. But it is still at the same time a sacred thing. And if the literary genres seek to characterize themselves by language, to give birth to words as great as the ideas and thoughts they express, to speak with Aeschylus (Aristophanes Frogs 1059), the sacred also seeks to characterize itself by language, to remove itself from trivial things of every day. In language, as in its costumes and characterization and choral dances, Tragedy was born as a thing apart. But as a thing apart, it distinguished itself through the use of elements to be found, sometimes in the rituals from which it began, sometimes in the retention of archaisms from its time of origin, sometimes in particular aspects of the innovations which it adopted, whether in the spirit of Dionysus or of already existing literary genres.

3. ORIGIN OF TRAGEDY AND SATYRIC DRAMA

1.

I have prepared the ground by showing what Tragedy did not take from the agricultural festivals and those elements it did adopt as distinctive features, by generalization of particulars derived from the festivals or by taking them from other sources. We have seen that, based as they were on competitions between komoi and on mimetic komoi with heroic themes, the innovations of Thespis, or whatever individuals were concealed under this name, were somewhat limited—the fission of the exarkhon, giving rise to the actor, the reinforcement of mimesis with the mask, taken from non-heroic rituals, the selection from among various possibilities of the chorales, with subsequent generalizations more or less complete, the adoption of adventitious elements which, like the mask itself, did no more than amplify or perfect those already present (iambic and trochaic rheseis, ‘Doric’ chorales, costume).

But stress must be laid on the actual nucleus of Tragedy, derived as it was from the agricultural rituals which, without any doubt, were the model for its creation, by means of selection, generalization, and addition. These rituals cannot be reduced to a single type or localized in a particular place, for Tragedy was an individual creation, starting from a variety of particulars in different festivals.

For beneath the ‘inventions’ of Thespis Tragedy was conditioned by deeper factors. Tragedy and Satyric Drama were performed by the so-called tragoidoi, from which the name Tragedy derived. At an earlier date we have reason to conjecture that these tragoidoi were called simply tragoi ‘he-goats’ …. We likewise conjecture that this word designated a whole series of ‘mythical communities’ whose members were at other times called satyrs. It has been noted that this use of the word differs from later uses, in which tragos is in fact the he-goat and the Satyr is distinguished from the Silenus and the non-theriomorphic ‘fat men’. These tragoi I say, performed Tragedies and Satyric Dramas. The name, in its ancient usage, was well adapted to the second (and undoubtedly also to other komoi), badly to Tragedy. But we have the fact that the performers of satyr plays were the same as those of Tragedy, though they take the name of the former, not the latter. Here we have not an ‘invention’ of Thespis or of anyone else, but simply a historical fact. Certain dancers—or to call them by their Greek name, orkhestai—specialized in heroic productions, with or without tragoi, but took the name of tragoi, more picturesque, more useful as a generic name for the dancers. There is no collective noun which embraces all the choruses of Tragedy. So tragoi was used instead.

Peisistratus or Thespis, let us say, operated with a previously existing troop of professional dancers who had specialized in heroic ballets. Before that there were satyr dances, there were agricultural rituals referring to heroic Myth and felt as a mimesis of heroic legend. I have given examples. Heroic Myth more and more penetrated the ancient agricultural rituals, starting from the identification of the agricultural hero—a hypostasis of the vegetation that dies—with the epic hero, and of the mythical communities, transformed into votaries of agricultural gods, with the companions or subjects of the heroes of legend. The tragoi or tragoidoi specialized in dances with these themes. They and Thespis continued a process already begun before, breathing epic content and literary lyric form into ritual schemes which thus became completed, perfected. The task was easy, since that was where Lyric came from. It was only necessary to use it to expand the points of ritual in which it originated. The remaining ‘inventions’ of Thespis were, from this point, a purely logical development.

2.

On the other hand, I have already explained that Satyric Drama, placed at the end of the tragic trilogy, performed a function of which there were manifold examples in Festival. The ‘serious’ element is followed by the burlesque element. And since Satyric Drama and Tragedy coincide in their heroic theme, it is inferred that their origins were inseparable. The tragoi or tragoidoi specialized in satyr dances around a divine or heroic personage and in due course in the performance of dances with purely heroic themes. They found inspiration for this, evidently, in the rituals involving traditional forms made into myth in a heroic sense. The forms they cultivated came from these rituals and coincided to a large extent with those of the dances of satyr type. But here is the difference. A ritual in which a heroic content is danced or sung presents only this heroic content, apart from differences of interpretation. Satyr dances, by contrast, became to a great extent independent, an element of entertainment which can present the most numerous variants at a single festival. Inspired, on the one hand, by rituals of heroic type and on the other by Literary Lyric of heroic content, inspired also by the variety of theme in the satyr dances and the traditional complex which follows a serious ritual by a burlesque one, the tragoidoi took two decisive steps. First, they performed dances of heroic theme, representing all kinds of myths, within certain definite schemes. Secondly, they systematized the satyr dances, by reducing them to those of heroic content. On the other hand, the importance in Comedy of parodies of Tragedy confirms once more that Satyric Drama and Comedy were successive specializations of the whole assembly of rituals existing alongside the heroic rituals of ‘serious’ type, to which they were performed as a ‘comic’ foil.

Therefore, when I insist on my idea that Tragedy is nothing more than the culmination of the making of the agricultural rituals into myth, and that on this basis the innovations attributed to Thespis were relatively limited, it is well understood that the process must have had an intermediate stage. The step from isolated and local rituals, with a mythical interpretation sometimes questionable and fluctuating, to Tragedy could not possibly have been taken unless there had already been in existence a komos of specialists performing all kinds of myths, and able to set off these performances with others involving a chorus

There is every justification for the comparison we have drawn between the agricultural rituals of heroic type and the elementary units we have discovered in Tragedy, the antiquity of which is attested in many cases by their agreement with Comedy. On occasions, it is true, even when the units compared are very close to one another, we find gaps. And there may be a doubt whether something in Theatre which is missing from the rituals was in fact present in them and has simply not been handed down to us, owing to our excessively fragmentary knowledge, or whether on the contrary the case is one of theatrical or pre-theatrical innovations based on the rituals. Some innovations might have concerned the whole of Theatre, others might have been derived from the dances of the tragoidoi, others introduced by Thespis or even earlier. In principle all these solutions may be correct according to the case, and sometimes we may simply lack the means of deciding between them.

3.

Tragedy was produced by a chorus which at a date subsequent to Thespis was reduced to twelve members and received in exchange an independent actor, separate from the coryphaeus, who continued in his role of exarkhon. They danced pompai, agones and stasima, accompanied on occasion by sections in which chorus and actor conversed in dialogue. As for content, apart from the agon, which was intrachoral (persuasion, supplication) or extrachoral confrontation, the elements were fundamentally threnodic and hymnodic, and also narrative. All of them could be inserted in the pompai (parodos and exodos), in the stasima, and in the dialogue chorus/actor. Even in the agones there could be threnodic and hymnodic elements. The action of one party might be accompanied by prayers, its fear or its defeat by threnoi. As for the action of death which was so often at the centre of Tragedy, and even the actions occurring far off or impossible to produce owing to the lack of a second chorus, they were brought on stage by the Messenger's narrative, which was nothing more than another specialization of a chorist. Or they could happen far away, out of view of the audience, but with the chorus taking part in them by what I have called ‘agones of presence’. The chorus listened at the door, urging, fearing, lamenting.

All these elements, including the Messenger, have been encountered in the festivals. We have even noted a certain tendency in them to isolate a type which contained or could contain a pompe, agon, or threnos as a possible forerunner of Tragedy. This of course complicated and multiplied the action. There might be a series of consecutive agones or threnoi or hymns, with many variations of form and content. The order could be reversed. Then, of course, there would be the agones of actors, the prologues, and so on. But the elements I insist, were the same. Yet, after all, there is a hole or discontinuity in the account which cannot be denied.

4.

The analysis of Tragedy suggests various formal possibilities for the various elements. We have seen the essential ingredients:

(A)

Pompai: only the chorus takes part, preceded or followed or not by stichic verses of the coryphaeus, from which the prologue and the links with the rest of the action were later derived.

(B)

Agones: those of chorus and Opponent, which were typical, could consist of one stasimon (of one or more strophes) followed by epirrhematic dialogue; or of simple epirrhematic dialogue; or of isolated stasima, including those of a single strophe. Generally they included several of these elements (which in Tragedy were isolated by stichic scenes). At earlier dates, there were no intrastrophic epirrhemata, the strophe was the minimal response for the chorus.

(C)

Threnoi: they always had a stasimon, which could be followed by lyrical dialogue chorus/actor or actors or else actor/actor or epirrhematic dialogue chorus/coryphaeus. This dialogue could not be made independent of the stasimon.

On the other hand, I have noted as earlier than Theatre (from its occurrence both in Tragedy and in Comedy) what I have called double structure, agonal or threnodic; strophe and antistrophe followed by epirrhema, or lyrical dialogue in which at least one actor took part. And I emphasized that Tragedy was lacking in the final element, the orgiastic komos of triumph or marriage, which was the logical finale to the agricultural ritual cycle and occurred also in Comedy. There were already precedents for it, I said, in several festivals centred on the threnos.

However, if with these particulars in view we turn to the elementary units isolated from Festival, whether of heroic type or in general, we find that our documentation is far less convincing. There were equivalents of the pompai mentioned above. It is easy for us to imagine, although we have no specific data, a threnodic dialogue in continuation of the stasimon, in which the exarkhon would impersonate the hero celebrated, or in which two exarkhontes of the two semichoruses would impersonate the two principal members of his family or retinue, and similarly in the case of hymns in the heroic cult instead of the threnos. But for the agon our data are terribly scanty. Almost all of them concern action rather than words. Possibly action was preponderant, just as in Theatre, logically enough, it was words. But the formal schemes of agon chorus/Opponent are so clear in Tragedy and agree so well with those of Comedy, and in the former, moreover, show such evident traces of archaism compared with the agon of actors, that we simply have to admit that they derived from ritual. On the other hand, traces of individual agones are not lacking in ritual …. The study of metric, for its part, reveals the presence of iambic, trochaic, and anapaestic rhythms common to the tragic and comic agones, and derived, therefore, from their ritual predecessors.

5.

The agon was the nucleus of Theatre, conferring unity on the whole. In the rituals without doubt it could be associated with the threnos, or on the contrary with the march of the victorious komos, sometimes of erotic character, and also with the rituals to which these komoi belonged. In Theatre it was so from the beginning. The stage play exceeded the rituals in range. Agones, threnoi, hymns, etc., were multiplied, combined in series by techniques of overlapping …, linked together too by the Messenger, another inheritance from Festival reinforced by Epic. But everything turned on the agon. This was characteristically ambivalent. It implied triumph and defeat at the same time, and sometimes in victory death was implicit, or the death was an announcement of triumph. It was the combination of the agon either with the threnos, or with hymns, or victory or wedding processions which polarized it into two different types, giving Tragedy and Comedy each its peculiar character. On the other hand, the agon implied the existence of a role of action for the exarkhon and another, still clearer, for another member of the chorus characterized as Opponent. Hence arose the idea, certainly, of giving a chorist, and that not only in the agon, the special function of ‘responder’ or ‘narrator’ (according to our understanding of the term hypokrites, actor …).

The problem remains of the antiquity of the non-agonal sequences. When in a threnos a stasimon is followed by lyrical dialogue chorus/actor, we understand that here we have an ancient sequence, since the actor simply replaces an exarkhon. But what of the case where the stasimon was followed, as frequently, by a stichic dialogue coryphaeus/actor or actor/actor, knowing as we do that actor and coryphaeus were a product of fission of the exarkhon? Must we wait for Thespis to introduce this, so that the presence of the scheme in Comedy was merely an imitation? Or may it have been due already to the tragoidoi, or even earlier to pre-theatrical rituals from which both they and Comedy originated?

That is the question, and it is not easy to give a decisive answer to it. It is not impossible that the last answer was correct. One exarkhon would play the simple coryphaeus, the exarkhon of the other semichorus the actor. Or both could play as actors, as we have supposed for the threnos. Thespis' actor, I insist, was only the limiting of a chorist to this role, so that he no longer joined in the choral dance. But the detailed chronology of the formation of the various elementary units into series and combinations must necessarily elude us. We have, by contrast, been able to follow the later evolution of the whole mechanism in the subsequent history of Theatre. …

Notes

1. Cf. A. Kleingünther, Protos heuretes, Leipzig 1933.

2. Plutarch, Solon 29.

3. Athenaeus 22 A.

4. Pollux IV 23.

5. Cf. A. Brinkman, Altgriechische Mädchenreigen, B.Jb. 130, p. 127; M. Wegner [Archaeologia Homerica. Musik und Tanz], op. cit., p. U 59.

6. M. Wegner, op. cit., p. U 40 ff.

7. Cf. M. Andronikos [Archaeologia Homerica. Totenkult], op. cit., p. W 14.

8. Cf. H. Koller, Musik und Dichtung, p. 166 ff.; at a later date the term is used very confusedly.

9. On Dance 20.

10. ‘Der Bau der Lieder des Aischylos’, Hermes 59, 1924, pp. 204-231.

11. In M. Bieber, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater, Princeton, 1961, p. 23.

12. Cf. M. Bieber, op. cit., p. 19 and bibliography there given.

13. Cf. M. Bieber, op. cit., p. 25.

14. Cf. my lecture (in the press, University of Salamanca) ‘La lengua del Teatro griego’.

15. ‘Sobre los origenes del vocabulario atico’, Emerita 21, 1953, p. 123 ff.; 25, 1957, p. 81 ff.

16. On this question of the language of the tragic choruses, cf. G. Björck, Das alpha impurum und die tragische Kunstsprache, Uppsala 1950, who does not believe that the impure alpha is evidence of Doric origin. He thinks it a transparent veil on an Attic body, intended to give a tragic ‘sound’.