Choral Dance as Play: Paizein in Greek Drama, or Body Movement as Sexual Attraction between Gender and Genre
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Abstracts
Cet article opère une distinction entre deux formes d’activité physique, le jeu et le sport en examinant comment deux autres catégories de mouvement corporel — les jeux de balle et la danse — créent un pont entre les deux. Deux questions restées jusqu’ici sans réponse sont soulevées. Premièrement, pourquoi les jeux de balle n’apparaissent-ils jamais dans les programmes des concours athlétiques de Grèce ancienne ? Deuxièmement, pourquoi la compétition de danse pyrrhique en armes aux Panathénées est-elle une exception remarquable qui contraste avec l’absence de compétitions similaires de danses lors de ces festivals ?
This chapter addresses a stark distinction between two forms of physical activity, play and sport, and then discusses how two other categories of bodily movement — ball games and dance— make a bridge between them. Two unanswered questions are raised. First, why do ball games never appear in the programs of ancient Greek athletic festivals? Second, why is the competition in pyrrhic dancing at the Panathenaea a noteworthy exception to the absence of similar competitions in dance at these festivals?
Full text
Introduction
1As a matter of fact, paizein (‘to play’) serves as one of the termini technici for dancing in Greek culture. This link exists also in German where ‘Spiel’ is derived from Old High German spil (‘Tanzbewegung’, i.e. ‘movement in dance’). Surprisingly, dance does not primarily belong to adults trained in sophisticated steps and elaborate figures, but to children (παῖδες). It is well-known that their movements are free, aimless, unintentional, arbitrary and playful.1 Thus dance and play go together, when dance is not understood as a performing art exposing purposefully selected sequences of human movement like high culture ballet, but as an anthropological expression and basic kinetic substrate. As such both dance and play are part of an idea about conceiving the human nature in a light and optimistic tone as homo ludens as emblematically done by Johan Huizinga, in contrast to the Darwinian homo faber, a term coined by Max Scheler, or the Neolithic homo necans of the dark anthropology as developed by Walter Burkert.2 Already Friedrich Schiller, in his fifteenth letter Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, summarized his view of the anthropological essence in the famous sentence: “Men only play, where they are human in the truest sense of the word, and they are only completely human, where they play.”3 The most authentic form of play is obviously free dance, movement without any purpose in a natural rhythm and flow. J. Huizinga regards dance as “pure play” and choral dance as “the purest and most perfect form of play”.4 Again, in respect of non-dramatic choral dance, W. Burkert contends that it is “[r] hythmically repeated movement, directed to no end and performed together as a group, is, as it were, ritual crystallized in its purest form.”5 Thus collective dance, play and ritual coexist and correspond in nature and function. In Greek culture khoreia is an all-encompassing concept ranging from worship to aesthetics, from entertainment to education. For the Jesuit Hugo Rahner choral dance and play coincide with religious, deeper sense or truth. In Der spielende Mensch, going back to an Eranos lecture in 1948, first published in 1948/49, H. Rahner says: “All play is basically dance, a cyclic dance around the truth. The sacred play has always been a dance play.”6 And Siegbert A. Warwitz, linking again the anthropological nature with the playing child and the flow of dance, contends that “the quintessential image of man in flow is the playing child that is in the happy state of the total state of being with himself.”7
2In ancient Greek the congruity of child (pais), play and dance (paizein) finds even expression on a linguistic level. To some extent, the quintessential collusion of play, dance, human existence, true, happy and eternal being, the state of flow, and political as well cosmic order can be traced back to Heraclitus’ famous fragment DK B 52: “Time (aiōn) is a child at play, moving counters on a game board. The kingdom belongs to a child” (αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεσσεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη).8 The cosmic as well as the human world, experienced in the dimension of time, is based on eternal transformations ruled by pure coincidence, just like in play. When men dance in a group without direct end or purpose they, so to speak, return to their state of childhood as their true condition of existence.
3In his Laws9 Plato gives us a sort of anthropology based on dance, play and paideia, that is the social formation of children (paides) so that they can become true and valid members of society. This concept is based on a higher theological order where we are only playthings and puppets of the gods:
θαῦμα μὲν ἕκαστον ἡμῶν ἡγησώμεθα τῶν ζῴων θεῖον, εἴτε ὡς παίγνιον ἐκείνων εἴτε ὡς σπουδῇ τινι συνεστηκός· οὐ γὰρ δὴ τοῦτό γε γιγνώσκομεν, τόδε δὲ ἴσμεν, ὅτι ταῦτα τὰ πάθη ἐν ἡμῖν οἷον νεῦρα ἢ σμήρινθοί τινες ἐνοῦσαι σπῶσίν τε ἡμᾶς καὶ ἀλλήλαις ἀνθέλκουσιν ἐναντίαι οὖσαι ἐπ’ ἐναντίας πράξεις, οὗ δὴ διωρισμένη ἀρετὴ καὶ κακία κεῖται. μιᾷ γάρ φησιν ὁ λόγος δεῖν τῶν ἕλξεων συνεπόμενον ἀεὶ καὶ μηδαμῇ ἀπολειπόμενον ἐκείνης, ἀνθέλκειν τοῖς ἄλλοις νεύροις ἕκαστον.
Let’s take it that each and every one of us, the living beings are a puppet (θαῦμα) created by God (θεῖον), this could be a plaything (παίγνιον) for them or something that has been designed seriously, we do not know that, but what we know is that these feelings inside us keep pulling us like a group of nerves and ropes and they push us towards conflicting activities since they are in conflict with each other: Here it is where we could find the distinction between virtue and evil. The reason tells us that everyone always follows one of these, never letting it go, and that one should resist the call of the other sinews.10
4The term for puppet interestingly is called thauma, the word applied also for the usual aesthetic response to mousikē and khoreia.11 We as players are playthings, toys for the gods, and are constantly moving in a theatrical play- “machine” of “habituation”, directed by eros as the “engine or motor” to reach perfection via body regime, discipline and inner attitudes towards pleasures and pains, while gods are sunkhoreutai (653d) for us, companions in a large choral cyclic dance reaching from us to the gods and to the cosmos.12 Plato interprets choral dance and the city festival as the gift of the gods to mortals, as a kind of compensation for their adverse existence in troubles and distress. In his overall anthropology and human education, the recognition of the play instinct as a requirement for the acquisition of culture is most noticeable. Plato explains choral dance on the basis of the instinct of every young creature to jump and to romp (Laws, 673cd); children especially cannot keep still (653de). He thus sees the origin of dance in the urge to move and in the cradling of babies (even in the womb) to keep them calm. A concept of homoeostasis and homeopathic thinking lies behind this: internal unrest may be overcome by movement (789e-791d). This model is applied to adults, who, in ritual activities during festivals, are viewed as the toy (παίγνιον 803c; cf. 644de) of the gods. The gods as sunkhoreutai (653d) gave mortals dance and festivals as playful relaxation from everyday life and as compensation for inner disquiet (653cd). On the other hand, humans understood choral dance as an offering to the gods (791a). Through play and dance they were able to gain the favor of the gods (803e). The unrestrained urge of children to move and hump becomes dance, paidia (παιδιά, ‘play’), by means of established forms and rules, and only afterwards in an agonistic context and with hard training in body regimes does it become a means of παιδεία (‘education’).13 But in ritual festivals the pains (ponoi) of the disciplinary practices can find release in khoreia, a return to play and pleasure in musical harmony and rhythms, where khoros (χορός) is felt as khara (χαρά), joy and cheerfulness (654a).14
5Plato clearly pursues his own philosophical agenda. But he builds up his anthropological theories in Laws on archaic and classical concepts of choral dance and melos in Greek society as well as on a basic use of paizein as a term for dancing. Since Homer the Greek word has served as an emblematic expression for carefree and joyful dancing.15 On the oldest piece of evidence for Attic competitive dance culture, a late geometric oinokhoē by the Dipylon master (750-725 bce), we can already find the following hexametric verse inscription: “Whoever of all the dancers now plays the most exuberantly, to him belongs this [vessel]” (ὃς νῦν ὀρχηστῶν πάντων ἀταλώτατα παίζει, τοῦ τόδε KΑ̣ỊΜỊΝ).16 One can easily recognize in this verb paizei (παίζει) the substantive pais (παῖς). Simple dance without any sophisticated artistry is to a certain extent “child’s play”. A complementary picture on a later aryballos of Corinth showing a young boy wildly jumping and leaping high clearly demonstrates the excessive, totally unregulated movement of such a contest in which he exposes himself to an audience, while a double-flute player accompanies him and other six choral dancers who follow in a hieratic formation of three pairs.17 The winding inscription on the vase assigns the name Polyterpos, “the one who gives pleasure to many”, to the diaulos-player and Purwias (Attic Pyrrhias) to the boy. Moreover, he receives the title prokhoreuomenos (προχορευόμενος), “the one who dances in front, leading the chorus”, who should own this vase, that is, the koruphaios or the khoragos of this playful group.
6From the graceful ball-playing of the Phaeacian maidens, reminiscent of a dance,18 to the choral songs of drama, paizein is used as a verb indicating dance or human movement directed at no end other than pure fun. Yet, looking at these instances,19 we will realize that only in few cases young men are associated with it. From Nausicaa onwards, who acts like a khorēgos (cf. ἤρχετο μολπῆς) of a maiden chorus for Artemis — herself almost identified with the glamor and beauty of this goddess of the parthenoi before they reach their adulthood20 — paizein refers mostly to young girls in their rite de passage.21 As such they are close to or on the brink of marriage and as numphai in a state of in-between, belonging already partly to Aphrodite, but still maidens in the realm of Artemis, the goddess of maidenhood.
7In the few cases when paizein is applied to male dancing solo-performers they are likewise very young and shown as ephebes and in their status closely before their marriageable age. Their divine idealization is Apollo, the eternal ephēbos,22 the brother of Artemis, as presented in the famous Homeric Hymn to Apollo:
ἀλλὰ μάλα μεγάλη τε ἰδεῖν καὶ εἶδος ἀγητὴ
Ἄρτεμις ἰοχέαιρα ὁμότροφος Ἀπόλλωνι.
ἐν δ’ αὖ τῇσιν Ἄρης καὶ ἐΰσκοπος Ἀργειφόντης 200
παίζουσ’· αὐτὰρ ὁ Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων ἐγκιθαρίζει
καλὰ καὶ ὕψι βιβάς, αἴγλη δέ μιν ἀμφιφαείνει
μαρμαρυγαί τε ποδῶν καὶ ἐϋκλώστοιο χιτῶνος.
οἱ δ’ ἐπιτέρπονται θυμὸν μέγαν εἰσορόωντες
Λητώ τε χρυσοπλόκαμος καὶ μητίετα Ζεὺς 205
υἷα φίλον παίζοντα μετ’ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι.
And among them sings one, not mean nor puny, but tall to look upon
and enviable in mien, Artemis who delights in arrows, sister of Apollo.
Among them sport Ares and the keen-eyed Slayer of Argus, 200
while Apollo plays his lyre stepping high
and featly and a radiance shines around him,
the gleaming of his feet and close-woven vest.
And they, rejoice in their great hearts as they watch,
even gold-tressed Leto and wise Zeus, 205
their dear son playing among the undying gods.23
8Apollo is clearly envisaged as the khoregos of the Olympians, who as his chorus are linked in a kharis-relation with him. In this epiphanic scene he steps high and beautifully (202); bibas (βιβάς) here already refers to his dance movements.24 A glow shines about him, sparks of light emanate from his feet and clothing (202- 203). From choral dance an aesthetic enchantment originates by that the onlookers are deeply impressed in wonder, also about his erotic dimension. Therefore, Leto and Zeus respond to the scene in the typical joy about their son Apollo dancing (παίζοντα, 206) among the gods and accompanying the group with his solemn kithara. Ephebes and maidens engaged in playful dance are always associated with a more or less open sexual attraction in their rite of passage. A girl like Nausicaa is just about to marry. In her puberty she is described as being in a phase between child and woman that has just reached the state of sexual maturity. The ephebes are envisioned in the state when their first beard is growing. Telemachus is their model and Nausicaa’s counterpart.25 Maidens and ephebes in this age of “Betwixt and Between” are seen as most attractive all over in Greek culture.26 Dance and khoreia are the Sitz im Leben of both paideia and erotic exposure to the public. In Alcman’s Partheneia27 the female khoragoi stand above the choral group and are about to leave the collective chorus for marriage. Their beauty and erotic attraction are displayed and celebrated in front of the polis.28 Since ephebes marry much later and their rite of passage aims at the integration into the civic body of military duty, the erotic dimension is less marked than on the female side where beauty is the central value of choral education. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that the ephebic beauty will first serve to satisfy the lust of male adults before they are going to marry a much younger girl in order to establish a family.29 All things considered, I believe that these circumstances may be the reason why paizein is much less frequent in association with young men than in the realm of girls.
9Moreover, apart from the gender aspect, the survey of the passages also tells us something about the use of paizein as a choral term in the various dramatic genres. It becomes evident that paizein as dance is almost exclusively limited to Old comedy, where wine, good food, festivity, dance, gaiety, sex and eros are prominent, whereas in tragedy and satyr play its occurrence is extremely rare. The exceptional cases are linked to the Dionysian dance where sexual connotations are intended, as these passages are associated with the mythic frenzy of Maenads and the ritual of women who left their house to dance on the mountains on the occasion of a festival of exception in honor of the god of drama.
1. Paizein in Tragedy
10In Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus the chorus in excitement and its last exultant, optimistic hopes wonders whether Oedipus descends from one of the Nymphs with whom Dionysus loves to dance (συμπαίζει) on Mount Helicon:
εἴθ’ ὁ Βακχεῖος θεὸς
ναίων ἐπ’ ἄκρων ὀρέων <σ’> εὕ
ρημα δέξατ’ ἔκ του
Νυμφᾶν ἑλικωπίδων, αἷς
πλεῖστα συμπαίζει.
Or the Bacchic god dwelling on the mountain tops that received you as a lucky find from one of the black-eyed Nymphs, with whom he often plays?30
11The chorus takes up Oedipus’ erroneous self-description that he is a “child of Fortune”,31 full of tragic irony when Iocasta has already left the stage in horror of the truth.32 Her efforts to conceal the truth and to implore Oedipus to cease his investigation inevitably failed in the face of Oedipus’ rational impulse finally to know everything about himself. He still misinterprets her sudden departure to the palace, in order, as it later turns out, to commit suicide as alleged reaction of shame about his low birth. The chorus happily accepts the king’s self-deception, no doubt hoping it turn out that Oedipus sprang from the sexual union of a mountain god, whether Pan, Apollo, or Hermes, and a human mate, or that a Nymph gave Dionysus the baby as a foundling. It is not by coincidence that the series of possible divine fathers culminates in Dionysus, the god of tragedy and ecstasy. In mentioning the god of paradox, contradictions and oppositions the tragedy turns to its catastrophe. The god of tragedy unites and contrasts the scene before this choral song with the dramatic development that follows. As tragic irony, the chorus’ divinatory claim at the beginning of the song of jubilation, calling Oedipus a foundling will prove true. Yet in the song of ecstatic hope Dionysus is also conjured up as the emblem of a happy life in the idyllic countryside with wine, wild dance, leading to erotic excitement, free love and sexual contacts with girls, Nymphs, Muses and Maenads on the mountain. These miraculous encounters can easily result in the birth of illegitimate children later exposed and, as foundlings, brought to mortal parents. Therefore it became evident that Dionysus’ cheerful dance with Nymphs envisioned in the imagery and in the dreams of wish-fulfillment of the Elders’ mind has clearly sexual connotations as the Nymphs are the personification of the brides, the girls about to be married.33 The idea of Dionysus giving a baby as a foundling thus seems like a chaste short-cut of the sexual intercourse as truth — owned to the tragic genre — that could have happened during the uninhibited body movements between exuberant dance and play.
12In Euripides’Bacchae the Maenads, in a choral projection, imagine to place their white feet in all-night dances and toss their neck into the dewy air, like a fawn which has escaped a violent chase, now when the former hunter has gotten caught in a trap: “shall I ever in the nightlong dances move my white feet in ecstasy? Shall I toss my head to the dewy heaven like a fawn that plays amid green meadow delights…?”34 The comparison of young girls with jumping fawns is frequent in choral culture and melic poetry.35 The passage of dense choral self-referentiality underlines the ecstatic movement that blends sexual drive with nature. Meadows function often as sexually charged symbols. The hēdonai are frequently associated with orgiastic pleasure of orgasm and sexual fulfillment. As I have shown elsewhere, in Bacchae Bacchic frenzy (bakkheia) is particularly linked to khoreia.36 In the theater performed in honor of Dionysus the ritual empathy and enthousiasmos are primarily expressed through chorality. Moreover, the Bacchants envision themselves as very young girls in nature — they as women so to speak return to their phase as unyoked girls before marriage. Young maidens picking flowers in meadows, accompanied by a chorus of Nymphs and Charites in the realm of Artemis’ afar in nature, are notoriously attractive when they frolic in their dance. It happens often that young girls dancing in choruses of Artemis are abducted by male gods and heroes.
13Chorality in Greek drama reaches back to archaic choral poetry. Choruses, especially for young maidens, have to do with paideia, with an overall concept of education in seclusion that partially recalls tribal initiation in residual forms, but is based on culture.37 In female choruses, led by a khoragos, a maiden of marriageable age, the girls are introduced into the myths, rituals and the entire system of values of the archaic society. This choral habituation proceeds in a multimodal and often synaesthetic manner. Alcman’s partheneia, the choral songs of maidens, and Sappho’s songs performed in the Sapphic circle are the main examples of this educational function of khoreia. Plato is well aware of it and bases his idiosyncratic theory of anthropology on this archaic cultural practice. Simple dance for joy will be refined to a collective expression of aristocratic ideology and of the evolving polis culture. Sappho mostly reflects the choral culture in virtual chorality.38 Only few poems can be imagined to be chorally performed at festivals. But her songs are ideal sources to study the cultural background of the education of young maidens, typically called paides, in choruses. In the new Cologne fragment, the song on old age and Tithonus, probably paizein, in the sense of dancing, has to be restored in the second line:
ὔμμες κατὰ Μοίσαν ἰ] ọκ [ό] λπων κάλα δῶρα, παῖδες,
νῦν παίσδετε κατ’ τὰ] ν. φιλάοιδον λιγύραν χε.λύνναν·
vel καὶ παίξατε ὐπ’ αὔδα] ν. Benelli
You, girls, to the beautiful gifts of the violet-bosomed Muses,
dance, and to the song-loving, light-toned lyre.39
14When the girls will remember their time in the circle, they will associate it with homoerotic desire, love and happy khoreia,40 of course, more refined than paizein.
15Tragedy, besides its alleged origins in Dionysian ritual and more cheerful songs, seems to have little to do with pure paizein as joyous self-expression in dance. Dance is pleasure, primarily aimed at honoring the gods. Tragedy incorporates the archaic choral tradition into the drama, the plot. It is a well-known fact that the genre oscillates between two instances of speech and perspectives, the here and now of the Theater of Dionysus and the polis, and the then and there of the mythical plot. Albert Henrichs thus speaks of an almost unbridgeable tension between the chorus members’ dramatic role and their function as joyful dancers in the orchestra.41 He rightly considers choral projection as a means to overcome this gap. From an evolutionary and historical perspective this observation may be quite right. Nevertheless, the incorporation of ritual chorality into the plot is so extensive that the breach and rupture based on this inner contradiction do not represent an unavoidable flaw or accident, but are sought out by the poet in order to intensify the speech act of ritual performance in illocutionary fashion. If the ritual performance had remained exclusively hidden behind a dramatic ‘illusion’, one part of the performative speech act would have failed.
16Be it as it may, tragedy possesses a much greater tendency to subordinate dance and ritual to the dramatic role or to combine both levels completely. Moreover, the tragic chorus can also recur to other choral modes performing dance movements of lament and wailing, thereby incorporating ritual traditions of thrēnoi.42 The verb khoreuesthai (χορεύεσθαι) needs not be taken to mean exclusively “to dance joyfully in the orchestra for cultic purposes”, but in the course of the development of tragedy simply takes on the additional connotation “to move as chorus in response to tragic action on stage”.43 As seen, it is especially in the reference to Dionysus, especially with maidens, Nymphs and Maenads as notional parthenoi, where the purely ritual and choral nucleus of the genre as dance and paizein becomes manifest.
2. Paizein in Comedy
17Therefore, it is much more natural to associate paizein with the cheerful Muse of comedy. The character of play and the dissolution of all temporal and spatial relations are much more prominent in comedy than in tragedy.44 The most important and original element destined for play is the chorus, which as it dances and plays constantly enters into contact with the audience, involves it in its game, and thus makes it become a potential fellow-player. Often the comic chorus refers quite explicitly to its own exuberant activity. Comedy seems to have developed from a joyful procession of drunken revelers, the kōmos. Unrestrained behavior and free movement, corporeality, love, mockery, eating, drinking and ritual celebration are in the foreground. The Dionysian occasion of the comic performance falls under the same festive auspices.45 Old comedy does not possess a continuous role identity, rather its involvement in one single dramatic piece may go from direct participation in the action on stage to commentary from the side-lines to ritual presence in the here and now, and may freely float and oscillate between these perspectives. Joy and fun are the dominant moods in both perspectives, and it will be no surprise that the paizein, the cheerful dancing of the chorus linked with jesting and bantering tones is so to speak the hinge, the common denominator and the shifter between both instances. Compared to tragedy the frequency of paizein is striking.46 Erotic play is clearly meant in Aristophanes.47 In the body-centered genre of comedy dance and erotic jesting, sporting and dancing often overlap and go together.
18In these passages we often encounter ritual chorality. Particularly when Dionysus is engaged in mythic scenarios of frolic dances with Nymphs on the mountains (Women at the Thesmophoria, 985-1000), dance as khoreuein becomes paizein. The same applies to ritual scenarios with girls. We find especially choruses of maidens or some in interaction with maidens, and we witness songs of fun with titillating and jesting scenes about sexuality. Paizein and sex have already played a role in Soph. OT 1109 in the context of a mythic scenario. In respect to parthenoi, we often deal with the typical situation of a notionally reprojected maidenhood, that is, of mature women that in ritual contexts, like the Thesmophoria, return to their status as chaste girls on the brink of being married.48 This idea can be used as the typically comic fall back into the past.49 When the women occupy the Acropolis in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, they comically reactualize their status as chaste Arrhephoroi ritually confined on the Acropolis for a limited period of time.50 The realm of the eternal parthenos Athena resembles in this regard the one of Artemis. On the terrace of the Acropolis51 the Arrhēphoroi used to dance and play ball on a sacred court for this activity, a sphairistra,52 just as Nausicaa and her companions, as a virtual chorus in honor of Artemis, are engaged in a ball game.53 Moreover, when the women, reunited with their husbands, dance in the final choral song of Lysistrata,54 they also recur to Alcman’s partheneia so that they are notionally exposed as ‘marriageable maidens’ to the polis.55
19In the context of a ritual song by parthenoi in the realm of Artemis Autocrates’ Tympanistai is very indicative:
οἷα παίζουσιν φίλαι
παρθένοι Λυδῶν κόραι,
κοῦφα πηδῶσαι ⟨ποδοῖν
κἀνασείουσαι› κόμαν,
κἀνακρούουσαι χεροῖν, 5
Ἐφεσίαν παρ’ Ἄρτεμιν
†καλλίσταν, καὶ τοῖν ἰσχίοιν
τὸ μὲν κάτω τὸ δ’ αὖ
εἰς ἄνω ἐξαίρουσα†
οἷα κίγκλος ἅλλεται.
Just as the girls, beloved daughters of the Lydians dance lightly <leaping on their feet, shaking out> their hair with their hands, before Artemis of Ephesus pleasingly drop down their hips, then raise them up again, like a wagtail hops.56
20Like the final song of Lysistrata57 and the choral dance interlude in Women at the Thesmophoria (947-1000),58 this is pure chorality and ritual performativity, probably alluding again to female rites of passage before marriage. The title refers to players of the tambourine (tumpanon) that occurs in Old comedy in the context of orgiastic cults.59 The musicians seem to have formed the chorus of the play. In their ecstatic dance the tumpanistai, who probably had an effeminate outlook, obviously compared themselves with Lydian maidens. The Ephesian prulis dance, attested in Callimachus,60 serves as the aition for the annually performed weapon dances of Lydian maidens at the Ephesia, the subject of the comparison in this fragment. The male chorus danced like young Lydians, the barbaric Other, who reenacted armed Amazons dancing around a statue of Artemis in Ephesus.61 In dancing with weapons the girls temporarily come close to young men in the liminal phase of the ‘Betwixt and Between’ before they finally reach the status of mature women who get married and have children.62 That is the reason why the male orgiastic chorus feels so close to them. The characteristic self-referential terminology of pure choral dance as ludic movement, in which the girls’ body en passage is emphasized through a temporary change of gender-behavior during the marginal phase of liminality, is again striking: they playfully dance (παίζουσιν), leap in a light manner (κοῦφα πηδῶσαι),63 jump, use their feet and hands,64 move their hips, hop like a bird (ἅλλεται)65 and shake out their open hair,66 the emblem of their sexual attraction.
21The playfulness of the chorus’ constant shifting in and out can be most clearly observed in the parodos of the chorus of Eleusinian initiates in Aristophanes’Frogs.67 The mixed chorus of men and women constantly refers to paizein (παίζειν) and khoreuein (χορεύειν) in a very self-referential manner. It is in a certain sense the ritual chorus’ fundamental task to dance joyfully. The chorus’ references to itself happen in a wonderful blending of two levels, that of the ‘player’ in its function as ritual dancer in the orchestra, and that of the fictional performer in its role. They cannot be as neatly separated as Kenneth Dover attempted to do.68 It is the property of play to dynamize ways of perception and to make them become one. Fusion is ultimately achieved by the double ritual dimension; the ritual of the choruses of initiates in the plot in honor of the dance gods Demeter and Iacchus is reflected in the Dionysiac chorus of the here and now. Both gods are called upon to watch over the dance and the choral performance, both in the here and in the there.69 Xanthias and Dionysus, as they are moving in a chorus in honor of Dionysus, are onlookers, whereas the choristers stylize themselves as true initiates70 of the genre: Someone who is mocked is thus called “ridiculed in the ancestral rites of Dionysus” (κωμῳδηθεὶς ἐν ταῖς πατρίοις τελεταῖς ταῖς τοῦ Διονύσου),71 and what the chorus is doing means “to see the rites of the noble Muses and to dance in them” (γενναίων ὄργια Μουσῶν ἰδεῖν καὶ χορεῦσαι)72 and to “be initiated into the Bacchic comedies of beef-eating Cratinus”, who is almost Bacchic himself (Κρατίνου τοῦ ταυροφάγου γλώττης Βακχεῖ’ τελεσθῆναι).73 What they do is to bestow a “fun-and dance-loving honor” (φιλοπαίγμονα τιμήν).74 We thus witness again a situation of ritual festivity, so to speak ritual in ritual, a self-reflection of comedy as well as comic performance and mockery. Moreover, since play, dance and sex go together in Old comedy, the scene is full of sexual jesting and jokes.75 This dance is thus also paisai kai skōpsai (παῖσαι καὶ σκῶψαι)76 and paisai kai khleuasai (παῖσαι καὶ χλευάσαι).77 Iacchus, so to speak, has torn apart the dress so that the initiates can paizein te kai khoreuein (παίζειν τε καὶ χορεύειν, 407b), especially as they can now throw a lewd and lascivious glance on the nude breast of a female fellow-dancer (συμπαιστρίας, 411). Dionysus, the onlooker of the spectacle, who does not recognize that he is called up in Iacchus to lead the chorus, ironically says that he would love to follow (φιλακόλουθός εἰμι, 414a-b) and to dance joyfully in the comic chorus (παίζων χορεύειν βούλομαι, 415). Thus the chorus invites to mock politicians and exponents of the polis.78 The song is pure paizein, the emblematic activity of Old Comedy, as comic and ritual dance, playfulness with, for and against the god of comedy, sex, corporeality, festivity and mockery as onomasti kōmōidein (ὀνομαστὶ κωμῳδεῖν) in the political context.
3. Paizein in Satyr Play
22Despite the lack of effort to differentiate between comedy and satyr play the peripatetic philosopher Demetrius79 calls satyr play tragōidia paizousa (τραγῳδία παίζουσα), “playing, i.e. playful tragedy”.80 For him gelōs (γέλως), laughter, is the feature of the genre, in opposition to tragedy. But he himself knows that this is also true for comedy (ἐν κωμῳδίαις). But the definition hides a deeper truth. Within the clarifying attributive participle something is contained which has scarcely been noticed until now: pais (παῖς), child, too, and a reference to the kinetic potential that is particularly characteristic of comic performers as well as for children. Yet, in this latter sense of playful dancing, Demetrius, due to his lack of distinction between comedy and satyr play, obviously attributed paizein to Satyrs in a mistaken way, whereas in hinting at the dimension of children he was right. As a matter of fact in satyr play the ever equal chorus of Dionysian Satyrs — the identical dancers formed also the chorus of the tragic trilogy in different masks and plot contexts — is in many respects equal to children. Often they are seen as children of Dionysus.81 Thus in this genre we return to total childhood, to the Id that according to Sigmund Freud is the instinctual part of the psyche driven by desires. Whereas comedy falls back to the primordial past, playing out scenarios of utopia that turn out to be a dystopia,82 satyr play quintessentially works on the phylo- and ontogenetic axis. Old comedy can be coarse, aggressive, mocking, political, obscene, acting out fantastic ideas and utopian worlds always in some relation to the real world, but at the same time — and we should not forget — it is cheerful and focuses on festivity, laughter, gaiety, sex, wine, food, love and unity. Despite the distortions and derision that even do not halt in front of the gods, the comic chorus is at the same time cultic and ritual, often affirmative and honoring the gods. The destructive, satirical and negative side, in short, is always counterbalanced by a positive side. This happy and joyful aspect is well captured in the frequent use of paizein, since choral gaiety and exuberance that aim at freedom, sexual uninhibitedness and festive union are typical features of the genre. Moreover, Old comedy has much in common with one of its origins, the kōmos, the drunken and excessive procession performed by revelers. Both in the comic plots and in the kōmos men reenact their wild phase of the ‘Betwixt and Between’, before they become true citizens and husbands.83 On the level of the comic plot we also often encounter a return of women to chaste girls before sexual consummation.
23Satyr play is ridiculous as well, but it is a different sort of laughter. The ever identical Dionysian chorus of Satyrs is thrown in constantly changing and different mythic contexts where their true nature is doomed to be suppressed. Their leader Dionysus is often absent,84 and they must drudge as slaves under terrible masters or even grotesque monsters. And, as said, they tend to regress to the Id, driven by their pure instinct, to the status of irrational children.85 Therefore they are even close to animals. Satyr play deconstructs the previous tragic trilogy and its myths by mixing them with this absurd group of wild men from the Dionysian Other. They often act in paradoxical and complete incongruent ways: in another paper I showed how the Satyrs turn even against their own performance in the famous fragment of Pratinas,86 only to make release their musical energy in an even wilder uproar.87 They are hybrids and work in hybrid fashions. Even as far as their sexuality is concerned —the aspect that is so closely linked with the idea of paizein—, their alleged hyper-masculinity is incongruent. They are lascivious and lewd, they chase and fly after Maenads and Nymphs, but never achieve their goal. They are ithyphallic or infibulated, trans-, hetero- and homosexual, or in the open categories of today, typically LGBT and FABGLITTER.88 In short, their hybrid nature is very fluid and even their sexual behavior can assume manifold scenarios. Therefore —to say it in François Lissarrague’s felicitous words— Satyrs are “good to represent”, since they explore alternative worlds through imaginary scenarios of experimentation.89 Thus, all things considered, it is evident that the laughter and playfulness of satyr play is in a very different key compared to comedy.
24As we have seen, παίζειν is the expression par excellence for the free and frolic dance of Dionysian origins. The developed satyr play is the dramatic genre in which the choreutic aspect in its ritual and performative self-indulgence is maintained most clearly in the sign of the chorus and theater god.90 However, despite the notorious regress of the Satyrs to children, we do not encounter the typical paizein for them, whereas it is the specific performative mode of Old comedy, as emphasized at the end of Women at the Thesmophoria.91 The Satyrs’ musical tones are not teasing, sexually charged mockery and fun, even in dance, but much wilder, more basic, just identical with Plato’s description of the very young children’s inner drive to constantly move, jump and hop.92 As Plato put it in Laws:
What it says is that, almost without exception, every young creature is not able of keeping either its body or its tongue quiet, and is always striving to move and to cry, leaping and skipping and delighting in dances and games, and uttering, also, noises of every description.93
25Leaping, jumping, stamping with the feet, skirtan (σκιρτᾶν), hallesthai (ἅλλεσθαι), pēdan (πηδᾶν) —these are exactly the terms for the Satyrs’ uncoordinated movements and uncontrolled body regime. Boisterous noise like the one of Bromios that the emblematic ‘Roarer’ (from bremein) and his entourage emit on the acoustic level comes on top of it, leading to a specific khoreia, a paradoxical anti-khoreia that is still khoreia, but certainly not an attractive and erotically charged paizein.
26Sometimes it is even worse: The Satyrs oscillate not only between men and animals just as their god Dionysus does, but also, as said above, between wild children and animals.94 Moreover, I have already hinted at their proclivity for incongruent and paradoxical self-referencing. In the Cyclops the chorus thus sings in a self-referential fashion about its own musical and choreutic activity in a surprising manner. First of all, Silenus articulates his amazement about the Satyrs’ imitating the sikinnis in their movements,95 the dance of the satyr play, even when they should not dance. Whatever they do turns out to a dance in their specific way that does not match the standards of paizein. The stamping of the sikinnis in the hic et nunc that they do not intend to dance, since they are allegedly working side by side under their new master Cyclops, somehow, nevertheless, corresponds with kōmoi once upon a time when the Satyrs and Bacchus marched together in mythical times. In the same parodos, in a totally paradoxical manner, the Satyrs give a typically negative choral projection that nevertheless functions as self-reference to their own dancing, singing and music-making. While they do not think about performing a Bacchic dance in the plot, they actually perform it in the Dionysiac orchestra in the here and now:
οὐ τάδε Βρόμιος, οὐ τάδε χοροὶ
Βάκχαι τε θυρσοφόροι,
οὐ τυμπάνων ἀλαλαγμοὶ 65
κρήναις παρ’ ὑδροχύτοις,
οὐκ οἴνου χλωραὶ σταγόνες·
οὐδ’ ἐν Νύσᾳ μετὰ Νυμφᾶν
ἴακχον ἴακχον ᾠδὰν
μέλπω πρὸς τὰν Ἀφροδίταν, 70
ἃν θηρεύων πετόμαν
Βάκχαις σὺν λευκόποσιν.
Here there is no Bromios, here are no choruses and thyrsos-bearing Bacchae, no thumping of the drums by the water-pouring sources, no sparkling drops of wine: nor in Nysa with the Nymphs do I sing the song Iakkhos Iakkhos to Aphrodite, whom I flew after, hunting with the white-footed Bacchae.96
27Although dance should be absent in the fictional setting, it is present on the performative level. On the surface we witness a strange, and seemingly contradictory divide between the actual performance of the chorus that dances and the inner plot where it is emphasized that dance is missing. The huge gap slowly closes over the course of the play.97 As I have also shown elsewhere,98 this absurd interplay in ontological terms has to do with a ritual given. Dionysus is always repressed, negated, only in order to make his energy in release felt even more violent. This precarious dance whose aesthetic dimension is put in question at the same time assumes a song quality. But whenever they refer to it they use the other, more general and ritual term, khoreia and khoreuein. And since the Satyrs belong to the god of theater, it is also coined as bakkhiazein, just as it happens in Bacchae.
28With this passage we come full circle. It affirms the absence of Dionysus and of the world-view of festive and Bacchic choral projections into idyllic nature as we know them from tragedy and comedy. Dionysus will break through in his total energy of the Id according to the perspective in statu erumpiendi. What has been suppressed will manifest even more violently.99 But in this negation there is also some truth why this satyr dance is never called paizein. In their specific ontological difference the Satyrs negate the idyllic Bacchic view of comedy and tragedy,100 where Dionysus plays and dances with Nymphs, by whom he is sexually attracted, or where his Maenads are seen in a context of Aphrodite. Thus they emphasize correctly, “nor in Nysa with the Nymphs do I sing the song Iakkhos Iakkhos to Aphrodite, whom I flew after, hunting with the white-footed Bacchae”,101 although they seem to express only their alleged separation from the god, when they shared the company with him and his entourage in conventional forms as used in tragic or comic drama.
29In tragedy the situation often corresponds just to this idyllic and erotic scenario, particularly in Bacchae, the Dionysian tragedy par excellence, where dance and Bacchic ritual overlap. In another choral projection102 the chorus of Maenads would like to escape to Aphrodite’s island of Cyprus and asks that the gods lead them to Mt. Olympus where the Charites and Pothos are living and where it is right to orgiazein. The verb obviously bears strong sexual connotations of unrestrained, wild and excessive reveling and activities with sexual contacts, that is orgies. In Bacchae,103 they wish to project themselves into the mountains lightly dancing (empaizousa) like a fawn, the symbol of the girls just about to marry. In their fantasy the fawn has just escaped a violent chase, the sexual threat of a male hunter. They thus desire to return to their state of young dancing maidens that are totally free and sexually highly attractive in their body movement.
30As seen above, the Satyrs’ sexuality is very different: they have nothing to do with these affirmative and light tones of Aphrodite, sex, love, interactions with Nymphs, desire, jesting and festivity, in short with paizein. They do not lightly fly after Aphrodite or the Nymphs, but chase like hypersexual hunting perpetrators104 or even harass the Maenads with erect huge phalloi. Sometimes they seem to be somehow disconnected in their chase or even without any erection, never reaching their goal.105 Satyrs are pure instinct, not sublimated body expression, noise, constant uncoordinated movement, loud breathing and harrumphing.106 Comic heroes as trickster-figures can be of a similar nature,107 but the chorus of Old comedy has always a positive, ritually affirmative side as well. Satyrs as paides, however, are unable to paizein, since it seems to be a cultural achievement. Their boundless energy is the pure Id, in Freud’s structural model of the psyche —their wild, uncivilized, almost bestial side breaking free. It is another aspect of Dionysus as well. Therefore, this sort of unchannelled movement that at moments can even come closer to choral dance, is called bakkhiazein and even khoreuein, but never paizein.
31Yet the paizein is there at a different level: the ludic is constitutive of the genre, consisting in playing out incongruity and inconsistency. As F. Lissarrague says: “The comic effect springs from this collage of satyrs and myth, the revision of myth through this specific filter.”108 It is a play with culture and text in terms of a counterworld, experimentation, exploring the tragic world from the foil of this Dionysian Id, the unconscious energy that works to satisfy basic desires and instincts. Or as I have put it:
The dynamic, paradoxical recycling of a spectrum of thought that is always the same, the whirling of the body in dance and the jovial, absurd blending of cultural connections yield a new mix of experimental, explosive force which, like foaming wine, makes it possible to blithely and cheerfully play out the cosmos of all civilizing discourses from the Dionysian perspective of the Other in the collective of the theater.109
Conclusion
32Paizein, the children’s play in body expressions and words, like khoreia as a whole has to do with education, learning, internalization and habituation of sexual and gender roles by young persons. There is a full gamut of manifestations and cultural levels. As a matter of fact, drama has incorporated a long tradition of multimodal paideia. Khoreia has always worked on an affirmative as well as on a disruptive model. Through performative foils, models, distortions, myths, narratives and body scripts young members of the society received a tool to apprehend and internalize the gender-role that is expected from them as well as to experiment with distortions and counterworlds. Paizein, as we have seen, has much to do with corporeal expression and sexuality. Especially girls are envisioned in playful dance to display their sexual attractiveness. Beauty is the central value they are about to assume in processes of habituation. The cultural re-workings of rites of passage and older initiation rituals in single or choral dance and play possess a huge role in the acculturation and appropriation of the expected behavior, not just by words but in a multimodality where the body as medium and vessel of dance is decisive.
Footnotes
1 On dance and play, see Bierl (2001), p. 86-96 [engl. Bierl (2009), p. 67-75], on choral dance as ritual action, see Bierl (2001), p. 11-104 [engl. Bierl (2009), p. 1-82].
2 Huizinga (1955); Scheler (2007); Burkert (1983).
3 Schiller (1793-1795) (Nationalausgabe vol. 20, p. 359): “Der Mensch spielt nur, wo er in voller Bedeutung des Worts Mensch ist, und er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt.” (trans. E. M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby, Clarendon).
4 Huizinga (1955), p. 188-189; see ibid.: “The connections between playing and dancing are so close that they hardly need illustrating. It is not that dancing has something of play in it or about it, rather that is an integral part of play: the relationship is one of direct participation, almost of essential identity. Dancing is a particular and particularly perfect form of playing.” On poetry as play, see Huizinga (1955), p. 141: “Poiesis, in fact, is a play function.” See also, p. 141-158, on art, p. 182-197.
5 Burkert (1985), p. 102.
6 Rahner (2008), p. 59: “Alles Spiel ist irgendwo am Grunde seines Wesens ein Tanz, ein Reigen um die Wahrheit. Immer war das sakrale Spiel ein Tanzspiel.” (trans. A. Bierl).
7 Warwitz (2016), p. 207: “Das Urbild des Menschen im Flow ist das spielende Kind, das sich im glückseligen Zustand des Bei-sich-Seins befindet.” (trans. A. Bierl).
8 Heraclitus DK B 52 (93 Marcovich, trans. M. Marcovich). About this sentence, see the different translations and interpretations in Bouvier and Dasen (2020).
9 Plato, Laws, 644d-645a (trans. after R. G. Bury, Loeb).
10 See Kurke (2013).
11 See Peponi (2012); to my knowledge, thauma is not particularly discussed, but see Kurke (2013); she sees the puppets as “frozen choreuts”… “under the sway of wonder (thauma) and desire (eros)” (p. 124); see also p. 126-127, 146-147, 153, 154. See also the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 3.135 and 156-157 (on the Delian Maidens). On references and discussion of the term thauma, see Pugliara (2003).
12 See also Kurke (2013), esp. p. 127, 129, 147.
13 On the etymological links between these two words, see recently Casevitz (2018).
14 Taken from Bierl (2009), p. 69 with n. 187 (to a large extent as direct auto-citation). See also Peponi (2013a); Calame (2013); Kowalzig (2013); and the entire volume Peponi (2013b).
15 See Hommel (1949) (on Homer); Calamei (1977), p. 165-166 [engl. Calame (1997), p. 87-88]; Burkert (1982), esp. p. 336-337; Dover (1993a), p. 173-179; Dover (1993b), p. 57-59, 61, 236- 237; Lonsdale (1993), p. 1, 33-43, 67, 71, 80, 251 and Henrichs (1996), p. 35-38.
16 Athens, National Museum 192. For the inscription, see IGI2 919 = CEG 432 (p. 239-240 Hansen, with scholarly literature). See Powell (1991), p. 158-163 and Powell (1988); Henrichs (1996), p. 32-34 with tab. I. This passage is taken from Bierl (2009), p. 68.
17 Aryballos, 580-570 bce, Archeological Museum of Ancient Corinth C 1954-1. See Henrichs (1996), p. 40-41 with pl. II and bibliographic references on p. 70-71 n. 41-42.
18 Odyssey, 6.100: σφαίρῃ ταὶ δ’ ἄρ’ ἔπαιζον (“and they played with a ball”).
19 See, among others, Homer, Odyssey, 6.100, 8.251, 23.134 and 147; Homeric Hymns, 2.425 (Persephone and the Charites), 5.120 (Aphrodite as girl with the Nymphs), 3.206 (Apollo) and 30.14-15 (maidens); Hesiod, The Shield, 277, 282; Pindar, Olympian Odes, 1.16 and 13.86; Ion, fr. 27.7-8 W.; Aristophanes, Birds, 660, Women at the Thesmophoria, 947, 983, 1227-1228, Lysistrata, 1313, Frogs, 318-320, 333, 388, 392, 407b, 415, 452; Autocrates, fr. 1 K.-A.; for sumpaizein see Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 1109; Aristophanes, Peace, 816-817, Birds, 1098, Women at the Thesmophoria, 975 and Menander, Epitrepontes (Men at Arbitration), 478.
20 Odyssey, 6.101; Odyssey, 6.101-109. Odysseus will also address Nausicaa in an almost worshipping form, equaling her with a goddess, esp. with Artemis (Odyssey, 6.149-152). Odysseus stylizes then the girl as a nymph, the ideal bride, the maiden about to be married and still in the realm and choral group of Artemis (6.153-159). Finally he compares her with the palm tree at Delos that is sacred to Artemis (6.160-167). On Artemis as a goddess of choral dance, see Calame I (1977), p. 174-190, 252-304 [engl. Calame (1997), p. 91-101, 142-174]. The fact that the scene of Nausicaa is associated with choral dance is already emphasized by her excuse to wash the dresses of her brothers (Odyssey, 6.57-65), who will soon marry and need them when they go “to the dancing floor” (ἐς χορὸν ἔρχεσθαι, Odyssey, 6.65).
21 E.g. Persephone in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 2.425.
22 Burkert (1975); Graf (1979); Burkert (1985), p. 143-149; Bierl (1994); Nagy (1994).
23 Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 3.198-206 (trans. H. G. Evelyn-White, Loeb).
24 See also Bierl (2017), p. 259.
25 See especially Hölscher (1989), p. 49-55.
26 Turner (1967), p. 93-111.
27 Alcman, fr. 1 and 3 PMGF.
28 Calame II (1977); Bierl (2011a).
29 See e.g. Winkler (1990).
30 Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 1105-1109 (trans. H. Lloyd-Jones, Loeb).
31 Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 1080 (trans. A. Bierl).
32 See Finglass (2018), p. 499-501, ad loc.
33 Sophocles refers to Dionysus’ notorious sexual adventures with Nymphs, as e.g. mentioned by Anacreon, fr. 357.1-5 (again expressed with the verb συμπαίζειν in v. 4). Normally Dionysus’ relations with the Nymphs are chaste. For a sexual sense of συμπαίζειν, see, besides Anacreon, fr. 357.4, Aristophanes, Birds, 1098, Frogs, 409-412. On the sexual and erotic aspect of Dionysus, see Jameson (1993), p. 56-57; Henrichs (2008), esp. 23; Schlesier (2013), esp. C.4 “Eroticism”.
34 Euripides, Bacchae, 862-867 (trans. D. Kovacs, Loeb): ἆρ’ ἐν παννυχίοις χοροῖς / θήσω ποτὲ λευκὸν / πόδ’ ἀναβακχεύουσα, δέραν / αἰθέρ’ ἐς δροσερὸν ῥίπτουσ’, / ὡς νεβρὸς χλοεραῖς ἐμπαί- / ζουσα λείμακος ἡδοναῖς, … .
35 On the deer (ἔλαφος, νεβρός) as a choral metaphor, see the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 2.174- 175; Sappho, fr. 58c.6 (Cologne Sappho); Bacchylides 13.86-90; Euripides, Electra, 860-861; Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 1318-1319.
36 Bierl (2013).
37 Calame I (1977) [engl. Calame (1997)]; Bierl (2001) [engl. Bierl (2009)].
38 Bierl (2016), esp. p. 310-312.
39 Sappho, P. Köln col. i.12-14 (= fr. 58.11-12 Voigt = 58.c.1-2 Bierl; trans. M. L. West)
40 Sappho, fr. 94.
41 Henrichs (1994-1995), esp. p. 73.
42 See Henrichs (1996), p. 18 and 54-55, where the tension is viewed within the cultic framework.
43 The previous part is almost literally taken from Bierl (2009), p. 66 [German original Bierl (2001), p. 85].
44 In tragedy, as in comedy, the world of the actual plot is distorted in a Dionysian fashion. In tragedy the point of view tends to be from above, from the sublime. Death and suffering in a royal family determine the story. In comedy, by contrast, the deformation takes place when figures are drawn down into the ridiculous and the grotesque. See Brelich (1982), p. 111-112, who follows Aristotle, Poetics, 1448a and 1449a. See also Bierl (2019a).
45 See Cole (1993) and Peirce (1993). This part is taken from Bierl (2009), p. 67.
46 We find it e.g. in Aristophanes, Birds, 660, Women at the Thesmophoria, 795, 947, 983, 1227- 1228, Lysistrata, 1313, Frogs, 230, 318-320, 333, 388, 392, 407b, 415, 452; Assemblywomen, 881; Autocrates, fr. 1.1 K.-A. Furthermore συμπαίζειν occurs e.g. in Aristophanes, Peace, 816-817, Birds, 1098, Women at the Thesmophoria, 975 and Menander, Epitrepontes (Men at Arbitration), 478.
47 Aristophanes, Birds, 660, 1098, Women at the Thesmophoria, 795, Assemblywomen, 881.
48 See Versnel (1993), p. 228-288, esp. 245-250 and 274-283. See the interpretation of the chorus in Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria, by Bierl (2001), p. 105-299 [engl. Bierl (2009), p. 83-265].
49 See Lohr (1986), p. 63-68 and Bierl (2019a).
50 See Bierl (2011a) and Bierl (2012).
51 Euripides, Ion, 492-508, esp. 497.
52 Ps.-Plutarch, Moralia. Lives of the Ten Orators, 839c. This (isolated) information given by Ps.- Plutarch is unique, as we have no other, especially classical, allusion to this place neither in literary texts nor in Attic inscriptions.
53 Odyssey, 6.100.
54 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 1247, esp. 1273-1320.
55 See Bierl (2011a).
56 Autocrates, fr. 1 K.-A (trans. I. Storey, Loeb). See Orth (2014), p. 131-148.
57 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, esp. 1305-1315.
58 See Bierl (2001), p. 105-150 [engl. Bierl (2009), p. 83-125].
59 E.g. Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 1-3.
60 Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis, 3.237-258, esp. 240-242.
61 See Calame I (1977), p. 178-183, esp. 178-179 [engl. Calame (1997) p. 93-96, esp. 93-94]; Dowden (1997), p. 122 and Ceccarelli (1998), p. 135-136.
62 See Ceccarelli (1998); Bierl (2001), esp. p. 225-251 [engl. Bierl (2009), esp. p. 196-220].
63 See Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 1304, Women at the Thesmophoria, 954; Euripides, Electra, 860-861, Ion 717. On πηδάω and jumping as typical expressions for comic dance, see Bierl (2001), p. 151 n. 118, 232-233 n. 351 [engl. Bierl (2009), 126 n. 118, 203-204 n. 351]; see also Naerebout (1997), p. 281-282.
64 See Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 1309, 1316-1317.
65 For comparison with jumping animals, see Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 1308, 1317.
66 See Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 1312-1313; Euripides, Bacchae, 240-241.
67 Aristophanes, Frogs, 316-459.
68 Dover (1993b), p. 58-60.
69 παῖσαί τε καὶ χορεῦσαι, 388 and παίζειν τε καὶ χορεύειν, 407b. These sentences are taken form Bierl (2009), p. 74.
70 Cf. Aristophanes, Frogs, 456.
71 Cf. Aristophanes, Frogs, 368.
72 Cf. Aristophanes, Frogs, 356.
73 Cf. Aristophanes, Frogs, 357.
74 Cf. Aristophanes, Frogs, 332.
75 Aristophanes, Frogs, 404-413.
76 Cf. Aristophanes, Frogs, 392.
77 Cf. Aristophanes, Frogs, 375.
78 Aristophanes, Frogs, 416-430.
79 Demetrius, On Style, 169.
80 On khoreia in satyr play, see Lämmle (2013), p. 155-243.
81 Bierl (2006), esp. p. 114-116, 123, 126, 129, 138; see also Lämmle (2013), p. 402-410.
82 See Bierl (2019a); Bierl (2019b).
83 See Bierl (2001), p. 300-361 [engl. Bierl (2009), p. 267-325].
84 See Lämmle (2013), p. 113-128.
85 Bierl (2006), esp. p. 118, 138.
86 Pratinas, TrGF I 4 F 3 = 708 PMG (trans. D. A. Campbell, Loeb).
87 LGBT: acronym for Lesbian; Gay; Bisexual; Transgender. FABGLITTER: acronym for Fetish; Allies; Bisexuals; Gay; Lesbians; Intersexed; Transgender; Transsexual Engendering Revolution. Bierl (2006), esp. p. 120-128.
88 See Lissarrague (1990a).
89 Lissarrague (1990b).
90 Bierl (2006); Bierl (2011b), esp. p. 328-331.
91 Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria, 1227-1231; Bierl (2001), p. 160-161 [engl. Bierl (2009), p. 135-136].
92 See Lämmle (2013), p. 193-201.
93 Plato, Laws, 653d-e (trans. R. G. Bury, Loeb): φησὶν δὲ τὸ νέον ἅπαν ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν τοῖς τε σώμασι καὶ ταῖς φωναῖς ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν οὐ δύνασθαι, κινεῖσθαι δὲ ἀεὶ ζητεῖν καὶ φθέγγεσθαι, τὰ μὲν ἁλλόμενα καὶ σκιρτῶντα, οἷον ὀρχούμενα μεθ’ ἡδονῆς καὶ προσπαίζοντα, τὰ δὲ φθεγγόμενα πάσας φωνάς.
94 Sophocles, Ichneutae, 124-135, 221-223. See also Lämmle (2013), p. 436-440.
95 Euripides, Cyclops, 37-40.
96 Euripides, Cyclops, 63-72 (trans. D. Kovacs, Loeb).
97 See already Bierl (2001), p. 76-79 [engl. Bierl (2009), p. 58-61], esp. Bierl (2006), p. 130-131.
98 Bierl (2006).
99 See Bierl (2006), p. 135-136.
100 See Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 1105-1109, Antigone, 1126-1136, 1146-1154; Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria, 990-995. On the Satyrs different attitude toward the Nymphs, see Lämmle (2013), p. 167-170.
101 Euripides, Cyclops, 68-72.
102 Euripides, Bacchae, 402-415.
103 Euripides, Bacchae, 862-866.
104 Euripides, Cyclops, 68-72.
105 See Lissarrague (1990a).
106 Euripides, Cyclops, 624-626.
107 See Bierl (2019c).
108 Lissarrague (1990b), p. 236.
109 Bierl (2006), p. 138.
Author
a.bierl@unibas.ch
University of Basel
Professor for Greek Literature at the University of Basel since 2002. He served as Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies (2005- 2011) and is Member of the IAS, Princeton (2010/11). He is director and co-editor of Homer’s Iliad : The Basel Commentary and editor of the series MythosEikonPoiesis. His research interests include Homeric epic, drama, song and performance culture, the ancient novel, Greek myth and religion. His books include Dionysos und die griechische Tragödie (Tübingen, Narr, 1991) ; Die Orestie des Aischylos auf der modernen Bühne (Stuttgart, Metzler, 1996) ; Der Chor in der Alten Komödie (München, Saur, 2001) ; English revised edition Ritual and Performativity (Cambridge, Harvard UP, 2009) ; and the co-edited volumes Literatur und Religion I-II (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2007) ; Gewalt und Opfer (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2010) ; Ästhetik des Opfers (München, Fink, 2012) ; Intende, Lector : Echoes of Myth, Religion and Ritual in the Ancient Novel (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2013) ; The Newest Sappho (Leiden, Brill, 2016) and Time and Space in Ancient Myth, Religion and Culture (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2017). His edition of Sappho with a new German translation, commentary and a detailed afterword has just appeared as Sappho : Lieder : Griechisch/Deutsch (Stuttgart, Reclam, 2021).
Only the text can be used under the OpenEdition Books License license. Other elements (illustrations, attached files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.
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