Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/50

 32 THE TRAGIC CHORUS. — ARION. gradually developed themselves, they necessarily superseded the ruder efforts of the old crowd of worshippers ; and the poet, as EijfjLL- ovpjo^, or " state- workm an 1," with his band of trained singers and dancers, at length executed all the religious functions of the col- lective population. The most ancient and genuine species of the Dorian choral song was the Pcean, which was not only practised in the rehearsals of the market-place, but carried to the actual field of battle. It was so thoroughly identified with the worship of Apollo, that we cannot doubt for a moment that its original accompaniment was the harp {(popfxiy^), with which Apollo himself, in the Homeric Hymn, leads a chorus of Cretans; he dances with noble and lofty steps, and they follow him, singing the sweet strains of the lepgean^. But as early as the days of Archilochus the flute had taken the place of the harp as an accompaniment to the P£ean at Lesbos ^ That there was something grave and staid in the original Pgean may be con- cluded from the topics to which it was confined'^; and as late as the time of Agesilaus it was performed at the mournful feast of the Hyacinthia^. Whence Plato speaks with disapprobation of the later practice of mixing up the P^an with the Bacchic Dithyramb^; and in general we observe that the Paean, as devoted to the children of Leto, is kept separate and distinct from the Dythyramb''', even 1 Od. XVII. 385 : T^s yap Srj ^elvov KcCKei dWoOev airos ireXdcov "AWov y' el p,i] tCov ot brjixioepyol ^acriv MduTiv 7] iTjTTjpa KaKiov rj riKTOva bovpwv "H Kal d^cTTLv aoi.h6v, 6' k€v TipTrrjo-tv deldcjv ; 2 Horn. Hymn. ApoU. 514 sqq. : TJPX^ S' &pa <Tcf)i, &va^ Albs vi6s, 'AttoWcou ^bpixiyy^ iu xetpecrcro' ^xwv, dyarbv Kidapl^uiv, KaXd Kol vxpl ^L^ds' ol 5^ prjacrovTes eirovro KprJTes irpbs Uvdw, Kal irjirairjov deidov OtoL re Kp-qrCov xatdoves. Cf. Pind. iV. V. 22 sqq. ^ Archiloch. apud Athen. V. p. 180 E. : Autos i^dpxojv xpbs avXbv Aia-^tov rairjoua, above, p. 30, note. Tyrannus, 151 sqq. Plutarch (p. 389 b) calls the Paean Terayfi^vrjv Kal (XiJxppova ixovaav. 5 Xen. Ages. II. 17: ol'/caSe direXdCov eh rd 'TaKlvdia, Sirov irdx^V ^Trb rov x^po- TTOiov rbv TTo.idva t($ de<^ avveTiXeu ^ Legg. iii. p. 700 d. "^ See Pindar, Thren. Fr. 10, 103*, according to the emendations which we have elsewhere proposed ;
 * The ideal of a Paean is very well given in the first Chorus of the (Edipus