Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/59

 THE TRAGIC CHORUS. — ARION. 41 of the early Attic Tragedy; for we are expressly told, that in Arion's days the ox was the prized Nor could it imply that the goat was the object of the song, as if rpa'ycoho^ signified a man o? rpayov delSei^. For, as /a6apQ)86<; means a man who sings to the cithara, so rpaycoho^; and k(o/xq)S6(denote the singer whose words are accompanied by the gesticulations or movements of a chorus of Satyrs, or a comus of revellers. That the form of Doric Chorus, which Arion first adapted to the Dithyramb, was the Pyrrhic, ap- pears from what has been stated above ^. It was probably not till the days of Thespis that the Gymnopcedic dance appeared as the Tragic Emmeleia. In Arion''s time the tragic style was still a form of the Dithyramb, strictly confined to the worship of Bacchus, to which tlie poet had been habituated in the early days of his Les- bian life"*, formally satyric in the habiliments of its performers, and in every sense a new and important branch of the Dorian lyric poetry. About the time when Arion made these changes in the Dithy- ramb at Corinth, we read that a practice began to obtain in the neighbouring city of Sicyon which could not be altogether uncon- nected with Arion's '^ tragic style." The hero Adrastus was there honoured with Tragic Choruses. And the tyrant Cleisthenes, for political reasons, restored these choruses to Bacchus °. The ten- dency, which was thus checked, shows that the Ditliyrambic Chorus of Arion had proved itself well adapted for the represen- tation of tragic incidents, and especially of those misfortunes which were traceable to an evil destiny; for Adrastus was a type of unavoidable suffering^, brought down by the unappeasable ven- geance of heaven ; and every reader of the later Greek Drama is aware that this was a main ingredient in the plots of the more finished Tragedies, in which the divine Nemesis was always at 1 Athen. p. 456 d ; Schol. ad Find. 01. xiii. 18. 2 This is E,itter's opinion ; ad Arist. Poet. p. 113. 3 It appears too from Aristophanes (Bance, 153) that Kinesias, who was a cele- brated Dithyrambist, was also renowned for his Pyrrhics. ■* Bahr, ad Herod. I. c. ^ 01 bk "ZiKvwvioi. iibdeaau fieyaXucTTl Kapra TLfig^v rbv ''ASpT](rrov...Td re dr] &Wa oi ^iKVUJVioi iTL/LLOJu TOP "AdpTjcTTOV, Kal dr] rrpSs, to. Trddea avrov rpayiKoTcri x^poTcn eyi- paipov' Tov p.kv Alovvcov ov tl/j.^(x}pt€S, top 5^ "AdprjcTTOv. ^Xeiadevrjs 5^ xopous fx^v ry ALOvvacf airibwKe, rrju 8k dWrjp dvairjv t(^ MeXaviinrijj' raura jxh is "AdprjUTOv oi ire- ■jro'njTO. Herod. V. 67. 6 His name, as is well known, indicated as much. See Antimach. p. 71 (apud Strab. p. 588).