Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/60

 42 THE TRAGIC CHORUS. — ARION. work. There may, therefore, be some foundation for the claims set up by the Sicyonians By transferring the Bacchic Chorus to the celebration of other heroes, they made a step even beyond Arion towards the introduction of dramatic poetry properly so called ; and it is very possible that Epigenes of Sicyon may have been the first of a series of sixteen lyrical dramatists ending with Thespis2, to whom, as we shall shortly see, we owe the actor ^, the dramatic dialogue, the stage, and the epic elements of the Athenian Tragedy. The only specimens of the Greek choral poetry which have come down to us complete are a certain number of the Epinician or triumphal Odes of Pindar, who was born three years after ^schylus, who was more than once an honoured guest at Athens after the establishment there of the tragic drama, and whose inter- course with -^schylus, in Attica and in Sicily, is attested by more than one indication of borrowed phraseology. We cannot therefore conclude the present chapter without endeavouring to ascertain how far the performance of one of Pindar's Epinician Odes partook of a dramatic or histrionic character. We have already seen, on the authority of Plato, that the melic poem presumed a direct communication from the poet himself — it was St aira'yyekla'; avrov rod TroirjTov, in other words, it represented the author of the poem as speaking in his own person, and was therefore distinguished from the imitative dialogue of dramatic poetry '^. Now the iTTiviKiov in particular belonged to the class of e^Kwyi^ia^ which by the nature of the case implied a festive meet- ing^ and more than any other form of melic poetry allowed the bard freely to introduce his own personality. It does not, however, follow from this that the poet was always present in person, and 1 rpayipdias evperal /xh Xlkvujvloi, reKeaiovpyol d^ 'AttlkoL Themist. Orat. XXVII. 337 B- See also Athen. XIV. p. 629 A : 'A/z^tW — dyeaOai 07;(7tv iv "EXiKdvt iraldoju dp- XVCeLS [xera (nrov^ris Traparid^fievos dpxaiov €Triypa/ji.p,a rode' 'Afj-<p6Tep wpxe^/J-av re Kal iv Mwtrats edibaaKov "AvSpas, 6 S' avK-qras -ijv "Avukos ^LoKevs' Elfii 8^ Ba/cxeiSas St/cuwi'tos. v pa OeoTcn Tots ^iKvQpL Kokov TOUT^ aireKeLTo y^pas. 2 Suidas in Q^criris. 3 Athen. Xiv. p, 630 c: auvi(TTr)Ke 5k Kal ^arvpcKT] iraaa woirjais t6 iraXaibp iK XopQv, (is Kal T] t6t€ rpayii^hla' dioTrep ov8k viroKpiTas elxo?'. ■* Plat. Resp. III. 394 c. Ast interprets drayyeXia as "ea exponendi ratio qua poeta lyricus utitur qui suis ipse verbis omnia refert, suae ipse mentis sensa explicat." s Below, Chapter v.