Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/89

 ORIGIN OF COMEDY. 71 one of the meanings of that word is r) fxer olvov whr}. This would scarcely be an argument if it were only the signification of the word Koofio^i : but this is so far from being the case, that it is not even the primary or most usual meaning of the word. Kco/jlo^;^ signifies a revel continued after supper. It was a very ancient custom in Greece for young men, after rising from an evening banquet, to ramble about the streets to the sound of the flute or the lyre, and with torches in their hands ; such a band of revellers was also called a kw/jlo^. Thus ^schylus says''^, very forcibly, that the Furies, although they had drunk their fill of human blood in the house of the Pelopidce, and though it was now time that they should go out like a /cc5/zo9, nevertheless obstinately stuck to the house, and would not depart from it. And as the band of revellers " flown with insolence and wine," as Milton says^, not unfrequently made a riotous entrance into any house where an entertainment was going on*, the verb eTreLaKco/jid^ct) is used metaphorically by Plato to signify any interruption or intrusion, whether it be the in- vasion of a philosophical school by mere pretenders to science^, or the evasion of the proper subject of inquiry by the introduction of extraneous matter^. Hence the word Kc3//,o9 is used to denote any band or company. In a secondary sense, it signifies a song sung either by a convivial party or at the Bacchic feasts (not merely in honour of the god, but also to ridicule certain persons), or lastly, by a procession in honour of a victor at the public games. By a still further transition, /cw/xo? is used for a song in general ; and a peculiar flute tune, together with its corresponding dance, was known by this name. It was in the second sense of the word that the Bacchic reveller was called a KWfxcoho^i, namely, a comus-singer, according to the analogy of rpayojBo^, iapa)S6(i, &c., in which the first part of the compound refers to the performer, the second to the 1 See Welcker in Jacobs' edition of Philostratus, p. 202. The remarks in the text are an abstract of what he says on the signification of this word. He supposes, how- ever, that /cw/uwSos is derived from the secondary sense of the word, in which he agrees with Kanngiesser (Koiii. Bilhn. p. 32), 2 Agamemnon, 1161, Wellauer : Kal fxrjv TreTTW/ccus y us dpaavveadat wXiov Bporeioj' aifia KQfios ev do/j-ois /xeuet Avaire/xTTTos ^^w avyyovcju ^'EpLvi^vbiv. 3 Par. L. I. 502. ^ Like Alcibiades in Plato's Sympos. p. 212 c. ^ Resp. p. 500 B : Toits ^^ojdeu ov Trpoa-iJKOv eireKXKCKiaixaKOTas. ® Thecetet. p. 184 A: Kal rb fieyiaTov, ov eveKa 6 X670S uipfMrjTai, iwtaT'qfirjs -rripi., tL ttot' iariv, Slctk^tttov yivTqrat. vwo tQu eireLaKUfJ-a^ovTuv Xoyoji'.