Choruses for Dionysus

270 Pages·2015·1.42 MB·English

Choruses for Dionysus:

Studies in the History of Dithyramb and Tragedy

By

Matthew C. Wellenbach

B.A., Williams College, 2009

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of Classics at Brown University

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

MAY 2015
© Copyright 2015 by Matthew C. Wellenbach
This dissertation by Matthew C. Wellenbach is accepted in its present form
by the Department of Classics as satisfying the
dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Date________________ _______________________________________
Johanna Hanink, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date________________ _______________________________________
Deborah Boedeker, Reader

Date_______________ _______________________________________
Pura Nieto Hernández, Reader

Date_______________ _______________________________________
Andrew Ford, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date_______________ _______________________________________
Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School

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Curriculum Vitae

Matthew C. Wellenbach was born on June 4, 1987, in Philadelphia, PA. He first began
studying Latin during his primary and second education, and in 2009 he earned a B.A. in
Classics, magna cum laude, and with highest honors, from Williams College, located in
Williamstown, MA. In the fall of 2008, he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. He
matriculated at Brown University in Providence, RI, in the fall of 2009 as a graduate
student in the Department of Classics. During his time at Brown, he presented a paper on
similes in the Odyssey at the 2012 meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle
West and South and published a review of a monograph on Aeschylus’ Suppliant Women
in Bryn Mawr Classical Review as well as an article on depictions of choral performance
in Attic vase-paintings in Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies. In the fall of 2014, he will
join the Department of Classical Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA, as a
Visiting Lecturer.

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Όταν, κατά το µεσηµέρι, βρέθηκε στο κέντρο του αρχαίου θεάτρου
νέος Έλληνας αυτός, ανύποπτος, ωστόσο ωραίος όπως εκείνοι,
ἐβαλε µια κραυγή (όχι θαυµασµού· θαυµασµο δεν τον ένιωσε διόλου,
κι αν τον ένιωθε σίγουρα δε θα τον εκδήλωνε), µια άπλη κραυγή
ίσως απ᾽ την αδάµαστη χαρά της νεότητάς του
ή για να δοκιµάσει την ηχητική τού χώρου. Απέναντι,
πάνω απ᾽τα καθετα βουνά, η ηχώ αποκρίθηκε –
η ελληνική ηχώ που δε µιµείται ούτε επαναλαµβάνει
µα συνεχίζει απλώς σ᾽ένα ύψος απροσµέτρητο
την αιώνια ιαχή του διθράµβου.

When at noon he found himself in the center of the ancient theater,
a young Greek, unsuspectingly as handsome as they were,
let out a cry (not one of amazement; he had not felt amazement at all,
and had he felt it, certainly he would not have expressed it), a simple cry
perhaps as a result of the untameable joy of his youth
or one with which he could test the acoustics of the place. Across
the horizon over the vertical mountains, the echo answered –
the echo of Greece which does not imitate or repeat
but which propels to an immeasurable height
the eternal shout of the dithyramb.

Yannis Ritsos, “Ancient Theater,” from Testimonies I (1963), translated by Minas Savvas
in Chronicle of Exile (1977).

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the many people who have given generously of their time and
energy to this work. First among these is Johanna Hanink, my advisor, who seemed
always to know what advice to give and when to give it. Without her guidance and
encouragement, this dissertation would exist in a very different, and undoubtedly worse,
form, if at all. Deborah Boedeker and Pura Nieto Hernández read my work in its many
interations as it progressed, and Andrew Ford did so at its conclusion. I thank all three of
them for their insightful comments, which have already left their mark on the project in
its current state and will continue in the future to influence my thoughts about the topics I
discuss here.
The research and writing of this dissertaton were undertaken primarily in the
libraries and facilities of three institutions: Brown University, the University of
Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. Without access to resources at all three of those
schools, I could not have completed this project. Outside of the immeasurable debt I owe
to my home institution of Brown, I am particular indebted and grateful to the members of
the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for welcoming me
so warmly during my time in Philadelphia from 2013 to 2014.
While at Brown, I have had the good fortune and great pleasure to be a member of
a welcoming, supportive, and intellectually stimulating and challenging department. For
fostering such an atmosphere, I am grateful to the entire faculty in the Department of
Classics at Brown. Susan Furtado has always been ready to provide good cheer and
administrative assistance, and for both of those I am immensely thankful. I would be
remiss if I did not express my gratitude to the wonderful fellow graduate students whom I
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have had to privilege to meet and work with over the last six years. While I hesistate to
name any of my colleagues individually, for all of them have enriched my time in
graduate school in one way or another, I will always recall with particular fondness the
times spent, both inside and outside of the seminar room, with the other members of the
cohort with which I entered the graduate program in 2009: Scott DiGiulio, Chris Geggie,
Melissa Holzhauer, Byron MacDougall, Tara Mulder, Jen Swalec, and Adrianne Troia.
I thank my parents, Andy and Tricia, and my brother, Jeff, for their unstinting
support and love.
Lastly (and not just for reasons of alphabetization), I thank my wife, Katie
Zagrabbe. She has provided amazingly boundless patience, support, and love while I
have worked on this project, and as the smallest of recompenses for those gifts and the
many others she has given to me, I dedicate this dissertation to her.

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Table of Contents

Conventions and Abbreviations ix

Introduction: A Program for Dionysus 1

Part One: Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Mimesis 27

1. Masks and Mimetic Performance in Attic Vase-Painting 28

2. Choral Voice, Identity, and Mimetic Performance in 75
Dithyramb and Tragedy

Part Two: The Beginnings of Tragedy: Discourse and Definitions 126

3. Herodotus’ Tragic Choruses 127

4. Aristophanes: Trugic, Tragic, Kuklic 169

Conclusion: The Emergence of Tragedy 236

Bibliography 241

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Conventions and Abbreviations

All ancient texts are quoted from the most current edition of the authors in the Oxford
Classical Texts series, with the exception of Pindar and Bacchylides, whose work I cite
from the most recent editions for the two poets in the Teubner series. All translations of
ancient texts are my own, unless otherwise noted. In preparing my translations, I often
consulted the editions for the authors in the Loeb Classical Library series. All dates are
BCE, unless otherwise noted. For ancient authors and their works as well as for modern
collections and editions of ancient texts, I have largely followed the abbreviations found
in the Oxford Classical Dicitonary (3rd edition, revised). For names of journals, I have
used the abbreviations found in L’Année philologique. Special note should be made of the
following abbreviations for the listed work:

ABV Beazley, J.D. (1956). Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters.
Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

Addenda Carpenter, T.H., with T. Mannack and M. Mendonça, (eds.).
(1989). Beazley Addenda: Additional References to ABV, ARV2 &
Paralipomena, Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

ARV Beazley, J.D. (1963). Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, Second
Edition. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

BAPD Beazley Archive of Pottery Database; URL:
http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/xdb/ASP/default.asp

CVA Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (1923-), Paris, et al.

DFA Pickard-Cambridge, A.W. (1988). The Dramatic Festivals of
Athens, Second Edition, revised with a supplement by J. Gould
and D.M. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

DTC Pickard-Cambridge, A.W. (1962). Dithyramb, Tragedy and
Comedy, Second Edition, revised by T.B.L. Webster. Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press.

Ieranò Ireanò, G. (1997). Il Ditirambo di Dioniso: Le Testimonianze
Antiche. Pisa; Rome: Istituti editoriali e poligrafici
internazionali

Paralipomena Beazley J.D. (1971). Paralipomena: Additions to the Attic
Black-Figure Vase-Painters and Attic Red-Figure Vase-
Painters. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press
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INTRODUCTION

A PROGRAM FOR DIONYSUS

In the last decade of the fifth century BCE, the Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes
brought forth a production which had as its primary theme the state of Athens’ poetic
culture. In the comedy, the poor poetry currently being produced in the city prompts a
trip to the Underworld, where the luminaries of a bygone era now reside. The purpose of
the trip is to return to earth in the company of someone who can help improve Athens’
slate of cultural offerings. Before the travelers depart with their savior, they participate in
and observe heated discussions about what makes for good poetry.
The description in the previous paragraph captures the major plot points of
Aristophanes’ Frogs, which premiered at the Lenaea festival of 405 and was one of his
most celebrated comedies. According to tradition, Frogs was so well received that a
special commendation was bestowed upon Aristophanes in recognition of his
achievement and it was arranged that the play be given a second production soon after its
first, both unusual measures.1 In the comedy, Dionysus, prompted both by his fondness
for the recently deceased Euripides and by his disgust for the tragedians who are still
living and producing their work, men such as Xenocles and Pythangelus, descends to the

1 PCG iii.2 T 1 35-9; Ar. Frogs, Hyp I.37-40.

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