Table Of ContentThe Choruses of Sophokles’
Antigone and Philoktetes
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Mnemosyne
Bibliotheca Classica Batava
Monographs on Greek and
Roman Language and Literature
Editorial Board
G.J. Boter
A. Chaniotis
K. Coleman
I.J.F. de Jong
P.H. Schrijvers
VOLUME 292
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The Choruses of
Sophokles’ Antigone
and Philoktetes
A Dance of Words
By
Margaret Rachel Kitzinger
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2008
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Detailed Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available on the
Internet at http://catalog.loc.gov
Hollander, David B. (David Bruce)
Money in the late Roman Republic / by David B. Hollander.
p. cm. — (Columbia studies in the classical tradition ; 29)
Based on the author’s Ph.D. thesis, Roman money in the late Republic, presented to
Columbia University in 2002.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15649-4
ISBN-10: 90-04-15649-6 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Money—Rome—History. 2. Coinage—Rome—History. 3. Monetary
policy—Rome—History. 4. Rome—Economic conditions. I. Title.
HG237.H636 2007
332.4'93709014—dc22
2006051844
ISSN 0169-8958
ISBN 978 90 04 16514 4
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CONTENTS
Preface ......................................................................................... vii
Introduction ................................................................................ 1
Chapter One Antigone ............................................................... 11
1. The Parodos: From March to Dance ................................. 12
2. πολλὰ τὰ δεινά: The Ordering of Ambiguity ................... 20
3. ἄτη: The Consequence of Action and the Sequence of
the Dance ........................................................................... 30
4. Hymn to Eros: The Appeal of the Divine ......................... 44
5. A Lyric Dialogue: Challenge and Response ...................... 48
6. Fractured Narrative and the Song of Fate ......................... 57
7. Dionysos After All .............................................................. 62
Chapter Two Philoktetes ............................................................. 71
1. The Parodos: A Divided World .......................................... 78
2. The Song of Lies ............................................................... 87
3. The Solo Song ................................................................... 96
4. A Hymn to Healing Sleep? ................................................ 112
5. The Kommos: (Dis)embodied Voices ................................. 122
Epilogue ...................................................................................... 137
Bibliography ................................................................................ 139
Index ........................................................................................... 143
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PREFACE
My interest in the choruses of Sophokles began in the helplessness I felt
when I tried to explain them to students. If I was teaching students who
didn’t know Greek, I found that all too frequently our discussion about
the plays seemed perfectly satisfying without our making any reference
to the chorus at all. If I was reading a play in Greek with students, we
enjoyed the beauty of the songs’ language and their rhythms, but had
no way of talking about them that enriched our reading of the play as a
whole. It was only when I directed fi rst the Ajax and then the Antigone in
productions in Greek that I began to see the ways in which the chorus,
in creating another world on stage by its unique language and move-
ment, gave the audience a different perspective from which to view the
play’s action. It took much more work with the texts of all of Sophokles’
plays before I could articulate how the chorus’ mode of expression,
which was so vivid to me as a director, related to what the chorus was
saying, their understanding of the action. In doing this work, it has been
of particular importance to me to try to combine the perspectives of a
philologist and a practitioner of the theater.
I am grateful to all the students over the years who have helped me
think about Sophokles’ plays, and particularly to those who have been
willing to give themselves over to the challenge of putting the plays on
stage, whether in Greek or in English. I would also like to thank col-
leagues who have generously offered me their thoughts, reactions, and
encouragement: Rob Brown, Carolyn Dewald, Pat Easterling, Helene
Foley, Mitch Miller, Seth Schein and Don Lateiner. And above all, my
gratitude to Eamon Grennan for his love of language, his readiness to
share that love with me, and his generosity in reading and commenting
on many versions of this book is boundless.
Rachel Kitzinger
Vassar College
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INTRODUCTION
The following essay explores the role the chorus plays in creating the
dramatic power of Sophoklean tragedy. In it I look at the language
of the choruses of the Antigone and Philoktetes to understand both how
and what the chorus communicates and how that communication
relates to the language of the actors in the episodes. With this close
reading I hope to show that the chorus’ mode of expression, song and
dance, shapes—or is inextricably intertwined with—its world view.
For Sophokles the difference in attitude and mode of communication
between actors and chorus allows him to explore the action of the
play from two radically different points of view. Reconciling, or at least
comprehending, this tension is central to the audience’s experience of
the drama. Sadly the text of the songs is all that is left to us of the
chorus’ performance, a performance in which dance movement, melody,
and words were all critical elements in the chorus’ representation of
its point of view. I wish to show in the following pages, however, that
the words of the songs can help us understand the fuller performative
context of the chorus and that without such an understanding the role
of the chorus does not emerge clearly.1 In putting the chorus’ mode
of expression at the center of an understanding of its role, I wish to
emphasize its essential difference from the actors; its mode of expres-
sion entails another way of thinking about the action of the play, one
circumscribed and defi ned by what can be said and thought in the
medium of song and dance, as opposed to speech and action.2
1 Other critics take into consideration the chorus’ mode of expression in discussing
its role, though without asking how that mode of expression affects what the chorus
says. So, for example, Davidson 1986, 69–78 argues against viewing the chorus as
simply another actor by pointing to the importance of music and dance as features of
choral performance not always consistent with “characterization” but does not discuss
any particular ode. And Scott 1996 interprets the tone of choral songs by studying
their musical design while assuming that choral characterization, of which tone is an
element, does not differ in radical ways from the actors’.
2 Dale 1969, 214 writes: “. . . even when the Chorus takes a large part in the action,
whether in its own cause or as the main interlocutor confronting the chief character, its
contribution is lyric or emotional in tone . . .” She is speaking here of the chorus’ role
in the episodes. How much truer is this distinction between actor’s and chorus’ mode
of expression if we consider the difference between odes and episodes! The claim,
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Description:"Dance of Words" argues for a fundamental difference in the modes of expression of actor and chorus. The chorus views the action from the perspective of dancers and singers, while the actors' understanding is shaped by the responsibility they have to make things happen. While this responsibility fas
