The Athenian institution of the Khoregia : the chorus, the city, and the stage 9780521550703, 052155070X

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The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia

This book is the first major study of the means wby which the classical Athenians organised and funded their many festival choruses. It explores the mechanics of the institution by which a minority of rich citizens were required to arrange and pay for a festival chorus, including choruses for tragic and comic drama, and situates this duty within the range of occasions for élite leadership in Athens’ elaborate festival calen­ dar. Peter Wilson goes on to show the importance of the khoregia to our under­ standing of the workings of Athenian democracy itself, and to demonstrate the degree to which the institution was itself a highly performative occasion, an opportunity for élite display in the democratic environment. The post-classical history of the khoregia and its appearance in a wide range of other Greek communities are also examined. PETER WILSON is currently a Research Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick.

The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia The Chorus, the City and the Stage

Peter Wilson University of Warwick

Cambridge UNIVERSITY PRESS

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, USA http://www.cup.org 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 2000 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First pubhshed 2000

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset in Bembo 10X/12 [se] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn

o 521 55070 x hardback

For my parents τί φίλτερον κεδνών τοκεων άγαθοίς;

Contents

page x

List of illustrations Preface

xiii

List of abbreviations

xiv

Introduction Parti

i

THE INSTITUTION

1 Private wealth for public performance

11

A cultural revolution?

12

Festival leitourgiai

21

Serving Dionysos: the City Dionysia

21

Processional leitourgiai: place and service in the city

25

The Lenaia

27

Anthesteria

32

Service for Apollo

32

Dancing for Hephaistos and Prometheus?

35

Panathenaia

36

Other services

43

An ‘international’ khoregia

44

"Whoever honours the gods best with khoroi are the best in war . . .’

46

2 Organisation and operation

50

The city and its khoregoi

50

Appointment

51

After nomination

57

Poets, patrons and the polis

61

The tasks of the khoregos

71

vii

CONTENTS

In the khoregeion

71

Recruitment

75

Civic purity

80

Training

81

Materials of performance

86

The politics of khoregic extravagance

89

Dithyramb, tragedy, comedy:comparative expenditure

93

Before the agones: proagon and procession

95

Judgement

98

102

Epinikian practice

Part II

THE KHOREGIA IN ACTION: Social performance and symbolic practice

3 Aristocratic style

109

The figure of the dramatic khoregos

109

Leading a khoros

111

Death in the didaskaleion

116

Khoregic prestige

120

Khoregic patronage

123

Khoregos, koryphaios?

130

Khoregic performance

136

4 Khoregia and democracy

144

Competition, victory, transgression: the power and politics of choral leadership

144

Alkibiades, khoregos "to the envy of my fellow-citizens . . .’

148

Khoregic curses

155

The theatre of conflict

156

Khoregic power

168

Phyletic honours

171

The leitourgist and the demos

172

The demos as oppressor?

184

The ‘love of honour’: a history of conflict

187

Tragic ambitions

194

5 Monumentalising victory

198

The politics of tripods

199

The rhetoric of tripods

201

Choral memorials

206

The street of tripods

209 viii

CONTENTS

Inscribing victory

214

The early period

216

‘ They name the place after certain temples, rather large for the purpose to which they are put. .

219

Oligarchic extravagance

226

Dramatic memorials

236

Remembering Dionysos in the demes

244

The khoregos in ceramic

252

Part III BEYOND CLASSICAL ATHENS

6

Challenge, change, diffusion

The end of democracy and the ‘khoregia of the demos’

265 270

The Athenian revival

276

The khoregia beyond Attike

279

Appendices

1 ‘Tripodes’

303

2 Thargelian and other dedications

304

3 Dithyramb in the demes

305

4 The date of the reform of the khoregia

307

5 Khoroi and the Tekhnitai

308

6 Further evidence for choral contests

309

Notes

311

Bibliography

395

General index

421

Index ofpassages

428

Epigraphic index

43 3

ix

Illustrations

I

Base of khoregic monument for tragedy and comedy (Lenaia), from the Athenian Agora: Onesippos’ herm. Athens, Inscr. Agora i 7168

page 30

2

Remains of the khoregic monument of Atarbos (for pyrrhikhe and (?) dithyramb). Athens, Akropolis Museum 1338

39

3

Late Archaic Attic wine-cup (kylix) with images of choral training. Metropolitan Museum, New York 27.74

74

4

Attic red-figured bell-krater with (?) dithyrambic khoros: Copenhagen 13817. Photograph courtesy of the Department of Near Eastern and Classical Antiquities, National Museum, Denmark

76

The ‘Pronomos’ vase: Attic red-figured volute-krater c. 400 b.c. from Ruvo, Puglia. Naples, Museo Nazionale 3240 inv. no. 81673

78

5 6

Base of khoregic monument for tragedy from Varkiza (the deme Anagyrous?). Athens, Epigraphic Museum 13180

132

7

Fragment of a (?) khoregic relief with an adult male in himation and tripod. Athens, Akropolis Museum 2995

208

Fragment of a khoregic (?) monument — a relief with an adult male in long himation and a small, bearded satyr seizing (?) a large tripod by its base. Athens, National Museum 1490

208

9

Plan of the theatre and sanctuary of Dionysos in Athens (after Korres (1988))

210

10

Athenian Akropolis and environs, indicating the course of the Street of Tripods (after Kazamiakes (1994))

211

The khoregic monument of Lysikrates: the design of Stuart and Revett (1762)

220

The khoregic monument of Lysikrates: the reconstruction of Amandry (1976)

223

8

II

12

13

The khoregic monument of Lysikrates: the reconstruction of Bauer 224

(1977) X

ILLUSTRATIONS

14

The khoregic monument of Lysikrates: the frieze (after Ehrhardt (1993))

225

15

The khoregic monument of Nikias: the reconstructed plan of Dinsmoor (1910)

228

The khoregic monument of Nikias: the reconstruction of Dinsmoor (1910)

229

The khoregic monument of Thrasyllos: its current state. Photograph courtesy of Barbara Kowalzig

230

16

17

18

The khoregic monument of Thrasyllos: the drawing of Stuart and Revett (1787)

232

19

The khoregic monument of Thrasyllos: the reconstruction of Welter (1938)

233

20

The khoregic monument of Thrasyllos: its place in the upper region of the theatre of Dionysos. Photograph courtesy of Barbara Kowalzig

234

Remains of a khoregic monument for pyrrhikhe and ? drama: Athens, National Archaeological Museum 3854 (front and right-hand side)

237

22

Monument from the Attic deme Aixone honouring two khoregoi for comedy at the local Dionysia: Athens, Epigraphic Museum

239

23

Fragment of an Attic volute-krater with masks and column-capitals in a Dionysiac environment: Sarnothrace 65.1041

240

Remains of a theatrical khoregic monument: fragment of relief carving from the Attic deme Ikarion. Athens, National Museum 4531

241

The semicircular khoregic monument of Hagnias, Xanthippos and Xanthides from the Attic deme Ikarion. Reconstruction after Biers and Boyd (1982)

250

26

Attic krater with victorious lampadephoroi of the phyle Antiokhis. British Museum 98.7-16.6 (drawing after Froeher (1898))

254

27

Attic neck-amphora with khoregic tripod being dressed with (?) ribbons by a (?) Nike and the inscription ‘The phyle Akamantis was victorious’ and ‘Glaukon kalos’ on the steps of the base. British Museum E298

255

Fragmentary Attic skyphos (drinking cup) with (?) khoregic tripod: reconstruction after Amandry (1976) (design of I. Athanasiadou)

255

Attic hydria with performing satyrs and auletes, watched by a (?) khoregos. Boston Museum of Fine Arts 03.788

258

30

Attic volute-krater with dancing satyrs, auletes and (?) khoregos. Ferrara, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Spina 3031; photograph courtesy of Hirmer Verlag Munich

259

31

The ‘Khoregoi’ vase: Apulian red-figured bell-krater c. 400 b.c. J. P. Getty Museum, Malibu 96.AE.29

259

21

24

25

28 29

xi

Preface

This book began as part of a Cambridge Ph.D., and developed into its very different current form at the University of Warwick, after two years of productively distracting teaching at University College, Oxford. Pembroke College Cambridge assisted my initial research and New Hall allowed me to further it in a sympathetic environment by electing me to a Junior Research Fellowship. My colleagues at Warwick have been supportive in its final stages. It is a real honour and pleasure to be able at last to thank the many people from whose help and encouragement I profited along the way. First among these is Simon Goldhill, whose intellectual energy was vital in the early stages of my research and who has always been ready with encouragement and insightful advice. In Cambridge, Eric Handley and Richard Hunter were generous with their time and learning. So too, well beyond the call of duty, were my two examiners, Pat Easterling and Paul Cartledge. Theirs is a model of scholarly arete one would truly wish to follow. In Oxford Oliver Taplin s constant support and interest in things khoregic have been invaluable, as has his friendship. Many people responded to parts of this work in draft form and as seminar papers. My thanks to them all; and in particular, for their ami­ cable discussions and criticisms, to David Konstan, Nicole Loraux, Christopher Pelling and Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood. On matters democratic I have benefited more than it shows from my dialogue with Josh Ober. Pauline Hire and Linda Woodward have been diligent and understanding edito­ rial guides to an inexperienced author. Thanks of a different sort go to Chris Clark, James Mackenzie and, in particu­ lar, Vanessa Smith; and above all to my parents, to whom I dedicate this book with much love.

xiii

Abbreviations

ARV2 D—K

DTA FGrH IEG IG IK IvO K-A LGPN

M—L

MMO MTS2

Paralip.

PMG PMGF

J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd edn, Oxford 1963. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, H. Diels and W Kranz, 7th edn, 3 vols., Berlin 1951—4. Defixionum Tabellae, ed. A. Audolent, Paris 1904. F. Jacoby (ed.), Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Berlin/Leiden 1923—58. Iambi et Elegi Graeci, 2 vols., ed. Μ. L. West, Oxford 1971. Inscriptiones Graecae, Berlin, 1913— Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien, Bonn 1972- . Inschriften von Olympia, eds. W. Dittenberger and K. Purgold, Bonn 1896. R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci, Berlin/New York 1983- . A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, eds. P Fraser, E. Matthews, Μ. Osborne, S. Byrne, Oxford 1987— R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the end of the Fifth Century B.C., Oxford 1969. T. B. L. Webster, Monuments Illustrating Old and Middle Comedy, 3rd edn, rev. J. Green, BICS Supp. 39, London 1978. T. B. L. Webster, Monuments Illustrating Tragedy and Satyr Play, 2nd edn, BICS Supp. 20, London 1967. J. D. Beazley, Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-figure Vase Painters, 2nd edn, Oxford 1971. Poetae Melici Graeci, ed. D. L. Page, Oxford, 1962. Poetarum Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 1, ed. Μ. Davies, Oxford

1991. RL/4pSuppl.ii A. D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, The Red-Figured Vases ofApulia, Supplement 11 (BICS Suppl. no. 60, 1991, publ. 1992). SGD D Jordan, ‘A Survey of Greek Defixiones Not Included in the Special Corpora’, GRBS 26 (1985) 151-97. Sn—M Bacchylidis carmina cum fragmentis, post B. Snell, ed. H. Maehler, Stuttgart/Leipzig 1992. TrGF 1 Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 1: Didascaliae Tragicae, Catalogi Tragicorum et Tragoediarum Testimonia et Fragmenta Tragicorum Minorum, ed. B. Snell, corrected and augmented R. Kannicht, Göttingen 1986. xiv

ABBREVIATIONS

TrGF 2 Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 2: Fragmenta Adespota, Testimonia Volumini 1 Addenda, Indices ad Volumina 1 et 2, eds. R. Kannicht and B. Snell, Göttingen 1981. TrGF 3 Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 3 : Aeschylus, ed. S. Radt, Göttingen 1985. TrGF 4 Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. 4: Sophocles, ed. S. Radt, Göttingen 1977.

xv

Introduction

During the course of a very long conversation held as they walk across the mountains of Krete in the heat of summer, three philosophically-minded elderly gentlemen turn their attention, and the experience of their respective cultures, to a matter of supreme importance for those, like themselves, deeply concerned with finding the way to shape the best possible form of society: the education of the young. As in all things Greek, the conversation is dominated by the Athenian, in this case a nameless ‘stranger’. His Spartan and Kretan companions are little more than reflective surfaces for his thoughts and pronouncements; their mountain hike to the cave of Zeus on Ida the most discrete of fictive frames for what is essentially systematic exposition. Plato now has little use for the didacticism of drama. Khoreia — the practice of dancing and singing as a social collective to the words and music of a poet — is absolutely fundamental to this Athenian vision of the ideal paedagogy in the ideal city. And this it shares with the historical city of classical Athens, as indeed with most Greek cities of whose religious and cultural practices anything much can be known. Views diverge enormously, however, as to the precise means and matters for choral performance. This Athenian has his listeners accede without demur to his vision of a city extending its legislative and administrative powers into every corner of choral practice: who is to perform in what khoros; at what age; with what words, bodily gestures, metres and rhythms; wearing what garments and ornaments; to what god, hero or heroised man their performance will be directed, and with what accompanying sacrifices; on what day of the year (and vir­ tually every day will see khoroi dance). Nothing whatever in khoreia, this practice for producing ‘beautiful bodies’ and ‘noble souls’, is left to contingency or whimsy: every poetic composition is to be checked by civic officials to ensure its ‘legality’, that it does not contravene what the city regards as just, beautiful and good’. Nor is the poet to show his work to some mere private citizen before it has been scrutinised by the guardians of the laws, the special ‘Lawmakers for matters Musical’ and the ‘Supervisor of Education’. Anyone foolhardy enough to propose a change in the sacred laws pre­ scribing the same choral performances, the identical hymns, on the same days every year, exposes himself to expulsion from the choral community and to prosecution for impiety. The lengthy exposition ranges widely, among many other things making a case

I

INTRODUCTION

for the education of women and, almost as enthusiastically, endorsing a programme to inculcate ambidexterity from an early age. But by its close there remains a significant omission. It is almost as an afterthought - but an affected afterthought, as though hoping to suppress the importance of the matter it recalls — that the question of drama, comic and tragic, is raised. The fact that they appear in this discussion at all is testimony to their continued importance as performances central to the shaping of civic identity in the mid-fourth century; while their presence among and treatment as fundamentally choral performances highlights an important and neglected truth: well into the later classical period, drama was conceived of as a choral form. A mild and as it were homeopathic dose of‘the business of base bodies and ideas’, of comedy, is admitted, in the belief that one exposes oneself to the dangers of the ludicrous and vulgar ‘in order to avoid ever doing or saying anything ludicrous through ignorance’. And the whole practice is consigned to foreigners. But the ques­ tion posed by ‘the so-called “serious” poets, the tragedians’, is the more pressing, pre­ cisely because of their seriousness, a quality which the elderly Athenian is very keen on for his educational purposes, and which is the most prized feature of the poetry and khoreia to be reperformed endlessly and without change in his visionary city. A critical question in this discussion of education then becomes whether to admit the poets of tragedy into the city and countryside, along with their actors ‘with their beautiful voices and their power to speak louder than us’, when they ask for permis­ sion to set up their stages in the marketplace. The works of these poets, like those of any other aspirant in the ideal city, are to be scrutinised by magistrates and tested against those of their rivals. But in this case, the rivals are the citizens of the ideal city, transformed in the Athenian’s vision into poets themselves, ‘of a tragedy at once most beautiful and good’, the constitution of the city, ‘a representation of the most beau­ tiful and best life which is in reality, as we assert, the truest tragedy’. This radical hijacking of the title of tragic poet by the citizens qua citizens, and of tragedy by the city’s very political structure, points to the depth of anxiety over its power. Expulsion or rejection will not work; appropriation and coercive redefinition are the only effective alternatives. So now, you children, offspring of soft Muses, give a display of your songs side by side with ours before the Arkhons, and if you seem to be saying the same as us, or even something better, then we shall give you a khoros; but if not, friends, we could never do so. (Laws 8iyd) This question - to whom the city is to give its khoroi, above all its tragic khoroi, encap­ sulates in very concrete form the paedagogical and psychological issues of such concern to the elderly Athenian and the philosopher preoccupied with the mainte­ nance of stable identity. And the question had an equal urgency for the historical Athenians themselves, but for the utterly different reason that these ‘children of soft Muses’ and their actors were the most prestigious of all the city’s many cultural prac­ titioners, that the democratic city as a whole identified itself very powerfully with this peculiarly complex and potent form of khoreia. There were few public activities in the realm of the social and cultural which carried as much privilege and prestige as having, giving, receiving, teaching or leading a tragic khoros. The Platonic vision of the way tragic production should be managed in the well-ordered city is entirely eccentric, and swims against the strong contemporary current of its diffusion across

2

INTRODUCTION

and beyond the Aigean world, in the process of becoming a primary symbol not merely of the Athenian but of the Greek city.1 The philosophers moral and social fears seem so extreme because the society from which he draws his experience devoted energies and wealth on such a scale to its tragic khoroi, and had done so for more than one and a half centuries. The Athenians were thus by no means unlike their philosopher in the impor­ tance they attached to their choral culture. While they could scarcely have differed more on the matter of dramatic khoreia, the principle, central to Platonic paedagogy, that the man without choral formation is a man without education (ô pèv carcdÔEUTOS à/opEUTOs r]pîv eœtcxi, Tov 5ê TrEiraiÔEU|JiÉvov îkovgûs KE/opEUKOTO, Laws 654a-b) was one they, like most Greeks, fully endorsed. In some Greek cities the institutions for the education of the young were called simply ‘the khoros’; in Sparta the word was used of the central political space of the city.2 The Athenians soon became famous in Greece for the degree to which they promoted and perfected Dionysiac khoroi in par­ ticular (cf. Athen. 5.181c), and they were perhaps the keenest of the Greeks for naming their children with aspirations at heart for their choral future, and at any rate in a manner that testifies to the prestige choral culture maintained in their self-image: we find ‘Khoral Glory’ (Khorokles), ‘Khoral Victory’ (both boy and girl - Khoronikos, Khoronikë); and at least one "Khoregos’, a comic poet who surely came from a ‘musical’ family.3 The Athenians were also not unfamiliar with a high degree of formalism and legal control in the conduct of their extensive choral culture. At the centre of its manage­ ment was a major institution, the khoregia. Its place at the heart of Athenian civic society and the importance attached to it, illuminate the absolute centrality of khoreia to Athens as a political community and help explain the philosopher’s anxiety.

The khoregia has suffered from a curious lack of scholarly attention. The only works devoted specifically to it date from the end of the nineteenth century, and are largely confined to epigraphic issues, and more generally to the attempt to reconstruct the scheme of its practical organisation and conduct, that is, to writing a formal institu­ tional history.4 These specialist studies aside, the khoregia has generally been consigned to the sphere of economic history where, with the other leitourgiai or ‘public services’, it was for a long time treated as a perplexing if interesting feature of the ancient public economy. Boeckh’s Staatshaushaltung derAthener of 1817 still remains the fundamen­ tal work in this project of economic and institutional history.5 More recently, this somewhat narrow designation has been nuanced by fruitful analysis of the ways in which the performance of leitourgiai was determined by political factors, such as the desire to raise one’s public profile through a ‘politics of largess’.6 In ‘literary’ studies of drama, on the other hand, the khoregia often rates little more than a passing mention, under the topic of ‘staging’, or with reference to the (now largely aban­ doned) theories which saw khoregoi and poets operating in personal and political concert.7 The two spheres - institutional, economic and political history on the one hand, and theatrical history on the other — have generally been regarded as discrete and of very different orders. The reasons for such a demarcation of analysis are not hard to divine. The mate­ rials on which any study of the khoregia can be based are of a diverse and difficult range of media: from fragmentary inscriptions from the wreck of monuments set up

3

INTRODUC TION

to commemorate a choral victory, to abstract philosophical rumination on the moti­ vating psychology of the leitourgist. But the khoregia is precisely as exciting and revealing a subject as it is difficult, for it ramifies into virtually all areas of Athenian life: not simply theatrical production, but a range of various other choral forms with which the Athenians honoured their gods and pleased themselves, in particular the elusive and little-studied, but extraordinarily widespread dithyramb. And the khoregia must also be viewed in relation to a vast array of even less familiar festival perfor­ mances which the Athenians chose to organise and fund as competitions between their rich citizens. Moreover the leitourgic system was no discrete, impersonal insti­ tution, but stood at the ideological and material heart of the city, channelling vast resources of private wealth into the celebration of numerous festivals and crucially underwriting the maintenance of the fleet while simultaneously furnishing it with leaders. Operated with such a high degree of care and investment by the Athenians in the fifth and fourth centuries, it put the security of the city’s choral culture on the same footing as that of its naval power, which was the backbone of its empire. For most of the period covered by this study, including the course of the long Peloponnesian war, the ‘leadership of khoroi’ and the ‘command of triremes’ were on a par in the institutional support they received from the polis. They were seen as par­ allel rather than competing priorities. The prestige and, effectively, the power that went with these different forms of ‘leadership’ of the demos were far from negligible. And the way their performance, and the ‘favour’ they generated, were exploited in relations with the demos, and equally, the way they are represented among the circles of the likes of the ‘Old Oligarch’, those antipathetic to the prevailing political régime, reveals an enormous amount about the contested formation of political ideologies in Athens. The subject goes to the heart of major issues concerning the political and social stability of the democratic city, of definitions of citizenship, of democratic society’s proper use of its surplus wealth, and of the gap between ideology and practice. Important recent developments in a number of areas make a reassessment of the khoregia all the more timely. In particular, the fruitful and influential project of rein­ stating Athenian drama in the material, political, social and mental landscapes in and for which it was created would hardly be complete without a study of the mecha­ nism at its centre. In any project which takes as its object the relations between theatre and community, study of the khoregia must play an important part, being at the sim­ plest level the mechanism whereby prominent members of that community, khoregoi, were appointed by the leading civic officer, the Eponymous Arkhon, to fund a tragic khoros.s Thus, at the very point at which tragedy is instantiated, there emerge impor­ tant questions of the dynamics of individual and collective in Athenian society — questions which insistently recur in the tragedies themselves, and which its form is indeed eminently suited to explore. This recontextualisation of drama through the khoregia also highlights, as Plato’s discourse on khoreia further shows, the status of drama as a choral production, in a cultural tradition which knew of many different choral types. A consideration of the centrality which was so often accorded to khoroi in contemporary discussion of dra­ matic organisation and production may also offer a corrective to what has long been the basic tenet of the formal history of the tragic genre — namely, that that history can be seen as the steady decline in the importance of the khoros with a correspond­

4

INTRODUC TION

ing increase in the role of the actors.9 The khoros has in recent years begun to be given its due recognition not only at the centre of any attempt to understand drama in its original context but as a major form of Greek cultural, social and religious life.10 My preference for the transliterated forms such as ‘khoregia and ‘khoros’ over their latinised equivalents, ‘choregia’, ‘chorus’ - more familiar certainly in literary studies — is largely in order to signal, however superficially, this attempt to remove some of the accre­ tions of a scholarly tradition of great antiquity for which the khoros had become a problem. An important point of departure for this book was the recognition that the modern scholarship devoted to the tragic khoros had largely reached an impasse. The terms of analysis were predominantly formal, and predicated on a notion of ‘litera­ ture’ more or less inappropriate for the public and political form of Greek drama. And they were dominated by the perceived preoccupations of Aristotle’s Poetics. In partic­ ular, the influence of the nineteenth-century obsession with the search for the origins of tragedy was slow in loosening its grip, and can be detected in many works, among them what is still the most systematic single study of the choral parts of tragedy, Kranz’s Stasimon: Untersuchungen zu Form und Gehalt der griechischen Tragödie.11 Perhaps the most deleterious habit of this approach was its tendency to confuse diachronic and synchronic explanation: the hypothesised, inaccessible choral origins of tragedy are adduced, explicitly or implicitly, to explain the extant examples of the form. A remarkable case is Kranz’s view of the character of the khoros. This he saw as most strongly drawn at the beginnings of plays, and dwindling as the action predominates, the khoros becoming more of a spectator, with fewer interventions, at the ends of works. Kranz regarded this movement internal to specific tragedies as a formal analogy mirroring the history of the development of the khoros in the genre as a whole, rising from choral origins and ending in the marginality or death of the khoros.12 The teleo­ logical bias of this approach is clear, and it is the hallmark of virtually all scholarship devoted to formal aspects of tragedy. Consigned to a brief acme of aesthetically ‘appropriate’ and dramatically successful participation in the action in the work of Sophokles,13 the tragic khoros as it appears in the work of Aiskhylos is on this approach generally seen as a primitive element in which one can divine the origins of the genre,14 and in Euripides, or at least in late Euripides, as a degenerate, superfluous, embarrassing relic on its way to becoming little more than the provider of act-divid­ ing musical ‘interludes’with no essential relation to the particular drama, εμβόλιμα.15 The very fact of the continuing vigour of the khoregia for nearly a century beyond the date at which Aristotle places the start of this practice is one of the strongest argu­ ments that this neat vision of organic decline cannot be sustained. These related concerns of origins and formal development reflect the continu­ ing orientation of scholarship around a model derived from (readings of) Aristotle’s Poetics. This is the founding text for the formal, teleological analysis of tragedy and more generally for the attempt to formulate a ‘theory’ of tragedy and its khoros. Yet in Aristotle’s account, the khoros is in fact the least amenable element to his theory of causality and action, and so is negatively privileged in his hierarchy of the ‘parts’ of drama, which places plot (μύθος) and character (ήθη) at the top, melic poetry (μέλος) and the visual (όψις) at the bottom, the latter considered inessential to experience of the tragic.16 Recent work has exposed some of the exclusionary biases operating under approaches centred on this view, which often come close to ignoring the part played by the khoros in tragedy altogether.17 The theoretical bent and formalism of 5

INTRODUC TION

such approaches have also encouraged and endorsed an apolitical and largely ahistorical view of tragedy, but the effects of (and the reasons for) the hugely influential omission of both the city and the khoros from Aristotle’s Poetics are coming to be better understood.18 Unlike Aristotle, the Athenians conceived of their drama as a choral perfor­ mance, one that sat easily alongside the purely choral genre of dithyramb. A whole field of terminology used to describe the organisation and performance of Athenian drama is centred on the khoros. The festival khoroi are in an important sense regarded as being ‘the city’s khoroi'. In Athens as in the city of the Laws, a tragic poet with hopes of plying his craft ‘asked for a khoros' — χορόν αίτεΐν (cf. Aristoph. Knights 513) — from the city in the person of the Arkhon, who ‘gave’ it — χορόν διδόναι (cf. Aristot. Poetics 1449b; Kratinos fr. 17 K—A; Pl. Rep. 383c) — as he saw fit to the three successful poets.19 Of course the χορηγία itself fits into this series of terms. Comedy’s own broader discourse of dramatic performance is equally revealing: in the Frogs of Aristophanes, the god of drama says that he has descended to Hades for a tragic poet, ‘so that the polis may be saved and conduct its khoroi' (ϊν' ή πόλις σωθεϊσα τούς χόρους άγηι, Η19), referring to the dramatic competitions as an institution con­ ducted by and for the polis with the simple term οι χοροί: and in this context, ‘the city’s khoroi' means tragedy.20 In the Clouds, that group of eager aerial choral visitors to Athens characterise its principal choral festival (to which they are heading) as ‘the Dionysian joy with the approach of spring, wranglings of sweet-voiced khoroi and the deep-toned music of pipes’ (311—13). This combination of pleasure, music and choral aggression as defining features of Dionysian performance is not uncommon.21

Recent studies of the ‘ancient economy’ or - to signal an important shift in empha­ sis from global systems to the more personal, social and specific - of ‘ancient eco­ nomic relations’, have refocussed attention on the leitourgic system. Whereas leitourgiai were once seen, and often condemned, as an irrational and wasteful example of the ancient economy’s ‘primitivism’, they are now held up as a prime example of the personalised nature of ancient economic relations, and of the way that much of ancient Greek economic life was deeply embedded in a network of interpersonal rela­ tions, one among a range of different forms of reciprocity. The ‘rationality’ of the classical Greek economy can only be understood when the general subservience of economic matters per se to political and broadly socio-ethical principles is appre­ ciated.22 As for the more specific question of the economic base of tragedy, this has received surprisingly little analysis, even from Marxist critics.23 Repugnance for probing the economic base for these masterpieces of classical literature can explain some of this neglect, but the weight of traditional disciplinary demarcations — espe­ cially between ‘history’ and ‘literature’ — is probably as much to blame. Paul Veyne’s Le Pain et le Cirque (1976) went further than perhaps any other single work in dem­ onstrating the advantages to be gained by liberating accounts of ‘ancient economics’ from inappropriate modern conceptual frameworks. For all the criticisms that have been directed against this work, Veyne’s demonstration of the importance of an economy of the gift in his account of those areas of the classical Greek, Hellenistic and Roman Imperial worlds concerned with the creation and use of wealth, force­ fully demonstrated the pervasiveness and power of the ethic of ‘noble expenditure’ to constitute social relations.24 Veyne’s study of this concept of ‘euergetism’ signalled 6

INTRODUC TION

the importance of viewing the leitourgical system in socially dynamic terms, without providing the texture of detail for such a picture in the early Greek context.25 A review of Veyne’s work in the Annales suggested the direction such a study might take: ‘Finally, in describing euergetism as outside the logic of politics, Veyne let it be under­ stood that it might have a symbolic function, but at no point does he develop what could be an essential aspect of euergetism: a study of euergetism as social representa­ tion and symbolic practice remains to be written.’26 The case of classical Athens proves a rich terrain for extending Veyne’s approach in this way. More recent developments in social and cultural anthropology on rituals and performance of various kinds as means for the symbolic representation of social relations have refined the techniques and demonstrated the rewards of such an approach.27 When the somewhat artificial borders between economics, political and cultural performance are broken down, the extent and significance of the competi­ tive and performative qualities of the khoregia are better understood, qualities it shared with drama itself.

Part One of this book attempts to present as coherent and detailed a picture as pos­ sible of the khoregia in Athens. It concentrates on the mechanics of the institution, both with an historical perspective, tracing the changing use made of this form of cultural leadership for the best part of two hundred years of Athenian democratic history; and it also sites the khoregia in the context of the wide range of civic activ­ ities, festal and military, which the democratic city supported by means of this special form of honorific obligation. The second Part takes up the project sketched out above of returning to the kho­ regia some of the dynamism which this profoundly social institution clearly had and which a bare account of its formal rules will always conceal. A particularly important strand which emerges from this sociology of the khoregia is the persistence, in the practices surrounding this central cultural institution, of élite, aristocratic forms of behaviour and relations: the ostentatious display of personal and cultural wealth in the form of personal clothing, for instance, or in the more permanent shape of the victory-monument. The complex relationship between this form of democratic civic service with a decidedly élitist character and democratic politics and ideology are explored, in particular through that motor of élitist behaviour, the ‘love of honour’ (philotimia) and its close relative, the ‘love of victory’ (philonikia). The final Part of the book looks beyond the usual termini of works devoted to the khoregia and the theatre. It centres on the changing evaluation of khoregic expense within Athens in the late classical period, when it becomes an important item in a debate over the best deployment of the wealth of the élite in a city no longer master of a great empire whose autonomy was increasingly open to challenge — in particu­ lar from those, somewhat ironically, who were most enthusiastically adopting and exporting Athenian drama. The ‘abolition’ of the khoregia close to the end of the fourth century, and so close to the end of democracy, is often taken to be the natural end-point of any history of the institution. But it is important also to trace the con­ tinuities across the rupture between the democratic arrangements and what followed, and to see that the seeds of the oligarchic development towards uniting cultural and political leadership had been planted long before. The fascinating neo-classicising revival of the competitive khoregia in first-century a.d. Roman Athens is more than

7

INTRODUCTION

a curious epilogue of antiquarian interest, but throws reflected light on the classical khoregia through its powerful cultural appeal to an embattled and nostalgic Athenian élite. I close with a rough sketch of what in many respects is uncharted terrain: the organisation of khoreia by comparable means outside Athens. This raises, although on the current state of evidence and analysis can hardly answer in full, a series of fasci­ nating questions about the possible rôle and nature of Athenian influence behind the khoregic systems which appear in a wide range of places. That Athenian influence is conspicuously not present in some telling instances highlights the need for a more nuanced study of the cultural traditions of the Greek world beyond the dazzling spec­ tacles of classical Athens, and in particular of the place the collective khoros contin­ ued to occupy at the heart of civic life for centuries.

Part I

THE

I

Private wealth for public

performance Any picture of the khoregia as a functioning institution will be a composite image con­ structed from a set of fragments from a wide range of contexts and periods. For what­ ever its precise date of introduction as a fully-fledged civic institution, the khoregia enjoyed a long history in classical Athens, enduring in an identifiably stable form for the best part of two hundred years. But even with so large a period to draw from, the image must be a partial one. Much of what we miss derives from the diurnal world of interpersonal relations, that largely inaccessible level of Athenian social history in which the grand public remains of ‘civic’ Athens — the texts of tragedy, the speeches delivered before mass juries, the monuments — were conceived and brought into being through the complex interactions of individuals. We have few enough of those creations which the Athenians sought to expose forever to the light of the public gaze; of the means of their production within a set of social relations we catch only glimpses. The atmosphere of the khoregeion, where every tragedy and comedy and hundreds of choral performances came into being, is all but lost to us. However, theatre was no matter of ‘private’ initiative in Athens. The khoroi that were at its heart were the city’s khoroi, and with the involvement of the polis came the culture of publicity characteristic of democratic Athens. The city devoted to their production, performance and judgement the rigorous and extensive armature of control provided by the organs of democratic government. The city as a collective entity promoted the proliferation of choral performances over the classical period; it charged the leading officers of the city with their supervision; it intervened exten­ sively in matters concerning their production, performance, judgement and record, often by means of legislation. Our picture of the khoregia will recognise the dominant role of the city, under the ultimate authority of a sovereign demos, at every stage. But essential to the institution is the management of a complex union between collective public bodies (phylai, the polis itself) with their representative figures (Arkhons, epi­ meletai) and powerful individual citizens and their private wealth.1 Festivals were expensive affairs. A logic of expenditure was central to the Greek concept of religion. The gods enjoyed the consecration to them of things of material value which were also the most prized possessions of human communities — livestock, gold in the form of garlands, jewelry or on the horns of cattle, costly fabrics. A welltrained and well-equipped khoros was also a costly and beautiful thing.2 And its value

II

THE

INSTITUTION

to the god could only be increased if its quality was improved by the tempering inten­ sity of competition. The central act of Greek religion, the sacrifice of a beast, brought benefits that could be enjoyed without conflict between mortal and god: food to sustain the sacrificing community and to unite its members through a shared meal, the savour of the burnt bones and fat to please and honour the god. So too in these other forms of expenditure for the gods, divine pleasure was by no means incompat­ ible with great benefits for the mortal donors. In choral performance, communities honoured their gods and brought glory to themselves through this conspicuously enjoyable form of religious dedication. The very considerable benefits to the donors at the social level will be the subject of later chapters. This book is however not a systematic study of the financing of Athenian festi­ vals. My attention is focussed on the special leitourgical method of introducing the wealth of individuals - with their names attached, as it were. But it will be important to recognise that a range of methods was employed in Athens to support the classical city’s famously extensive festival calendar. Funding of festivals in this highly personal way was by no means the only possible form: an Athenian festival could for instance support itself in part at least from the sale of spring water.3 But spring water alone could never sustain the massively elaborate choral contests for Dionysos. In my dis­ cussion of the Great Dionysia, we shall also consider such evidence as there is for the ways in which this personalised form of financing was set alongside that provided by the city itself. Collective and individual Athenian wealth were deployed together but allocated to different ends within the structure of the festival. The sheer scale of expenditure on festivals in Athens is itself worthy of consideration: it astonished later observers, and their astonishment often centred on the ephemeral and especially extravagant form of expenditure which choral performance represented. Even in the fourth century the rationality of the vast outlay by khoregoi was exposed to question by more than a vocal élite minority who resented this enforced imposition on their resources. Fifth-century Athenian festival culture had been buoyed up on the wealth of empire, as to a lesser extent it had been under the second confederacy in the early part of the fourth century. With those resources no longer available, khoregic expen­ diture was exposed to scrutiny in the harsher light of more straitened economic circumstances. If a strict accounting were possible of the total expenditure lavished on the grand Athenian civic festivals, such as the Great Dionysia and Panathenaia, in the period of empire, the figure for an annual outlay would probably be reckoned in terms of tens of taiants.4 And the dozens of smaller festivals would cumulatively produce sums equal to those of their more famous siblings, to say nothing of the many festivals and other cult practices conducted by sub-groups of the city, or by different configurations of Athenians meeting collectively.5

A cultural revolution? The search for origins is always an elusive and often a misguided project in cultural histories, as horizons recede and largely arbitrary criteria are invoked to mark epochal moments. Yet the attempt has some justification for an institution like the khoregia which, when we see it in operation, shows so many signs of formality and conscious

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definition by the city. We can at least ask at what point and under what conditions it appeared as a civic institution with such distinctive qualities.6 Although the beginnings of the khoregia itself are rarely singled out for special consideration from general discussion of the early Dionysia, what passes for an ortho­ doxy on the subject has it that the City Dionysia was very probably the home for the first system of centralised management of the organisation and funding of its choral culture by the city, through the form of honorific obligation on its richest men which characterises the classical khoregia. Whether the introduction of that system is to be credited to the new social and political order of Kleisthenes or to the hands of the tyrants in the preceding decades is a matter for less agreement.7 There is a little evi­ dence suggesting a centralised khoregia already under the tyrants. But the most telling point is perhaps that the nature of the institution does not of itself preclude an origin in either era: the khoregia sits easily with the needs of the tyrants and of the early democracy.8 There are good arguments to the effect that the ‘Kleisthenic’ period represents an epochal moment in the history of the Dionysia: as good, at least, as arguments come in this poorly-documented area. The competition between the great phyletic khoroi and their khoregoi in dithyramb obviously dates from a time at which the phylai existed. The important but much-debated epigraphic evidence of the ‘Victors’List’, a monument of Dionysian history erected in the later fourth century, shows a desire to go back ‘to the beginnings of things’. And the beginnings to which it apparently looks have the appearance of an epochal moment some time in the last decade of the sixth century.9 The victors most prominently recorded by this document are khoregoi: only they are consistently listed for all the performance-categories, along with the phylai for boys’ and men’s dithyramb and the poets of drama. The possibility of creating such a monument late in the fourth century shows that records of khoregic victors were consistently maintained by Arkhons from an early date, and demonstrates their per­ ceived importance throughout the entire history of the festival. For the period it covers probably corresponds with the period of khoregic funding of the festival.10 The initial date is beyond sure recovery: something approaching a consensus sees the record begin in or around 502/1, though an earlier date is equally possible.11 And one needs to remember that the creators of this monument in the fourth century were also operating under constraints of evidence, and, just as significantly, with their own agenda: were it even possible for them to have traced the history of the festival back into the era of the tyrants we might well imagine that they would choose not to. If, as sometimes suggested, this monument of theatre-history did indeed form part of the ‘Lykourgan’ programme of regeneration of the theatre, as of the fabric and cul­ tural life of the city more generally after the catastrophe of Khaironeia — or if it at least fitted in with its aspirations — it is surely unlikely to have celebrated the conti­ nuity of this great Athenian achievement by recording its origins in another age of tyrants. That the Kleisthenic moment was perceived as a major historical rupture in Athenian culture in general and Dionysiac performance in particular is also implied, from a very different perspective, by a passage of one of ‘the most enigmatic and most important of the literary texts from classical Greece’,12 the Constitution of the Athenians by the so-called ‘Old Oligarch.’ The special virtue of this evidence lies in the clarity

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of the text’s politics: a trenchant ideological oligarch, a self-styled outsider within the democratic environment, the author seems to correlate the inauguration of the kho­ regia (and other leitourgiai) directly with the democratic revolution of the late sixth century: ‘The demos has subverted (καταλέλυκεν) those who engage in gymnastics here and who are practiced in mousike because it does not think it honourable, real­ ising that they cannot do these things themselves’ (1.13). The ‘subversion’ or ‘overthrow’ of gymnastic and musical practice as the preserve of the noble few surely recalls, through whatever distortions worked on the histori­ cal reality by this highly tendentious author, a moment seen as particularly significant in the cultural and political history of Athens, καταλύω and its cognates regularly refer to overthrow or revolution in the political sphere. This cultural revolution which the author lays to the blame of the demos is surely the ‘démocratisation’ of gymnas­ tic and musical activities represented, as he sees it, by the introduction of the formal, polis-controlled leitourgical institutions of khoregia and gymnasiarkhia. The fact that the sentence immediately following this statement about the democratic cultural ‘rev­ olution’ refers to the current system of leitourgiai implies a direct causal relation.13 The author of this Constitution of the Athenians is hardly a dispassionate compiler of facts: this is a man who in the previous paragraph could assert that in Athens ‘we have estab­ lished an equality between slaves and free men’. Great caution is needed in any attempt to anchor him too precisely to historical events. However, it seems fairly clear that this cultural revolution, driven by what he sees as a degenerate political ideology interfering in a sphere of aristocratic practice and introducing to it the anathema of demotic compulsion, was imagined as coinciding with the introduction of democ­ racy itself. Khoroi danced and sang before Kleisthenes. The Old Oligarch’s’ plangent com­ plaints prove as much. The question for our purposes is whether there are any signs that such pre-Kleisthenic khoroi were supported by something akin to a khoregia — in particular, therefore, whether any of the urban festivals fostered by the tyrants might have been the home for a pre-democratic khoregia. Amid the obscurity of sixth­ century Athenian history, three things that are relatively well attested among the sociopolitical practices of the Peisistratids are a major concentration of cultural, polit­ ical and material resources in the city; the extensive development of urban festivals as a special instance of this; and the patronage of poetic talent, including that of the most illustrious choral poets of the age: all of which are the essential enabling conditions for the emergence of a khoregic system. That a culture of urban choral performance, and probably of competition, existed under the tyrants is relatively clear. The alter­ natives for its support are basically the tyrants themselves as personal patrons; or rich aristocrats participating at their invitation, the men the Old Oligarch’ nostalgically described as ‘those who used to take care of mousike’. These are the direct antece­ dents of classical Athenian khoregoi. Two fourth-century texts imply the existence of khoregoi at urban festivals some decades before 500: indeed in one of these, Demosthenes ascribes the law concern­ ing antidosis to Solon (42.1), but that is little more than a sign that the law was per­ ceived as of considerable antiquity in the later fourth century — or rather that Demosthenes was keen to invest it with all the authority that a Solonian parentage brought with it.14 A passage of the pseudo-Aristotelian Oikonomika which refers to khoregoi in the

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time of Hippias (tyrant 527-510) may deserve a better hearing. Although much of the context in which it appears — an account of the economic reforms of the tyrant — is generally rejected as anachronistic fabrication, one of the measures discussed by [Aristotle] immediately prior to the passage about leitourgiai — the demonetisation of coinage by Hippias - is usually accepted as having a firm historical basis. Those who reject the other reforms rarely argue the case that the author is here moving between anachronistic fabrication and more genuine historical record:15 ‘Those who were expecting to serve as trierarkh or phylarkhos or khoregos or to undertake the expense of some other such leitourgia, he allowed, if they wished, to commute the service for a moderate sum, and to be enrolled among those who had performed leitourgiai' ([Aristot.] Oik. 1347a). Much of this, it is true, is redolent of later, late fourth-century practice (the prob­ able period of the composition of the Oikonomika). Yet it is not inconceivable that a memory of ancient practice should be preserved here in a form heavily coloured by contemporary arrangements. If the tyrants did indeed invite aristocrats to take up at their personal expense positions of cultural and military leadership, the provision for exemption through commuting the service to a cash contribution sounds like a plau­ sible means to avoid exacerbating the tensions with aristocrats that were characteris­ tic of the age.16 Of the successors of Peisistratos it is certainly Hippias, whom Aristotle characterises (in contrast to his flighty younger brother) as ‘by nature inclined to polisaflairs and of sound judgement’ (Ath. Pol. 18.1), whom we would most expect to have a care for economic matters, while the ‘Muse-loving’ Hipparkhos is associated with the invitation of poets to Athens and the possible institution of choral contests. Festival ‘leadership’ is an area in which it may well have suited the tyrants’ pur­ poses to allow leading aristocrats to share. Invited to ‘work for the people’, at the newly expanded festivals in the city, this diversion of the wealth and cultural energies of aristocrats to a centre symbolically identified with the tyrant would have served the latter’s interests, perhaps effecting at the same time a certain shift away from forms of local and gentilitian patronage and power.17 And the aristocrats themselves would have found it hard to resist the lure of an opportunity for display and performance before a civic collective of unprecedented magnitude.18 Where might these khoroi have performed? Peisistratos’ name is connected with the development of large-scale urban festivals, with the ‘embellishment’ of the city and the provision of new sacrifices for sacred rites (Thouk. 6.54.5). H1S family’s pro­ motion of the cult of Apollo Pythios is well attested, and important changes effected by Peisistratos in the Panathenaia are likely; frustratingly, rather less well attested are actions in connection with an urban Dionysia.19 The possibility that the ancient fes­ tival of the Thargelia, devoted to Apollo Pythios, may have been a home for choral performance in the city from an early date has recently been aired by Robert Parker and deserves serious consideration.20 Khoroi may well have danced for Apollo before the democratic reform of the festival which introduced phyletic patterning to its com­ petitions, but their composition, nature and means of support are entirely specula­ tive. Given the Peisistratids’ interest in the sanctuary, we might be permitted the speculation that the performance of dithyrambs in Athens under the tyrants may have found a home in the festival of Apollo so patronised. The problem with this scenario, as Parker notes, is the difficulty of supposing that Dionysos’ dithyramb ‘already formed a part of a festival of a different god a decade or more earlier’.21 But that

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difficulty would be eliminated if in fact dithyrambs were performed competitively for Dionysos earlier than the date given by the ‘Parian Marble’ for the first victory in the men’s contest (?5o8);22 in other words by giving credit to the testimony that Lasos ‘first introduced the dithyramb to a competition’. That competition may well have been at a Dionysia under the tyrants. The difficulty would also disappear if, as is alto­ gether possible, the most ancient Dionysiac festival in Athens, the Anthesteria, saw khoroi dance for the god in its early days.23 Apollo Pythios certainly knew how to share with Dionysos: he did so with his most glorious sanctuary at Delphi. And the two were worshipped in some relation in Ikarion, perhaps from the sixth century. The Pythion was in close proximity to the Dionysion there, and the Pythion appears in some irretrievable function in a fifth­ century decree of the Ikarians regulating the appointment of their khoregoi and the conduct of their Dionysia; and we have a fragmentary joint dedication from the site.24 Nor is the great prize and symbol of dithyrambic contest in Athens - the tripod — inappropriate in connection with the worship of Apollo, the god of the Pythian tripod; many were dedicated to him by khoregoi after victory at the Thargelia. Indeed the tripod suits him rather better than Dionysos: the designation of its cauldron as the krater of Dionysos smacks of later justification and explanation of the somewhat unexpected fact that the tripod became principally and indelibly linked to the Dionysia.25 It may be that the award or simply the dedication of tripods for Apollo Pythios in the context of a festival that included choral performance was in fact the first home of the ‘choral tripod’ in Athens, adopted thence for the Dionysia at the end of the sixth century.

The poet Lasos from Hermione in the Argolid is an extremely important figure in the early history of dithyramb, and he is credited with the introduction of dithyram­ bic contests. If these are to be located in Athens, they should be put in the context of a city festival, probably the Dionysia.26 Both he and his great contemporary and rival Simonides came to Athens at the invitation of Hipparkhos, and were there remembered or imagined in later years as having been competitors.27 Sixth-century Athens seems to have had fewer great native poets and major public occasions for choral performance than other cities of its age, and may well have taken advice from men like Lasos highly experienced in the international world of poetic agones. The tyrant’s concerted attraction of leading poetic figures of Greece to Athens is expli­ cable in terms of a cultural politics that would have had both an internal dynamic — the prestige of such figures at work in Athens increasing the citizens’ pride in their city under the care of the tyrant; and an external one — for if it was not an intention of Hipparkhos to make Athens a centre of poetic culture by fostering epichoric talent through contact with these skilled foreigners, it was certainly a consequence in the longer term. Hipparkhos was later credited with the motive of wanting ‘to educate the citizens, so that those subject to his rule might be as good as possible . . . and when the citizens in Athens and its neighbourhood had been educated to his satisfaction . . . with the intent to educate those in the countryside also, he set up Herms along the roads between the city and each of the demes’.28 Although perhaps little more than the apologetic fiction of a later age, the contrast between the poetic performances for the good of the urban citizenry and the rural herms for the countryfolk implies that the former were remembered as part of a central cultural occasion for the ‘edu­ 16

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cation of the citizenry’. The language is that so often used for the paideia provided by the Great Dionysia and its poetic performances in the fifth century, and is some further minimal indication that these poets may have been performing in the context of an urban festival. One of the first fixed points to emerge from this early obscurity is the date of (509/) 508, as the year of the first victory in the dithyrambic competition for men, its poetic victor Hypodikos of Khalkis.29 So early a date does have its problems: it is difficult to see how the competition could have been between the new phylai, since Kleisthenes can scarcely have had any opportunity to present and implement his reforms until 507, when Alkmaion, probably an Alkmeonid and supporter of Kleisthenes, was Arkhon, succeeding upon the arkhonship in 508/507 of Kleisthenes’ political enemy Isagoras. If we hold to 509/508 as the year of the first men’s agon, we may need to envisage it to have been contested in some other configuration. It may be that very soon after, perhaps in the year of Alkmaion’s arkhonship, that configuration was changed to fit the radical new pattern of the Kleisthenic phylai.30 This site of major urban choral performance may have served as a kind of testing­ ground for competing sociopolitical models. It is generally agreed that the Kleisthenic reforms cannot have been embedded or fully enacted until some time after that initial year, and a year or quite probably more must have intervened before the complex labour of the draughting-board can have been worked out and put in place.31 So the likelihood that the kyklioi khoroi were an early mode - perhaps the ear­ liest — of organising phyletic activity in Attike should be entertained. The names of the phylai will have been one of the first things produced, given the importance of the authorising rôle of Apollo in selecting them, and even if the details of just how each was to be formally constituted from demes and trittyes were not fully clear, the idea that choral participation might as it were have led the way in establishing the new sense of membership in these bodies should be considered. It would not be out of keeping with all that we know of archaic Greek socio-political culture to see the ‘musical’ realm taking the lead in instantiating change. We might appropriately recall the fascinating passage of Plato’s Laws (701a) in which the introduction of a ‘democ­ racy of mousike" in the theatre is claimed to have induced the spread of political liberty, or rather, as Plato saw it, of political licence. If the introduction of major competitions between Athenian khoroi which were, perhaps for the first time, kyklioi — circular — is to be associated with the ‘Kleisthenic moment’, we might also reflect upon the not negligible symbolic importance of the circle as a form for the new Kleisthenic world.32 The Kleisthenic city was a power­ fully centred and centralised city. The great circular khoroi brought into the centre of Athens representatives of the phylai for major festival interaction, just as the new struc­ tures of Kleisthenic society gave to political and military participation a new central­ ised focus.33 But if these Dionysian kyklioi khoroi are centred at the heart of the city, we should remember that they are multiple and competing khoroi, and as we shall see, intense and aggressive competition between them was in some sense the defining character of their performance in the historical period. The various constituencies of the phylai did not join together to form a great single, unified khoros that represented the city to itself as a composite of its parts. Those parts were put into a conflict at the heart of the city.34 Khoregoi were certainly given an important new function at this point. The new

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dithyrambic khoregia offered a highly attractive rôle to these ‘head men’ of the new phylai from a social and political perspective. And the development is intelligible within the changing political climate: it made sense to give to the great and the good an important continued form of leadership, and one in which their traditional edu­ cation made them excel. This was a largely symbolic rather than narrowly political form of leadership, but that opposition was not very radical or especially meaningful for late sixth-century Athens. And the introduction of a form of leadership which was not strictly political in the narrow sense but which offered a route to great public visibility and prestige must have represented a solid foundation for more stable élite pre-eminence and participation in the future. It encouraged a more ordered, if highly competitive, sharing of positions of cultural and sociopolitical prominence in an urban centre which had hitherto been largely occupied, symbolically and actually, by the tyrants, or torn by real and threatened inter-élite violence. Dithyrambic khoregoi led collectives which were constituted precisely so as to mediate those conflicts, per­ forming in a central site, probably the Agora itself until some time soon after 500. Where does tragedy fit into this fragmentary picture? The chronological prior­ ity of dithyramb over tragedy as a form is clear, but this does not necessarily help us much in tracking down their first performance-contexts in Athens.35 Tragedy cer­ tainly developed in an Attike under the tyrants, and the development of its complex generic form benefited directly from their patronage of foreign poets. However, we simply cannot say whether tragedy was performed in an urban context before the time of the ‘Kleisthenic’ reorganisation of the Dionysia, after which it surely was, with the support of khoregoi. The testimony for the early practitioners - Thespis, Khoirilos, Pratinas and Phrynikhos - is both woefully inadequate and ambiguous.36 It implies a rural setting certainly for much of Thespis’ activities, yet the record that Khoirilos and Phrynikhos produced their work in a competitive context might better suggest an urban festival for which such records were likely to have been maintained.37 The little that can be gleaned about the nature of early tragedy is not enough to help in deter­ mining whether its admission to major civic performance might better have served the purposes of a city under the tyrants or one recently freed from them. The inher­ ent ambiguity of the genre on the matter of the pre-eminent individual — often royal and frequently tyrannical — disqualifies any view of tragedy as simply inspired by an anti-élite programme or, conversely, as an ideological apparatus of a state under the tyrants. A life in the demes, probably at Rural Dionysia, is perhaps the most likely context for early tragedy. Ikarion, the birthplace of Thespis and the site of Dionysos’first Attic advent in myth, clearly had a strong dramatic tradition from an early date.38 It is quite plausible that forms of more or less organised patronage which had been deployed at the local level played a part in the development of the central leitourgical khoregia. It should not be assumed automatically that patterns of institutional imitation and bor­ rowing will inevitably and solely have seen the deme mimic the city.39 The earliest epigraphic evidence we have for a body providing for the systematic organisation of a khoregia anywhere in Attike in fact derives from mid-fifth-century Ikarion.40 One thing which is clear is that the tragic competition of the Dionysia was not brought under some manner of organisation along phyletic lines at the time of the ‘Kleisthenic’ reforms. Whether a pre-existing competition of three poets, khoroi (and khoregoi?) was left as it had been or introduced at this point, the social patterning of 18

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the new Kleisthenic system has left no identifiable mark on it, but at the time of the reorganisation a decision must, as it were, have been taken about the place and the shape of tragedy in the city. The point has received little attention. There ought to be a strong presumption that the three-way competition of the tragic agon should reflect some form of socio-political or cultic organisation. The evi­ dence of all manner of agones of the archaic and classical periods, and in many cases beyond, shows that such activities were routinely shaped on the basis of particular social groupings, as of course the dithyrambic competitions were in their ‘Kleisthenic’ reconstruction. The tragic contest cannot reflect the old Ionian phylai, since they were four in number.41 The search for the significance of numbers in the absence of anything much else counting as evidence is a foolhardy undertaking. However, given the lack of any con­ sideration of the issue, it is at least worth airing an hypothesis - entirely conjectural - concerning the ‘tragic three’. There is only one well-attested tripartite division of Attike and Attic society from this period: the geographical and political division between the Paralia (the coastal region), the men of the Plain and the men ‘beyond the hills’, the Diakrioi or Hyperakrioi. This division (problematic as all the evidence for it is), was deemed by later writers to have reflected the struggles of the three great aristocratic factions violently contesting power in mid-sixth-century Attike in a kind of ongoing stasis 42 The author of the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia cites as one of the prime reasons for the ongoing stasis and the sickening of relations between these leaders, ‘the desire for nike against one another’ (την προς άλλήλους φιλονικίαν, 13.3)· And that desire is one which animated khoregoi in later years. The conflict between these three groups must have dominated much of mid­ sixth-century Athenian life, and it was still deemed necessary in 507 to ‘target’ these staseis in order to achieve the boundary-cutting ‘mixture’ of the population deside­ rated by the Kleisthenic reforms. The new phylai were designed to dispel or mediate these divisions, while at the same time, the trittyes, the ‘thirds’ of the phylai which were drawn from the regions of the city, the coast and the inland demes, preserved a rec­ ollection of the existence of these old geopolitical divisions.43 Perhaps, just so, the tragic agon — including, crucially, its khoregic component — preserved a memory of these divisions, side-by-side with the grand new dithyrambic agon, which sought to do away with them. One could not suppose that the three tragic ‘sets’ in any sense directly represented these units in either their old form or their contemporary equiv­ alent in the trittyes; it would not be a question of drawing khoreutai or khoregoi from such groups.44 They might rather be a creation of the new era serving as the basis for a poetic performance so profoundly centred on issues of social violence as well as on ‘mingling’ and mediation; an institutional creation which in its own form reflected that shifting history.

Fixed points begin to emerge from the darkness soon after the turn of the century. The operation of the familiar civic khoregia can be detected in the 490s, although we have to wait until the 470s for the names of particular khoregoi. The testimonia con­ cerning another early musician and poet, Pratinas of Phleious in the Argolid, who was active in Athens composing satyr-plays and tragedy, may raise the earlier date by another decade.45 In his one surviving fragment of any length, from a work called by Athenaios a "hyporkhema but perhaps some kind of satyr-poem, the choral voice

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apparently expresses annoyance at a trend in contemporary musical practice which saw the aulos take on a domineering role over the songs of khoroi in performances for Dionysos. Athenaios, in introducing the fragment, refers it to a period in which ‘aulos-players and khoreutai in receipt of pay (μισθοφόροι) were dominating the orkhestras’ (14.617b—c), and if it derives from early in the poet’s career, we might catch an oblique glimpse of the khoregia at work at that time. For the emphasis on the fact that the instrumentalists and khoreutai of these performances for Dionysos were receiving pay, for all the problems of interpretation, almost certainly implies an envi­ ronment in which khoregoi are operative. This stress on pay evidently carries a negative evaluation, and the slur seems to go back beyond Athenaios (via Aristoxenos?) to Pratinas himself. Do we have here the echo of a view chiming with that of pseudo-Xenophon which saw in the intro­ duction of a relation of pay into khoreia through the formal khoregia the debasement of an ideal — an ideal of ‘amateur’ and spontaneous aristocratic culture to which the involvement of misthos is utterly repugnant? If this somewhat precarious deduction that he was vexed by the spectacle of paid khoreutai can be allowed to stand on the basis of Athenaios’ third-hand report of Pratinas’ attitude, it may be that the Dorian poet was responding to a recent development not only in the relative balance between auletai and singers in performance, but to the novelty of the khoregia itself, and the new relations it formally established between poet, performer and ‘khoros-lezder . Our first securely named and dated tragic khoregos is an individual who domi­ nated the political scene of Athens and Greece in the early decades of the fifth century. It is Themistokles, who was teamed with Phrynikhos, Aiskhylos’ great pre­ decessor and rival, in 476, in the arkhonship of Adeimantos.46 This khoregia is the statesman’s last attested action in Athens before his flight in exile to Persia. And he was victorious: the memorial he erected to the event succeeded in perpetuating his glory, down to Plutarch’s time (who possibly saw it personally) and beyond. But Phrynikhos had produced a notorious tragedy nearly twenty years earlier, probably in 493 or 492, the Capture of Miletos, a work which Herodotos (6.21.2) says provoked the Athenians to fine him a thousand drakhmas ‘for reminding them of their trou­ bles close to home’, the destruction of an Ionian Greek city that had rebelled against Persian power (with conspicuously little support from Athens in their hour of need);47 and the Souda (9)762) records a first (?) victory for Phrynikhos in the sixty-seventh Olympiad, that is 511—508. He is the first tragedian whom we can envisage, with any definition, working under the formal khoregic system. The arkhonship of Adeimantos is also the year which gives us our first securely attested victorious dithyrambic khoregos, Aristeides the son of Xenophilos, possibly a relative of the famous Aristeides son of Lysimakhos, who belonged to the same phyle as his namesake, Antiokhis. The poet in question was the great Simonides, and it is an epigram of his that preserves the victory.48 A candidate for precedence to Aristeides’ position as the earliest surviving dithyrambic khoregos is Hipponikos son of Strouthon, the victor who perpetuated his memory and that of his phyle, Akamantis, in an elaborate inscription by his poetic colleague in the khoregia, Antigenes. However, this epigram had no place for the Arkhon’s name, and as a consequence cannot be fixed to a particular year.49 It is generally regarded as dating from the early fifth century, perhaps as early as 490; the reference in its opening words to many pre­ vious choral victories of Akamantis suggests that the phyletic agon had at that date 20

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been in operation for some time. Pindars talents had already been lavished on an unknown Athenian phyle — with success — in 497/6.50 The history of the introduction of comedy to the khoregic system at the Dionysia is rather more straightforward. Aristotle writes of the Arkhon having granted a khoros of komoidoi ‘late’ (Poet. 1449b!—2): that is, the provision of polis-controlled khoregic support was some time in coming after that for tragedy and dithy­ ramb. The year may have been 486, the first victorious poet Khionides the Athenian.51 487/6 is a significant year of democratic reform, for it also saw the intro­ duction of ostracism and probably the opening of the arkhonship to the hippeis, with selection by lot (though from an elected shortlist: [Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 22.5). Before that date, Aristotle makes explicit, ‘they were volunteers’ (έθελονταί ή σαν). ‘They’ are presumably the komoidoi, the poet-actors and their choral troupes. The introduction of the comic agon to an official status at the City Dionysia is likely to have been in part a recognition of its increased importance as an instrument of social and political critique as well as of entertainment within its democratic context, and the provision of khoregoi selected by the Arkhon was a sign of how seriously the city regarded comedy’s function.52

Festival leitourgiai Khoroi for Dionysos were not the only agonistic performances assured a secure material base through ‘public service’ — far from it. Before considering the operation of the khoregia in detail, another level of context needs to be surveyed against which its distinctive qualities will take on greater definition. A great network of leitourgiai supported the city’s culture of festival competition (nor was it restricted to competi­ tive performance); and other social groupings of a scale smaller than the city itself — most notably the demes — employed the khoregia and other festival leitourgiai to support their own, largely independent, festival culture.53 The production of drama by means of khoregia takes place within an environment where similar structures were used to support a vast array of ritual practices: torch-races between the phylai for Athena, Prometheus and Hephaistos; militaristic group dances by males of various ages for Athena; a trierarkhic regatta from the Peiraieus to Cape Sounion; huge phyletic ban­ quets; the superintendence by blue-blood Athenian girls of the weaving of the great peplos of Athena. The support of drama by rich Athenians as khoregoi should be seen within this diverse range of occasions for comparable forms of communal leadership by the élite. As Pauline Schmitt Pantel has put it, ‘le choix de ce qui fait l’objet d’une liturgie n’est pas indifférent’.54

Serving Dionysos: the City Dionysia The Great Dionysia is quite probably the first home of the leitourgical khoregia in the city of Athens. It always remained the pre-eminent occasion for choral performance, both dramatic and dithyrambic. The city festival in Elaphebolion can be seen as forming a climax, in terms of scale and prestige, to a series of Dionysian festivals in

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the sacred calendars of Athens and Attike beginning in winter, in the month Poseideon, with the celebration of the local Dionysia in the demes; then seeing the Lenaia in the next month (Gamelion) held in the city and followed by the new-wine festival, the Anthesteria, in the month before the City Dionysia (Anthesterion). Each of these included agonistic performances of various kinds; all of them, with the prob­ able exception of the Anthesteria, with competitive performance of drama supported by khoregoi. Their different participants — as organising communities, performers and spectators — gave each a distinctive quality which affected the experience of serving as khoregos for each. The khoregic requirements of the Great Dionysia reflect its unquestioned pre­ eminence as Athens’ principal choral festival. From the time at which comedy was admitted to leitourgic support, twenty-eight of the city’s richest men were needed each year to organise and fund the choral performances of the Dionysia: ten to lead the ten phylai competing in the performance of men’s dithyrambic khoroi, each of them fifty strong with members of the phyle; and the same number for the boys’ agegroup in this agon. Three khoregoi were needed for the tragic (and satyric) agon, where khoroi of twelve citizens competed without any known affiliation to a sub-group of the polis and a further five were needed to lead the groups of twenty-four citizen komoidoi, who also performed without any known principle of representation.55 This complement of twenty-eight Dionysian khoregoi can be regarded as standard for most of the fifth and fourth centuries. One major development in the life of the theatre and the programme of the festival will have had ramifications in the realm of funding: the introduction, in various stages, of reperformance. We should imagine the deme Dionysia, with their more flexible patterns of performance, as an impor­ tant context from an early date for reperformance, although they hardly constituted a ‘repertory’ circuit. The first identifiable step in this crucial process as it concerned the City Dionysia was the decision of the Athenian demos to provide for the produc­ tion of the works of Aiskhylos after his death, in recognition of their value to the city. Whatever deformations the tragic khoros may have experienced in the fourth century, it is hardly possible that these productions of Aiskhylos dating from the middle of the fifth century could have done without the full material and organisational support provided by khoregia, implying a properly trained khoros. The Athenians apparently passed a decree to the effect that ‘a person wishing to produce work of Aiskhylos should receive a khoros.’56 The implication seems to be that a would-be producer (and note the generalised use of the democratic d (BouAopsvos, the citizen-volunteer) was guaranteed one of the three regular tragic khoroi up for competitive award each year, as though the status of Aiskhylos in the city were adequate to ensure his works an automatic passage through this preliminary stage of selection by the Arkhon.57 A passage of Philostratos speaks of Aiskhylos, ‘invited back to the Dionysia even when he was dead’ (Life Apoil. 6.11), winning new victories with his old plays; and the opening of Aristophanes’ Akharnians (9—12) sees Dikaiopolis, some thirty years after Aiskhylos’ death, recall the ‘tragic pain’ he suffered as he sat in the theatre, expecting to hear the herald announce Aiskhylos, to hear instead the cry of ‘Bring on your khoros, Theognis.’ These latter both suggest that when Aiskhylos was to be reproduced under these conditions, his plays were an integrated part of the traditional tragic agon, not outside it, as was to be the case with the more systematic production of ‘old’ trag­ edies and comedies in the fourth century.

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The arrangements for the financing of these are rather less clear. A performance of ‘old’ tragedy is known for 386, perhaps as a one-off; it appears on a more regular basis from 341—339. Old’ comedy is known for 339 and perhaps more regularly from 311. The inscription in the Fasti relating to the first of these reproductions uses the expression ‘The tragoidoi produced in addition an old drama’, παλαιόν δράμα πρώτο[ν] παρεδίδαξαν οί τραγ[ωιδοί, with the parallel expression for comedy. The force of the verb παρεδίδαξαν must be, as Pickard-Cambridge noted, to signal that this single ‘old drama’ was an ‘extra’, a new addition to the programme; and the introduction of the information concerning these performances more systematically in the production records or Didaskaliai in later years by the expression παλαιάι ‘with the old (sc. tragedy or comedy)’ implies that this was the sole work produced, given that on the same inscription, the names of the poets of all three or five com­ peting entries are listed for new tragedy and comedy. It was probably not until the third century that a competition between ‘old’ dramas was introduced to the Dionysia.58 The fact that these performances found an established place in the programme of the fourth-century festival demonstrates a very high degree of recognition of their importance by the polis, and is in itself an indication that they may have been funded leitourgically. The Lykourgan period will have been of special significance. Large sums of money, public and private, were lavished on the fabric of the theatre in this age, the age of the construction of the first stone theatre of Dionysos in the city. The attention given to the three great tragic masters of the past by Lykourgos (in the 330s), particularly in relation to the security of their texts, suggests that the city, shaken by Khaironeia yet economically more resilient than it had been for decades, was much concerned for the healthy condition of its dramatic patrimony. Some form of support from public funds for these performances is thus likely. They were held up as a foun­ dation-stone of the heritage of the city itself, and one can easily imagine a willing­ ness on the part of potential khoregoi to be associated with the production of the works of these icons of a glorious past, in a time when the reflex to look to that past as a place of lost value and grandeur is commonplace. The acting community appears to have had the principal responsibility for these productions, and from the point of view of their history, this represents a crucial step towards the formation of more organised and mobile guilds. As much is generally assumed from the use of the terms ‘tragoidoi’ and ‘komoidoi’ in the Fasti, apparently of their performers as a whole, rather than specifically of khoreutai or actors; and, in par­ ticular, from the reference to the principal actor in the official inscriptions recording these productions: (e.g.) Tn old (tragedy): Neoptolemos, with the Iphigeneia of Euripides’ (IG ιι22$2Ο for 342/1). It seems likely that the more or less formal associ­ ations of fourth-century actors, centred around illustrious principals like Neoptolemos, took on much of the organisational burden for these reproductions, probably with supporting funds from the state (whether leitourgical or not). The reperformance of Attic drama outside Attike had for some time provided a context in which groups of theatrical professionals developed the skills of performing a rep­ ertoire; and it had begun to provide some actors with a new and substantial form of funds. As to the question of choral participation in fourth-century productions, some of the same considerations apply as for the fifth-century reperformances of Aiskhylos: despite the increased focus on actors and their art in this period, little more than

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uncritical adherence to a belief in the model of ‘choral decline’ allows us to suppose that these reperformances would have had no khoros, or a reduced team. Many of them will have been fifth-century tragedies to whose integrity the khoros was essen­ tial. It is hardly credible that these reproductions should have been lacking one of their fundamental components, given too that Lykourgos was so anxious to rescue the texts of the Great Three tragedians from interference by later hands, and to have their ipsissima verba available for consultation by the citizenry, that he arranged for their depo­ sition in the public archive.59 However much overshadowed by the spectacular khoregia, there were a number of other means through which individual wealth and expertise were employed at the Great Dionysia. The most significant of these is the office known as the hestiasis, and this was organised, like the dithyrambic khoregia, on a phyletic basis. The hestiator or ‘banqueter’ provided the wherewithal for great phyletic banquets held during the fes­ tival. This was an important duty, if of much less ‘durable’ glory than that to be derived from competitive leitourgiai. There will have been one such man for each phyle, appointed by it rather than by the polis, and the duty is also attested for the Panathenaia.60 Perhaps the oldest, most widespread and fundamental form of patronal generosity — feasting one’s less well-off peers — was thereby brought within the ambit of a system managed by the city. This was more than the subsistence support provided regularly to its citizens by the democratic city in the form of civic pay and other distributions, since we should imagine a sacrificial feast of some scale and quality.61 Yet neither is it quite the same as the direct, patronal feeding of one’s less well-off peers practised to some advantage by men like Kimon. The recipients were the members of the democratic phylai, a larger pool than could ever be treated to culi­ nary largesse at an individual’s residence, and the shared meal will have served to reaffirm the identity of those somewhat artificial groupings. While the hestiasis, like all leitourgiai, could include an element of compulsion, the beneficent hestiator was doubtless himself a beneficiary of a great store of goodwill and ‘honour’ that repre­ sented a more than purely symbolic return for his outlay. The remark of Xenophon’s Sokrates that his rich friend Kritoboulos would find himself ‘bereft of supporters’ if he were to stop ‘dining the citizens’, although ostensibly pitying him this expensive obligation, points to the real power that lay at the base of such collective feasting.62 For most of the classical period ten wealthy men were also needed to serve as the ‘overseers’ or epimeletai (eTTiiaEApTai) of the Dionysia each year, and to draw on their personal wealth for the preparation of the great pompe or procession which opened the festival proper on the tenth of Elaphebolion.63 These men are never referred to as leitourgists, although we are told on the authority of the [Aristotelian] Athenaion Politiea (56.4) that they used to be elected by the demos and outlayed from their own pockets the expenses necessary for the office. Under these circumstances they were thus elected officials who used their own, not public, funds towards the conduct of the festival, and their activities were virtually indistinguishable from leitourgical service. At some time not long before the writing of the Ath. Pol., a change took place such that the epimeletai were appointed by lot by the phylai, one from each, and were given one hundred mnai for their tasks.64 This change can be related to parallel developments of the period which shifted some of the burden of festival expenditure from the shoulders of individuals to the polis; and to the similar ‘decentralisation’ of

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responsibility for the appointment of comic khoregoi from the Arkhon to phyletic authorities.65 The epimeletai were the Arkhon’s assistants: he had formal responsibility for the pompe. Although their office was clearly subordinate to that of the Arkhon, and lacked the glamour of competition, the fact that they used their own wealth and were inti­ mately associated with the procession, an occasion of maximum display, will have made the epimeletai figures of high public profile and recognition. Theophrastos chose to illustrate the nature of his Oligarchic character through a vignette depicting a debate in the Assembly on the office of epimeletes: when the demos is considering whom to appoint to assist the Arkhon in overseeing the pompe, the Oligarch expresses the opinion that the men chosen should have full powers (δει αυτοκράτορας τούτους είναι, 26.2). And when others propose that ten be elected, he says One is sufficient — but he must be a real man.’ The desire not to circumscribe the powers of the officer, and not to dilute them by sharing them in a college, are the marks of the oligarch; the usual complement of ten epimeletai is more ‘democratic’. But although character­ ised as ‘oligarchic’, the association made in this scene between personal wealth, power and a sense of ‘manhood’ is certainly present also in the democratic environment of leitourgic service.

Processional leitourgiai: place and service in the city If the office of epimeletes for the Dionysia’s procession was never fully assimilated to the form of a leitourgia, an ambivalence of a different kind touched the central ritual act of participation within the procession itself. The grand civic pompai — especially those of the Dionysia and Panathenaia — were acts of symbolic, communal self-con­ stitution. The right to participate, placement within the procession, what one carried and wore — these were carefully controlled and designed to reflect one’s position on a map of social rôles. What is especially relevant here is the fact that a number of these formalised ritual rôles appear to have had the status of a leitourgia, but they rarely attract attention in discussion of the leitourgic system. Above all, these offices demonstrate in a particularly lucid fashion the way in which the sense of honour and prestige which powered the leitourgic system was one whose terms were set and managed by a civic and social élite. By making this area of festival participation, which was very directly centred on notions of status and iden­ tity, subject to the leitourgical system of honorific obligation, the power structures which underlay that system become all the more apparent. At one level, all forms of representative participation in the festival pompe were deemed honorific: from the pride of place at its head as the kanephoros, the blue-blood Athenian young woman decked out in gold and carrying the basket full of barley-grains and hiding the sacrificial knife; to the representatives of the metic community carrying trays, water­ jugs and sun-shades, and wearing distinctive crimson tunics. To be included in one of the most illustrious acts of worship and self-display by the assembled city was gen­ erally deemed a source of pride. Yet the fact that in an area of civic life as poorly doc­ umented as this we can find traces that not all metics at least regarded these duties as an unambiguous honour - and, moreover, that neither did the Athenians who

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endowed them with it — shows how the leitourgic system was here being used to enforce a system of social differences in which not only Athenian civic status, but wealth and high birth were accorded a special place in one of the democratic com­ munity’s most symbolically charged acts of self-display. Everything we hear about the office of kanephoria shows that it was felt to be one of the highest ritual honours available for the girl and — just as importantly - for her family. And although we know little about the manner of her selection, the honour was one fought for and available only among a small number of aristocratic Athenian families.66 It was the insult of not having his sister granted the role of kanephoros at the Panathenaia that was said by some to have driven Harmodios to tyrannicide. This seems to be a case where the civic system of leitourgiai was applied to an area of ritual practice the preserve of noble families, without infringing on the prerogative of those families by widening access to it.67 Limited evidence suggests that the cost of equip­ ping a kanephoros may have been undertaken not simply by her family or the city but by a leitourgist.68 But if, as is perhaps more likely, the hypothetical leitourgia was the recognised duty and honour of the father to equip his daughter from the resources of their great house, the principle that ‘[e]ven in a democracy, the wealthy may super­ sede everyone else for ceremonial purposes’ is shown to operate in this most impor­ tant of symbolic, ritual duties, where, even more directly than was the case with the major leitourgiai, the wealth and idealised beauty of the houses of the kaloi kagathoi were granted pride of place, to be gazed upon by the huge audience of citizens and visitors.69 The case of the processing metics is pointedly different. A representative group of metics was required to participate in certain major festival processions in special dress, carrying accoutrements that signified their status, and to do so perhaps in silence. Men carried bowls, their daughters water-pitchers and parasols. That these duties are known to have been demanded by law marks their very different character from the kanephoria; and they were certainly leitourgiai in the strict sense.70 As such, they differ very significantly from other leitourgiai — indeed, they are unique - in that they fell as obligations on a particular, minority status-group outside the Athenian cit­ izenry, and they consisted in large part in placing that collective in a markedly infe­ rior status-position. The point is made all the more forcefully by the fact that the metics were probably excluded from participation in the very sacrifice in which this procession culminated.71 However one assesses the ideological tenor of these and other ‘demands’ made on or ‘honours’ accorded the metic, in this case they were being required to ‘serve the people’ in a very special sense, by displaying the inferior status they occupied within its midst, and without the lustre given other leitourgiai by com­ petition. The point could hardly be clearer than in the case of the skiadephoria, where metic daughters were required to carry sun-shades to cover the kanephoros in the procession — the second-class daughter protecting the most prized daughter of all the Athenians. In a passage intended to illustrate the burgeoning of Athenian hybris as a consequence of the city’s prosperity, Aelian interprets the metic processional leitourgiai as a wilful expression of Athenian superiority — as, indeed, a form of hybris.72 This view clearly represents a partial and extreme position, one pole of an evaluative discourse con­ cerning these honorific obligations. Another position is represented by the explana­ tion of metic participation in processions as a concession to their desire to be included 26

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in cult, so that they should be ‘better-disposed’ to the city.73 Modern critics tend to adopt one or another of these evaluative extremes, but both could certainly have been held by different people at the same time.74 The latter position — what might be seen as the city’s ‘official’ interpretation of the metic leitourgiai in keeping with its collec­ tive self-image as adopting an inclusive and generous stance towards outsiders — is in fact less audible in our sources. A clear asymmetry is at work here: while these obligations fell on the metic com­ munity for the symbolically charged moments of festival procession, the Athenian citizen by contrast was invited to participate in the Dionysiac procession wearing what he liked (echoes here of the democratic notion of ‘to live as one pleases’ ideal­ ised, for instance, in Thouk. 2.37.2—3) and carrying a wineskin, the token of direct participation in the occasion as a festive one in honour of Dionysos (and doubtless a practical accoutrement for refreshment along the way).75 There is, of course, no ques­ tion of legally-enforced participation here. The metic, by contrast, was required to wear the purple khiton designating his status; and the objects carried clearly symbol­ ised the secondary, if ‘supportive’ and perhaps productive rôle played by metics in Athenian society. The point that these hierarchical status-differences were not only keenly felt by both sides, but that the occasions of the great civic processions were perceived as highly significant, public, moments on which these identities were created and rein­ forced, further emerges from a brief but illuminating fragment of Deinarkhos’ speech Against Agasikles.76 Agasikles was alleged to have been a foreigner who had bribed the people of Halimous to enrol him in their deme; Deinarkhos composed a speech for the prosecution. In the relevant fragment, some males are mentioned who ‘will go up to the Akropolis as ephebes rather than as skaphephoroi, not having you [the demos] to thank for their citizenship, but this man’s silver’. These are the sons of Agasikles, who, it is alleged, will participate in the great procession of the Panathenaia as ephebes, the flower of the future citizenry of Athens, not as the metic bowl-carriers (that they should injustice be). The speaker delivers the allegation with a tone of righteous indignation, and he can evidently count on this indignation finding receptive ears in his citizen audience. The point of choosing this moment in particular as the one to epitomise the gulf of status between citizen and metic is clear, even from so brief a fragment. This evidence, deriving as it does from the sphere of the popular courts, is a good indication of the way the ‘honour’ of skaphephoria could be seized upon as a clear index of the lack of honour of the metic by comparison with the citizen. The comic poets’punning confusion of the skaphephoros with the skapheus or ‘ditch-digger’ is another; as are the indications, hugely significant given the poverty of our sources, that these obligations encountered some resistance.77 The ideology which construed the leitourgical duty of skaphephoria as an honour is one working in the interests of a greater civic identity, an identity based on a clear sense of hierarchy and power.78

The Lenaia The Lenaia was the second most important of Dionysos’ urban festivals, and some­ what older than the City Dionysia. Its contests were restricted to drama, and comedy

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seems to have been the senior genre.79 The festival appears to have been less concentratedly focussed around the politai than the Dionysia: the absence of phyletic khoroi and the permitted involvement of non-Athenian khoreutai and metic khoregoi point in this direction. The Lenaia is often described as having a ‘domestic’ character: the classic statement is that of the Lenaian comic hero of Aristophanes’ Akharnians himself, Dikaiopolis, who in his great speech of advice and self-defence locates the Lenaia as a site from which to advise the city without restraint: ‘. . . we’re by our­ selves, and it’s the Lenaian agon, and there are no foreigners here yet; for neither tribute nor troops have arrived from the allied cities’. (The latter remark contrasts the Lenaia with the City Dionysia, at which the imperial tribute was produced and dis­ played before the theatre-audience.) ‘This time we are alone, ready-hulled; for I reckon the metics as the civic bran’ (504—8).80 The absence of a sense of being on show to the world beyond Attike at this mid-winter festival seems to have had the effect of inducing a willingness to grant a role in it to a wider spectrum of society and, perhaps, to scrutinise sensitive issues of ‘internal’ concern with greater rigour. Perhaps reflecting its antiquity, the Basileus rather than the Eponymous Arkhon was the civic official in charge; but at whatever date dramatic performances began at the Lenaia, they received formal civic recognition, as expressed through a khoregic base, some time later than the Great Dionysia — around 440 for comedy and perhaps a little later for tragedy.81 It may well have been the increased popularity of drama that encouraged the creation of Lenaian khoregiai. If it was indeed a creation of the 440s, it is tempting to associate it with Perikles, and his politics of ‘always devising some public spectacle, banquet or procession in the city, and educating the polis with not uncultured pleasures’ (Plu. Per. 11.4). This inclusion of rich metics in the cultural life of the city may have been intended as a recognition of their importance at a time when their inferior status had recently been given sharper focus by Perikles’ citizen­ ship laws. There were probably five productions of comedy as a rule,82 and only two or three of tragedy (the figure was three for at least part of the mid-3 60s):83 there were, of course, more comic than tragic ‘slots’ at the Great Dionysia too (five as opposed to three of tragedy), but at that festival three sets of tragedies signified twelve individ­ ual works, and so the overall amount of tragic (and satyric) drama was considerably greater than the comic. At the Lenaia, on the other hand, it seems that tragedians ordinarily competed with two tragedies only and no satyr-play;84 so there were usually four tragedies and five comedies. There was thus a demand for at least two tragic and five comic khoregoi each year, appointed directly by the Basileus.85 We can form some idea of what made the production of a Lenaian khoros dis­ tinctive, and our sense of its character is to some extent determined, as it was for the Athenians, by contrast with the arrangements for the greater urban festival. The primacy of comedy at the Lenaia seems to go hand in hand with a generally inferior status of the festival in terms of the prestige to be won by poet, performer or khore­ gos. The Lenaia evidently served as a stepping-stone to — and a place to be demoted to from - the more prestigious competitions of the Great Dionysia. The different status of the two competitions was perhaps even acknowledged by a formalised mech­ anism for regulating access of aspiring poets and actors: a fourth place for a comic poet at the Great Dionysia may have led to his being ‘pushed back again to the Lenaia’.86 The power and value of a Dionysiac victory were quite finely calibrated: a 28

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fourth or worse meant demotion to the lesser competition for a poet; presumably it was also possible to ‘win one’s way’ somehow back up to the other agon. And it may have been effectively if not formally necessary for a poet to serve an ‘apprenticeship’ at the lesser festival before being granted access to the Dionysia. The relative prestige­ value of victory and of the right to be seen in the public eye competing at the two festivals could hardly be more sharply drawn than this.87 It is entirely in keeping with the hierarchy of prestige between the two dramatic festivals that there was a major legal distinction concerning the recruitment of the choral personnel of the Lenaia. Metics could serve as khoregoi, and khoroi could include foreigners.88 The significance of this involvement in the city’s choral culture of those not fully members of the political community needs to be stressed, especially given the importance of khoreia as a prime means of communal self-definition. The commentator to whom we owe these details explicitly links them causally: foreign­ ers could participate in a Lenaian khoros, since metics also served as khoregoi. This asso­ ciation between foreign choral leadership and choral membership is an example of the recurrent close association, in practical and ideological terms, between khoros and kho­ regos — something to which I shall often return. When metics were permitted to be khoregoi it was perhaps natural that they be allowed to recruit from among ‘their own’, as it were, from among resident aliens and perhaps also from non-resident foreign­ ers.89 The concession to metics will have been made a virtue to the benefit of all: the economic basis of Lenaian drama was thereby more secure, and the talents of the numerous foreign musical practitioners in Athens could be employed at a major Athenian festival. It would surely be wrong to imagine that only metic khoregoi could employ foreigners; such a potential benefit will not have been granted the metic and denied the citizen. The ‘rule’ of ‘same-status’ choral membership and leadership was very probably relaxed to this significant degree.90 Metic and citizen khoregoi will have been competing directly and for the same prizes.91 It was presumably up to the Basileus to include among the pool of potential kho­ regoi for the Lenaia the upper tier of the economic élite among the metics. These would have been readily identifiable by virtue of the generally tight controls exer­ cised over the registration of metics. Voluntary khoregiai were perhaps not uncommon among wealthy metics, keen to establish a position of goodwill for themselves among the community at large. And given the relatively high degree of metic wealth, and the small number of leitourgical duties we know them to have been liable to perform, metics may have dominated the profile of Lenaian khoregoi. When calculating the number of those exempt from leitourgic service, Demosthenes makes a clear distinc­ tion between ‘political’ (πολιτικοί) leitourgiai and ‘those of the metics’ (od . . . των μετοίκων, 2O.i8, cf. 20). It need not follow that these two groups did not overlap at all (since he is examining potential performers, not the services themselves), but there his words do imply a familiar distinction at the level of service. Demosthenes asserts that there will be no more than five metics exempt at any one time (20.20); he later agrees to assume for argument’s sake that the number could be as high as ten (20.21). Since the trierarkhia is not relevant to this calculation, this small number of metic lei­ tourgists could consist largely of Lenaian khoregoi. The Lenaia normally needed seven khoregoi each year — a figure which interestingly falls precisely between the two numbers proffered by Demosthenes.92 We can identify only a tiny group of certain or probable Lenaian khoregoi. But most of these are metics, and we know of no certain 29

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Fig· i· The khoregic monument for tragedy and comedy (Lenaian) of the Arkhon Onesippos,

found in the Athenian Agora.

case of a citizen khoregos for the Lenaia.93 The possibility that metics dominated the choral competition at the Lenaia should be entertained. Some regard this involvement of the metics in major khoregiai for the city’s most prestigious cultural form primarily as an honour accorded them in recognition of the important part they played in the life of the city, and no doubt such an interpretation carries some weight. As Whitehead writes: ‘. . . at the elite end of the status hierar­ chy, leitourgiai played their part in the ideology of the metic by inviting him to affirm his acceptance of the ideology of the polis itself’.94 But the ‘honour’ was clearly a carefully delimited one, given the evident second-ranking of the festival as a place to gain prestige. Their siting in the comic language of Dikaiopolis’ political and festive metaphor is consistent with this institutional and legal position: they are the eminently useful, but less pure and refined, bran that would be sifted out of the meal to make flour. Their place in the city was thus neatly, symbolically described by this allowed form of festival participation, as was their perceived value to it, which was predomi­ nantly an economic one. The point is brought home with clarity by the remains of a khoregic monument of an altogether unique form among those extant (figure 1). It is the sole surviving example of a monument recording victories at the Lenaia, and was erected on the steps of the Stoa of the Basileus in the Agora - an extremely conspicuous location — by an Arkhon himself, Onesippos, at some time near the end of the fifth century.95 It was in the shape of a herm, itself an interesting and unique variant in the known range of khoregic monuments. It is the only known case of an Arkhon erecting such

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a monument, in his capacity as general manager of the agones of the festival. And it has been argued that he did so during his term of office, which if true would be par­ ticularly striking because we know that for an Arkhon or any civic officer to do such a thing before undergoing his scrutiny was (in the later fourth century at least) strictly illegal.96 The inscription is fascinating for the manner in which it combines what might be termed elements of ‘official’ and ‘private’ dedicatory practice: official in the sense that it presents itself as the public record, erected by a leading state official, of the victors at a major festival. It thus falls into a well-recognised tradition of public ‘Victor-Lists’.97 Yet its restriction to a single year — the one in which the dedicat­ ing Arkhon served as manager of the competitions in question — makes it rather closer in spirit to the victory-monuments erected by individual khoregoi, since by this close association with the victors the Basileus is himself appropriating some of their glory. In addition to this unusual mix of ‘public’ and ‘individual’ elements, Onesippos’ herm casts the special character of the Lenaian khoregia into sharp relief. For although the monument stands under the name of the Basileus, it is extremely likely that the khoregoi whose victories are recorded were involved in, and probably contributed materially to, its creation.98 Onesippos, son of Aitios, of the deme of Kephisia, Arkhon Basileus, dedicated [this]

These men were victorious as khoregoi during Onesippos’ office as Basileus For tragedy

For comedy

Sosikrates the bronze merchant was khoregos

Stratonikos, son of Straton, was khoregos

Megakleides was didaskalos

Nikokhares was didaskalos

The way in which the comic khoregos is represented is the most striking feature of this inscription: Sosikrates the comic khoregos is publicly commemorated in the Athenian Agora as a bronze merchant of non-Athenian origins. It is surely not merely fortuitous that it is the comic khoregos who is identified in this inscription as the metic trader, while the tragic khoregos is identified further only by his patronymic (and not his demotic). Given the marked prejudice in certain circles against those involved in commercial activity, this imbalance may be regarded as further evidence that there was a hierarchy of prestige among the various khoregiai. The less ‘elevated’ genre is in the care of one of the less ‘pure’ members of the civic community at the Lenaia.99 A mutually useful arrangement is at work: the Athenians benefit from this infusion of metic wealth into their festival, just as more generally they benefit mate­ rially and ideologically from the management of their commerce by metics. Sosikrates and his kind for their part are granted a significant form of symbolic rec­ ognition of the importance of their contribution to the city. Sosikrates the metic trader’s proud self-assertion as the successful khoregos for the ‘senior’ poetic perfor­ mance at the Lenaia - in the Agora, moreover, the privileged place of exchange, especially economic exchange, in Athens — is altogether intelligible: he has gone as high as he can, as it were, in the range of civic services that the city accords those of his status, by his involvement with a successful performance of comedy at the Lenaia.100

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Anthesteria The most ancient festival of Dionysos in Athens (Thouk. 2.15.4, P· Oxy. 853), the Anthesteria was a new wine festival celebrated in early spring. Evidence for dramatic or choral performances here of any kind is slim, but suggestive. The best-known items are the shadowy references to the ‘Khytrinoi agones’.101 Lykourgos is reported to have passed a law which ‘restored’ a contest of comic performances in the theatre at the festival of the Pots (Khytroi), the third day of the Anthesteria.102 The notion that this was a genuine revival has been questioned, perhaps rightly, and it may rather be a case of the creation of (false) tradition by Lykourgos. The institution of this contest of comic actors, in the form described by [Plutarch], cannot in any case have been an event at the Anthesteria from its beginnings, since its winner is said to have been ‘listed as eligible for the city competition’, and that did not exist before the sixth century. There is no good evidence for tragic performances in the classical period.103 The picture concerning purely choral performance is rather more complex. There is a tantalising possibility that a fragment of Kallimakhos’ poem Hekale implies that the poet had knowledge of a very ancient tradition of khoroi for Dionysos at the Anthesteria, which are it seems explicitly described as having performed at a time when the city did not dance and sing for Dionysos Eleuthereus.104 Further evidence for such performances from as early as the sixth century — and of a kind, moreover, in which Athenian women participated — has recently appeared in the form of a fas­ cinating thesis of Benedetto Bravo. On the basis of a detailed study of the evidence for private (familial, rather than polis-organised) all-night revels or pannykhides in Athens, Bravo argues that the first evening of the Anthesteria, the Pithoigia or jar­ opening’, saw élite Athenian families organise quite elaborate performances of dance and song involving their women and set in a sympotic context within smaller sanc­ tuaries of Dionysos around Attike. Bravo may have unearthed the considerable remains of one such dithyramb from the fourth century, which tells an aetiological story of the third king of Attike, Amphiktyon, instructed by the god in the practice of mixing wine, and founding these very rites for Dionysos on the day of the new wine. Later in the poem we catch sight of the arrival of the god in his famous ship­ car to Athens. Although such performances were probably not competitive, they will have been funded by élite Athenians on a voluntary basis, at least without the formal compulsion behind polis leitourgiai, and they provided an occasion for very much more intimate and exclusive choral performance than the great city khoroi, and with poets of the stature of Anakreon composing for them.105 If there was any kind of formal leitourgia at this festival, it has left no trace.106 The requirements of the Great Dionysia in the following month were no doubt the over­ whelming focus of choral preparation in Athens at this time of the year.

Service for Apollo A festival to which choral performance was indeed central is the Thargelia. This took place two months after the Great Dionysia, in late spring. Originally a harvest festi­ val, the Thargelia was later linked to a ritual purification of Athens in which two 32

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scapegoats were selected to bear the burden of the city’s transgressions, but in the fifth century, as Robert Parker has put it, ‘an Athenian would probably have thought first of dithyrambic choruses’.107 After the opening day (6th Thargelion), on which the purification took place, the day of Apollo’s birth (7th Thargelion) saw a procession, the ritual core of the festival, pass from the newly-cleansed Athens to Apollo’s Pythian sanctuary near the Ilissos, bearing the stew of first fruits in the special vase known as the thargelos.108 On this day in the classical period competitions were held between five kyklioi khoroi of boys and five of men. These were drawn from the ten Kleisthenic phylai according to a system of pairing, two phylai being represented by a single khoros, and the duty of providing the khoregos for this composite khoros alternated between the paired phylai each year. Each phyle thus provided one khoregos for the Thargelia each year, for one of the two performance-categories.109 The basic text is [Aristotle] Ath. Pol. 56.3: ‘. . . and the khoregoi for the Thargelia [serve] in competitions of men and of boys ... at the Thargelia one man serves for a pair of phylai; and each of the phylai provides him in turn . . .’110 A khoregos thus always led his own phyle and another. The second was linked to that of the khoregos at random by means of the lot until the early fourth century. Thereafter (in or near the 3 70s) the phylai operated in an estab­ lished set of five fixed pairs.111 The fact that the choral competitions at the Thargelia were structured along Kleisthenic social divisions and that the official with responsibility for them was the Eponymous Arkhon (Ath. Pol. 56.5), not the Basileus, suggests that these competi­ tions were a relatively late addition to a very ancient festival. Or rather it suggests what is in any case probable - that a major reform in the organisation of the Thargelia took place in the democratic era. Khoroi may well have danced for Apollo before that time, but we can only speculate as to their composition and means of support. Uncertainty must also surround the question ofjust when the khoregia was introduced to the Thargelia. It was in operation by the middle of the fifth century.112 It is perhaps likely to have been transferred to this festival after its introduction and success at the greater city festival for Dionysos; but we have no direct evidence for this, and one might equally imagine a desire late in the sixth or early in the fifth century to ‘democ­ ratise’ a festival in whose deity the Peisistratids had taken such interest. The Thargelia has in fact left little epigraphic evidence, and none of the kind for the Dionysia that shows the high degree of polis involvement in recording the victors and competitors more generally at the dramatic festivals. The phyletic kyklioi khoroi were certainly the major performance at the Thargelia, and the only one to be organised as a competitive event with the participation of khoregoi. But music was heard elsewhere in the festival, in the ancient ‘tune of the fig­ branch’, played on the aulos, as the scapegoats were expelled (Hesykh. Kpabiqs vó[jo$) - and the name of cru[3o(KXOi "fig-bakkhoi" given to the scapegoats (Hellad. in Photios Bibl. p.534b) has intriguingly Dionysian overtones. There was also another dance of some kind, presumably choral, performed by an élite guild called the Orkhestai, for whom Euripides served as cup-bearer in his youth — suggesting a sympotic milieu and an insight, perhaps, into the kind of cultural formation of an aspiring Athenian poet. These Orkhestai, who danced around the temple of Apollo wearing Theran cloaks, are specifically reported to have been ‘from among the foremost Athenians’, and their presumably ritual performance must represent a rather more élite activity than the great phyletic dances.113 It is difficult to draw any conclusions about the distinctive qualities, from the

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point of view of the experience of the khoregos, in serving for Apollo as opposed to Dionysos, and as far as the performances themselves are concerned, no single word of their songs certainly survives.114 That Apollo should be the recipient of dithyrambs need not surprise, although the issue demands closer consideration than it has received.115 Drama was never introduced to the competitions of the Thargelia — a fact which will have coloured their general nature for all involved. The ‘international’ element is likely to have been lacking from the audience, the competitions exclusively those of phyletic khoroi. Leading a khoros composed of members of two phylai will have had some effect on the nature of the competition, and perhaps too on the sense of social formation that participation in such a khoros fostered. It is hard to come up with other places in Athenian life where the phylai were paired in this way. The expla­ nation which comes to mind most readily is of a practical order: ten khoroi were cheaper, and took less time, than twenty. But on reflection such explanations perhaps carry little weight in a city which invested such vast sums of money and energy on its choral culture. And we might at least entertain the possibility that a positive wish to have a festival context in which phylai were mingled in this way may have formed part of the motivation for this unusual arrangement. We might also guess that competition was less intense. The stories of the most explosive khoregic philonikia at festivals apparently derive from Dionysia. Any disper­ sal of prestige in victory occasioned by this pairing of khoroi probably redounded to the benefit of the khoregos, who is consistently recorded as the winner ahead of the phylai in Thargelian victory-dedications.116 That said, however, a highly fragmentary and rather neglected decree of the phyle Hippothontis from the middle of the fourth century throws a fascinating if thin ray of light on this issue. At the motion of the aptly-named Polynikos, Hippothontis honours one among its number, Metagenes, for having voted for the victory of the phyle at the Thargelia (IG n2i 153): ‘Decision of the phyle Hippothontis: Polynikos son of Phokiades from Oion spoke. Since Metagenes son of Eukleides from Eroiadai in a fine and just and unbribed manner judged that the phyle be victorious at the Thargelia . . .’ We do not know what the contest was here — but the prominence of khoroi at the Thargelia and the complete lack of any evidence for any other must make one believe that the paired choral con­ tests are far and away the most likely candidate. A fascinating picture emerges. We apparently have a single phyle honouring one of its members for having served as a judge of the Thargelian contests and for having voted that his own phyle should win, ‘in a fine and just and unbribed manner . . .’ This certainly suggests that individual phylai of these joint Thargelian teams could appropriate what must have ‘officially’ been a shared victory to themselves, at least in the somewhat less public context of their own phyletic Assembly. Presumably Hippothontis had provided the khoregos; this is more than likely to have given his phyle the ‘senior’ role in the partnership - enough, perhaps, to sideline their comrade in this way. This text also raises many questions concerning the problematic nature of the process of judging at Athenian choral con­ tests (below, pp. 98—102): how on earth did dithyramb ever produce a clear result, given that the ten judges at the Dionysia were appointed by and from the ten phylai, and given the kind of obvious partisanship that this decree displays?

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Dancing for Hephaistos and Prometheus? Whether khoroi of men and boys drawn from the phylai danced and sang — yet more dithyrambs? — at the city festivals of Hephaistos and Prometheus at the expense of khoregoi is a matter of mild dispute.117 The evidence suggesting that they did is gen­ erally interpreted so as to refer only to the well-attested phyletic torch-races of these festivals and to their leitourgical supporters known as gymnasiarkhoi. In a tirade on the difficulties of transacting public business in Athens because of the mass of duties put upon magistrates under the democracy, the ‘Old Oligarch’ lists the disputes of adju­ dication the Arkhon has to settle arising between khoregoi each year at the Dionysia, the Thargelia, the Panathenaia, the Promethia and the Hephaistia (Ath. Pol. 3.4). These khoregoi for Prometheus and Hephaistos have been emended away or explained as an example of the extension of the term yopriyos to include the comparable (but not choral) leitourgical officer for the torch-race.118 Such an extension is in itself plau­ sible (although this would be a rather early instance), and the linguistic phenomenon clearly demonstrates the pre-eminence of the khoregia among the festival leitourgiai, the habit of using it as a term to cover all festival leitourgiai. The other item of evidence is a phyletic decree. At some point in the first half of the fourth century, the phyle Pandionis set about recording those of its members who had served as victorious khoregoi since the arkhonship of Eukleides ‘in the com­ petitions of boys and men at the Dionysia, the Thargelia, the Promethia and the Hephaistia’.119 This expression, as it relates to the Hephaistia and Promethia, is under­ stood by sceptics as referring to victories in any kind of contest organised between the phylai.120 But, given the state of our evidence, the possibility of choral contests at these festivals cannot be dismissed and the existence of a further group of (between four and forty) choral sponsors should be entertained.121 Somewhat in their favour also is the tantalising reference to a ‘[? contest] of mousike’ in an important decree of 421/0 which organises the Hephaistia (IG i382.I4). However, these two festivals certainly were set on a firm leitourgical base through the gymnasiarkhia for the competitions that were their most remarkable feature — the foot-races between teams of phyletic runners who carried flaming torches in a ritual relay (lampadedromia or lampadephoria).122 This agon was probably first instituted in Athens in the cult of Prometheus (Paus. 1.30.2). By the classical period Hephaistos, Athene, and probably Pan were also honoured by racing ephebes with the assistance of gymnasiarkhoi, and the practice was later attached to many other cults.123 This was a spectacular form of agonistic display of physical skills deemed important for ephebes. In 421 the newly-appointed officials (hieropoioi) of the Hephaistia are exhorted to see to it that ‘the lampadedromia and the rest of the agon’ at the newly reorganised festival are to take place just as the lampadarkhoi arrange the spectacle at the Promethia’ (IG i382.j 1-3124). The torch-race was probably part of the annual Panathenaia, and was the most important of that festival’s phyletic events. Its course began at the altar of Prometheus in the grove of Akademos (Paus. 1.30.2) and passed through the Kerameikos, home to the artisans under the patronage of Prometheus and Hephaistos, to reach and ignite the altar of Athena on the Akropolis (2 Plat. Phaidr. 231c). At least thirty wealthy men, appointed by their phylai,125 were thus needed to support this athletic, ritual

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competition at city festivals. Their title, ‘masters of the gymnasion’, reflects the pri­ marily athletic quality of the training they provided. Oil for the training ephebes and the cost of their daily upkeep in the gymnasium will have been the essential material demands on the gymnasiarkhos.126 One victor at the Prométhia in the late fifth century spent twelve mnai on his team, a sum which probably represents some two months’ training.127 This extensive activity, along with the ‘beardless’ (ayevEiot) category of the ‘warrior dance’ (pyrrhikhe), will have formed an extremely important part of ephebic training in the elusive period before 335 and the introduction of a system­ atic state-sponsored ephebeia.128 Its importance is further shown by its flourishing in the fourth century in the garrison-deme of Rhamnous, the most significant centre in Attike for ephebic training, where the contests (organised by phylai as well as at a local level) encouraged lavish victory-dedications.129 Thus, for most of the demo­ cratic period, the preliminary preparation for military life of the all-important ‘flower’ of Athenian manhood was entrusted to the leading men, in socio-economic terms, of their phylai rather than directly to the polis itself.

Panathenaia The place which leitourgical support had in the grandest of all Athens’ festivals, the Panathenaia, reflects its distinctive and highly differentiated nature as a competitive festival. Of its many contests — athletic, equestrian and musical — only the ‘home’ con­ tests, the warrior dance (pyrrhikhe), the contest in ‘manly beauty’ (euandria), the contest of boats and the minor competition in kyklioi khoroi, were leitourgically funded (in addition to the torch-race, already mentioned).130 The point brings home a basic and significant fact about the leitourgy system: it was always directed towards activities involving the Athenian citizen-body as a collective. The leitourgical demands of the Panathenaia are far from nugatory, but this is the most conspicuous case where large funds were also forthcoming directly from the city itself to support a truly ‘international’ meeting of competitors. The many athletic competitions, most of the equestrian and all the non-choral musical events — most of them contests between individuals or pairs and open to non-Athenians — were securely established by the Athenian polis through the offer of valuable prizes and the material upkeep of the sites of performance.131 But it was only the all-Athenian competitions which were funded by the direct system of leitourgical support. An elaboration of the musical programme in particular around the middle of the fifth century is with some certainty attributable to Perikles when athlothetes of the Panathenaia, who initiated at the same time, and to accommodate their performance, the construction of the great Odeion on the eastern side of the theatre of Dionysos. The design of securing the position of Athens in Greece as the pre-eminent centre of musical culture is clear, and is one that Perikles shared with his tyrannical predecessors in the sixth century - a fact that did not pass without comment at the time.132 The city’s sponsorship of the occasion was, in the period of empire, famously assisted by the enforced contribution of sacrificial beasts by allies.133 In the early fourth century the prizes totalled well over a talant in value, and they included individual cash sums of up to 1,200 dr. and gold crowns of 1,000 dr. (IG n223ii). This is in addition to well over a thousand of the 36

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famous Attic prize amphorai, full of as much as 50,000 kg of high-quality olive-oil: a victorious adult pentathlete carried off some sixty of these.134 The aim — evidently achieved — was to set the Panathenaia on a par with the four great ‘international’ Hellenic festivals of the circuit, to attract the finest competitors to the city at the same time as displaying and publicising the city and its glories to the rest of Greece. The festival was surely one of the most tangible instances of Athens’ ‘education’ (paideusis, Thouk. 2.41.1) of others. It can hardly be a matter of indifference that the exclusively Athenian elements of these agones — those to which the rest of Greece could only attend in the role of spectators — had a predominantly militaristic character. Forms of warrior dance were widely practised in Greece, and the Panathenaia was the premier site of Athens’ most important event of the kind.135 The date of the introduction of competitive pyrrhikhe in Athens is unknown, but it may go back into the sixth century. Athena herself is sometimes credited with the invention of the dance, to celebrate her defeat of the Giants; and it is always strongly associated with military security and victory.136 In the fourth century, and surely already in the fifth, the pyrrhikhe was contested in three age­ categories at the Panathenaia: boys, youths and men; possibly, but far from certainly, with some form of phyletic organisation.137 That it was performed at the annual fes­ tival (Lys. 21.1—4), (and that it was very possibly not phyletically configured) suggest that it may have been part of an ancient core of events, predating the changes made in the sixth century. If the three age-categories did compete by phyle, the number of khoregoi required each year could have been as high as thirty; there was a minimum of nine.138 There was only one prize awarded (as is the case for most choral events in Athens, as opposed to the athletic and the musical events open to outsiders), and in each category this was an ox worth a hundred drachmas (IG n22311.71—6). The event shows most clearly the marked affinities and overlap between choral and military per­ formance.139 Sokrates himself is credited with having said — in poetry — that ‘Whoever honours the gods best with khoroi are the best in war’ (Athen. 628e), and military dances like the pyrrhikhe are recommended by the Athenian of the Laws (796c) for children (including girls) from the age of six until military age ‘alike for service in war and for the sake of festivals’. The pyrrhikhe was indeed a choral performance, its lei­ tourgical supporters properly called khoregoi (Lys. 21.1, 5). It was accompanied, like drama and dithyramb, by the music of the aulos, and had its own special musical forms and traditions. It is not impossible that the pyrrhikhe may at times even have involved a verbal component, of perhaps a fairly simple nature. A certain degree of generic overlap with a rather militaristic strand of Athenian dithyramb is likely.140 Presumably each pyrrhic khoros will have needed a musician and/or a trainer, but such individu­ als are difficult to identify. The pyrrhikhe is likely to have employed highly traditional forms of dance-steps and tunes, and so the names of particular composers generally appear only when an arch-innovator like Kinesias turns his attentions to it.141 Its divine recipient at the Panathenaia, the virgin warrior Athena, is said by the Athenian of the Laws (796b—c) to have been gladdened by choral dance, but she thought one should not sport with empty hands, but rather execute the dance cos­ tumed in full panoply. At her historical Athenian festival, nudity (such as is consistent with a hoplite shield and helm) seems to have been the rule in this carefully co-ordi­ nated dance of rapid steps and vigorous wielding of the hoplite shield and spear.142 Something of its combination of athleticism, graceful bodily control and collective

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discipline can be gleaned from the idealised images of pyrrhikhistai on a number of fragmentary khoregic monuments (see figures 2, 21). Plato describes pyrrhic dance as ‘imitating, on the one hand, movements that evade all kinds of blows and missiles by dodging, giving way completely, jumping up, humble crouching — and then again striving to imitate the opposite to these, aggressive postures involved in striking with missiles — arrows and javelins — and with all sorts of blows’ (Laws 7.815a, cf. 796b). Its mimetic character is often stressed, and this clearly lay in a visual system of bodily ges­ tures rather than in poetic words, but this was a dance form which had venerable ante­ cedents, such as the ‘Dance of the Crane’ which Theseus and the Athenian youths performed on Delos, imitating the intricate movements made to escape the Kretan labyrinth.143 The fact that this competition was held in three age-categories of Athenian males indicates its importance as a symbolic performance of the skills of the Athenian soldier-citizen: symbolic in the sense that it is unlikely to have served as a form of general, practical military training for all males, and so the competitors were probably representative of their age-classes; symbolic too in the sense that the mili­ tary manoeuvres performed — the technical resources of the hoplite — have been com­ muted to a choral form and are thus stylised and mimetic.144 Less complex in its demands for training and costuming, the khoregia of pyrrhikhe attracted expense on a scale considerably lower than for any of the poetic genres at the Dionysia: we hear of 800 dr. for a Great Panathenaic khoros and 700 dr. for a youths’ khoros at the lesser festival towards the end of the fifth century (Lys. 21.1, 4).145 This is more than twice as much as the same man spent (300 dr.: Lys. 21.2) on a dith­ yrambic khoros at the lesser Panathenaia in 409/8, which may suggest that the ‘purely’ choral agon of that festival was regarded as less important than its more athletic and militaristic variety; but this should not surprise in a festival for Athena. The fascinating but elusive euandria, a contest for Athenians only in ‘manly excel­ lence’ of some kind was certainly organised at the Panathenaia on a phyletic basis, although we also hear of individual winners.146 I suspect that those individuals who represent themselves as victors, certainly in the case of the speaker of [And.] 4 (cf. IG ii23022), are the leitourgical supporters of the competition (whose title, if there was one, we do not know), rather than a particular member of the competing team. Just what the competition involved is, in the absence of clear evidence, open to widely divergent interpretation: a male ‘beauty contest’; a kind of acrobatic display with shields and leaping between horses; a competition between the phylai to determine which was best endowed with an ‘abundance of (young?) men’; or more generally, and perhaps most plausibly, a contest between groups of phyletai which prized phys­ ical qualities as demonstrated in some form of military display.147 At an absolute minimum, the euandria promoted Athenian ideals of male physical and aesthetic excellence through competition and the wealth of rich individuals, at the most self­ demonstrative event staged by the city. The abstract concept of euandria was a virtue upon which the Athenians collectively and somewhat narcissistically prided them­ selves: ‘no other city can bring together euandria to compare with that in Athens’, insists Xenophon’s Sokrates (Mem. 3.3.12).148 It is as though a highly idealised concept of Athenian sociopolitical culture has been given a concrete agonistic form, funded by rich Athenian men. A similar phenomenon is at work in the competition of ‘good order’ (eutaxia) which appears in the fourth century.

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Fig· 2. The remains of the (?)mid-fourth-century khoregic monument of Atarbos, with

a sculpted relief of dancers for (?) dithyramb and pyrrhikhe.

We know very little indeed about the dithyrambic competition at the Panathenaia, which is for our purposes most frustrating.149 Kyklioi khoroi danced and sang at both the small and great festival by the later fifth century (Lys. 21.2), and they may have been leitourgically organised in (c.) 446, in the context of Perikles’probable reorgan­ isation of the musical contests of the festival.150 We do not know how many khoroi danced and sang for Athena, nor whether they did so on a phyletic basis; the nature of their songs is equally obscure, as is their place in the festival programme and their composition in terms of age, number and even of gender.151 The competition may have been organised by phyle, given the importance of this system for dithyramb at the major Athenian choral festivals and for other group events at the Panathenaia. If it were phyletically based, it represented the involvement of ten more khoregoi every year, unless some system of pairing was used. At some point drama was added to the programme of the Panathenaia, but probably no earlier than the late Hellenistic period, when it found its way into all manner of festivals.152 The parallels between the militaristic khoreia of pyrrhikhe and the purely choral dithyramb at the Panathenaia are further underscored in the remains of an elaborate victory-monument dedicated (probably in 366/5 or 323/2) on the Akropolis (the prime site for Panathenaic dedications) by one Atarbos, a khoregos successful in both agones (figure 2).153 For Panathenaic khoregoi did, like their Dionysian and Thargelian counterparts, take the opportunity to perpetuate their victories in monuments of considerable scale.154 The remains of the base of Atarbos’ monument show, on the left-hand of the two extant blocks, a set of seven adult males carved in relief, wreathed and tightly wrapped in himatia, facing right in an orderly formation, with a figure depicted frontally at their head. On a narrow cornice above them is the extremely fragmentary inscription viKpfoag kukAigoi xo]pcdi, ‘victorifous with a cyclic kho]ros’. The restoration cannot be regarded as certain, but a reference to some form of choral victory is virtually certain.155 A ‘circular’ khoros is the best candidate, and it is reason­ able to assume that the draped men represent this khoros.156 Above this block stood a statue some 1.8 metres high — of the khoregos?157 On the right-hand block, and clearly forming an iconographic parallel, two groups of four naked pyrrhikhistai hold their round hoplite shields in front of their bodies, moving, with slightly bowed heads, in a sedate dance-formation. At their head, on the left-hand side, is a figure very similar to the ‘leader’ of the dressed group of men; and on the cornice above this image the remainder of the dedicatory inscrip­ tion reads: [Truppix]icn-ai$ viKpcrag 7\Tap|3os Au[o........ qveOeke. K]r|(pio-6[5]GOpo[s ppXs], ‘victorious with [pyrrhikh]istai, Atarbos son of Ly[- - - dedicated this. K] ephiso [d] oro [s was Arkhon]’. Above this block there once stood two bronze statues

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smaller in size than that on the other block. They may well have been boys or youth pyrrhikhistai; the relief carvings seem to represent young men. The remains of this monument demonstrate in a striking manner the similarity between these two forms of khoreia, as well as some differences, particularly in terms of the display of the body: the closely-wrapped men contrast sharply with the naked youths. It also gives a sense of the considerable prestige which was to be derived from association as a khoregos with these less high-profile ‘domestic’ agones at the Panathenaia. We should note in this connection that the inscription for the dithyram­ bic victory apparently had no place for poet, trainer or aulos-player — indeed, for none other than the khoregos. The ‘leader’ figures standing at the end of and regarding both choral groups present a particularly acute problem of interpretation. They were once thought to be the khoregos himself depicted with his victorious teams, but they are in fact female figures.158 Athena can be ruled out: they are the same size and stand on the same ground as the mortal figures; and they have no armour or other feature that would identify them with the goddess. Some form of personification might be a possibility, representing the phyle (if the contests were phyletic), or a figure such as Theoria (‘Spectacle’). But the best iconographic parallels strongly suggest that these women are Muses.159 The Muses are appropriate patronesses of both dithyrambic and pyrrhic contests, and their inclusion would play an important part in the strategies of self-rep­ resentation engineered by Atarbos. Atarbos has fully appropriated the victories as their agent (and thus subject of the participle viKijoas); the cyclic khoros and the team of pyrrhikhistai are, in the permanent record of the event, the instruments of his success (hence the datives yopdoi, Truppixicrmis). The presence of Muses at the head of these victorious khoroi is of a part with the absence of their poet-musicians. Atarbos is, as it were, willing to share his victory with its divine agents only. In the idealised record of the victory made possible by his own resources he dispenses with the mortal inter­ mediaries altogether.

A female divinity of mousike might serve mortal men as a useful device to link their achievements to the transcendent world of the divine, but at the Panathenaia, as at all the Attic festivals of which any evidence survives, khoreia was a matter for men. It had not always been so, nor was it so elsewhere in Greece. Indeed, there was an intimate association between women and choral performance in both myth and cult prac­ tice.160 But if, as is likely, women of Attike had danced in festival khoroi in the sixth century and earlier, they had receded entirely from the public horizon by the classi­ cal period.161 The great organisational armature of the khoregia was never, as far as we know, devoted to women’s khoroi; whereas virtually every age of Athenian male was catered for, most of them many times over. The distinction in fact extends to the lei— tourgy-system as a whole: this channelling of vast resources of private wealth was with extreme rarity geared to support the activities of women. We have already noticed the highly symbolic function of the parthenoi who led festival processions as kanephoroi; and we have seen also that the prestige that went with this ‘public service’ devolved upon the father and family of the girl. The only known leitourgia which seems to have supported an exclusively female activity is in connection with the Thesmophoria: this was a hestiasis, the funding of the festival feast. Unlike those already considered in con­ nection with the Dionysia and Panathenaia, this was organised at the deme, not city, 40

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level, rich demesmen serving on behalf of their wives to ‘feast the women’ (εστίαν τάς γυναίκας, Is. 3.80). It is perhaps not surprising that even this leitourgia linked to the most important civic festival for women should have been organised not centrally but locally, and through the wealth of husbands. The situation reflects the social fact that only under the most unusual circumstances were free women in control of resources in their own name, and perhaps too that the ‘proper place’ of women, the locale with which they were principally identified, was their household, the oikos to which they belonged, rather than the polis. However, the Thesmophoria also provides evidence for an office elected and held by women of the deme which was not a priesthood (the most conspicuous area for female participation in public life), and was in some way akin — though on a vastly narrower scale of operation — to the various Arkhons’ management of civic festivals. This was the (female) Arkhon (arkhousa), two of whom were chosen by the wives of demesmen (Is. 8.19—20), among whose duties it lay to supply the priestess of the cult with, among other things, the necessary cereals, fruit, wine, oil, honey and cash.162 These resources were presumably provided by the women’s husbands, or came from deme finances, and hence the gratitude and prestige that were the regular quid pro quo of such (quasi-)leitourgical service were not fully available to women themselves. The defining form of ‘public service’ available to women was that of supplying the city with men; at least this is how the comic vision exploits the gendered dichot­ omy in the matter of leitourgiai. The female semi-khoros of the Lysistrate compares the ‘contribution’ which women make to the city in giving birth to its men to the tax­ like ‘contributions’ (eisphorai) rich men are required to make, and they declare them­ selves to be the more economical managers of civic resources (648—55). This assimilation of child-bearing to a form of civic service not unlike leitourgia (cf. Thesmo. 830—3) need not be a derisive and fundamentally absurd male conception of female civic contribution, but the conception and its basis in reality are sustained by an ideology of the city created by the empowered male citizenry. The great festival for the female protectress of the city is one place where the elusive dancing of Athenian women has been divined. Although there is little to demand that khoreutai should be of the same sex as the deity they honour, women certainly did dance for Athena in some cities.163 Athena’s choral worship in Athens was, however, a conspicuously masculine affair. It is only in the nocturnal celebra­ tion of the pannykhis on the heights of the Akropolis that khoroi of parthenoi for Athena are thought to have danced, but the claim is unfortunately based on little more than a passage of Euripides’ Children of Herakles in which the khoros of the play, composed of old men from Marathon, appeals to Athena in terms which evoke, with all the distantiation of the tragic genre, the pannykhis of the Panathenaia, an event which culminated in the torch-race and took place on the evening before the great procession to the Akropolis that was the ritual heart of the festival.164 The old men sing of ‘. . . the songs of the young and the dances of khoroi. And on the wind-swept cliff shrill shouts [όλολύγματα] ring out with the beat of the feet of virgins all through the night’ (780—3). It is a striking fact that this constitutes the best evidence we have for the organisation of khoroi for women by the classical Athenian polis at one of its major festivals — or, for that matter, at any festival.165 Whether we are dealing with an absence in practice or a silence of our sources on the matter of female par­ ticipation in public performance is difficult to determine. And that fact is in itself

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revealing. These maidens, if they danced, did not do so in competition but in the performance of a ritual song for the wellbeing of the community.166 The Athenians not only appropriated choral activity from all over Greece and made it their own when they massively developed their choral culture in the sixth and fifth centuries; they also took over essentially female forms of khoreia by absorbing them into their (entirely male) drama and made them serve the greater male agenda of the demo­ cratic city. It is from the pannykhis, the all-night revels, which took place on the evening of the first day of the Anthesteria (the opening of the jars of new wine), that the best evidence for Athenian women dancing in circular khoroi for Dionysos derives. This, most tellingly, was a matter of the initiative of individual élite families or groups of families, and will probably not have been competitive, though it was apparently on a scale to attract substantial compositions by famous poets. Its audience will have been strictly delimited to the social group, joined by bonds of blood and friendship, par­ ticipating in the worship of the god in a smallish sanctuary.167

Of a rather different nature from the Panathenaic leitourgiai so far considered is the arrhephoria. This service of young girls funded by men was designed to support a very specific ritual end, not a competition, and thus its character was much closer to that of the kanephoria than the khoregia. It is one of a number of festival leitourgiai that have left only the slightest, tantalising traces in our records. The speaker of Lysias 21 (§5) rounds off his huge catalogue of major khoregiai, trierarkhiai and the like with the words ‘. . . and besides, there were arkhitheoriai and errhephoriai168 and other such things, for which my expenses have come to more than thirty mnai’. Their place in his list is an indication to some extent of their perceived importance; but the sum spent on these services is considerable, and their low profile in such contexts of democratic public speech may more pointedly have something to do with the fact that they were rather less egalitarian in character: for some, like the arrhephoria, continued to promote a principle of high birth as well as wealth.169 The leitourgical duty of arrhephoria presumably involved the maintenance of the two or four arrhephoroi, girls of between seven to eleven years of age who came from the most distinguished families of Attike and who, in a year of the Great festival, were in charge of the weaving of the peplos of Athena, and who had various other respon­ sibilities during the annual festival.170 The special white robes and gold jewelry which were dedicated at the end of office to Athena were also surely provided by the lei— tourgist. When working on the peplos, the arrhephoroi spent some eight months living on the Akropolis in the charge of the priestess of Athena Polias, where they appear to have had a kind of indoor football hall (ocpaipicrTpa) in which a famous bronze statue of Isokrates as a boy riding a horse was once erected — a very aristocratic form of representation ([Plu.] Lives Orators 839c). On the Akropolis they supervised the even younger girls (ergastinai) who actually wove the peplos, and participated in obscure rites connected with a number of related festivals.171 Unfortunately little can be said with certainty about the nature of the relations between demos, girls and their leitourgist. It seems that the demos elected four girls from whom the Arkhon Basileus chose two to serve.172 Yet since the sources empha­ sise the aristocratic status of the girls’ families, chosen Tor their high birth’, this elec­ tion, filtered further by the Arkhon, grants the demos an extremely circumscribed say 42

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as to who is to hold office. It has been plausibly suggested that the leitourgist was the girl’s father, which would even further blur the categories of civic leitourgia — as an office rotating simply among the wealthy — and those offices which continued under democratic conditions to be filled on criteria of birth.173 The priestess of Athena under whose care these girls were to serve is a case in point: this has been described as ‘the last grand stronghold of the aristocracy and its values’.174 What this leitourgia may have lacked in terms of the spectacular performative and competitive character of a dramatic khoregia will have been counterbalanced for some by its elitism and exclusive association with one of the most important duties in the Athenian religious calendar. The girls who serve as arrhephoroi are said by the comic khoros of women in Lysistrate to ‘stand for’ all the girls of Athens.175 Their service was thus perhaps a kind of symbolic passage to puberty for all Attic girls; but the luxurious appointment of the girls and the exclusivity of access to the service demonstrate the degree to which the Athenian democracy was not averse to maintaining the rich and well born in the position of the symbolic representatives of the community.

Other services This survey of the leitourgical support of Athenian festival culture demonstrates the breadth and variety of the organisational structures within which competitive drama was performed. Moreover the list is surely incomplete: not only because entire layers of non-urban festival practice have not been fully considered - in particular within the deme-context, where the khoregia is again the most conspicuous among a range of leitourgical services; and there were other associations within Attike at a level of participation smaller than that of the city which will have employed comparable forms of leitourgical or quasi-leitourgical support from among their members.176 But there are many important festivals of the Athenians which are not much more than names to us, and some of these involved collective and competitive activities which may have been covered by the city’s leitourgical net. These include the Herakleia held in Hekatombaion at Marathon, in the same year as the Great Panathenaia. An inscrip­ tion dating from not long after the battle of Marathon (JG i33) shows a high degree of (apparently) central, democratic control in the appointment of officials (a[thloth]etai) for a festival which may previously have been under local control; three men of at least thirty years’ age are to be chosen from each of the democratic phylai to oversee the games, doubtless to celebrate the victory with added splendour, and Herakles’ assistance in achieving it. This festival hosted athletic games for adolescents and men which were prestigious enough to deserve mention in the record of non­ Athenian victors who had commissioned praise from Pindar in the 460s; and there was very probably also a musical element.177 The Eleusinia in the following month were the site of important competitions in the second and fourth years of the Olympiad, involving athletic, musical and equestrian events in addition to the ‘ances­ tral’ contest. Both of these were, at least in the fourth century, under the charge of ten hieropoioi elected by the Athenians each year for the management of festivals; and their funding — including the silver phialai offered as prizes at Marathon as well as the upkeep of the sites — appears to have come from central polis resources.178 It may be

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that there was no place here for leitourgical support, since there is little sign of any competitions restricted to groups of Athenians.179 The situation was rather different with the competitions at the Theseia. As a state festival these probably date from the 470s, to celebrate the recovery of ‘the bones of Theseus’ from Skyros by Kimon. What had seemingly been an essentially gentilic cult of Theseus managed by the clan of the Phytalidai, who had welcomed Theseus to Athens and purified him of his blood-guilt, appears to have been taken over and mas­ sively elaborated by the polis.180 The games were certainly reorganised and further extended over time, and the Theseia is still vigorous in the second century as an ath­ letic festival continuing to promulgate the ideals of Athens through her national hero, and focussed firmly on the ephebes.181 Extensive ‘domestic’ competitions, incuding a torch-race, euandria, a mock hoplite battle (hoplomakhia) and other militaristic events, were part of the later festival, and a number of these at least were organised phyletically; a choral competition for ephebes has been hypothesised.182 Although not directly in evidence, it is thus highly plausible that in the classical period this festival received some leitourgical support. A number of the many other imperfectly attested competitive festivals fall into this category,183 while on the other hand we know of at least one leitourgical duty whose festival home we cannot specify.184 To the conclusion drawn by Osborne that ‘the more grand the worship offered the more likely it was to include something com­ petitive’,185 we might add that when the competition between groups of Athenian citizens was grandest, the democratic city arranged another level of competition, between the ‘leaders’ of these cultural and para-military performances, who them­ selves became competitors by virtue of the economic and cultural power they exercised.

An ‘international’ khoregia Another important category of leitourgia looked beyond the borders of Attike, and supported Athenian participation in major festivals elsewhere in Greece at which the city’s representation was deemed desirable. The arkhitheoria, as this duty was known, had the status of a leitourgia in classical Athens, and it required the arkhitheoros to lead a small delegation of citizens to transport offerings to a festival outside Attike as the representatives of the city at the ‘spectacle’ (θεωρία).186 The ‘spectacle’ sometimes involved choral performance, and so the offering to the god took the form of a glo­ riously trained and dressed khoros; on occasion a theoric khoros may have been an optional and more elaborate form of offering. The democratic city was here putting firmly under its collective aegis a ritual duty that had also been an important means of political self-representation in the Greek world for aristocrats and tyrants. But that duty was nonetheless placed in the hands of the élite of wealth.187 The most important destinations for Athenian khoroi beyond Attike were the great cult-sites of Delos and Delphi. The quadrennial Delian festival of Apollo is espe­ cially significant in the classical period; the preparation of khoroi and related offerings for this very ancient spring panegyris of the lonians after its revival in 426, was prob­ ably the most important form of ‘international’ khoregia in the classical period.188

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Tripods were awarded to the victors in the fourth century, probably modelled on those given in Athenian agones, and their names were announced by a herald before the assembled delegations and other spectators.189 It may indeed have been part of the new management under the Athenians, those masters of philotimia, to make the choral performances on Delos competitive, or at least to introduce some form of choral competition to the festival,190 Unfortunately, the details of this duty are terribly obscure, and simple lack of information is aggravated by the complexities of the dis­ turbed life of the island throughout the classical period.191 When and under just what conditions the duties of training and equipping the Athenian khoros sent to Delos were integrated into the leitourgic system we cannot say. The revival of the 420s is a likely date, given the general tenor of the renewed Athenian interest in the island, which centred on fostering Athenian imperial concerns. In the fourth century, prob­ ably also in the fifth, it was the duty of the Eponymous Arkhon to ‘appoint khoregoi for Delos and an arkhitheoros for the triakonter which carries the youths’.192 Whatever the precise relation between these khoregoi and the leader of their delegation, it is clear that they were figures of immense wealth and prominence in Athens, men of the stature of Nikias and Kallias. These were the successors, operating in the name of imperial Athens, of the Ionian tyrants for whom ‘the sacred place [had] served as a showcase for . . . pious magnificence’.193 The little we hear of actual theoriai to Delos suggests a degree of magnificence on a scale out of the reach of perhaps even many ordinary ‘domestic’ khoregoi: Nikias’ ‘lavish outlays at Delos’ were remembered as ‘brilliant and worthy of the god’ long after (Plu. Nikias 3.4-6). Not only did he introduce to the whole conduct of the choral performances an orderliness that they had, according to Plutarch’s account, long been lacking — the eukosmia on which the Athenians prided themselves; he famously had erected, overnight, a bridge, pre-made in Athens, between Rheneia and Delos, covered in gilding and dyed fabrics, garlands and tapestries. Across this at day­ break he led his khoros in procession for the god, ‘arranged in lavish splendour and singing as it crossed the bridge’ (3.6).194 His theoric khoros may have been greeted, as those of later years were, by the famous khoros of young Delian women, the Deliades.195 The brilliance and success of Athenian performance on Delos is the example which most readily comes to Sokrates’ mind (Xen. Mem. 3.3.12—13) to illustrate his city’s incontestable pre-eminence in khoreia, which in turn is taken as an illustration of the Athenian quality of philotimia: “‘Did you never reflect that, whenever a khoros is selected from this city - for instance, the khoros that is sent to Delos - no khoros from anywhere else at all is in the running with it. . . ?’”196 An arkhitheoros leading an Athenian khoros abroad was thus in an important sense a representative of Athenian culture in a sphere in which the city prided itself most for its abilities and which offered occasions for the expression of the characteristically Athenian virtue of ‘eagerness for honour’. The discharge of such an office with success and glory no doubt also had significant consequences for the estimation and standing of the indi­ vidual arkhitheoros at home. He may even to some extent have been conceived of as following in the footsteps of the great Athenian hero, Theseus himself, the Athenian leader of youthful khoroi par excellence.197 In contexts like this, where Athens is being represented at occasions of weighty symbolic significance by one or a small group of her leading men, there is a potential tension between the glorification of the city and

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of those who engineered and funded the glorious activities in the name of the city. Nikias’ arkhitheoria to Delos is a case in point: Plutarch concludes his account of the event with details of Nikias’ dedications. He erected the famous bronze palm tree and purchased a tract of land for ten thousand drakhmas, the revenues from which were to provide the Delians with sacrificial banquets, ‘at which many blessings were to be invoked upon Nikias from the gods’ (3.6). The god is to be honoured, and the people of Delos feasted, by the generosity of the great Athenian; but there is always the quid pro quo — Nikias secures the perpetuation of his own memory, not that of the Athenian demos, on the lips of the future people of Delos. What did these khoroi of Athenian youths sing for Apollo?198 It will have been virtually de rigueur for any khoros visiting a sanctuary away from home to sing of that home, perhaps most usually in the opening of their song, and to elaborate on the rela­ tionship between their city and the sacred site of pilgrimage.199 The Athenian rela­ tion to Delos will have rendered this task of choral self-presentation especially charged. The dances for Apollo (and Artemis) on Delos were aetiologically connected to the detour made to Apollo’s sanctuary by Theseus on his return to Athens from Krete. On Delos, Apollo was duly thanked for saving the flower of Athenian youth from the Minotaur with first-fruit offerings which included choral dances by the youths themselves.200 Paians would thus seem most appropriate, but the generic char­ acteristics of these performances cannot be tied down.201 The fact that they also had an important initiatory element, preparing the youth of the community for marriage and adult life, complicates matters further, as the Thesean myth of rescue entwines with the founding myth of Delian cult, the birth-story of divine brother and sister. But we are surely safe in assuming that many of the songs sung in the era of Athenian control promoted this account of the festival’s origins so obviously favourable to Athenian sentiments and interests. One poem by Bakkhylides — the Youths (Eitheoi) — dating from around 470 sounds suspiciously like propaganda for Athenian leadership of the newly-founded Delian League, from the mouths of a Kean khoros.202 In its closing lines, the Athenian youths who ‘shouted a paian with lovely voice’ (128—9) at the reappearance of their resplendent leader from the waves are virtually indistin­ guishable from the youths of the Kean khoros.203 A celebration of Kean youth, to the greater glory of Apollo, which assimilates that youth to the mythic youth of Athens under Theseus’ care, establishes a potent analogy for the contemporary, paternalistic protection by Athens of the ‘youth’ of the Ionian Aigean. While, at the date of the re-establishment of the Delia some fifty years later, choral reflections on a myth which celebrated the god’s aid and the hero’s bravery in saving the youth of Athens from the depredations of foreign (if Greek) enemies would have a special relevance at this time of plague and war between Ionian and other Greeks.

‘Whoever honours the gods best with khoroi are the best in war . . This survey of the khoregia within the context of the range of festival practices sup­ ported by private wealth in Athens has highlighted the degree to which the line between festival and ‘military’ leitourgiai is not sharply defined. Choral activity itself including tragedy, with its rectilinear, rank-and-file khoros - encouraged skills of 46

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orderliness, obedience and co-ordination, as well as of physical fitness, which would serve the hoplite in the phalanx. While at the level of complex representation, both dramatic genres, through their different forms of distantiated self-scrutiny repeatedly returned to war as a matter for problematic reflection — the duties of the hoplite, the practical and moral pressures under which armies and individuals operate, the ten­ sions generated in the military sphere between the claims of family and those of the city; the suffering caused through war for both vanquished and victor — these are matters for constant reflection in Attic drama. Its militaristic concerns at all levels become more apparent when the institution of drama is considered against the back­ ground of Athens’ extensive leitourgical system. In the fourth century there was a further flourishing of agonistic events which were closely tied to the military practice and values of the city, especially those values desiderated of ephebes (eutaxia, euoplia, lampadedromia); but even in the fifth century the pyrrhikhe and lampadedromia in particular cultivated skills practically valuable for military life - physical excellence and agility, group co-ordination and perhaps even virtuoso manipulation of hoplite weaponry. And at the same time as these competi­ tions encoded and cultivated these values, they displayed them in a specially-framed festival environment before the onlooking citizenry as a whole, and, in some cases, before an audience which included non-Athenians. This highly symbolic value of fes­ tival leitourgiai with military qualities should be stressed. It extends in different ways to the navy and cavalry, and thus brings the festival leitourgiai into a closer relation with the strictly military leitourgia of the trierarkhia and the cyaasi-leitourgia of cavalry service. 204 However, the incorporation of the navy and values associated with it into the fes­ tival scene of Athens is striking principally for its absence, for this backbone of Athenian imperial power was not transmuted to the symbolic medium of festival per­ formance in the way that land-based military forms were. This is no doubt in part due to the awkward status which the fleet occupied in Athens in ideological terms: its existence was deemed a necessity for the security of Athens and its empire after the experience of the Persian Wars, yet it also required the mobilisation — and hence increased the recognition - of the lowest socio-economic tiers of society. It has recently been well argued that the ritual practices and imagery of the Panathenaia — the one festival which did to some extent integrate the navy — constructed an ‘aristocratised’ demos, while the élite was portrayed in democratic guise as the benefac­ tors of cults, the beautifiers of the city, the agents of the demos’ will.205 This ideological loading of Panathenaic symbolism of the city appears to have had little space for the navy, that element least amenable to such a refiguring in aristocratic terms.206 Idealised images of civic life and autonomous existence had for centuries been entirely centred on the flourishing khora and an agrarian existence, and these were profoundly linked to the practices and ideals of hoplite warfare. Moreover, one of the Athenians’ favoured mythical self-images — the notion of themselves as autochthons, sprung directly from the soil in the manner of their mythic ancestors — was inherently inimical to identification with the sea. And so the historical need to turn away from the land that was so dramatically highlighted in the abandonment of the city itself during the Persian Wars, to trust in the ‘wooden walls’ of a hastily-built fleet, remained in many ways a painful and uncomfortable experience for the Athenians of

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the classical period. The role of the fleet in the defeat of the Persians was frequently occluded in subsequent accounts, the hoplite battle of Marathon entirely overshad­ owing Salamis as the critical encounter, as was the importance of maritime matters more generally in the self-image projected by the Athenians in certain ‘official’ con­ texts, in particular the Funeral Speech delivered each year over the war dead.207 And it has been cogently argued that in Aiskhylean tragedy in particular - in tragedy, that is, produced in the period of the greatest upheaval in the military base of Athens sea power is figured as a seductive but highly dangerous form of military and politi­ cal dominion, a dubious hegemonic inheritance from the Persians.208 The fleet did have those to sing its praises and to attempt to fashion a set of images and values with which it could be positively identified and incorporated within the Athenian political imaginary — mostly, and significantly, in ‘demotic’ contexts.209 Moreover, the central act of delivering the new peplos to Athena at the greater festi­ val on the mast of a wheeled ship drawn through the city, perhaps one of those from Salamis itself, seems to have preserved at the heart of the Panathenaia a memory of the fleet in the salvation of the city.210 However, the hoplite ideal remained the most powerful ideal of military self-definition long after the hoplite had ceased to be the sole, or even the dominant, form of military power. And so it is perhaps not by chance that the single agonistic festival event associated with the navy — the ‘contest of boats’ (άμιλλα νεών) — occupies a rather obscure place among the phyletic events at the Panathenaia.211 Its obscurity in the historical record need not straightforwardly reflect its actual status, but it is suggestive nonetheless. A ‘victory with a trireme in the contest at Sounion’ is among the leitourgical successes listed by the speaker of Lysias 21 (.5) towards the end of the fifth century, and if this is the same as the Panathenaic event (perhaps incorporating into the great festival an element, albeit minor, in honour of Athena’s old rival Poseidon, who had an important temple at Sounion?), this constitutes the earliest evidence for it.212 It is otherwise securely attested from the first quarter of the fourth century, when it appears among the phyletic events at the Panathenaia carrying a first prize of three oxen, with a supplementary 200 dr. ‘for a feast’, and a second prize of two oxen. The nature of the prizes implies the partici­ pation of phyletai on a large scale, since the provision of beasts and money suggests a victory-feast considerably larger than those for the winning pyrrhic khoros.213 Whether the leitourgical leaders of this event were called trierarkhoi, and whether they were selected from among the regular trierarkhoi of a given year are matters of uncer­ tainty. If they were regular trierarkhoi, this competitive event, centred on the fleet to which they contributed further sums of their own wealth, may have developed in part as a way in which the much less ‘public’ and performative naval leitourgia could achieve something of the high profile and glamour that had for long been central to the kho­ regia. There are other clear indications that those who financed the fleet sought a share of the prestige born of competitive performance and public display with which, by comparison with the khoregia, the regular fields of action of the trierarkh - the seas and the dockyards — did not provide him. In the fourth century a crown was awarded by the demos to the trierarkh who was first to have his ship ready ([Dem.] 51.1, 6); and the decree of Kephisophon (IG n2i629a. 190-204) prescribes valuable prizes, gold crowns of 500, 300 and 200 dr. respectively for those ready first, second and third. It is another illuminating example of the use of the publicity of festival culture that these were to be proclaimed by the herald of the Council at the agon of the Thargelia. The 48

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Thargelia was doubtless chosen because it was celebrated in the month following the time at which the ships had to be ready, but its choice over the Dionysia, where kho­ regoi garnered glory for their victories, is also consistent with a lower level of agonis­ tic prestige to be derived from financing the navy. A plangent speech by one who feels himself to have been wrongly deprived of this award ([Dem.] 51) well illustrates the degree to which formal and competitive recognition of leitourgical preparations was sought by trierarkhs. The speaker (who may be Demosthenes) strives to put into narrative and revivify, if only before the more restricted audience of the Council, the circumstances of his trierarkhia. He stresses the publicity and visibility of the event for which he claims ‘victory’ - the testing of his ship at the pier — as though to endow it with the spectacular, performative quality of a festival competition. Agonistic events involving the cavalry in its phyletic units took their place in Athens alongside the more traditional equestrian contests such as the chariot-race and the single horse race.214 The best documented of these, which may only date from the fourth century, is the anthippasia, a kind of mock cavalry battle in which two squadrons of five phyletic teams apparently charged and fled from one another at speed, running through each other’s ranks when they met.215 Refinements proposed by Xenophon to the manner in which this spectacle was performed in Athens are designed to make it ‘more warlike’ and ‘more novel’ (Hipp. 3.10—13). Military utility and public entertainment should ideally coincide. Both individual phylarkhoi and the phyle as a whole can be represented as victors in this competition, for which the prize was a bronze tripod. This kind of contestation of victory between group and indi­ vidual is common enough in the context of the khoregia (and the phylarkhos was pre­ sumably the person who provided such funding as this contest demanded). The anthippasia elicited the construction of considerable monuments by its victors: on the most famous and best-preserved of these, a wealthy father and his two sons jointly celebrate the prestige their hippotrophia has brought their family, commissioning one of the finest sculptors of the day to depict on three sides of the base a solitary horse­ man advancing towards a tripod.216

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The city and its khoregoi The conduct of a khoregia, from the moment of appointment to the day of victory­ celebrations or the construction of a monument, set before the khoregos an elaborate set of tasks.1 Much of the detail is lost to us; but it is clear from what we do know that a khoregia demanded a great input of time and energy on the part of a diligent khoregos, and involved a complex series of interactions with various authorities of the polis at a number of stages. The polis continued to have an important role to play long after the appointments had been made, and it exercised these tasks with such dil­ igence that Demosthenes could complain, in what was probably his maiden speech before the Assembly in 351, that by comparison with the poor state of the city’s preparadeness for war — and in particular, in the face of the recent incursions of Philip in Euboia and at Marathon — the city was supremely efficient at planning its festivals: . . . you are still powerless to prevent these insults or to send your expedi­ tions at the appointed times. And yet, men of Athens, how do you account for the fact that the Panathenaic festival and the Dionysia are always held at the right date, whether the lot chooses experts or laymen to be their over­ seers, that larger sums are spent upon them than upon any one of your expe­ ditions, and that they are celebrated with bigger crowds and greater splendour than anything else of the kind in the world, whereas your expe­ ditions invariably arrive too late, whether at Methone or at Pagasai or at Poteidaia? It is because with the festivals everything is ordered by law; each of you knows long beforehand who of his phyle is khoregos or gymnasiarkhos; what he must receive, from whom he is to receive it, and when; and what he must do; nothing here is omitted and left unexamined or undefined. But in what pertains to war and its equipment, everything is disorderly, illmanaged, ill-defined. (Dem. 4.34—6)

For all its rhetorical overkill, this passage offers an insight into the high degree of organisational and legislative control exercised by the Athenians over their festival culture. Choral performance frequently projects, in the words of its participants, an 50

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image of its own spontaneity; essential to much of its performative efficaciousness is a sense that it arises as a collective response directly from the moment, from the occa­ sion of worship or ritual that gave rise to it — and this no less so in the second-order world of dramatic representation, where khoroi frequently respond to events on stage with choral prayers, paians, laments and so on. Yet this spontaneity is the product of intense labour; and the task of the khoregos was, in an important sense, to arrange this labour that conceals itself and produces the ‘grace’ of choral performance. This passage usefully demonstrates the continuing fusion of individual and col­ lective contributions in the preparations for a major civic festival. Demosthenes high­ lights the early appointment of festival leitourgists by phyletic authorities as an index of efficiency and preparadeness; it may also, as we have seen (and as Demosthenes was to experience himself a few years later), have been motivated by the frequency of dispute and contestation. The following clause about the handover of materials, the specification of times and personnel, seems to allude, with tantalising obliquity, to a range of legal enactments that are lost to us. Perhaps there were regulations govern­ ing the handing-on of materials between khoregoi of consecutive years, as there cer­ tainly were between trierarkhs, although what one khoregos might be due to receive from a predecessor is rather hard to imagine. It is, however, just as likely that Demosthenes is exaggerating the degree of formality and legal order in the organisa­ tion of festivals in order to drive home his point.2 What cannot be dismissed as rhe­ torical excess is the general picture of the enormous degree of investment of energies individual and collective in the whole business of competitive performance at Athens’ festivals. That their conduct was indeed as important to the Athenians of the classi­ cal period as their military preparadeness had been proven in the previous century, when in the city’s darkest days, its grand and costly festivals continued to have the wealth of the city and its leading men lavished on them.

Appointment The extensive labour of a khoregia began months before the day on which the khoros entered the orkhestra for its brief moment of performance. As soon as he took up office, at the start of the new civic year, in mid-summer, the Eponymous Arkhon was faced with the task of nominating the eight khoregoi for drama at the Great Dionysia.3 The festival was at this time more than eight months distant. At some point in the fourth century, probably in the 330s, the Arkhon ceased to be responsible for the direct nomination of the five khoregoi for comedy, and these were now put forward by the phylai.4 Whether the comic competition thereby took on a phyletic orienta­ tion is not clear, but the fact that in 307 the number of comedies at the Dionysia was increased to six when the Athenian phylai were increased to twelve strongly suggests that the phylai were paired for the provision of comic khoroi, and perhaps too that the comedies were indeed contested between the phylai. The fact that the process of appointment began so far in advance of the festival and was in the care of the highest officer of the polis demonstrates very forcefully the importance attached to the whole. business of Athens’ choral culture. The tasks of the Arkhon, as of other civic officer^Au were certainly in the fourth century codified in laws, and it is likely to have been ||iu

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under those regarding the Eponymous Arkhon that stipulations were made about the number and nature of khoroi to dance in the city each year for Dionysos.5 The twenty khoregoi necessary for the dithyrambic agon had as far as we know been put forward by the phylai since the time of the Kleisthenic reforms. And prob­ ably of early date is the involvement in this process of an officer called the epimeletes, of whom there were three in each phyle, one from each trittys.6 This was the most important office in the phyle, and the duties in connection with the phyle's khoroi were among their most significant, along with the organisation of the cult of the Eponym and the preparation of phyletic decrees in honour of its members - including its zealous khoregoi. They might also have been called upon to update records of the phyle's victorious festival leitourgists.7 Epimeletai seem to have been men of substance themselves — another example of the democracy’s reluctance to hand over duties that involved the management of significant funds and property interests to men with little themselves. Although in 349 recriminations flew back and forth between the epimeletai of Pandionis and the Arkhon over which of them was ultimately at fault for the phyle’s failure to nominate a khoregos, it is likely that the epimeletai were responsible for secur­ ing nominations and answerable to the Arkhon for their efficient production.8 Convened by the epimeletai, the phyletic meeting to select khoregoi must have taken place some time before the start of the new civic year, perhaps as early as the very month following the last festival (Mounikhion, more than two months before the new year).9 It is not impossible that at the meeting of the city Assembly which (at least in the fourth century) took place immediately after the festival, and met in the theatre, candidates for khoregiai for the following year may already have been informally nom­ inated. This Assembly in the wake of the festival would certainly have offered an attractive context for anyone wishing to make an early voluntary offer of their ser­ vices for the coming year. Nominations should certainly have been made by the time the Arkhon entered office. For after seeing to the dramatic khoregoi, the Arkhon ‘received’ the men who had been proposed for these positions by their phylai.10 It is worth emphasising the difference in the manner of khoregic nomination between dithyramb and drama: the Arkhon seems to have had no degree of personal choice in the selection of dithyrambic khoregoi;11 whereas, it was, apparently, entirely his responsibility to identify the handful of super-rich men who were to support the city’s ‘main symbolic form’.12 The Ath. Pol. speaks of the Arkhon nominating ‘khoregoi for tragedy . . . three from all the Athenians together, the very richest’. I preserve the word order of the passage to convey a slight but significant sense of paradox within it. Whether the effect is intended or not, by keeping to the last place in this sentence the detail of the great wealth of tragic khoregoi, there is an initial suggestion that their nomination is akin to a familiar process of democratic election from the entire body of the citi­ zenry. The developed Athenian democracy preferred on the whole to choose its officials by lot; but election was deemed to be sufficiently ‘democratic’ where the office was filled from all the Athenians as such (that is, ‘from all the Athenians together’, έξ απάντων ’Αθηναίων, precisely the expression used here), and where the vote was open to all citizens.13 The appointment of tragic khoregoi is thus in part depicted in the language of democratic office-holding — tragic khoregoi come from ‘all the Athenians’ as a body, even though they are appointed by the city’s highest officer. 52

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But this impression of democratic inclusiveness is immediately qualified, if not com­ pletely contradicted, by the addition of‘the richest’. The pool of potential candidates for this ‘office’ at once shrinks from the entire citizenry to a small group of some three hundred or fewer men. Service as a dramatic khoregos at the Dionysia thus depended, formally, on two factors: Athenian citizenship and great wealth. The exhaustive work of Davies on the ‘leitourgical class’ has shown that, for the fourth century at least, a property worth less than three taiants was unlikely to attract leitourgical obligations; while one over four taiants was unlikely to escape them.14 But looking at matters in terms of ‘qualifications’ is to emphasise obligation at the expense of recognising the powerful motivations which led men to perform leitourgiai. We should certainly not think of a ‘census’ of wealth which a khoregos had to meet before being allowed to serve. In fact strictly speaking, the personal possession of great wealth was not a necessary require­ ment at all: there are cases, albeit unusual and therefore very suggestive, of even ‘poor’ men who performed khoregiai, by borrowing resources from extremely rich men. Plato himself did as much when he served as khoregos for a boys’ khoros in 365 on the back of Dion of Syracuse’s vast resources.15 This was doubtless a mutually convenient arrangement, giving Dion the benefits to be accrued from an act of covert ‘euergetism’ to the Athenians which as an outsider he would be ineligible to perform in person, and at a time when his relations with his own community were deeply trou­ bled. The phenomenon is one of the best indices of the extent to which symbolic returns were the principal motivating force behind the khoregia, something to which I shall return. We do not know what means the Arkhon had to help him select ‘the richest men from among all the Athenians’. It is unlikely that he had anything like a list of poten­ tial leitourgists such as some believe to have been kept by the generals to assist in their appointments for the trierarkhia.16 The evidence of the ‘Fasti’ suggests that the names of victorious Dionysian khoregoi were preserved from the beginning of the khoregic system, but even if all the khoregoi of each year were recorded by the Arkhon (and phyletic authorities), the use of such records to identify future candidates will have been very limited. Volunteers for this very small number of the most high-profile arenas of public performance may have accounted for the majority of appointments. And if the situation arose in which, when the time had come to establish the khore­ goi for the coming festival, a full complement of volunteers or nominees had not emerged, it was probably not difficult for the Arkhon to single out the requisite number of men from among those not exempt, given that the pool of potential kho­ regoi was a group of never more than about three hundred men (more than half of whom will have been exempt at once because serving as trierarkhs) — and these were men whose wealth made them particularly conspicuous in society. We should imagine a great degree of familiarity among those at the highest socio-economic tier of Athenian society: Arkhons generally moved in the same circles as leitourgists, and they are likely to have been able to identify potential dramatic khoregoi with a minimum of reflection or personal inquiry. It is clear too that informal nomination by one’s élite peers also played a significant part in the system’s ability to ‘police itself’ with efficiency.17 Many aspects of the system put the business of deciding who was to serve firmly into the hands of the élite themselves as a group. In fact, we shall probably be misled if we take the

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extreme formality of tone of the Ath. Pol., with its image of an administrative deci­ sion imposed from above, for a simple description of practice. A good deal of evi­ dence directly from the world of active public life stresses the degree to which the performance of leitourgiai, especially those for festivals, remained, for the rich, largely a matter of choice. As will emerge more fully in later chapters, it was crucial for the operation of the entire leitourgic system that the leitourgist be able to present himself as acting under no compulsion but choosing to render service enthusiastically to the demos. The practice of citing one’s leitourgic record of performance in the courts, and of comparing it against an opponent’s, would have little point if it amounted to nothing more than a statement of duties which the speaker had been legally obliged to perform. Self-presentation as a willing benefactor serving the city will, of course, always have rested upon a complex calculation of competing motives. And the main­ tenance of choice as a central element of the leitourgic system meant that the per­ formance, and the avoidance, of leitourgiai, will always have had a strongly moral aspect. The actions of the rich were open to construal as an index of their commit­ ment to the political form of democracy and of their disposition towards their fellow­ citizens. For the performance of a leitourgia was an act of giving to the demos, with all the implications of reciprocal obligation that the gift brings. The leitourgist’s realm of choice extended not simply to the question of whether or not to perform a leitourgia. We have seen that the festival leitourgiai offered a great range of areas in which the wealthy man could choose to exercise his beneficence and display his cultural skills. The khoregiai of the Great Dionysia were clearly at the pin­ nacle of a pyramid of prestige-rich festival leitourgiai, and there can rarely have been a shortage of willing performers. What is most striking about the entire history of the classical Athenian theatre from an economic point of view is the simple fact that over so many decades of political turbulence and economic upheaval its material support was maintained with such consistency and at such a high level. In the only known example of difficulties experienced in organising a full com­ plement of khoregoi for the Great Dionysia — when in 349/8 Pandionis failed to put forward a dithyrambic khoregos on time (Dem. 21.13) “ the problems are given graphic, but very possibly exaggerated, weight by the person who presents himself as the magnificent saviour of his phyle’s honour in its moment of need, Demosthenes himself.18 As Davies points out, such incidents are inexplicable unless the Arkhon, or the phyletic authorities, depended to a large extent on men coming forward or being nominated as khoregoi.19 In 355 Demosthenes could claim in the courts that ‘. . . surely we must know this, that as long as the city exists, there will be many citizens to perform leitourgiai, and the supply of them will not fail’ (Against Leptines 22) — a claim challenged by his own experience six years later. But the point lies rather in the enor­ mous ideological loading of this sentiment, with its correlation between the very exis­ tence of the city and the unstinting willingness of its rich to serve it; and in its demonstration of the practical importance of resisting the encroachment of formal compulsion in the performance of leitourgiai — which is the central issue at stake in the case for which the Against Leptines was composed.

Tragedy was the one performance-type the appointment of whose khoregoi never ceased to remain entirely in the hands of the Arkhon. Its perceived importance to the polis meant that any form of deputation away from the control of the highest civic

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officer was resisted. The Ath. Pol. presents the Arkhon’s duties in what is clearly a sequential list.20 The nomination of the three tragic khoregoi for the Great Dionysia follows only his formal proclamation upon entering office that all men shall retain their possessions and powers until the end of his term. This was a somewhat fossil­ ised survival from Solonian times, essentially serving as an assurance that no redistri­ bution of property would take place. The fact that it was followed immediately by the organisation of dramatic khoregiai may not simply be a matter of administrative utility, but rather reflect an informing logic of the passage and a significant relation between the duties. For the two are linked in an important sense through their shared concern for the rights and duties of the individual Athenian in relation to his wealth. The Arkhon’s authority as the highest officer of state will ensure that there is no unlawful redistribution of citizens’ wealth, a danger which may have remained a feared spectre of democratic excess; but equally, the polis requires, through the agency of the Arkhon, that part of the wealth of its very richest men - those most likely to be the targets ofjust such a threat — will be deployed to provide the city with its tragic drama, a medium which frequently muses on conflicts attendant on the use or misuse of ‘ancient wealth’, and more generally concerns itself with the balance of claims for recognition within a community from the individual and his household and from the city as a collective. It is possible to detect here the outlines of a civic ideology in accor­ dance with which the tragic khoregia operates as part of a negotiation engineered by the city between powerful and potentially conflicting social and economic interests within it.

We know of one special criterion for eligibility to the khoregia that was established in law in the fourth century, and it is particularly revealing for the light it sheds on the democratic city’s attitude to the choral formation of its future citizens. A khoregos in charge of a khoros of boys was required by law to be over forty years of age.21 Aiskhines’ speech Against Timarkhos of 345 preserves the most detailed account of this measure, with a gloss on its rationale. It is presented as one of a series of legislative measures designed to ensure the protection of Athenian boys from the sexual advances of their teachers, and from various other homosexual relations:

(9) In the first place, consider the case of the teachers ... it is plain that the law-giver distrusts them; for he expressly prescribes, first, at what time of day the free-born boy is to go to the schoolroom; next, how many other boys may go there with him, and when he is to go home. (10) He forbids the teacher to open the schoolroom, or the gymnastic trainer the wrestling­ school, before sunrise, and he commands them to close the doors before sunset . . . and finally, he regulates the companionships of the boys and their kyklioi22 khoroi. (11) For he prescribes that the khoregos, a man who is going to spend his own wealth for you, shall be a man of more than forty years of age when he performs this service, in order that he may have reached the most temperate time of life before he comes into contact with your boys.23 The driving force behind this legislation is clearly a fear for the sexual integrity of the precious future citizens of the polis, who were gathered together in large numbers for participation in the khoroi of the city’s festivals. Much of the law that touches upon sexual behaviour in Athens has a primarily political orientation. This was a culture in

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which a normative ideology insisted that a citizen’s ability to exercise his full powers as a citizen was crucially correlated with his powers of control over his own body — both in terms of preserving its autonomy and freedom from wilful outrage by others and in terms of managing the force of those internal passions which waged a con­ stant war against ‘good’ self-restraint and ‘manly’ control.24 It is under such conditions that a successful prosecution for an act of male prostitution would debar the convicted man from the exercise of his rights as a citizen; while ‘[b]oys who, under certain circumstances, participated in sexual intercourse with men were believed to have acted for gain and to have adopted a submissive role which disqualified them as poten­ tial citizens’.25 Adult males who employed Athenian citizen boys for sexual gratification were open to prosecution for hybris, and cases involving erastai or eromenoi were graphai, public prosecutions, not private proceedings between individuals. The integrity of the citizen-body itself was deemed to be at stake. This law thus seeks to head off such threats by ensuring that in an important area of civic paideia — that of choral performance - pre-ephebic males would not be exposed to prolonged periods of intimacy with men between the age of twenty and forty, for such must be the ‘danger age’ as perceived by this legislation.26 That it is the khoregos rather than the choral trainers, poets and so on, who is the focus of this sanc­ tion, demonstrates their overall responsibility for what went on in the khoregeion, and implies that khoregoi were assumed (at least officially) to spend a good deal of time in the company of their khoros. Given that the period of training could be very long (and, unlike daily attendance at a school or gymnasion, could also involve continu­ ous residence), and given that it could be conducted in the private house of the kho­ regos, it is little wonder that he attracts such legislative attention. The anxieties surrounding male homoerotic practices in democratic Athens are highlighted by the clarity of this legislative injunction. The law itself is evidence both for the desired comportments of a normative ideology and for friction within and opposition at the level of ideology and practice that led to its formulation. In the case of this surveillance of the choral training of future Athenian citizens, one might justifiably wonder whether there may be an axis of specifically political ideology to consider as a further point of tension. For there were traditions of great antiquity, found in various parts of the Greek world, in which young men or women partici­ pated in choral groups structured by age-classes, with more senior men or women serving as ‘leaders’ for the younger. This was, certainly in the archaic age, one of the most important collective activities for the ‘socialisation’ or ‘education’ in the broad­ est sense of the young members of the aristocracy into the traditions and ritual prac­ tices of the community. And the expression of homoerotic sentiments played an important part in the relations between the older leader and the group to which he or she stood as a model and a figure of authority.27 Choral activity in democratic Athens, I would suggest, continued to serve a comparable social function. It too can be usefully regarded as a ‘political education’ in a broad sense, one of a range of insti­ tutions of the polis that helped shape and nuance the complex identity of the polites of classical Athens. It is possible that some khoregoi in democratic Athens may have pursued erotic relations with their younger charges which carried something of an ‘aristocratic’ tone, the kind of relation familiar from the archaic context, and which those stereotypical figures in Aristophanic comedy attached to old-fashioned notions of conservative education pine after. This legislation may thus be designed not only 56

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to protect minors from a physical ‘corruption’ that could, in terms of the sexual ideol­ ogy of democracy, threaten their future citizenship. It may more specifically be moving against the formation of relations which were seen by the dominant demo­ cratic ideology as ‘politically incorrect’, between young men of the richest families, who often have just come through the ephebeia themselves, and these pre-ephebic boys. It may thus have aimed to discourage the fostering of paiderastic relations of paideia in the sphere of khoreia that carried the imprint of an élite and potentially anti­ democratic ethos.28 Presumably it was the duty of the Arkhon to ensure the eligibility of a man serving as khoregos; some responsibility may have lain upon the phyletic authorities, at least in the first instance. But it is clear that khoregoi were not subject to a dokimasia before they began their work, and one of the principal grounds — perhaps the prin­ cipal ground - for rejecting a nominee at dokimasia was that he held unacceptable — anti-democratic - sympathies.29 Khoregoi were not subject to this democratic control to adjudicate on the suitability of candidates which was exercised by the people’s courts and the Council over those nominated to the year’s civic offices. As we shall see in greater detail, the khoregos, who was not a civic officer, occupied an ambigu­ ous position in relation to ‘official’ power.

After nomination One of the reasons that the preparation of the city’s khoroi was set in motion so early in the year was the possibility (endemic in Athenian civic life) that legal proceedings might be initiated by some of those involved. Only when such actions were out of the way could a definitive group of khoregoi be established. Those who had volun­ teered or taken on their nomination willingly doubtless turned to their preparations at once, at least to those tasks — such as the recruitment of the khoros itself - which did not require that the Arkhon take further procedural steps. A man nominated to a khoregia had a number of avenues open to him: to accept and perform the khoregia; to excuse himself from the service, by a procedure called skepsis, on one of a number of clearly-defmed grounds for exemption (ateleia); or to claim that another man was better equipped to perform it than he, and institute a pro­ ceeding to resolve the matter, known as antidosis. In both of the last two avenues, the legal proceedings that ensued were in the charge of the Arkhon, and they are among those which the ‘Old Oligarch’ claims — however tendentiously — blocked the dem­ ocratic city’s officers and courts.30 In the majority of cases the nominee no doubt accepted the leitourgia with a greater or lesser degree of good grace, and with a great outward show of willingness and enthusiasm. The fact that various leitourgists are at pains to inform their audi­ ences in the courts that they had performed more than was required of them ‘by the letter of the law’ shows that these legal provisions were certainly not designed to prevent men from performing more than a limited number of services — a point to which I shall return.31 They testify principally to a wish to ensure that the burden of leitourgic expense was being spread over those best equipped to shoulder it. And they have the interesting effect (and the probable aim) of devolving much of the

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responsibility for the effective selection of leitourgists onto potential leitourgists themselves. They are certainly not designed to stop big spenders from being partic­ ularly free with their wealth. A successful antidosis simply transferred the duty to another.32 It did not imply that the original nominee was in principle exempt from the performance of the lei­ tourgia in question. It only showed that he was at that moment less wealthy than another man who had not been nominated and who was also not exempt. A man who successfully transferred a leitourgia to which he had been nominated onto another through antidosis might then be called ατελής (‘exempt’), since he was, strictly speak­ ing, free from that particular duty, but the procedure did not necessarily free him from nomination to another leitourgia in that or any other year, nor from the possibility that another nominee might introduce a further antidosis action against him. Cumbersome as it might at first appear, the antidosis procedure seems to have on the whole quite successfully regulated the composition of the group of men performing leitourgiai. It ensured that fluctuations in the distribution of individuals’ wealth from year to year could be recognised.33 One of the keys to the success of the system must have been that it left in the hands of the economic élite themselves the responsibility for high­ lighting those of their number deficient in the spontaneous expression of civic virtue, since it was up to a nominee who felt unduly burdened by his nomination to find a man economically better equipped than he to perform it.34 Leitourgic performance was to this important extent largely self-regulated by the élite, because it was only when its adjudication in a private dispute was sought that the city became involved. If any outside the élite played a rôle - in the capacity, for instance, of sykophant - we hear little of it.35 The cumbersome nature of the antidosis procedure and the fact that its operation was extremely time-consuming may have been quite intentionally designed to act as a deterrent to its excessive use.36 It presented as the immediate alternative to perform­ ing the service a complete exchange of properties between the nominee and the man he had designated as better equipped to perform it. The nominee would then proceed to perform the service on the basis of his new fortune — an option whose radical nature has encouraged some in the belief that it can never really have been put into practice. But such exchange was certainly envisaged as the appropriate mechanism, and did indeed take place, even if in the known cases the properties were subsequently restored on agreement between the parties.37 Individual and familial self-interest of the élite was securely harnessed to the ends of the greater efficiency of the system as a whole. If the two men failed to settle the question of which of them was to perform the leitourgia by these means, the matter entered the courts as a diadikasia-triA, an adjudi­ cation as to who was the wealthier. Although any attempt to avoid the performance of a leitourgia must have been difficult to keep quiet, it was at this stage that the issue had become decidedly public. The publicity of a case in which one sought to relieve oneself of a ‘public service’ - with all the possibilities this afforded one’s enemies will have made the antidosis very unattractive for anyone concerned to maintain a healthy civic reputation.38 The grounds on which exemption could ordinarily be claimed from festival lei­ tourgiai through a skepsis before the Arkhon ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 56.3) are of two main kinds.39 A permanent, special exemption was granted to the descendants of the 58

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tyrant-slayers, Harmodios and Aristogeiton; and a number of rules determined the frequency with which men ordinarily liable to festival leitourgiai could be expected to perform them. A man could claim exemption on this ground if he could show that he had performed the leitourgia in question previously: no one was required to perform precisely the same festival leitourgia twice.40 A man could also claim exemp­ tion if he had performed another leitourgia and the period of exemption which its performance entailed (generally one year) had not elapsed. It also seems that a man could not be required to perform two leitourgiai in the same year.41 This has the significant consequence, as Demosthenes makes clear, that the very richest men, who were always the first choice as trierarkhs, were permanently exempt from festival lei­ tourgiai, because they were either performing a trierarkhia, or else in the period of exemption after having done so.42 Since men who were trierarkhs certainly did also serve as khoregoi, the issue of personal voluntarism is in such cases all the more strongly focussed. It is important to stress again that these represent minimal limits, not maximal: they are certainly not designed to restrict or deter willing spenders from undertaking more than one festival leitourgia every two years, but to establish a lower limit for what a rich man might be required to perform.43 In addition to these regular exemptions, the demos and its phylai from time to time voted further, ad hominem, grants of exemption to outside benefactors of the city who had been awarded citizenship44 or to particularly generous and successful leitour­ gists. Given that even the ordinary exemptions were evidently viewed as a kind of honour granted the leitourgist in recognition of his service, these additional exemp­ tions can be regarded as an extension of the same principle.45 As such, they testify to a recurrent notion in the leitourgical context: namely, that success in the agonistic lei­ tourgiai necessarily entails that a greater degree of ‘honour’ be bestowed on the lei­ tourgist. In addition to an extended period of exemption, these honours could include the award of a crown, on top of the prestige to be had from the continued presence of the inscription recording the award. It seems likely that the benefits they brought for their honorands were primarily symbolic rather than practical, although a sharp distinction should not be drawn between the two.46 That these could be regarded as highly significant honours is clear from the speech composed by Demosthenes in 355 (20), in opposition to a proposal of one Leptines that the custo­ mary exemptions be abolished. The case of Leptines demonstrates how central and delicate a mechanism the leitourgic system was in managing the tensions between pre-eminent individuals and the civic collective. Demosthenes presents exemption, along with various other rewards for civic virtue, such as the bestowal of crowns and the right to set up a statue, as a crucial resource for the democracy, to employ as a ‘return gift’ to its benefactors. He compares the Athenian situation with Sparta, where the corresponding reward for civic virtue is to become a ‘master of the masses’, ‘to share with one’s peers the supremacy in the state’ (§107). In Athens, where the demos is kyrios and does not grant its powers to individuals, freedom is guaranteed by ‘the rivalry of good men’ (§108). This notion of rivalry among the agathoi as a basis of democratic stability is one that lies at the heart of the city’s ‘official view’ of the lei­ tourgic system. There was one special case of the conferment of exemption for life from leitour­ gic duties, and that was upon the descendants of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, members of the ancient aristocratic family of the Gephyraioi.47 It is one of a number

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of privileges accorded them, which included the extremely rare honour of dining for life in the Prytaneion at public expense. As Schmitt-Pantel has argued, the very small number of people granted this latter honour in the fifth century all share a link with the city of the past, the aristocratic city, and with the beginnings in that city of the civic system. In addition to the single descendant of the tyrant-killers who was deemed most legitimate (yvporos) were the hierophant of Eleusis, a prophet of Apollo, and victors at the Olympian, Isthmian, Pythian and Nemean games.48 The exemption covered only festival leitourgiai. Demosthenes explains this as due to the importance of the military obligations for the security of the city (20.18), but it may also be because the exemption was granted from a very early date, when the trierarkhia did not exist. It may not even be too fanciful to suggest that this detail might be related to a perception that the actions of Harmodios and Aristogeiton had a par­ ticular and intimate link with Athenian festival life (and nothing to do with the navy). For it was at the Panathenaia that the assassination — of Hipparkhos as it turned out, rather than Hippias — supposedly took place, as the procession entered the city.49 These heroic young aristocrats had provided the Athenians with an archetypal model of ‘leadership’ at their greatest civic festival of a kind to exempt them forever from the need to provide the regular forms of festival leadership established under the democracy they helped into existence. They could merit no greater gratitude from the demos. They had after all, in popular mythology, ‘made Athens a place of laws equal for everyone’ (PMG 893, 896). The symbolic significance of the gratitude expressed towards these men is great, and can be seen as a charter for the future pattern of relations between the demos and its leaders that is officially desired to pertain. Just as these two aristocrats were the supposed founders of democracy, and deserved the eternal gratitude of the demos as a consequence, so too in the future world of the democratic city, all members of the élite would perform outstanding services for the demos, and receive gratitude and recognition in return.50 Given the symbolic importance of this exemption in ideological terms, it is fas­ cinating that it attracted considerable critical attention, albeit in the partisan world of legal conflict, in the early fourth century. For the privilege accorded to these men depended on a principle of inherited merit, a notion of familial honour and worth transmitted from a distant generation to the present. While birth was certainly not altogether rejected as a factor which could work towards advancement, indulgence or honour in democratic practice and ideology, it is certainly very unusual to iden­ tify birth alone as a proper source of honour. This paradox — of honouring the family whose ancestors ‘founded democracy’ on the basis of a criterion, that of birth alone, which sat uneasily with the principles of democratic ideology — was aggressively exposed in a number of court cases, most notably one for which Isaios composed a speech of prosecution against a member of the family (Isaios 5, On the Estate of Dikaiogenes, c. 389).51 Isaios reserves what must have been one of his most potent arguments for the close of the speech:

But perhaps you will think it right that you be given greater consideration on account of your ancestors, in that they killed the tyrant. While I have praise for them, I regard you as in no way sharing their honour. For in the first place you chose to be in possession of our wealth rather than of their good name, and you preferred the name of ‘son of Dikaiogenes’ over ‘son of 60

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Harmodios’, showing contempt for being fed at the Prytaneion, and despis­ ing the proedria and exemption that is accorded to the descendants of those great men. And furthermore, the great Aristogeiton and Harmodios were not honoured for their birth, but for their valour - of which you have no share, Dikaiogenes. (5.46—7)

Poets, patrons and the polis With the festival’s set of khoregoi finalised, the substantive business of their task — the ‘massive expenditures, multiple toils and long periods of devoted practice’ (Xen. Hiero 9.11) — could begin. However the polis, in the person of the Arkhon, continued to have vital duties to perform. The single most important further task in his hands at this early stage — and one utterly crucial to the outcome of the agones — was to unite the city’s khoregoi with those poets to whom he had ‘granted a khoros". For much of the classical period, it was also the Arkhon’s duty to link those who supplied the vital musical support for the performances of the Great Dionysia — the players of the aulos - with khoregoi. For drama, the Arkhon must also at this stage, and essentially as part of the same process, have brought together the two constituent components of the performance - the collective khoros and the individual actors. For the latter were largely the concern, from an organisational and ‘conceptual’ point of view, of the polis. And although khoregoi may have had no formal obligations with respect to the actors, it was obviously essential to the proper conduct of any rehearsals that it be known as early as possible in the proceedings which actors were to work with which poets and khoregoi. In most, perhaps all, of these linking operations which would have such a profound effect on the eventual performances, the Arkhon regularly employed the lot, thus relegating these weighty decisions to the gods, in principle at least. Before he could link them to his khoregoi, the Arkhon had first to interview and select between aspirant poets for each performance: a process as obscure to us as it was vital to the very survival of Athenian poetry. This procedure must have taken place after the appointment of khoregoi had been set in motion, since the latter was his first practical task in office, and given too the fact that the expression used for the Arkhon’s selection of poets — ‘to grant a khoros" — seems to imply the assumed pre­ existence of ‘ khoros-leaders". This may indeed suggest that the process of choosing the poets for the competition was all of a part with that of assigning khoregoi to them: with the khoros one was given came its khoregos.52 What factors determined the Arkhon’s choice of poets has long been a matter of speculation. But the very fact that the leading civic officer chose the poets for the city’s most important annual cultural event is in many ways of greater interest than his choice of khoregoi for what it implies about ideals of‘democratic expertise’. It was a skill expected of any who filled the highest public office of the democracy to be able to determine the best tragic, comic and dithyrambic poets for the city. Aristophanic old comedy gives us some sense of the broad psychological background to the fraught agonistic poetics of institutionalised festival competition in Athens, and of the way the struggle to make one’s mark began well in advance of the actual 61

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festival competition in any given year. The agon in the theatre itself was only one stage in a prolonged course of encounters which began, for the poet, with the initial deci­ sion to embark on a career in the aggressive world of komoidodidaskalia. The parabatic self-presentation of a comic début depicts it as beset by perils on all sides, and the per­ ceived need of a young poet to undergo an anonymous ‘apprenticeship’ during which he entrusted the production of his work to a more experienced director reflects these circumstances (see esp. Aristoph. Knights jijffi). It also implies a presumed conserva­ tism on the part of the awarding Arkhons and the voting public.53 The power of pre­ vious success is arguably the most plausible factor influencing the Arkhon’s decision, although this immediately runs up against the glaring counter-example of Euripides, who seems regularly to have been awarded a khoros but to have won a small number of victories in his lifetime.54 Perhaps a notion of popularity that could encompass a desire to be affronted or challenged rather than an unquestioning ‘identification’ is what is needed. Such slender evidence as there is for the procedure indicates a high degree of public attention on this preliminary ‘competition’ between poets.55 A fragment of the mid-fifth-century comic poet Kratinos (17 K-A) criticises an Arkhon for having failed to grant Sophokles a khoros, while doing so for Gnesippos, the son of Kleomakhos: ‘. . . who didn’t give Sophokles a khoros, but did the son of Kleomakhos; I wouldn’t rate him worthy of producing for me, not even at the Adonia’.56 Here we see komoidia fulfilling its function as an institution of critique, and doing so in the immediate context of the politics of festival poetics. Although any conclusions about so fragmentary a passage must be extremely tentative, it does suggest that the discourse of comic critique could aim to exercise a regulatory power over the actions of the Arkhon as manager of the festival agones, just as all other areas of the exercise of official power in the city were open to its attack. At the same time, we should not attempt to stabilise the comic voice, especially when it speaks to us from a fragment, so as to hear in it the unequivocal opinion of either its poet or of the demos expressing itself directly through the institution of komoidia. In this case we cannot even be sure of the fictional identity of the speaker. However, the way in which it depicts the inferiority of Gnesippos in relation to Sophokles — in terms of their suitability to be granted khoroi at festivals of polarised prestige and publicity - is very illuminating. Is the indig­ nant assertion T wouldn’t rate [Gnesippos] worthy of producing for me, not even at the Adonia’, the expression of one speaking in the rôle of a khoregos, horrified at the thought of being associated with so poor a poet at a festival primarily attended by women and for a god perceived as ‘foreign’ and perhaps a newcomer?57 Or are we to hear the voice of a comic Arkhon, which would give the expression a patronal tone perhaps suited to his wide powers as overseer of a number of festivals? Both are pos­ sibilities, and in the absence of any context the important point to be taken from the fragment is its evidence for comedy’s power to critique the institutions of its own production.58 An even more fragmentary scrap of Aristophanes (590.27-9 K-A) shows that comic complaints of this kind against the festival ‘authorities’ were more widespread than our fully extant plays suggest. This reads something like ‘but those who were granting a khoros at the Lenaia should have examined . . .’ (άλλ' έχρήν χορόν | [δι]δόντας τόν επί Ληνοί | [ωι] σκοπε[ΐ]ν). It is impossible to say whether the plural here implies that responsibility for the selection at the Lenaia lay in more hands than 62

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those of the Arkhon Basileus, as opposed to being a generalised swipe at past Arkhons;59 and the fragment breaks off before giving any indication of what criteria the comic voice was about to propose as the rightful means of selecting festival poets. That it should arrogate to itself the task of doing so is quite consistent with the some­ what megalomaniac claims of comic drama to determine what constitutes poetic sophia, both comic and tragic (and for that matter, dithyrambic). Perhaps sophia was in fact the general standard by which Arkhons themselves claimed to award khoroi. For the dramatic poet was pre-eminently a teacher, and poetic ‘wisdom’ could serve as a malleable concept for Arkhons faced with a difficult task certain to displease some concerned parties, as it could for those called upon actually to serve as kritai, judges, of the poetic competitions. Past victories could ‘prove’ its existence, and the fact that there existed a plurality of acceptable but greatly divergent standards of sophia — from the technical skills of composition and metrics to broad conceptions of moral ‘wisdom’ - meant that any particular decision would have had a range of standards by which it could be justified. The famous passage of Plato’s Laws discussed in my introduction concerning the place (or rather the absence) of tragedy in the ideal city is often cited as evidence for the likely procedure followed by Athenian Arkhons in awarding khoroi. When tragic poets approach and ask whether they shall visit the city and country and traffic in their poetry, ‘What would be the right answer to make to these inspired persons regarding the matter?’ The Athenian continues:

In truth, both we ourselves and the whole polis would be absolutely mad, were it to allow you to do as I have said, before the officials had decided whether or not your compositions are deserving of utterance in public. So now, you children of dainty Muses, first demonstrate your songs to the Arkhons alongside our own (έπιδείξαντες τοϊς άρχουσι πρώτον τάς ύμετέρας παρά τάς ήμετέρας ώιδάς), and if they appear to say the same or better than ours, we will give you a khoros (δώσομεν ύμϊν χορόν), and if not, my friends, we could never do so. (8iya-d)

The likely distance of this imaginary practice from classical Athenian festival proce­ dure needs to be recognised; and, given Platonic attitudes, no more so than in the criteria implied for the assessment as to whether the offerings of the visiting trage­ dians are ‘better’ than the products of the ideal politeia itself. Yet expressions such as ‘grant a khoros,’ used of Arkhons, also bring it close to what we know of the classical Athenian system, and it may well be that the notion of a ‘display’ (cf. έπιδείξαντες) of tragic song by hopeful poets before a judging Arkhon recalls a familiar moment in the calendar of preparations for the dramatic festivals.60 The conditions of applying for a khoros may have differed between performance­ genres. Dithyramb is a particularly interesting case. While the majority of tragic and comic poets were Athenian, dithyrambists were regularly foreigners in Attike, and the means by which they were chosen to perform are quite unclear. Did they, like their dramatic counterparts, have to present themselves before the Arkhon at a fixed time early in the civic year? Or could they ‘send’, or depute another to present, their poetic offering? Were they, as is often assumed, solicited directly by khoregoi for commissions, quite unlike their dramatic counterparts?61 If they were themselves present, and con­ tinued if successful to remain for any length of time to supervise the training of the

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khoros, they presumably attracted the status of metics.62 The demand for the poetic powers of these foreigners in Athens each year was enormous: at the City Dionysia alone, some twenty poems were needed for the two categories of phyletic competi­ tion. It is not often stressed how regularly these foreign poets and their associated musicians worked in Athens with and for the Athenian phylai at a festival so impor­ tant for Athenian civic consciousness and identity, how freely they crossed borders often hostile to do so. It is possible that there were a number of more or less codified rules affecting a poet’s eligibilty to receive or even to apply for a khoros at the Dionysia. These may have calibrated the value of past success with some precision. We have already seen evidence for the possible existence of such a rule concerning comedy, in the testimo­ nium that Plato the comic poet, after coming fourth at the Great Dionysia, ‘was pushed back again to the Lenaia’. This expression has been taken to reflect a volun­ tary decision on the part of Plato in shame at his defeat, or to be simply a way of describing a particular Arkhon’s decision not to grant Plato a khoros.63 But it may hint at a whole range of rules surrounding the procedure of distributing khoroi at Athens’ festivals of which we are quite ignorant. Such formalism would hardly be out of char­ acter for the classical democracy. Perhaps it was necessary for a comic poet to ‘qualify’ by a ranking of a certain quality at the Lenaia before moving on to the Dionysia;64 or a poor performance at the Dionysia may have disqualified a poet from being eligible for a khoros there in the subsequent year. Whether any such rules affected the tragic agon, which had the smallest number of khoroi and was in many ways the most pre­ stigious of all Athenian poetic performances, we cannot say. It is also quite unclear whether a knowledge of the year’s group of khoregoi might have in any way influenced the Arkhon’s decision as to the granting of khoroi. My sus­ picion is that the clear delineation of spheres which the system engineered, the prob­ able timetabling of procedure and the general nature of civic accountability all point towards the Arkhon’s ‘desired’ role as being in part at least a mediator between poten­ tially competing individual interests - and one who was, unlike both khoregos and (to a lesser extent) poet, very directly accountable to the demos for his actions. Everything he did was subject to scrutiny in the rendering of his accounts at the end of his office, and alleged malpractice could be raised by any concerned party at the meeting of the Assembly held in the theatre itself immediately after the Great Dionysia. This is not to suggest that the system ran in strict accordance with the way its ‘official’ regulations intended. On the contrary: many of the laws and protocols surrounding the organisation of the festivals operated in the face of, and probably as a response to, attitudes and behaviour deemed undesirable by the dominant demo­ cratic ideology. But the old idea that poets were bound to conform to the views and indeed specific political agendas of their khoregoi clearly ignores the position of the polis between poet and khoregos and, moreover, adduces modern and probably inap­ propriate notions of artistic patronage. For the Athenian polis technically occupied the place of the commissioning ‘patron’ of the tragic, comic and dithyrambic poets of the Dionysia, and the fact of their official ‘employment’ by the city rather than by any individual or smaller group is signalled by their receiving a misthos from the city. It is frustrating that we know so little about this economic relation between poet and polis, for it is clearly an impor­ tant adjunct to the economics of production in the khoregic system. That poets did 64

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receive payment is clear. This arrangement ensured that the poet was not under the obligations created by a direct monetary relationship with his khoregos. The very exis­ tence of such pay for its poets probably had a primarily symbolic value for the dem­ ocratic city: it set the stamp on the status of the poet and his position, claiming his primary loyalties for the polis (and its constituent parts), whatever the nature of his relations with his socio-economic peers (khoregoi and others) may have been. It assim­ ilated the service of the poet to a kind of civic service, his misthos the reward for doing the city good, like service in its juries or in its triremes, in the Council and so on.65 Of course being a great dramatist, educator and master of poetic truth, was rather different from being a thranites pulling at the oar. And this is no doubt why PickardCambridge, for instance, translates misthos when used of the tragic poet’s reward as an ‘honorarium’.66 It is hard to imagine him doing the same for the same word when used of rowers’ pay. The fact that poets seem routinely to have come from the upper socio-economic tiers of society meant that the import of this misthos was all the more symbolic in its force: but that did not stop the fury of comic poets when its level was threatened by politicians. The amount of pay for the city’s poets was established in accordance with normal democratic practice by a decision of the Assembly, perhaps with a particular rôle for the Council.67 Forming a climax to their list of those excluded from their holy khoroi, the khoros of Initiates of Aristophanes’ Frogs crowns the groups of the ritually impure, those who do not appreciate (Aristophanic) comedy, and those guilty of various forms of political misconduct and anti-social behaviour, with ‘any person who, when he is a politician, proceeds to nibble away at the pay of the poets after he has been made the subject of a comedy in the traditional rites of Dionysos’ (ή τούς μισθούς των ποιητών ρήτωρ ών είτ σποτρώγει, | κωμωιδηθείς εν ταϊς πατρίοις τελεταις ταις τού Διονύσου, 367-8). Although its position at the end of a list which includes fomenters of civic strife may in part be designed for bathetic effect, it is little surprise to find the comic khoros metatheatrically defending its masters in this way against the depredations of wayward leaders of the demos, men whose politics were deemed inimical to the city’s poetics, and whose position was ever open to the watchful cri­ tique of the city’s comic poets.68 It may be that the money poets received in this way was scaled according to their success in the competition, so that poetic payment was inextricably enmeshed with the award of prizes.69 This would scarcely be surprising in a context where agonistic success and its attendant social and political recompense vastly outweighs any purely material consideration in the motives of all those engaged in performance. The ivy crown presented in the theatre before a vast crowd was what the poet wanted, with all the public recognition and prestige that it brought.70 There may have been significant differences between the three genres as regards the relations of their poets to the polis. It is perhaps not merely by chance that we hear rather more about the misthoi of comic poets, while the issue of the pay of tra­ gedians rarely arises. Is there some sort of ideological distinction at work here between the more and less ‘elevated’ dramatic genres, such that the issue of payment for tragic poets is generally obscured?71 The poet of dithyramb was in a rather different position from his dramatic colleagues. It is sometimes stated, on no good grounds, that the phylai or their khoregoi independently commissioned the poets for the dithyrambic contests, not the city. But that the city also engaged its dithyram­ bic poets is clear from the fact that the Arkhon allotted these to their respective

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khoregoi.72 Nonetheless, the relation of the (usually foreign) dithyramb ographos to the city was bound to have been of a different order from that of the (usually Athenian) dramatic poet. As a foreigner, he could not have his misthos assimilated to a civic payment, since he was not a citizen. And he did not have the motivation of civic or phyletic loyalties on his own account to tie him to his task. Although the thousands of dithyrambs composed for Athenian festivals are an almost completely lost world to us, one comment that can be made with a small degree of confidence about the content of some of this poetry is that it seems to have been characterised by a strain of polis-encomium, at least in the early days. One of the very few surviving fragments of dithyrambic poetry certainly intended for per­ formance at Athens is the famous passage of Pindar (fr. 76 M): ‘O shining and violetcrowned and celebrated in song, bulwark of Hellas, famous Athens, divine citadel!’ And although its context of performance is unknown, fragment 77 describes Artemision as the place ‘where the sons of the Athenians laid the bright foundation of freedom’.73 That the indications we have point in particular to praise of Athens’ military prowess and role within the wider Greek world is neither surprising in itself nor unsuitable for khoroi of men (and boys) whose principal mode of interaction was in their military units also organised by phyle. But it is especially interesting that this form of self-praise — or rather, of employing others to provide the musical and poetic material through which one praised oneself — did not go uncriticised within Athens. The Thoukydidean Perikles reminded his citizens that theirs was a city that did not need poetic encomium (2.41.4). The issue of self-praise was surely a sensitive one for the highly critically astute Athenians. We owe the existence of fragment 76 in large part to the use to which it was put by that omnivorous machine of criticism, Aristophanic comedy. In the parabasis of the Akharnians, the comic khoros vaunts its own poet for having always sought to disabuse the Athenians of their attachment to self-praise: Our poet says that he deserves a rich reward at your hands for having stopped you being too easily deceived by the words of foreigners, taking pleasure in flattery, being citizens of Emptyhead. Previously, when the ambassadors from the allied states were trying to deceive you, they began by calling you ‘violetcrowned’; and when someone said that, at once that word ‘crowned’ made you sit on the tips of your little buttocks. And if by way of buttering you up someone called Athens ‘gleaming’, he could win anything from you by virtue of that word ‘gleaming’, by fastening on you an honour fit only for sardines. (633-40)

This self-deceiving rhetoric from which the comic poet saves the city is itself a poetic rhetoric, the encomiastic rhetoric of dithyramb. Aristophanic comedy is ever ready to point to the dangers and folly of poetic forms other than its own, and dithyramb and its poets in particular come in for harsh treatment on a range of grounds.74 It cannot be idle coincidence that the practitioners of the poetic genre apparently most prone to praise of Athens were themselves usually not Athenians. Conversely, the fact that Athens produced no melic poet comparable to its dramatic masters was commented upon by later critics (Plu. Mor. 348b), and his rather anomalous status as an Athenian dithyrambist must somehow figure into the peculiar and extraordinarily hostile attitude adopted universally toward ‘the fe/zoros-killer’, the Athenian Kinesias. 66

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Being praised by others was doubtless more acceptable — and more efficacious — than direct self-praise. And victory for a poet at this major international event gave a return of shared reflective glory, reinforcing the convenient structure between the city and its visiting poets. It was for his words of praise that the Athenians supposedly lavished great rewards on Pindar. The huge sum of money, the bestowal of status as proxenos, the statue and other rewards of which we hear, whether historical fact or not, prob­ ably represent a particularly lavish extension of the regular kind of ‘payment’ that was generally on offer to these foreign melic poets who turned their skills to the benefit of the city.75

The Arkhon’s role in assigning poets to khoregoi has always been the practical linch­ pin in any view of drama as a collusive means of disseminating a particular, narrowly political agenda, in the hands of wealthy (and therefore, so the argument goes, anti­ democratic) khoregoi, Arkhons and poets.76 This crucial joint’ in the system united the poetic resources of the city with the material and cultural resources of its richest private individuals. As I discussed above, this procedure was conceived and spoken of in terms with a strongly ‘khorocentric’ focus: the poet was ‘granted a khoros’. The circumstances of the operation are quite unknown to us. The usual assumption, namely that the Arkhon exercised complete personal discretion in the matter, accords him an enormous degree of power and potential influence over the dramatic culture of the city. On this assumption have rested theories of greater or lesser elaboration concerning the collusive machinations of Arkhons, poets and khoregoi in producing dramas (tragic and comic) with particular, programmatic political agendas that fur­ thered the interests of their class or specific political grouping before the mass audi­ ence.77 Such hypothetical activity of political and poetical ‘propaganda’ has in fact for long been one of the main centres of interest in the study of the khoregia, but the view as to the nature of tragic and comic drama which such an approach presupposes has largely been superseded. The political character of Athenian drama is now generally understood not as if it were a forum for narrow, thinly-veiled political pamphleteer­ ing for a particular course of action in the ‘primary’ political arenas of the Assembly or courts; but rather more as an institution in many ways parallel to them, one in which could be raised the more unwieldy, problematic ‘big questions’ of life in the polis that underlie it but exceed the capabilities of its diurnal debate. The evidence indicates that it was not the personal whim of the individual Arkhon, but the will of the gods as expressed through the lot, which determined which poet would work with which khoregos. A fifth-century khoregos begins an account of his office with the statement ‘When I was appointed khoregos for the Thargelia and received by lot Pantakles as poet and Kekropis as the phyle in addition to my own . . .’. The implica­ tion is clear: the poets at the Thargelia were allotted to their khoregoi. And it is extremely difficult to imagine why a mechanism thus employed presumably to obviate partiality, conflict and human fallibility at a lesser festival would not be employed for the parallel tasks at the greater festival, including in its high-profile dra­ matic competitions. There is certainly nothing in the surviving evidence to suggest it was not. Its well-known democratic associations and its demonstrable use at other important stages of the festival programme (for example, in the selection of judges), support the probability of its employment at this crucial moment. The principal area of uncertainty with regard to this system of allocation is 67

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whether the lot simply assigned khoregos to poet; or whether what was assigned was an order of choice on the part of the khoregoi. The latter practice was used in the fourth century to link dithyrambic khoregoi at the Great Dionysia to their aulos-players. And it is implied for the poets of the same festival in the later fifth century by a number of comic passages: in particular, Aristophanes Birds 1403—4 (performed at the Great Dionysia of 414, and so close in date to Antiphon 6). This suggests that the phylai, doubtless as represented by their khoregoi, had some say as to which dithyrambic poet they received. The much-maligned Kinesias complains of the treatment meted out on one who is ‘always fought over by the phylai" (ταϊσι φυλαις περιμάχητος . . . αεί, 1404). If phylai can wrangle over poets, perhaps the lot’s fall did not unequivocally determine their assignation.78 A mechanism which accorded a degree of choice in the matter to the khoregoi would certainly be consistent with the general character of the system, tending as it did to temper any form of imposition on khoregoi with con­ siderable scope for individual choice and agency.79 If an order of choice rather than a particular poet was what the lot assigned at the Great Dionysia, we are left to consider whether this is consisent with the betterattested practice at the Thargelia. Antiphon’s Greek — έ'λαχον Παντακλέα διδάσκαλον, T received the poet Pantakles by lot’ (6.11) — could, certainly for an audience familiar with the procedure, encompass the sense of T was allotted a place in the order of choice which allowed me to select Pantakles as poet.’ The potential objection to this reading that Demosthenes is rather fuller and clearer in his descrip­ tion of the allotment of aulos-players in 349 — ‘the allotment was made, and the first choice of auletes fell to me’ (κληρουμένων πρώτος αίρεϊσθαι τον αύλητήν έλαχον) - carries little weight when the reasons for Demosthenes’ loquacity are considered. For he makes much of the fact that his lot fell out first of the ten — a sign of favour­ ing fortune which, he says, the people greeted with the same noisy applause and signs of pleasure as his volunteering to serve as khoregos in the first place had received;80 and Demosthenes in any case had good cause to talk at greater length of his musician than of his poet, given that the latter — whom he nowhere names in this long speech — was ‘corrupted’ by Meidias, and Telephanes the auletes saved the day by taking on the training of the khoros himself. It was also the Arkhon’s responsibility to unite the instrumentalists so important to many Athenian festivals, players of the aulos, with khoregoi. The important rôle of the aulos in Athenian life, and in particular its virtual omnipresence at the majority of the many festivals of Athens, is something that has passed largely unnoticed, despite the fascinating implications of the crucial part played by this ‘alien’ instrument and its practitioners — who were routinely non-Athenian — in festivals central to Athenian identity and civic consciousness.81 The aulos had its own pool of expert practition­ ers in Greece who were attracted to the prestigious centre of musical culture that fifth-century Athens had made of itself. Thebans in particular were the acknowledged masters of the art in Greece, especially from the latter decades of the fifth century, when many masters of the ‘Theban school’ made the crossing from Boiotia to Attike — in the footsteps of their patron Dionysos — to perform with great success at the major festivals of Athens.82 The aulos was the crucial technical resource for the music of drama and dithy­ ramb. The music of a single auletes supported dozens of choral performances at fes­ tivals each year, and it was the sole instrument used for tragedy - this despite the 68

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time-honoured scholarly misnomer of ‘tragic choral lyric . If the lyre was ever employed, it was only for local and special effect, an effect which depended on the assumed presence of the aulos and, further, on a deeply-entrenched polarity — amounting, at times, to an hostility — between lyre and aulos.83 The skills of the aulosplayer could be very important in determining the success of a performance at the Dionysia. This was especially the case in dithyramb, where it was used for the entire length of this purely choral performance, and the development of dithyramb in Athens over the classical period seems to have involved an increase in the role played by the instrumentalist, perhaps at the expense of the word.84 At a certain point in the fifth century, the auletes for dithyramb at least ceased to be paid by the poet, as he apparently had been before then. The source which reports this does not go on to state who paid him thereafter, but the point he wants to illus­ trate by this fact is that in these ‘good old days’, music was still subordinate to the words of the poet. Hence the musician was in the pay of the poet, a relationship which could certainly be regarded as entailing subordination in the classical Greek context. A change is implied, but not clearly stated, as having taken place in Melanippides’ day - one which saw auletai, who now occupied a more prominent place in performance, ceasing to be the subordinates of poets and being sought after for their own particular skills.85 Were they now perhaps the more direct concern of khoregoi, keen as ever for any advantage to enhance their chances for success? By the time we see clearer evidence for the rules governing relations between khoregoi and auletai at the Great Dionysia — in the middle of the fourth century — the lot is being used to allocate a choice of auletes to the khoregos, perhaps thus limiting his power to ‘buy’ the best. A logical development can be divined here. Presumably this was the polis’ way of ensuring that the distribution of musical skills was fair, because ‘demo­ cratic’ and random. It will have been modelled on the procedure already in place for the allocation of poets. Whether the polis also became the paymaster of the auletes when this system was introduced is unknown. Auletai are perhaps more likely to have remained the financial responsibility of the khoregos, for they and their music were more of a part with the khoros.86 As skilled experts who seem to have depended on their craft rather more than poets for their livelihoods, auletai — especially the ‘stars’ sought after for major events like the Athenian Dionysia — will have been able to attract considerable sums for their participation.87 A fascinating but contextless fourth-century comic fragment further attests to the importance of the auletes and musical innovation in Athenian festival competition in the theatre. It also makes a suggestive reference to the use of the lot relevant to this discussion. It is from a comedy by Amphis tantalisingly called Dithyrambos, probably dating from the second half of the century (K-A 14) :88 A: But [what I like is] the gingras, a very clever thing. B: What’s the gingras? A: A new discovery of mine. I haven’t yet put it on show in the theatre, but it’s already all the rage in private at symposia in Athens. B: Why don’t you bring it out before the mass public? A: Because I’m waiting to get by lot a phyle that’s really keen for victory; I know it’ll heave up everything, like a trident, with the applause it gets. 69

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The identities of these two speakers have not been preserved, but it is a fair guess that at least the first of them is a musician (an auletes) or a dithyrambic poet. This was a period when the line between instrumentalist and dithyrambic poet was less clear than it had been a century before: figures like Pronomos and his son Oiniades, whom we tend to regard as above all instrumentalists, are recorded as having been composers of words as well as music; while the most famous dithyrambic poets of the day were perhaps most famous (or infamous) precisely for their musical innovations.89 Whether one or both of the speakers are poets or musicians, their discussion centres on an instrument known as the gingras, a special kind of small aulos associated with the Phoinikians and connected with the worship of Adonis.90 It is already famil­ iar in the world of the upper-class private symposia of Athens, but has yet to be brought before ‘the mob’ in the theatre, where it is sure to be a great success. It is par­ ticularly fascinating that the ‘innovation’ is only seen as such for the mass, theatrical audience (the okhlos), and not for the cultured symposiasts of Athens. The lack of context is more than usually frustrating: one would like to know whether more was made of this clearly elitist attitude which sees dithyrambic poets bringing tit-bits from the cultural riches of the upper-class private world of pleasure into the public world of the mob in the interests of their own victory. For the poet/musician is waiting for the optimum moment to introduce thejyh^ras to the Athenian theatre and so achieve its riotous upheaval, and that moment will be when he is linked by the lot to a really victory-hungry phyle.91 Although this is the world of the comic imagination, the mentality depicted here is not fantastic: a particularly innovative poet or musician might well have saved his best efforts for the occasions on which he was linked up with a phyle — and, of course, its khoregos — which was suitably addicted to victory, and so keen to spend and train lavishly. Even in its isolation as a comic fragment, this passage testifies to the importance of good personal relations and like-mindedness of purpose between the crucial personnel, performers and providers, involved in a khoregia. It was presumably at the meeting of the Assembly mentioned by Demosthenes as the occasion on which ‘the law requires the Arkhon to allot the auletai to the khore­ goi’ (21.13), that this function was also performed for drama. Because Demosthenes was himself a khoregos for dithyramb, only that genre merits a mention in his speech. Given the importance of the musician to all the performances at the Dionysia, one wonders whether securing the ‘best’ available player was something for which there was competition between genres.92 It is possible that a much-vaunted auletes could have participated in all three Dionysian performances, since they were held at different times, but one wonders whether this would have been feasible given the physical demands on the player and the need for extended rehearsals with the different khoroi. And competitive khoregoi and poets may in any case not have been willing to ‘share’ their auletes even across the boundaries of performance (and thus of competition). It is possible that auletai may have tended to specialise in particular genres. Many of the more famous players are associated pre-eminently with the performance of dithyramb in Athens. But even the most famous auletes of all, Pronomos of Thebes, is repre­ sented on the great volute-krater named after him (figure 5) with what is to all appear­ ances a khoros of Athenians costumed as satyrs.93

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The tasks of the khoregos The basic aim of producing a well-trained khoros entailed a clearly-defined, almost formulaic, set of tasks: the orderly recruitment of the best candidiates from the appro­ priate constituency; the employment of a professional trainer, and perhaps of other men of more or less specialised skills to help the poet in the preparation of the khoros, and to maintain the high degree of discipline constantly associated with choral ‘order’; the provision of ample space for training (khoregeion); and of the materials to support it — for instance, the needs of a specialised diet designed to produce the optimum physical, and in particular vocal, condition of the khoreutai; and more gen­ erally the livelihood, in money and materials, to maintain them. Then there are the needs of the performance itself — the costumes, the masks (for a dramatic khoros), perhaps a set of stephanoi (certainly worn by some dithyrambic khoroi). Even the mon­ ument that a victorious khoregos had built was to a large degree in conformity with certain prevailing conventions. Yet it is crucial to stress that in all these areas, no matter to what extent the duties of the khoregos appeared to be the standardised impositions of the polis, there was always enormous scope for the demonstration of individual self-expression through liberality and the provision of a khoros which carried the per­ sonal imprint of its provider. The formalisation of the khoregia stood in a certain tension with the image of the voluntary benefactor; but it was a tension which could always be resolved in favour of the latter by a display of cultured extravagance. It is, predictably, from the extravagant, self-assertive khoregoi that we hear most in our sources, while those who discharged their obligations at the minimum remain largely obscure. A recurrent and fundamental image of the khoregos is as the figure ready to provide whatever might be needed, and it is this emphasis on his role as a generalised ‘provider’ that largely explains the linguistic development of the word yopriyeiv to mean simply ‘to provide.’94

In the khoregeion The first practical task of a khoregos newly entered on his role was to prepare a place for the training of his team (Ant. 6.n). The choral activity which occupied so many people in Attike for such a substantial part of each year required considerable space for its preparation. The khoreg(e)ion (yopriysiov or yoppyiov) was the name for the site put to this end. In any year, some twenty-eight such spaces will have been needed for the choral requirements of Dionysiac khoregiai alone. The broader term didaskaleion (5i5aoKaAeibv) was also often used of the place where khoregoi had their khoroi trained, a general and more inclusive word (usually translated simply as ‘school’) for those places in Greek cities which, from an early date, were used for the instruction of the young principally in matters musical but also in letters.95 The fact that the more generalised term for the place of schooling for the young could be used in clas­ sical Athens for the name of the site of choral instruction in particular reflects the degree to which choral education remained a central component of the formation of the young man, at least in certain circles. And Athens was far from unique in this

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regard: in some cities, the place where the young were taught was called simply ‘the khoros’.96 The Athenian khoregeion is unlikely to have been a purpose-built structure devoted exclusively to choral training. What was needed was a space of sufficient size to serve the ends of intensive choral activity, of twelve, twenty-four, fifty, or however many khoreutai and their associated poet, trainers, actors and so on. The physical requirements of such a space may have included all-weather protection, since train­ ing for the Great Dionysia will certainly have taken place in the winter months leading up to Elaphebolion. A good supply of water is, understandably, sometimes mentioned in contexts of choral training: according to an ancient commentator on Aiskhines, in the interiors of Athenian didaskaleia and palaistras there were small statues or shrines, dedicated to the Muses (‘Mouseia’ — or to Hermes and Herakles, in the case of the palaistra), where water was provided for the thirsty young. These were also, according to the same commentator, places known for sexual encounters — ‘pre­ tending to be thirsty [the boys] went there and corrupted one-another’— and so espe­ cially in need of surveillance.97 Presumably the requirements for a khoregeion were not unlike the resources provided in a gymnasion or palaistra, and these latter may have been employed by a khoregos, hired out from their owners. Some khoregoi will cer­ tainly have possessed their own. An unidentifiable Theophrastean character (Char. 5.9, a passage misplaced under the Obsequious man), an attention-seeking figure, devoted to luxury expenditure on himself and almost an ancient dandy, uses the hiring of his private palaistra to philosophers, sophists and teachers (or theorists) of music as a source of self-gratification: he deliberately arrives late for the performances held there ‘so that the spectators may say to one another “That’s the owner of the palaistra’”. The only direct account we have of the arrangements a khoregos made for the provision of his khoregeion is that of Antiphon 6 (§11), where the speaker very expli­ citly states that he turned part of his own house into a didaskaleion. We do not know the size of a dithyrambic khoros at the Thargelia for certain, but if, as I argue below, it was fifty strong, his house must have been of very substantial dimensions to accom­ modate an entire khoregic team in one part of it, especially given that the khoreutai seem to have lived there for the duration of their training. And he states that this was not the first time he had used part of his house in this way, but had done so previ­ ously when he was khoregos at the Dionysia. It may have been the regular practice for the khoroi of Athens to live, to train and to be fed in the great houses of its richest cit­ izens, a fact with extremely interesting ramifications for the nature of the activity.98 Such an arrangement demonstrates very clearly the continuing intimacy of the link between the khoregos and his team, even when the khoregos was forced to depute most of the practical aspects of the office to others. Although the khoroi of the Great Dionysia and other civic festivals were indeed the ‘polis” khoroi, we should not lose sight of the fact that they emerged as such from an intimate nexus of personal rela­ tions, relations centred conceptually and practically around the house of a member of the socio-economic super-élite of Athens.99 There is on the other hand little clear evidence for the use of public sites for the training or rehearsal of khoroi. It seems plausible that access to the theatre itself may have been permitted prior to the days of performance, no doubt under some form of control in order to avoid unfair advantage; but no evidence can be cited to support 72

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the plausibility. One could imagine the well-protected, spacious Odeion, adjacent to the theatre, being put to use for the rehearsal of Athenian khoroi, but again, there is little more than likelihood to offer in evidence for this.100 A passing reference in some late lexicographers to a place known as ‘the house of the Meliteans’ opens a tantalisingly small window onto the complex world of train­ ing for specifically dramatic productions in Athens. In the urban deme of Melite there was, it seems, a very large house which was regularly used for training by tragic kho­ reutai and actors. The demesmen of Melite or its private owner presumably hired this building out to khoregoi. Its urban location, not far from the Pnyx, will have made it convenient for access to the theatre, and for khoroi whose members had been drawn from across Attike.101 As for other public buildings, an argument has been made for the use of the Stoa Basileios for the training of early Athenian khoroi. Bieber suggested some time ago that a red-figure Attic kylix dated to c. 475 (figure 3) may represent a tragic khoros in training in the Stoa Basileios, which at the time was probably the only stoa stand­ ing in Athens, and was the seat of the Arkhons, the organisers of Athens’ major choral competitions.102 Although the link to tragedy is, unfortunately, a particularly weak point in Bieber’s argument, her speculative interpretation of this fascinating image merits more than the disregard it has apparently received in subsequent studies of the theatre. The outside of the cup shows the figures of eight young men, in two groups of four, wearing ankle-length himatia and wreaths, and facing inwards in pairs; they are singing. In the centre of each of the two groups stands an aulos-player, whose long-sleeved dress with rosette pattern is of the elaborate kind, familiar from other vases, worn by professional players in large-scale activities such as festival competi­ tion. He provides a strong iconographic link to the world of the theatre. Around three-quarters of the graphic space occupied by these young men there is represented a colonnade, with five (wooden) Doric columns and sixteen mutules. One of the aulos-players is standing at the point where this colonnade ends, and two of the kho­ reutai (for these young men clearly do represent a khoros103) are beyond it, ‘outside’ as it were, in the open air. It is this rather unusual representation of an architectural envi­ ronment in connection with a khoros which encouraged Bieber’s interpretation con­ cerning the Stoa Basileios, and the consequent suggestion that this public building may have been used in the early days of drama for rehearsal; others would contest so specific an identification.104 The most curious feature of this cup, however, is on the inside. It is the unusual image there which offers the most convincing argument that the outer imagery rep­ resents a scene of choral training. For in the centre of the tondo there is a single figure, an adult male, holding a trainer’s rod in his hand. He is inspecting an extremely unusual piece of furniture, a wooden structure roughly the shape of a door, the same height as himself, constructed from two upright and five shorter horizontal beams. It seems to be designed to hold twelve oblong wooden tickets, as there are circular slots in the crossbars evidently intended to receive a peg-like token. Bieber argued, quite convincingly to my mind, that this piece of equipment must in some way be related to the activity of choral training in which the figure with the staff on the interior and the khoreutai on the exterior are both involved. She suggested that this ‘machine’ was set up at the entrance to the khoregeion, and that it was designed to control the admis­ sion of khoreutai, to indicate their attendance by means of the insertion of the oblong

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Fig· 3· A late Archaic Attic kylix (large wine-cup) with, on the exterior, two auletai in longsleeved robes, each accompanying four young men; on the interior, a (choral?) trainer examines an unusual piece of equipment.

wooden tokens, with one of which each khoreutes would have been issued to iden­ tify him.105 The interpretation must remain highly speculative, but if it were indeed the case that khorodidaskaloi or khoregoi operated such a mechanism to control the attendance of khoreutai, it would imply that khoreutai might attend a khoregeion on a daily basis, rather than being permanently resident in their place of training. It is of course altogether likely that both models of practice were in operation, especially given the very long period in question.106

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Recruitment With the place for training prepared, the khoregos could turn to the all-important busi­ ness of recruiting the members of his khoros.107 Collecting a khoros was an activity demanding a high level of inter-personal skills and practical know-how. The khoregos needed to know both who to ask (where the best khoreutai were to be found), and he needed the skills of securing them for the long and arduous period of training that would take men away from their usual occupations for lengthy periods and boys away from their parents’ homes. In gathering his team around Attike, the rich man or his deputies must have negotiated with a delicate balance of tact and compulsion. The highly personal nature of this process of recruitment is in itself an argument that kho­ reutai were in general drawn from a not dissimilar social and economic background as khoregoi. His range of choice was determined in the first instance by the nature of the contest: a boys’ khoros for the phyle Akamantis at the Great Dionysia would naturally be drawn from Akamantid boys.108 Such categorisation by age-class for competitive performance was completely traditional in Greek athletic and musical culture. The pool of available khoreutai, considered simply in terms of age, was rather narrower for boys’ khoroi than for men’s. The latter will have included any male citizen over the age of eighteen or nineteen. We do not know how, and with what degree of formal­ ity, the age-category of pais was determined in Athens.109 But it presumably repre­ sented a band of about five to seven years of age (c. 11—17); while the men’s category will have been some four times as broad (c. 18/20—45+?). ‘Men’ will have had many more claims on their time - military and political - than boys, and there must have been a sharp decline in those willing and able to serve as adult khoreutai, perhaps espe­ cially from the age of thirty. As many boy as adult khoreutai were needed for the phyletic khoroi of the Great Dionysia each year; and so a considerably higher percentage of Athenian boys is likely to have served in khoroi than of men in any given year. Indeed, a good percentage of Athenian boys might have attended the khoregeion for perhaps a number of years during their minority.110 This must have formed a significant part of the education of the male children of at least the better-off Athenian families, those who could afford to be without their assistance on their properties for extended periods and for whom the traditional culture of khoreia was deemed a desirable achievement.111 One such is the troubled family of the Boiotos against whom Demosthenes wrote speech 39 for Mantitheos. Mantitheos claims that his half-brother Boiotos, born to a mistress of his father, has sought to misappropriate his own name, that of his pater­ nal grandfather, by having himself enrolled under it in his deme. One of the proofs Mantitheos cites to demonstrate that the boy’s own mother regarded him as belong­ ing to her phyle (Hippothontis), and not that of Mantias, the father of both men (Akamantis), is that ‘before he claimed to be a kinsman of ours, he used to go to the phyle Hippothontis to dance in the boys’ khoroi (εις Ίττττοθωντίδ' έφοίτα φυλήν εις τταϊδας χορεύσων, §24). ‘And yet, who among you imagines that his mother would have sent him to this phyle [if she thought his father had accepted him as his own] ? No one, I am sure. For it would have been just as much your right to attend at Akamantis (εις yap τήν Άκαμαντίδ' ομοίως έξήν σοι φοιτάν), and then the phyle

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Fig. 4. An Attic bell-krater with a (?) dithyrambic khoros.

would have been in manifest agreement with the giving of the name’ (§24). The point is supported by the testimony of those who attended the Hippothontid khoregeion with him (τούς συμφοιτώντας, §24) — that is, by his fehow-khoreutai. The whole argument throws fascinating light on the role of choral training for the young in Athens, as well as offering a number of suggestive details of fact. It is noteworthy, for instance, that it could be a mother’s business to send a son to dance in the city’s khoroi.112 And the underlying assumption is that such khoreia was con­ strued as a vital early act of political or pre-political participation, of asserting and establishing one’s status as a citizen. Training of this sort for an extended period with fellow-boys from one’s phyle drawn from geographically diverse regions of Attike will have helped form the early stages of a sense of phyletic solidarity that would be imporant to later sociopolitical (including military) life. Informative too is the language used for the attendance itself, φοιτάν εις is the expression most commonly used for atten­ dance at any educational institution, for ‘going to school’. ‘To go to Hippothontis, to the boys to dance’ has an altogether colloquial air, but we should remember that the families in question are themselves of leitourgical status, and ‘choral formation’ was surely a less familiar or quite alien business to many families of lower socio-eco­ nomic status. The great phyletic khoroi of the democratic festivals, supported by private wealth, may well have broadened the base of this traditional form of educa­ tion, but the fifty Dionysian boy khoreutai from each phyle are more than likely to have been drawn from their wealthier families. Talent will always have been a deci­ sive factor in a khoregos" recruitment of his team. But even talent is the product of, or at least powerfully fostered by, the availability of resources, training and encouragement.113 76

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The same will surely have been true of dramatic, especially tragic, khoreutai. For they were many fewer in number, and the skills demanded of them more complex, their necessary training and endurance in all probability more sustained.114 A great advantage will have been had by those with experience of the élite world of bravura, competitive performance provided by the symposion, which principally involved the ability to sing a variety of melic works (including tragic excerpts), to accompany oneself, and perhaps also to dance.115 While the formal constitution of dithyrambic khoroi is clear, determined by criteria of age-class and geopolitical identity, there is less evidence — and its interpretation is more controversial — when it comes to drama. This reticence as to the nature of the composition of tragic and comic khoroi is itself a little surprising, given the usual practice of defining collective competitive teams by age-classes and given too the intense fascination of subsequent ages with the Athenian theatre. Any number of lost treatises — such as Aristoxenos’ On Khoroi, or, if it ever existed, the work ascribed to Sophokles himself On the Khoros — must have contained vital information.116 In classical sources, there is a marked tendency to refer to tragedy by reference to the men who constituted its khoros, most often using the term tragoidoi — "tragossingers’. But, in contrast to their dithyrambic colleagues, these tragoidoi are never oth­ erwise specified by a term denoting an age or sociopolitical category. The dithyrambic performances at the Dionysia are very frequently referred to in the language of public inscription, of the law and of oratory simply as ‘the men’ or ‘the boys’.117 For instance, Demosthenes compares his khoregic record with that of his enemy Meidias in the following terms, which were obviously familiar to his audience: ‘He has been a kho­ regos for tragoidoi; I for men’ (Dem. 21.156: TpaycoiÔoîs KEyoppyriKEV ttoO' outos, éycb 5è àvÔpdcriv·).118 To judge solely from the evidence of terminology, this distinc­ tion between drama and dithyramb may suggest that the age-class of tragic and comic khoroi was less of a defining criterion in the general perception of the genre; and that, in the absence of any more specific indication, it is best to assume (as it were, by default) that the proper constituency of these khoroi were Athenians as such: probably, but not necessarily, adult men. Such literary testimony as there is tends to support this general position. This is essentially to restate the orthodoxy on the matter in the face of the one recent and highly suggestive attempt to confront this issue head-on. A fascinating hypothesis maintains that tragoidoi is indeed a term containing a reference to an age­ category, if of a predominantly symbolic nature: according to Winkler’s conjecture, tragoidoi means ‘billy-goat singers’, and signifies, by reference to the phenomenon of the breaking of the voice, the category of those undergoing social puberty. The tragic khoros is composed, on this view, of ephebes, the age-class between those of the boys and men who danced in the circular khoroi of dithyramb at the same festival.119 Winkler’s hypothesis is, on his own account, finally unproven; but the material he assembles in the process of making this imaginative case, and his general interpre­ tation of the festival as an occasion ‘for elaborate symbolic play on themes of proper and improper civic behaviour, in which the principal component of proper male cit­ izenship was military’, represent an absolutely vital contribution. The ephebeic hypothesis may not be proven, but its explanatory power synthesises many disparate areas of evidence with a powerful economy, and it certainly cannot be dismissed out of hand. 77

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Fig· 5· The ‘Pronomos’ krater (Attic, c. 400 b.c.).

Winkler’s main piece of positive evidence is the Pronomos vase, the famous late fifth-century Attic volute-krater one side of which apparently depicts the cast of a satyric-tragic team (figure 5).120 This is virtually unique among surviving pieces of ceramic in that its iconography apparently deploys images of an actual team of Athenian khoreutai, represented after rather than engaged in performance; nine of the figures depicted in satyric costume are labelled with names that could well be those of real Athenian citizens. These khoreutai (along with a few others on roughly com­ parable theatre-related images) are, Winkler stresses, iconographically represented as (beardless) ephebes, in clear distinction from the bearded actors in the upper register of the image. The thesis taken as a whole is a compelling one: the notion that the khoroi of Athens’ two transgressive performances, tragedy and comedy, were consti­ tuted by those figures of transition between boyhood and manhood, performing in the demanding quadrangular tragic khoros a symbolic and representative enactment of the skills in military discipline and good order for which their formal ephebic train­ ing had prepared them, and witnessing from their privileged position in the orkhestra the dangers and duties of manhood — all of this is very attractive. Yet the Pronomos vase is a delicate and elusive foundation for such a structure. As for the non-iconographic evidence for the composition of dramatic khoroi, the few and largely uninformative items are well known. There is a simple structural analogy to observe: just as khoregoi for dithyramb were selected from and represented the collective phylai with a khoros constituted from their members, so the fact that tragic (and comic) khoregoi were selected from all the Athenians as such implies that the khoroi they led in some sense also ‘represented’ the wider collective of Athenian • · 171 citizens. Social and biological thinking in the age of Aristotle saw a connection between the breaking of the voice and the commencement of sexual activity in the young, a fact which at first sight adds weight to Winkler’s suggestion that the "tragoidoi’ — in the sense of ‘those whose voices are breaking’ — were ephebes, men who were on the threshhold of adult, and sexual, life.122 The voices of those who pursue aphrodisia 78

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‘change to those of men, while for those who abstain the opposite happens’. And the voice stays the same for much longer and is only subject to a gradual transformation ‘if they forcibly keep away from sex by special practices, like some of those who are seriously engaged in khoreia (Hist. An. 581a). The dissonance of a breaking voice is precisely the sort of thing which choral trainers will have wanted to avoid — to the extent, as this fascinating evidence makes clear, of having made sexual abstinence an element in their training régime. It is hard to envisage the conditions under which one of the most undesirable vocal phenomena that experts sought most to suppress among their trainees should have given its name to the performers of the most serious and artistically sophisticated of choral performances.123 We know that khoreutai at the Dionysia were exempt from military service during the period of their training and performance. If any khoreutai sought after by a kho­ regos appeared on the phyletic lists of those due to serve on campaign, the khoregos (or perhaps the khoreutai themselves) had to apply to the relevant authorities to have them released from this obligation.124 Such a rule brings with it the implication that these khoros-members were fully adult citizens; ephebes would not normally be called upon for regular military service. The passages referring to this exemption do not make explicit mention of dramatic khoroi: one is certainly concerned with dithyramb (Dem. 21.15 and Σ), while another speaks of ‘being in a khoros at the Dionysia’ (Dem. 39.16-17). The latter more generalising expression might lead one to assume, however, that membership of Dionysian khoroi in general (drama included) was nor­ mally felt to be the business of adult Athenian citizens; that certainly is also the impli­ cation of the rules governing the ‘civic purity’ of these khoroi.125 There is some tantalisingly fragmentary epigraphic evidence from Ikarion which shows that, by as early as the middle of the fifth century, the men of Ikarion were making and recording detailed provisions concerning the manner of appointment and the duties of the tragic khoregoi at their deme Dionysia.126 It is dangerous to make deductions concerning practice in the city on the basis of (highly fragmentary) indi­ cations of practice in (only one of) the largely autonomous demes, although parallels between central and local arrangements are in themselves likely. In any case, Ikarion’s special and ancient mythic associations with Dionysos give this evidence particular interest. One clause of this decree requires that two khoregoi of Ikarion ‘enrol their [tr]agoidoi from the . . .’,127 and the inscription breaks off, infuriatingly, before the con­ stituency of these tragic khoroi is specified. The most likely candidates for the group are the demesmen of Ikarion themselves, from whom (along with Athenians resident in Ikarion), the local khoregoi are to be selected.128 However, the process being described here may be more than simply an injunction to recruit these khoroi: the use of the term καταλέγειν may imply an action of enrolment, of official registering (cf. the κατάλογοι of hoplites and cavalry in the polis) as opposed to the action of ‘col­ lection’ or recruitment implied by συλλέγειv used in Antiphon (6.11). As the provi­ sions which immediately follow concern some sort of public oath-taking involving the cult statue and witnessed by the demarkh, this ‘enrolment’ of the tragoidoi of Ikarion may be an official, public ‘registering’ of those about to serve in the god’s khoroi rather than the practical act of recruiting them, although the latter can obvi­ ously only follow on from the former. Of the little else that is recoverable concern­ ing these tragic khoroi, the number fifteen mentioned may well refer to the number

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of khoreutai to be in each khoros, a number familiar from the urban context. Unfortunately, it seems unreasonable to understand any of the figures mentioned in the decree as a reference to the age of the tragoidoi.129

Civic purity The Athenians excluded foreigners from their city khoroi. They were in no way unusual in doing so, as the link between choral participation and civic or ethnic iden­ tity was virtually universal in Greece. This is all of a part with the dynamics of a fes­ tival which in its structures, as in its poetic productions, was firmly centred on questions of Athenian identity. The place of the non-Athenian was carefully delim­ ited at this festival, for all that it could be presented in certain contexts as an inclu­ sive, status-blurring occasion open to all.130 I shall leave aside for the moment consideration of the broader implications, and concentrate here on what is known of the restrictions as they affected the recruitment of a khoros. We have already seen that khoregoi at the Dionysia were required to be Athenian citizens; and that a ‘concession’ was made for the involvement of metics at the Lenaia. Parallel to these rules govern­ ing Athenian choral leadership were rules governing the civic status of the collectives they led. Dionysian khoreutai were required to be Athenian citizens; Lenaian khoreu­ tai could be foreigners, (which meant, in effect, metics). At what point this protocol hardened into legislation, we cannot say for sure; but the ideological force of such a demand for ‘civic purity’ at the city’s leading festival is clear.131 And in the case of the tragic khoros in particular, these regulations concerning the civic purity of its members stand in a significant tension with the fact that so often the identity of the tragic khoros is defined precisely by its non-civic status, certainly its non-Athenian status: they are foreigners (non-Athenians or non-Greeks), women - especially young women — slaves, old men, even deities. These Athenian citizens regularly take on the identities of those who are doubly, even triply, marginal in terms of their own real-life status. Some sources suggest that the standard formulation was ‘that no foreigner compete’ - μηδέν’ άγωνίζεσθαι ξένον (Dem. 21.56): a negative statement of the exclu­ sion of foreigners (and disfranchised citizens) from competitive performance rather than a positive one of participation by citizens.132 That khoregoi did nonetheless employ foreigners shows the tension between legislative injunction and actual practice indeed, it probably suggests something of the climate in which such a rule was felt to require the formalisation of law. By Demosthenes’ day, a complex procedural mechanism was in operation. This engineered a fine balance between the demand for purity and the dangers of vexa­ tious exploitation by rivalrous khoregoi of the powers to exclude khoreutai.133 Any interested person who thought they saw an alien about to participate in a city khoros could ‘summon’ (καλεΐν, προσκαλέσαι) and ‘inspect’him (σκοττειν, Dem. 21.56—7), presumably asking him to state the name of his father and his deme. To do so the summoner had to pay fifty drakhmas, the rationale being, as Demosthenes glosses it, ‘to ensure that a man who is wearing a crown and serving the god during that day is not accosted or subjected to interference or insolence by anyone for his own reasons’. Despite a clear reference in [Andokides] 4.20 to the democratic ‘voluntary prosecu­ 80

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tor’ (6 p>ouA6|aevos) as the one to whom the initiative for such an inspection was entrusted, Demosthenes himself speaks as though the only figure likely in practice to do so will be a rival khoregos. And that his probable motivation was not to be a dis­ interested concern for the city’s choral culture but rather the goal of his own victory is apparent from Demosthenes’ commentary, and is inherent in the legal procedure itself.134 For this makes the expulsion of a khoreutes an expensive business. If the enquirer was still not satisfied with the responses he received after summoning a kho­ reutes, he could apparently expel him from the khoros altogether, and order him to be seated in the theatre (KaOi^eaOai, Dem. 21.56). But he could do so only by paying the substantial sum of 1,000 drakhmas and arranging for the khoreutes to appear before the Arkhon at a future date (itpoaKaAeaao-Oai, Dem. 21.60). If at that meeting the Arkhon was satisfied of the civic status of the khoreutes, the person who ejected him lost the money to the polis. If the khoreutes turned out to be a foreigner, the same sum was paid over to the prosecutor by the khoregos who had recruited him, and the polis effectively kept the money as a fine levied on the khoregos for introducing the out­ sider. Citizens — at least wealthy ones who could produce 1,000 dr. on the spot in the theatre — stood to profit from protecting the purity of their khoroi. Such evidence as we have implies that these controls were to be activated in the theatre itself, just before the moment of performance. This clearly made of the whole procedure itself something of a (para-)dramatic performance, a contestation of civic identity and personal power before the massed theatrical audience: a performance whose protagonists are the city’s khoregoi, in conflict with one another; and where the central issues of civic identity are dramatised as a concern of the demos that poten­ tially stands in tension with the desires of individual khoregoi for victory and personal pre-eminence.

Training However much he regarded himself an expert in matters of the Muses, a khoregos for an important city khoros will have regularly taken assistance for the practical side of his task, particularly if a busy public life kept him from more direct involvement himself. In a discussion between Sokrates and the conservative Nikomakhides in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (3.4), Sokrates lavishes ironic praise on one Antisthenes for his ability to deploy his skills at money-making, fired by his love of victory, to the ends of supplying crucial civic needs, particularly in the military realm: ‘and when­ ever he has been a khoregos, you see, he has been victorious with all his khoroi’ (3.4.3). In the face of Nikomakhides’ objection that Antisthenes has no personal experience whatever of military matters, and that there is no analogy between being a leader of a khoros and a leader of an army, Sokrates goes on to explain that Antisthenes’ skills lie in ‘being able to fmd the most powerful exponents’ in singing and the training of khoroi (3.4.4). His skills at ‘collecting money’ (χρήματα συλλέγειν, 3.4.1) can be turned to the ends of ‘collecting khoroi’. Antisthenes is branded by Nikomakhides as a ‘trader’ (έμπορος) with no real experience (έμπειρος) in cultural and military lead­ ership. Nikomakhides’ attitude reflects a certain strand of élite disaffection with the perceived damage to social relations and traditions that comes from those whose 81

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position is based on mercantile success - who have money but no breeding. And it further demonstrates that khoreia was one sphere of leadership which, even in the later fourth century, could be claimed as properly the preserve of an élite of birth, educa­ tion and wealth, even if that claim was made in the face of manifest challenges in practice. For all Nikomakhides’ horrified surprise at the power of money to achieve choral victory for a man who knows nothing about khoroi, Athenian khoregoi had doubtless long since been employing the services of those acknowledged experts who devoted their lives to the training and preparation of khoroi. The assistance khoregoi ‘bought’ in this way will have been of two principal kinds: that of men who were choral ‘pro­ fessionals’, probably not composers of music, poetry or dance themselves, but skilled in their execution and in the difficult business of forging good order, discipline and the much sought-after ‘grace’ of choral eukosmia.135 And then there is a range of requirements which are not part of the khoros’ strictly ‘musical’ instruction: from the demands of a specialised diet which was thought to improve the physical, and in par­ ticular the vocal, condition of khoreutai, to the provision of robes and gold crowns to wear in performance. The speaker of Antiphon 6 appointed no fewer than four such men to ‘oversee’ (έπιμελεΐσΟαι, §12) the needs of his Thargelian khoros. One of these — Philippos — was given particular responsibility for financial matters. It was his task ‘to buy and spend whatever the poet or any of these other men told him’ (§13). The description of two of the others is especially interesting: ‘Ameinias of the phyle Erekhtheis, whom his phyletai themselves voted to put in charge of assembling and overseeing the phyle on every occasion (δν αύτοί οί φυλέται έψηφίσαντο συλλέγειν καί έπιμελεϊσθαι τής φυλής έκάστοτε), thinking him the best man for the job, and another fellow of the phyle Kekropis, who always used to assemble this phyle’ (δσπερ έκάστοτε εϊωθεν ταύτην τήν φυλήν συλλέγειν, §13).136 These two were clearly chosen for their expe­ rience with choral organisation at the phyletic level, having held elected offices in their phylai concerned with the business of recruiting and overseeing their khoroi. It was no doubt a resourceful move on the part of this khoregos to employ men to the ends of his own success who had gained experience of phyletic organisation and khoreia in part through public office. These were probably the same epimeletai whose responsibilities we hear of in connection with the appointment of phyletic khoregoi and who seem to have had general charge of the phyle’s funds - indeed, to have been their chief officers. It seems likely that Ameinias at least, a member of the speaker’s own phyle, had been a phyletic epimeletes, while the man from Kekropis137 may have had a lesser duty, perhaps subordinate to an epimeletes, relating to the assembling of his phyle for collective events - an important and difficult business no doubt, given the geographical spread of the phylai.138 Even though the khoregos suggests that he employed these men after he had already recruited the khoros himself, and so implies that they had not assisted him, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that these two in particular had been chosen for the help they might give in identifying and helping to secure the participation of the best singers of the two phylai. Such assistance in gathering a full complement of khoreutai may have been especially necessary for khoroi which were fifty strong. The smaller size of dramatic khoroi may have made the task of their khoregoi less forbidding — although in their case, it should be remembered, the three tragic and the five comic khoregoi 82

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will have been competing against one another for the services of citizen-singers in a way that phyletic khoregoi were not. The smaller size of the khoros may also have tended to make the relation between it and its khoregos a more intimate one. Among the physical memorials to Athenian choral activity which survive, very few indeed actually record the personal names of the khoreutai — and two which do are two of the extremely rare memorials for tragic performance.139 There is some limited evi­ dence to suggest that a tragic khoregos may have recruited his khoros from among the members of his local deme — one known khoregos at least, Sokrates of Anagyrous, appears to have adopted this practice with the air of old-fashioned local patronage. But it is impossible to generalise from such material.140 That recruiting a khoros was recognised as potentially a difficult business is evident from the fact that khoregoi were given special powers by the polis to assist them. It seems that the problems lay with reluctant khoreutai, or more especially, with parents who were reluctant to have their sons taken away for an extended period in the care of another. The authority of the kyrios over his child was potentially threatened by the khoregos. A khoregos could impose certain fines or levy distraint by force.141 Presumably the fines were for those who flatly refused to attend or to send their sons to his khoros. They should also be seen symbolically as the city’s statement concern­ ing the importance of willing participation in its khoroi, of the need to put the inter­ ests of the wider collective above those of the oikos. While the levying of distraint represents an alternative to the fine, the seizure of property of a value equal to the fine; or else a security taken from those who promised to co-operate in the future to ensure their good faith.142 In any case, the extraordinary conferral of such powers on men who were not civic officials is another indication of the great importance which the Athenians attached to the performance of their khoroi. And since they were not in fact elected officials, the powers khoregoi were given were not covered by the con­ trols normally in place on those who wielded them.143 As for the specialised choral expertise that a khoregos could ‘buy in’ to supplement and support the activity of his poet, it seems to have been regular to employ a ‘deputy’, known as a hypodidaskalos.144 In the early days, the poet was the trainer of his khoros, for which he had composed not only the words but also the music and dance-steps. He was also the ‘trainer’ of the actors — indeed, he often took on the rôle of first actor himself. Phrynikhos was remembered for the complexity and innova­ tiveness of his dance-steps, and the ‘old poets’ in general were known as ‘dancers’ not only because of the prominent rôle of dance in early drama, but also because they ‘taught anyone who wanted to to dance’ (Athen. 1.22a).145 It is a fairly safe assump­ tion that dramatic poets tended on the whole throughout the classical period to ‘teach’ their khoroi directly in this way, although the help of an ‘under-teacher’ (hypodidaskalos) was doubtless also often recruited. Euripides is also associated with the per­ sonal instruction of his khoroi in the subtleties of musical innovation.146 The hypodidaskalos must have been employed by a khoregos after he had been allot­ ted to his poet, for as the poet’s ‘deputy’ it was crucial that the two be able to work together harmoniously. It is important to stress that, unlike the didaskalos, the hypodi­ daskalos was in the pay of the khoregos, and so in a significantly different relationship to him. This was an area in which the purchasing-power of a wealthy khoregos could make a significant impact. The importance of such a deputy is highlighted by Demosthenes’ experience in his unhappy khoregia for dithyramb at the Dionysia.

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Whatever the truth of his claim that his (unnamed) didaskalos was ‘corrupted’ by Meidias Demosthenes evidently lost his poet’s full support for some reason, and the image he paints of a poet deliberately sabotaging ‘from within’ a phyle’s chances at choral victory is fascinating, even if the truth of the matter cannot be wrested from Demosthenes’ representation. Two further points are worth making here: Demosthenes appears not to have enlisted the help of a hypodidaskalos. For surely he would have mentioned him at this point if he had existed. And it is the auletes who stepped into the breach caused by the poet’s treachery and undertook the tasks of the trainer, presumably continuing to use the disaffected poet’s material. Secondly, the circumstances of this khoregia illus­ trate forcefully the degree of potential ‘independence’ of a poet from his khoregos. Since they were allotted to one another impartially, and since poets were remuner­ ated by the polis rather than their khoregos, there was always a potential for such a rift to emerge. One might recall that since the vast majority of dithyrambists were non­ Athenians, they did not have the motivation of civic or phyletic loyalties to tie them to their task. A hypodidsakalos then, as well as being a practical assistant to the poet, might have served as the "khoregos’ man’ in the khoregeion. It may have fallen to the hypodidaskalos rather than the poet-trainer himself to oversee the more physical side of choral training, and to institute a régime for the khoros that included a special diet and perhaps sexual abstinence in order to achieve the desired physical, and especially vocal, condition. We know little about what was clearly a highly developed feature of training in the competitive world of choral per­ formance, but the sources reveal a suggestive paradox: on the one hand, life in the khoregeion is presented as one of considerable luxury for the khoreutai, in particular dietary luxury. Yet training is also associated with a degree of asceticism; fasting was certainly practised. The Athenian of Plato’s Laws talks familiarly of‘those khoroi com­ peting for victory whose members are forced to sing without food and go lean when training their voices’ (665e). And it appears to have been believed by some that the voice was harmed when it was exercised vigorously after the taking of food: so khoroi ‘perform their exercises at daybreak and fasting’.147 The same tradition held that drink causes the voice to break, and so must be kept from khoreutai. But thinking on the usefulness of alcohol may have diverged.148 This work on the body and voice demanded a special diet, and evidently some elaborate preparations could be involved. A ‘drug’ (pharmakon) administered to a boy khoreutes to improve his voice which turned out to be lethal is probably an example of a widespread practice of trying all manner of techniques to improve vocal quality. As for the paradox of largesse and fasting, these may represent divergent schools of thought. But we should probably understand the claims of luxury in the khoregeion to refer to the rewards of victory, the lavish feasting of a winning team by its khoregos; and, perhaps more generally, to reflect a popular view of what life in the house or at least under the care of a member of the élite is like. Unfortunately we can say little with confidence about the particular dynamics of training in a khoregeion for drama. Did the actors and khoros work together for the entire period? Or did the khoros, as one might expect, given the difference and demands of its medium, have special and separate collective training for its fully choral parts, and was it united with the actors at a later stage in the proceedings? If so, did the actors ever train in a place separate from the khoros? I would stress the way in

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which, under the khoregic system, a conceptual distinction was maintained between the spheres of the actors and khoros, and it may be that there also remained a certain separation in practical terms between the two constituent elements of drama. But any such separation will have been limited by the overriding objective of success.149 Two major issues for our focus on the practicalities of dramatic khoregia persist: the rôle of the polis, in the person of the Arkhon, in assigning actors to poets and their khoregoi; and the question as to what the responsibilities of the khoregos were, if any, with regard to the actors. As for the first issue, it is crucial to identify major vari­ ations across time in the art and organisation of actors which radically affected the relations between actors, polis, poets and khoregoi.150 In the earliest period, the tragic poet regularly served as his own first actor, and in a gradual process of differentiation, the rôle of the actor split off from that of the poet. A period followed during which poets seem to have worked in association with particular actors.151 Under these arrangements, as in the earlier time, khoregoi will presumably have been associated with the actors who came with (and were) their poet. But, as I have pointed out, the direct links between khoregoi and actors seem in any case to have been quite weak. At the same time, probably around the first third of the fifth century, the three protag­ onists for tragedy at the Dionysia were connected by the use of the lot to the com­ peting poets. 152 The strong professional and personal ties that had existed between particular poets and actors — ties sometimes founded on familial relations — must have been to some extent undermined by this development. As the craft became increasingly independent, and as the skills of famous actors came to have a marked impact on the award of the prize, it was evidently seen to be desirable, because more equitable, to distribute the talents of the three protagonists chosen to perform at the festival across the three teams of competitors, so that each acted in one of the three tragedies presented by each poet and khoregos.155 One needs to visualise the practical consequences of such an arrangement: the protagonists must have divided their time training in the three different khoregeia of the poets in com­ petition. Under these circumstances, one might imagine the bonds between poets — along with their khoregoi — and actors to have been further weakened, given that the actor was working towards the goal of his own victory, an endeavour which will have in part at least cut across the ambitions of poets and khoregoi. An additional effect may have been to reinforce the sense of group solidarity on the part of the khoros. The early stage of these developments is most clearly marked by the institution of the prize for acting, which as Slater has put it, ‘means that acting is now concep­ tually separate from drama. Actors have an ontology in and for themselves. Standards exist by which one actor’s performance can be judged superior to another’s.’154 The polis, almost certainly through the Arkhon, took charge of selecting and allotting the actors to poets.155 It seems that each poet received one actor only in this way (the pro­ tagonist) , while the second, third and any other actors were secondarily recruited by the protagonist himself.156 How the Arkhon chose these three protagonists is quite unknown, except that we are told that the victor in the actors’ competition was immediately preselected by virtue of his victory for the competition in the following year: as ever, success will in general have tended to breed success.157 Such control by the polis over the selection and allocation of the protagonists of tragic drama implies that they are likely to have been, from this time if not earlier, remunerated by the polis. A character in a comedy of Strattis (active c. 419—375) complains of someone

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having ‘murdered Euripides’ cleverest drama, the Orestes, by hiring Hegelokhos, the son of Artichoke [?], to play the first part’.158 This reference (albeit in a comic frag­ ment) to the hiring of the protagonist implies that the actors of drama had an eco­ nomic relationship with the polis, not the khoregos. At some point in the fourth century, prizes in themselves became an important part of actors’ remuneration.159 But just what the nature of the relation between khoregos and actors was it is partic­ ularly difficult to say, and no doubt conditions changed radically over the classical period. This is a grey area, produced by a combination of our ignorance and, in all probability, a certain flexibility of practice. It would be altogether in keeping with all else we know of the khoregia if it was left largely to the khoregos to choose how far to extend his provision into the sphere of the actors, with which he may not ‘officially’ have been obliged to concern himself at all. Any time spent by actors in the khoregeion will surely have seen them enjoy the largesse of its khoregos.

Materials of performance The principal material component supplied by a khoregos for the relatively brief moment of the performance itself was the costumes and, in the case of drama, the masks of his khoreutai.160 For the fifty members of a dithyrambic khoros, who seem never to have worn masks, stephanoi of ivy were an additional material accoutrement. Even so simple an item had scope for symbolic and economic elaboration at the great civic event: Demosthenes had a set of fifty manufactured from gold.161 As far as tragedy and comedy are concerned, variation and innovation seem to be the key­ notes, although any discussion of dramatic costuming in the classical period is beset by great problems of evidence and interpretation.162 The needs of choral costuming for drama could range from the relatively naturalistic, ‘real-life’ costuming of figures like the old men of Sophokles’ Oidipous Tyrannos to the outlandish Okeanids of Aiskhylos, or the Danaids in his Suppliant Women, ‘a gathering splendid in robes and headdresses | such as no Argive wears, or any woman of Greece’ (234—7). Xenokles of Aphidna, in whose hands lay the khoregia of the Oresteia, had to provide not only the costumes of the old men of Argos, of the eastern slave women of the Khoephoroi and the terrifying sable of the Erinyes, but presumably also a set of scarlet cloaks for the symbolic change of attitude and status of the latter; and, further, whatever the Areopagites and the escorts wore in the final scenes of the trilogy. Comic khoroi seem to have been potentially even more visually innovative and ambitious, ranging through the representation of a wide array of diverse theriomorphs, to a khoros of dead poets (?Kratinos Arkhilokhoi, Telekleides Hesiodoi), the cities of the empire (Eupolis Poleis), the demes of Attike (Eupolis Demoi) and the ‘economic’ rags of mystic Initiates (Frogs 405).163 The khoregos' special association with this dominant visual element of drama is all of a part with the highly visual and performative quality of his own appearance before the public in the theatre in special robes of his own, ‘leading his khoros'. A khoregia will thus have brought the khoregos or his deputies into contact with a number of craftsmen. There is the skeuopoios or maskmaker. He may have also been the person who manufactured special theatrical clothing and other properties.164 86

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Perhaps, as in Demosthenes’ case, a goldsmith for crowns, and even for gold-weave fabrics, will have been consulted. A less zealous khoregos could, we are told, visit the himatiomisthotes and hire second-hand costumes from him:165 even the scanty evidence at our disposal reveals the considerable range open to a khoregos to demonstrate his munificence or otherwise. How rigorously observed was the convention that the dramatic khoregos con­ cerned himself only with the material needs of the khoros? Even if he did not, or was not expected to, provide the elaborate dress of the actors, what of the various ‘extras’ and the scenic props that appear to have been part of the necessary theatrical equip­ ment over all its history?166 It is surely safe to assume that in practice the zeal for victory that animated the khoregos will have led to an expansion beyond the strictly ‘choral’ realm on his part: this fact in itself is probably part of the explanation for the linguistic development of the term xopTjyEiv from ‘lead / train / provide a khoros" to ‘provide [anything] ’.167 The most likely cases for provision additional to the needs of his khoros in per­ formance are those ‘extras’ (especially mute parts) strictly outside the troupe of‘three’, like the Areopagites in the Eumenides, or Violence in the Prometheus. The use of the term Trapaxopf)yT||Jio( for such cases has no classical credentials.168 In such cases, the source for the provision of these extras is entirely a matter of speculation. Strictly choral extras (like the additional khoros of Hippolytos’ companions in Euripides’ Hippolytos or the frog khoros in Frogs), and perhaps too ‘quasi-choral’ extras like the group of (silent) Areopagites, may naturally have fallen to the provider of the princi­ pal collective group.169 The petulant demands made on the fourth-century khoregos Melanthios by an actor playing the part of a queen in a new tragedy, who insisted on being given a large number of richly-adorned female attendants before going on stage (Plu. Phok. 19.2—3), are far from cast-iron evidence for classical practice, and the whole story has something of the air of an ad hoc moralising fabrication (how could a khoregos be expected to produce a crowd of extras on the spot in the theatre?). The issue of theatrical properties and scenic materials is even more obscure. The physical structures of the theatre itself, as of the adjacent sanctuary of Dionysos, belonged to the polis as such (or, perhaps more accurately, to the god himself), and so came under the care of its various agents and officials. Concerning the appearance of the skene in the fifth century we are almost completely ignorant; and opinions differ wildly as to the degree of elaboration and variation in the available resources of skene and other stage properties.170 The polis itself may have taken some responsibility for the provision of at least the minimal necessities. Prior to the period in which a per­ manent theatre, with a stone skene, was constructed, such scenic matter as was avail­ able will probably have been in the form of temporary wooden screens. On these the art of scene-painting (crKTjvoypoicpia) may have come into being.171 Although the skene and its decoration are part of the spatial world of the actor rather than of the khoros, the construction of these and the expense of their decoration, as of other stage properties, may also have fallen to the khoregos, whose duties Aristotle associates with the production of ‘the spectacular’.172 It is impossible to determine the likely cost of the materials provided by a khore­ gos, and the attempt is in any case somewhat misdirected. The dress of khoreutai was almost certainly the single most important item for performance, but how can we possibly decide what percentage of the large, round figures cited in courts by

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khoregoi for their expenditures went on durable materials, how much on the support and pay of the khoros for the long period of training? The very ‘roundness’ of these figures might give some cause for suspicion; but I suspect that any vagueness or pos­ sible ‘rounding off (or ‘up’) of sums here is due to the fact that a khoregos, unlike an auditor of public accounts, would not want to be seen to practise ‘nice calculation’, a vice of the ‘paltry’ man (άκριβολογία, Aristot. N.E. H22b9). One might nonethe­ less speculate as to how, for instance, the khoregos who spent 3,000 drakhmas on tragedy in 410 (Lys. 21.1) might, if pushed for further details, have accounted for the sum. But we can do little more than point out that a poor man’s tunic (έξωμίς) in the Athens of Sokrates may have cost about ten drakhmas, while at the other end of the vestimentary scale, the kind of trailing purple robe (πορφύρα) worn by Alkibiades as khoregos would have cost some thirty times as much.173 A more meaningful com­ parison is one which places these figures on broader horizons of expenditure. One might, for instance, compare the sum of 3,000 dr. with the item of private expendi­ ture universally regarded in the ancient Greek world as the supreme token of great personal wealth and élite pretensions, the thoroughbred racehorse. One of these might cost around 1,200 dr. in the fourth century — still somewhat less than half the amount spent on a few hours of tragedy in 410. Even a house in ‘expensive’ Athens could be bought for much less than this man outlayed; and he might have purchased five or six skilled slaves for the same sum.174 Relevant comparando for individual lei­ tourgical expenditure are, rather, items of a collective character — on the scale, for instance, of the payments of cash tribute exacted from states of the empire. Many small cities were required to contribute annually to the grand imperial project under Athena’s firm guidance less than a single khoregos spent of his own wealth for a set of tragedies;175 the existence of the former to a significant degree made possible the outlay of the latter. One factor which must have substantially affected the sum outlayed on a khore­ gia will have been the erection of a victory-monument. The perpetuation of the glory of victory was doubtless an expensive business. Some of the more elaborate of these monuments were structures of significant scale and architectural and artistic complex­ ity, and would in themselves have been costly private works, even in a society with relatively low labour costs.176 It seems certain, however, that the 3,000 dr. spent on the tragic khoregia in question did not include any outlay on a victory-monument; for victories rarely passed unmentioned in these circles. One might tentatively proceed by comparing the sums spent on the various khoregiai for which we have figures cited and establishing a sense of the relative ‘unit costs’ which these reveal - the amounts that, at least notionally, each member of the different kinds of khoros had outlayed on his preparation and performance. Some interesting results emerge. As a crucial preliminary, however, some of the very pow­ erful limitations of this evidence should be signalled: in the first place, in the fifth century alone there will have been some ten thousand agonistic leitourgiai performed in Athens. We have figures cited for about ten. And the period from which these all derive is a very brief one, covering roughly the two decades from 410 to c. 390. These were years of more than usual social and economic turbulence in the turbulent history of classical Athens. They included the continuing effects of the massive defeat in Sicily, the aftermath of one oligarchic coup d’état and the entire bloody history of another, as well as the closing agonies of the most protracted and exacerbating war

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fought between Greek states. The treasury was exhausted by the end of 411; the supply-post of Euboia was lost, and domestic wealth had been further squeezed by the Spartan occupation of Dekeleia. It would be dangerous to regard these as exem­ plary and normative figures on which to base an economic profile of the classical kho­ regia. One might naturally suppose that they would be depressed in relation to those from more prosperous years. But such assumptions sometimes turn out to be mis­ guided.177 On top of considerations of this order there are the problems inherent in dealing with texts principally designed to promote flattering self-portraits of their lei­ tourgical speakers. Whether any of these sums cited in court by men keen to dem­ onstrate their civic virtue would or could be exposed to closer scrutiny by members of their audience is unclear.178 Exaggeration remains a possibililty. But the most important point is that the very notion of normative sums does not capture the essen­ tial flexibility of a system in which leitourgical drakhmas can be open to construal as the mark of an upright defender of democracy or as the drug with which the demos is numbed before being subverted.179 A related point is the fact that, of the ten figures we have for choral agonistic lei­ tourgiai, nine come from the mouth of a single man, the speaker of Lysias 21. A brief consideration of the politics of the period during which he spent so lavishly will throw some light on the far from uneventful circumstances in which he ‘served the people’; and thus on this anonymous, extremely wealthy young leitourgical extrovert himself, who in the space of less than eight years outlayed the vast sum of nearly two and a half taiants on the choral culture of Athens.180 By his own account (§5), this represents more than four times what he might have been expected to spend accord­ ing to the letter of the law. Khoregoi had reasons for exceeding such limits.

The politics of khoregic extravagance The speaker was twenty-six, having attained his majority in 411. He thus reached adulthood in the year of the oligarchic revolution of the Four Hundred. He opens his massive list of leitourgical performance with the statement that, following his dok­ imasia in the Arkhonship of Theopompos, he served as khoregos for tragedy and spent 3,000 dr. — an interesting choice for the first appearance of the young man on the public stage (§i).181 But already an ambiguity arises through the apparently simple surface of this account. For while he links his office as tragic khoregos closely with the Arkhonship of Theopompos, the first two months of the civic year 411/410 were in fact under the Arkhonship of Mnasilokhos, the oligarchs’ man and almost certainly one of the Thirty seven years later.182 Theopompos was the Arkhon appointed after the restoration of democracy, and he came to be regarded as the ‘official’ Arkhon of 411/410, but Mnasilokhos had held office for its first two months. So it is almost certain that when our speaker was appointed tragic khoregos, Mnasilokhos was in charge of the Dionysia.183 What this implies with regard to our speaker’s sympathies towards the régime we cannot say. Mnasilokhos at least must have regarded the young man a suitable leader of the city’s primary symbolic form in these turbulent days. Had he launched a career with a lavish tragic khoregia under the expectation that his per­ formance would in some sense welcome in the new order? And did he then go on

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to spend with an even freer hand as events took a different turn and the counter­ movement for democracy gathered ground? He was not, in the outcome, blessed with victory. Only two months later, in the same year, the speaker won a victory with men’s dithyramb at the Thargelia, on which he spent 2,000 dr. Two khoregiai in the same year (and on top of the trierarkhid) speak for an urgent desire to amass time before the people and indicate, as does the rest of his leitourgical catalogue, that he completely relinquished the exemptions available to him. He must have volunteered for this Thargelian office when Athens was under the Four Hundred. Whether the festival itself was held under the Five Thousand or under the restored democracy we cannot be sure. At a space of only two more months, at the start of 410/409, there followed a khoregia for pyrrhikhe at the Great Panathenaia, with 800 dr. spent: three major khore­ giai in the first half-year in which this man was eligible to perform. He is taking every opportunity available to put himself before the city as a generous provider for the col­ lective performances of his fellow-citizens and the ritual wellbeing of the city. With the restoration of democracy, there were improvements in Athens’ economic condi­ tion. The speaker was khoregos yet again at the next Great Dionysia. This time it was with his phyle? khoros for men’s dithyramb. Perhaps this choice of performance, the ‘democratically’-configured dithyramb, represents something of an act of symbolic identification with the restored régime at a time when reprisals against those who had been implicated in the rule of the Four Hundred were widening in scope. The divi­ siveness that this reaction was still causing in 405 is clear from the choral appeal in the parabasis of the Frogs that the disfranchised should be forgiven.184 His outlay was spec­ tacularly lavish — 5,000 dr., the largest sum reported for a khoregia — and it produced victory for himself and his phyle.185 At the (Lesser) Panathenaia four months later, the speaker spent 300 dr. on a kyklios khoros. The relatively small scale of the figure (although it is, we should recall, as much as a skilled workman might have earned in a year186), is probably to be explained principally by the fact that dithyramb was not a high-profile performance­ category at the Panathenaia. It is also quite likely to have had rather fewer than the fifty khoreutai known for the Dionysia. If, as seems likely, the speaker’s list is complete and chronologically organised, there follows a gap of some four years in his performance of agonistic leitourgiai, but he is careful to explain it by reference to his continuous and apparently active service as a trierarkh for seven years, ‘facing daily peril in your service abroad’ (§3). This period saw the defeat of the fleet at Notion in 406, followed by the withdrawal of Alkibiades and the subsequent victory at Arginousai by a fleet extraordinarily manned by metics and slaves promised their freedom. But the victory was overshadowed by its terrible sequel. By late 405, there was little food and no unity in the city. In the following year the Thirty Tyrants were in charge. The cycle of festival competitions, and this man’s rôle in their support, show little or no sign of having been seriously affected by these major upheavals. After his return from the seas, probably from the disaster of Aigospotamoi (cf. §§ 9—10), the speaker immediately undertook a gymnasiarkhia for the festival of Prometheus in 405, and spent 1,200 dr. on training his team. This strikes one as a substantial sum, but the event was an important one which may have involved some forty runners, and our ignor-

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ance of the Promethia should not lead us to underrate its significance.187 The fact that generous sums continued to be outlayed during this of all periods of Athenian history demonstrates the overriding importance attached to the conduct of their festivals. The speaker was also victorious here and, although he makes no mention of a dedi­ cation, gymnasiarkhs certainly did erect victory-monuments; and victory may have brought with it other occasions for outlay, such as a commission of special ceramic with which to celebrate, as the phyle Antiokhis evidently did in the late fifth century with at least one beautiful red-figure krater representing their victory, probably won at the Promethia.188 One cannot be dogmatic about the necessary ideological implications of the fact of a leitourgist’s participation at a festival held under a certain régime. To some extent one needs to recognise that there was always a certain distance between festival life and politics in the narrow sense, although the two were also interconnected. And ser­ vices which were always officially devoted to the demos had a fundamental demotic legitimation. Festivals under an oligarchic régime may have continued to be held in the name of the demos as a whole, even when the demos had had its powers restricted. It is important too to recognise that one’s actions under such circumstances could be open to different constructions, particularly after the fact. As much is shown by the way in which our speaker recounts this list that also traces a personal history of social prominence across seven of the most politically unstable years of Athens’ history within the context of a democratic trial in which his property and citizenship are at stake. As we shall see in later chapters, leitourgical performance was open to sharply conflicting political interpretations, though usually under rather less extreme histor­ ical circumstances. Yet in the following sentence, a silence perhaps argues for a degree of pointed avoidance on the speaker’s part that cannot be unrelated to his position­ ing, physically and (therefore) politically, during the rule of the Thirty. After mentioning his gymnasiarkhia he continues (§4): ‘Then, later, I was appointed as khoregos for a boys’ khoros and spent more than fifteen mnai.’ There is a marked vagueness in his use of ‘later’ here, in an account which has hitherto given precise Arkhon-dates, and which will resume this practice in the very next sentence. The absence of a reference to the festival is not unique, but is in this instance perhaps not fortuitous.189 His avoidance of precision at this point tips the balance in favour of a date under the Arkhonship of Pythodoros - that is, at the Dionysia or Thargelia of 403.190 And if he had indeed been khoregos for either of these festivals, he must have remained in the oligarchic city at a time when armed resistance centred on Thrasyboulos at Phyle was gaining ground, and when the response of the ‘tyrants’ saw the disarming, expulsion and expropriation of the wealth of all those not on their list of a political élite of three thousand. This action laid the basis for the sharp divi­ sion between the two parties of ‘city people’ and ‘Peiraieus people’, a division of Athens along geographical as well as ideological lines. There are no signs that the speaker suffered under the Thirty, who in 404 attacked and killed many wealthy cit­ izens - and these the men they regarded as most likely to offer opposition to their plans and to be able to carry large numbers of supporters: in crude terms, rich demo­ crats and moderates. The speaker shows no signs of having been touched by the property­ confiscations and sales enforced by the oligarchs. His victorious khoregia with comedy for the poet Kephisodotos191 at the Dionysia of 402, in the Arkhonship of Eukleides,

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was followed by another with a khoros of pyrrhikhistai at the Lesser Panathenaia (also in 402?) for 700 dr., and there follows a selection of other agonistic leitourgiai which are less precisely placed chronologically, but probably postdate those so far cited.192 If he was in fact in sympathy with the oligarchs and remained in the city he evidently was not so prominent as to attract reprisals after the restoration of democracy (cf. §18). The very case for which he is on trial may be related (if obliquely, given the terms of the amnesty) to the events of those years and his alleged affiliations, and if so, the fact that he can cite khoregiai very possibly performed under the Thirty is a testimony indeed to their ‘openness to interpretation’. The figure for his comic expenditure - 1,600 dr. - is our only one attested for the genre, and bears fruitful comparison with the 3,000 dr. for (non-victorious?) tragedy and 5,000 dr. for victorious dithyramb from the same period. It is the figure of a victorious khoregia, and one celebrated by the dedication of the ‘equipment’ (συν τήι τής σκευής αναθέσει), as his dithyrambic victory had been celebrated by the ded­ ication of the prize tripod. These figures clearly do not reflect a minimal discharge of khoregic duty, but they need not necessarily be wildly unrepresentative of the kinds of sums outlayed. This was, after all, an area in which lavishness was proclaimed as normative. What was exceptional about this man’s career is the regularity with which he continued to volunteer as khoregos over successive years, rather than the individual amounts he spent. Some confirmation for this conclusion is to be had from the other extant figure cited for actual khoregiai. In Lysias 19 the Aristophanes whose property is at issue is said to have served twice as tragic khoregos, once on his own account, once on his father’s, and it emerges that these two tragic khoregiai, which must have taken place c. 394-389, had 5,000 dr. spent on them (§§29, 42). There is no indication of festival, and no mention of victory, which probably implies that there was none. An average of 2,500 dr. for each is not so far removed from the 3,000 dr. of the speaker of Lysias 21’s tragic khoregia in 410 as to demand explanation beyond the scope of differential philotimia. And it may be that one or both of these was at the Lenaia, for which a lower outlay on tragedy might be expected. Any discussion of khoregic expenditure by individuals needs to emphasise the degree to which the principal determinant of outlay was a ‘timological’ one — a cal­ culation, on a complex base of considerations, as to the degree of‘honour’ (τιμή) and ‘gratitude’ (χάρις) that could be derived from an appropriately lavish outlay, calibrated according to a more or less informal but readily recognised hierarchy among the various festivals and among the various performance-categories within them. Thus, the fact that precise cash sums are cited by khoregoi should not lead us to imagine that the services they had performed had been to any extent ‘depersonalised’ by some form of conversion to a monetary sum. The assimilation of leitourgiai to a form of taxation misunderstands the complex and competing motivations that the system sustained. To put it in terms which correspond more closely to classical attitudes to the leitour­ gic system and to the realities of a largely embedded economy, the khoregia was a public service which invited lavish instances of expenditure because of the extensive benefits that a glorious performance could bring its agent. The very notion of a codified system of ‘costs’ of leitourgiai (which appears regularly in the standard histo­ ries) is quite anachronistic in a classical context.193 These are rather sums used in a complex rhetoric of civic expense, not the ‘costs’ of a khoregia. Even on our meagre evidence it is clear that the Great Dionysia exercised a pow-

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erful pressure towards expense on a grand scale, and considerably more so than the Thargelia. These sums support what a scholiast commenting on a speech of Demosthenes (20.28) made explicit: ‘at the Great Dionysia the outlay was larger (sc. than for the Thargelia)’.194 The fact that we have figures for men’s dithyramb spent by the same khoregos in consecutive years at the two festivals is particularly instructive: the Thargelian figure is less than half the Dionysian, which must in some sense imply a comparable ratio of prestige. But one must not lose sight of the fact that great sym­ bolic and economic resources were directed through the leitourgical system into the celebration of festivals below the spectacular pinnacles of the festival iceberg, the Great Dionysia and Panathenaia.

Dithyramb, tragedy, comedy: comparative expenditure In attempting to assess the relative degrees of outlay that the various performance­ categories of the Great Dionysia elicited, writers on the khoregia have tended to restate as fact a claim made by Demosthenes in the Against Meidias (21.156) that ‘no one is unaware’ that the expense of a dithyrambic khoregia is much greater than that for tragedy. But they do so without mentioning the powerful tendentiousness of the orator’s argument. The passage is part of a comparison set up by Demosthenes of his own leitourgical record with that of his hated opponent Meidias. Meidias had been a khoregos for tragedy, Demosthenes for dithyramb. The demos was probably used to hearing figures cited by khoregoi in courts and elsewhere, and so may have had some good experiential basis against which to test Demosthenes’ assertion, but the rhetor­ ical trope of claiming that ‘no one is unaware’ of a certain state of affairs is nonethe­ less in general a sign to be wary of tendentious claims to normativity. It is certain that dithyramb attracted great outlay and was a focus of heightened competition. But on the other hand, the speaker of Lysias 24, an invalid who is defending his right before the Council, on grounds of poverty and disability, to the continued receipt of a state pension, singles out the tragic khoregia as the (hypothetical) leitourgical duty which his poverty prevents him from performing.195 Or rather, he says that, were he called upon to serve as tragic khoregos, and challenged his prosecutor to an antidosis, the latter would prefer to be khoregos ten times rather than submit to the exchange of proper­ ties (24.9). Beneath the hyperbole of this claim and the generally ironical tone of its speaker, there rests the acknowledged assumption that the tragic khoregia can be taken as a paradigm of leitourgical expense on a grand scale, the preserve of the very nar­ rowest economic élite. The actual sums cited by khoregoi might be thought to support the picture painted by Demosthenes. However, to compare the figure of 3,000 dr. for a non-victorious tragic khoregia with 5,000 dr. for a victorious dithyrambic khoregia is not really to compare like with like. A victory-monument could surely have the best part of 2,000 dr. spent on it. But more instructive is the consideration of what one might call ‘unit’ expenditure. Taken as a sum to be distributed over the respective khoreutai, the tragic figure produces a unit expense of 200 dr. per person (assuming, as we must, a fifteen­ man khoros for this period); the dithyrambic, one of 100 dr. per person. And this is to take no account of the fact that this included the cost of the monument: the

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properly comparable figure for the duration of the khoregia itself up to and including the performance will have been somewhat less. It would seem clear on this basis that the tragic khoregia, if not quite as evocative of gross outlay on the quantitative scale of the dithyramb, represented a more intensively lavish case of choral expenditure. The difference may have been felt most sharply from the point of view of the respec­ tive khoreutai, but it will also have coloured the perception of the performance more generally. When the figure for victorious comedy is calculated in this way, we have 66 dr. 4 obols per khoreutes, rather lower than those of both tragedy and dithyramb. However, another method of considering these figures for dramatic khoregiai would be one that assumes a determining importance for the expense of costuming. And if we calculate the unit expenditure for tragedy on this principle, dividing the figure by forty-five rather than fifteen to see what the outlay on individual tragic choral ‘characters’ was, we have a figure of 66 dr. 4 obols each.196 This is exactly the same as the figure for comedy, (which of course remains the same when calculated in this way because there was only one drama offered by each comic poet). The fact that the figures converge in this way does not of course prove the determining role of cos­ tuming in the allocation of funds in a khoregia. But it does offer some confirmation of the reasonable assumption that the large number of choral costumes needed for a tragic trilogy could be a significant factor in the overall expense of a production.197 One should certainly not seek to argue away the fact that in absolute terms, comedy evidently had lower amounts spent on it than its companion and rival per­ formances at the Great Dionysia; but neither should one find in this lower figure evi­ dence for a postulated decline in the late fifth-century comic khoros. On the contrary, it should be stressed that in precisely this period, the khoroi of both comedy and tragedy were receiving very substantial material support through the institution of khoregia; and that they were very probably doing so at a roughly comparable level. An important sociological and ethical point of this difference is brought out by Aristotle when, in illustration of the behaviour of the banausos in the Nikomakhaian Ethics (1 izjaiq—24), he describes him as the type who, when khoregos for comedy, ‘brings on purple in the paro dos, like the Megarians’. Sifakis is surely right in arguing that this ‘purple’ is that of the (for comedy) excessively lavish costume of the khoros, represent­ ing a vulgar and inappropriate expenditure characteristic of the banausos (and of the Megarians). It follows that there is a hierarchy at work here according to which comedy ‘should’, in the normative ethical scheme outlined by Aristotle, elicit less expenditure than tragedy.198 For tragedy is the performance most often associated with the regal and costly colour and material of purple. One thinks at once of the ‘path strewn with purple’ (Aga. 910), over which Agamemnon passes to his death, a dense symbol of tragic meaning at the heart of the Agamemnon.199 Purple is the symbolic fabric of tragedy, and is particularly linked to the transgressive regal individual. The identification continues to be made in a comic fragment of the fourth century, Philemon (105 K—A): ‘silverware and purple are suitable for tragedies, not life’.200 Whatever its context may have been, this fragment neatly captures a normative dis­ tinction, between the appropriate use of purple in tragic representation and its inap­ propriateness to ‘ordinary life’ — a distinction that Alkibiades, as khoregos, flagrantly subverted. Tragedy as a performance is symbolically associated with material riches and lavish expenditure - and the symbolic association is sustained at the level of material instantiation by a practice of intensive expenditure on the fabric of tragedy by the super-élite of wealth in Athens.

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One advantage of the fact that the figures we have for khoregic expenditure fall within a fairly narrow time-span is that we can with some legitimacy use them to esti­ mate how much might have been outlayed in overall khoregic expense on a Dionysia of the period. If we assume that the other khoregoi spent somewhere in the region of the amounts preserved in the speech of their colleague, and that those for boys’ dith­ yramb (the only performance for which, strictly speaking, we have no certain Dionysian figure), spent somewhat less than their equivalent for the men’s category, we arrive at a sum not far short of 100,000 dr. for the support by rich individuals of the choral elements alone of the Dionysian agones. This is just short of a massive eight­ een taiants for five days’ choral performance. And it does not include what must have been a very substantial contribution from the polis towards the actors’ needs, the pay of poets, the cost of sacrificial beasts, the upkeep of the theatre and, from some point in the classical period, large-scale théorie distributions.201 When the many other lessprestigious but nonetheless extensively supported choral festivals are included, and when the point is brought home that this system of diverting private wealth to public performance was in place for the best part of two centuries, the truly staggering scale of investment by classical Athens in its choral culture is clear. These figures support the somewhat lurid picture painted by Plutarch of the material excess of Athenian drama in the fifth century, even if Plutarch thereby shows himself to have misunderstood the symbolic and ideological importance of this outlay. He reports the remark of a ‘Lakonian man’ that

the Athenians were making a great mistake in wasting their energies on amusements, that is to say, in lavishing on the theatre what would pay for great fleets and support armies in the field. For, if we reckon up the cost of each tragedy, the Athenian people will be seen to have spent more on pro­ ductions of Bakkhai, Phoinissai, Oidipous and Antigone, and the woes of Medea and Elektra, than they spent in fighting for their supremacy and for their liberty against the barbarians. (Mor. 3qSf-j49a) The comparison is exaggerated but, as Csapo and Slater put it, not wildly so.202 It is telling that among the various genres in performance at Athenian festivals, tragedy is singled out as the symbol of this lavish, almost reckless, expenditure. If its khore­ goi could harness the will and resources to spend such sums on the Dionysia at a time when the city’s coffers were virtually empty, we might surmise that earlier in the century, in a ‘golden age’ buoyed up by the wealth of empire and Laureian silver, the outlay may have been all the more substantial. We should not take the nostal­ gic rhetoric of Isokrates’ fourth-century image of fifth-century restraint and sim­ plicity in the conduct of their city festivals as much more than a characteristic case of historical mythology shaped largely by his contemporary moral and political agenda.203

Before the agones: proagon and procession In addition to the activities which formed the core of their essential duties as the pre­ parers of khoroi, the participation of khoregoi is known or can safely be assumed in a

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number of important events in the calendar of the Dionysia. These are the proagon; the great procession or pompe; and the complex procedures involved in producing a panel or panels of judges for the competitions. The proagon was essentially an event of publicity, display and advertisement.204 As its name implies, it took place before and as a preliminary to the agones of the festi­ val, usually held on the eighth of Elaphebolion, before the ‘official’ start of the festi­ val with the pompe on the 10th.205 Our meagre sources link the proagon with tragedy only, and it may have been an event especially or solely associated with the publicity of the tragic theatre.206 It is certainly the case that no source ever associates the proagon with dithyramb; so this was presumably an occasion on which dramatic khoregoi had an important opportunity for self-display not available to their phyletic colleagues. Tragic poets, along with their associated actors and khoreutai, mounted a platform in the great music-hall adjacent to the theatre, the Odeion built under Periklean lead­ ership, and delivered some kind of address to the public, an account of the works with which they would compete in some six days time.207 The participation of the ‘leaders’ of these khoroi, their khoregoi, at this prime occasion for self-presentation before the public can hardly be doubted, though it is not explicitly attested.208 The proagon looks like a means of advertising the civic identities of the perform­ ers and poets of a genre which, by its nature, tends to conceal these in performance. The Platonic Sokrates depicts Agathon’s address to the masses at the proagon as a dem­ onstration of his poetic sophia, and of his ‘manliness and greatness of mind’. Sokrates’ praise does, of course, have a corrosively ironic quality; it insinuates that the event was an opportunity for a kind of inflated self-promotion of dubious skills before an audience of equally dubious critical powers. It is not simply because this was Agathon’s poetic début that the event has the character of an introduction of the young poet to the civic audience, although that of course is an important factor. It is as much through his own undaunted performance before the crowd at the proagon that Agathon demonstrates these qualities as through the poetic ‘words’ themselves that would be delivered in his plays.209 The proagon thus puts the tragic poet before the people in his own identity, effectively dramatising the poet’s authorship of his work (something which comedy regularly does self-consciously), and his position as the creative and performative centre of the production as its didaskalos. Furthermore, our meagre sources stress that actors and khoreutai appeared at the proagon without costumes or masks; they were simply garlanded (2 Aiskhin. Ktes. 67). This was an occasion for the advertisement also of the civic identities of those who would be performing behind the masks. The proagon publicises the personnel and, as an event, dramatises the place of tragedy and its practitioners within the city. That it was particularly associated with the publicity of the tragic theatre is further demon­ strated by the anecdote which grew up around the death of Euripides and is pre­ served in his Life: when Sophokles heard of his death, he appeared at the subsequent proagon wearing a dark himation, and with his khoros and actors without their tradi­ tional garlands; the demos wept. Whatever its historicity, what is most interesting about this story is the way it confirms an image of the proagon as the occasion where the place of tragedy in the life of the city is actively dramatised. Sophokles — wearing a costume appropriate to the event, and dressing his troupe accordingly - dramatises by this theatrical gesture his respect for his rival and the loss felt at his death; the theat­ rical demos responds both to Sophokles’ performance and, through this shared per96

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fbrmance, integrates the fact of their own collective loss of a master of their theatre.210 Khoregoi certainly were involved in the major religious and social event that initiated the festival proper, the procession or pompe.211 As well as being of fundamental relig­ ious significance — as the activity which transported the sacrificial offerings, animate and inanimate, to the place where they would be dedicated to the god, and which escorted the image of the god himself to the sanctuary — the pompe was an intensely social and ‘theatrical’ event. Xenophon captures this duality when he writes of sug­ gestions to make pompai ‘most pleasing to the gods and the spectators (θεατοί) alike’ (Hipparkh. 3.2).212 Many inhabitants of Attike did not actually process but formed part of a ‘spectatorship’. The fact that citizens may have worn masks when participating in Dionysiac processions underscores this theatrical quality as it demonstrates their abiding affinity with other Dionysiac rituals in which masks were worn.213 The pompe of the classical Dionysia began at the Prytaneion and wound its way around the south-east side of the Akropolis, along the street called ‘Tripods’ lined with the monuments of victorious khoregoi. The statue of Dionysos had been brought from a small temple near the Academy on the road to Eleutherai to the Prytaneion in a preliminary ritual, the eisagoge or ‘leading in’ of the god. The Prytaneion was the sym­ bolic centre of the polis, and the headquarters of the Arkhon who ‘sent’ the pompe. The passage through this substantial stretch of the course of the pompe surely under­ scored a sense of the community’s reliance on its élite to provide the centrepiece of the god’s spectacular worship, the glorious competing khoroi. The procession is clearly charged with socio-political, as well as ritual, significance. Khoregoi were accorded a spatial and structural position within this constitutive ritual that acknowledged as it reproduced their status as leading men of their society, outstanding for their wealth and cultural prowess. And there is little evidence for the suggestion that these men, as the city’s great and good glorying in their position, were subject to the kind of abusive attacks that sometimes surface as an anti-structural tendency in such social rituals.214 The constitution of a pompe for a festival of the city as a whole was in itself a sym­ bolic configuring of society, with individuals and groups of representative status car­ rying objects of charged significance, objects which reflected through the functional microcosm of ritual the place of their bearers in an imaginary ideal of Athenian society. As we have seen, the whole was led by a single Athenian parthenos of aristo­ cratic birth carrying the gold basket that hid the sacrificial knife. The principal beast of dedication, a bull ‘worthy of the god’, was led to the sanctuary of Dionysos by ephebes.215 Others in the formal train included groups representing most segments of Attic society and its extension beyond the seas — metic men and women certainly; Athenian citizens; colonial states who were required to send and carry phalloi for the god;216 even those prisoners who were extraordinarily granted freedom for the dura­ tion of the festival could apparently participate, though hardly in a formal, ‘represen­ tative’ capacity.217 Whether Athenian citizen wives took part in this highly public activity is a matter of debate.218 Khoregoi certainly occupied a privileged position in the pompe. To be themselves an object of spectacle in this way was part of their return for the wealth and efforts they had expended in producing a spectacle. Insofar as there operated something of

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a principle of ‘you are what you carry/wear’ in the pompe — and in Greek the same term, especially cpopsiv, covers the sense of both English verbs — khoregoi were identified by the wealth they wore, their precious clothing. Alkibiades was remem­ bered by later antiquity for having worn a purple robe as he took part in the pompe ‘whenever he was a khoregos', and on his passage to the theatre he was the object of the adoring gaze not only of men but of women too (Athen. 12.534c).219 Alkibiades’ behaviour was not exceptional: even Demosthenes, a man of very much less osten­ tatious habits than he, had paid a goldsmith who was preparing fifty gold garlands and robes for his khoros, to make a set for him to wear as khoregos in procession for Dionysos, a crown of gold and an himation interwoven with gold.220 Precisely what position the khoregoi occupied in the pompe is not known. Perhaps, unlike many of the other participants, their place was not strictly demarcated; but it was surely prominent. It is possible that the pompe saw them literally ‘lead’ through the city, and under its attentive gaze, the khoroi they had trained with such energy: this would nicely reinforce a sense of ‘choral leadership’ that had become increasingly distanced from the practice of close participation, reinvesting it with the symbolic force of such active identification in a spirit we find khoregoi seeking to do elsewhere. By Xenophon’s time ‘the khoroi' at the Dionysia apparently performed a special dance of worship for deities other than Dionysos, the Twelve gods in particular, in the context of this pompe (Hipparkh. 3.2). Whether these khoroi are those that will perform in the coming days or some specially constituted for this end,221 part of the motiva­ tion for their ritual performance for gods other than Dionysos must have been to demonstrate that, despite the extraordinary elaboration of choral worship that had developed for one god, these others had not been forgotten. It was not only Dionysos who enjoyed khoroi.

Judgement One final place where we can identify the significant presence of khoregoi is in the elaborate preparations conducted by the city for the appointment of judges for the Dionysian competitions. While much is obscure concerning the whole process of appointing these judges (even their number is unknown), and in the nature of their duties (whether the same panel sat for all four performance-categories, for instance), it is clear that the business of theatrical krisis was supervised and controlled by the polis with extremely thorough precautions, and that the involvement of khoregoi — men who were themselves under judgement and competing for prizes - was regarded as important to the transparency and fairness of the operation.222 The complex array of controls and procedures set in place by the democratic polis demonstrates just how significant this form of decision-making was felt to be, and how akin the panels of Dionysian judges were to other important decision-making and judicial bodies, with their comparable regulations.223 The formal similarities are to be seen against the broader background of the wide range of occasions for critical viewing and judging fundamental in the formation of the citizen within democratic Athens. Involvement in collective decision-making was perhaps the single most important element characteristic of democratic political practice. Dionysian krisis also 98

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needs to be set in the context of the very traditional belief that what a society valued in the realm of mousike, and the very manner in which it went about determining what it valued, were a crucial index of the cultural and political condition of a com­ munity. In the theoretical discussions of these matters in the philosophers, debate as to the proper manner of musical and theatrical judgement is generally polarised around a mass-elite axis. Questions of political power are never far away from such issues of‘artistic judgement’. Plato’s Athenian Stranger laments the passing of‘an aris­ tocracy in the judgement of music’, which gave way to ‘a base theatrokratia , in which the multitude in the theatre had the effrontery to imagine themselves capable of passing judgement. He goes so far as to assert that the (to his mind) excessive politi­ cal liberty associated with democracy actually followed as an historical consequence upon the lawlessness of this ‘democracy in music’ (Laws 701a).224 The debate as to the proper functions of the theatrical judge thus powerfully illustrates the essentially polit­ ical character of this duty. A particularly interesting and seemingly uncharacteristic opinion from Aristotle sees the philosopher give qualified approval of democracy and its principle of political equality (Politics 1281a—1282b). And he cites the poetic sphere as his example of the superiority of collective judgement: ‘the many are better at judging the works of mousike and of the poets, because different men can judge a different part of the performance, and all of them all of it’. In addition to the grand ethical and social consequences which the philosophers regarded as the stake of proper poetical judgement, the strictly Athenian evidence shows that more diurnal concerns over the commodity of prestige - that of khoregoi and poets in particular - were also responsible for the precautions taken for Dionysian judgement. In the act of adjudication, no distinction was made between the perfor­ mance of the team of khoros, actors and poet and that of their khoregos.225 We cannot even say who was proclaimed formally as the winner in the theatre. Presumably — and the presumption is supported by the language of khoregic inscriptions, which may in part mimic the formal, ‘live’ proclamation — khoregos, poet and, in the case of dithy­ ramb, the phyle and its khoros all received mention.226 A whole armature of democratic personnel and practices was involved in the process of selecting theatrical judges, including the Arkhon, the Prytaneis of the Council, the Treasurers of the Akropolis, repeated use of the lot, and the sanction of the death penalty. Panels of judges who were themselves judged not to have ‘made their decision justly’were punished in the people’s courts (Aiskhin. Ktes. 232). A sep­ arate panel of ten men, representatives of their phylai, was probably chosen for each category; although not organised as a competition along phyletic lines, it seems that tragedy was also judged in this manner.227 The phylai will have at some time before the festival put before the Council a list of names of men for approval as judges (Lys. 4.4), and those accepted were placed in water-jars, sealed by the khoregoi and stored on the Akropolis under protection of the Treasurers (Isok. Trap. 33—4). That khoregoi were involved at this point amply demonstrates a recognition that their interests were most at stake, and a certain degree of responsibility for the probity of the operation. In the theatre itself, a set of judges was summoned by the Arkhon after an allot­ ment had been conducted from the water-jars, presumably before the assembled audi­ ence.228 They probably assumed special front-row seats, and they swore an oath — ‘to give the victory to the one who sang well’, if we can put any trust in a late ancient scholar’s account.229 At this point the picture becomes more obscure. How many of

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the votes cast were used, how a first place was determined, how ties were broken, whether separate ballots were conducted for ranking, all these vital matters are unclear.230 It is at least clear that the ingenuity of the democracy to establish complex procedural mechanisms to overcome technical problems of this kind (and in particu­ lar the threat, which must have been very real, of indecision) was employed in the theatre, for we hear very little of any difficulties experienced in the long years of theatrical performance (as opposed to criticisms of actual judgements). Indeed it may be that the complexity of the system is in part responsible for the confusion in later ancient scholarship over such matters as how many judges served at the Dionysia.231 Perhaps the most convincing interpretation of the procedure at this point argues that of the ten judgements cast a further lottery was conducted to select (probably) five who would determine the final decision. This best explains the reference in a speech of Lysias 4 (§3) to a judge at the Dionysia whose vote was not ‘selected by lot’. The unused ballots could then be drawn upon to break a tie — an arrangement which coheres with the Greek dislike of tied votes. Taken at face value, however, this organ­ isation countenances a quite extraordinary possibility, as a recent discussion has pointed out: that the judgement passed by all ten judges of the panel could have been completely different from that actually produced by the five chosen lots and announced as the final verdict.232 The passage of Lysias also casts fascinating light on attitudes towards the process of theatrical judgement and the role of social ties that could be presumed to sway judges in casting their vote. The speaker is trying to establish that relations between himself and his prosecutor — who is charging him with premeditated wounding with intent to kill — were in fact much more friendly than has been alleged. There are good reasons to doubt this eirenic image; for it is striking that as his first proof of reconcil­ iation he mentions an antidosis he had instituted against his prosecutor. An exchange of property had, it seems, actually taken place, or at least been initiated (§§1—2), and it was the efforts of their friends in reconciling the two men that led to a restoration of the goods exchanged. An antidosis — even one that may have been overturned in this way — is hardly a sign of cordial and co-operative relations. Indeed, it is clear that the antidosis had been used here as a strategic and highly aggressive manoeuvre in ongoing relations of personal enmity. The speaker goes on to say that he wishes his prosecutor had not been excluded by lot as a judge whose vote was counted at the Dionysia, because then it would have become public knowledge that the two were reconciled, ‘since he judged my phyle the victor. In fact he had written it thus on his tablet, but he was omitted by lot’ (4.3). He adds that he and two other men had pro­ posed this man as judge in the first place, ‘and it was on account of us that he was sitting there’ (4.4). There is much that is obscure to us in this compressed account. In particular, if the speaker and his friends had indeed proposed the prosecutor as a Dionysian judge, we should have assumed they did so as members of his phyle, in the context of the phyletic proposal of candidates for the Dionysian panels. But if the two were of the same phyle, the fact that the prosecutor had then voted for the speaker’s phyle — which was also his own — surely carries nugatory weight as an argument for their reconcil­ iation. A vote for his own phyle hardly needs special justification. Indeed, one wonders how serious a problem partisan phyletic attachment was in general to producing clear results in the dithyrambic contests. A likely explanatory context for the speaker’s argu­ 100

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ment seems to me to lie in the fact that he may himself have been serving as the phyle’s khoregos, perhaps performing the leitourgia which had been at issue between the two in the antidosis. Under these circumstances, the fact that the prosecutor should have wanted to vote for his phyle to win might then be open to construal as a more significant sign that the two were reconciled, since a vote for the phyle’s victory was also, and perhaps foremost, a vote for its khoregos.233 It accords well with all else we know about the operation of the khoregia that this vote for the victory of their common democratic collective could be interpreted primarily as a sign that personal conflict between two of the phyle’s leading men was at an end. But it represents for us a surprising demonstration that such personal relations between élite individuals could be openly avowed in court as legitimate grounds for determining one’s vote in judgement of a poetic i?£ow.234 There is no sign that the speaker feels the need to soften, for his democratic audience of jurors, this argument which effectively privi­ leges personal motives and relations at least potentially at the expense of collective interests, and certainly of artistic judgement.235 The entire portfolio of evidence concerning the process of Dionysian judgement is tinctured with these and similar tensions: on the one hand, the polis went to great efforts to institute a system free from manipulation, and in particular, free from the informal sources of power that individuals could wield. Alkibiades’ actions as khore­ gos are once again the illustrative limit case of transgression of these democratic con­ trols: his personal power, derived from wealth, birth and the charisma attendant on these and on his beauty, led the judges to vote for him through fear and a desire to ingratiate, ‘thinking less of their oath than of him’ ([And.] 4.21236). But there is plenty of evidence to show that the danger was perceived as extending well below the extreme of a figure like Alkibiades, and the group most targeted by such precautions was that of khoregoi as such. In the case of the phyletic contests, the oath sworn by the judges to choose the best performance seems designed to counter the structural propensity for partisanship along phyletic lines. And yet at the same time these align­ ments — both the individual and the phyletic — are built into the system itself by the polis. For khoregoi, the prestige of personal victory at almost any cost is an essential component of the return for their expenditure; while the phyletic shape of the dith­ yrambic competitions encourages solidarity and partisanship from its members. In an acutely and characteristically self-reflexive manner, old comedy incorpo­ rates within the range of its self-styled function as an institution of omnivorous social and political criticism the actions of those who sat in judgement on it. It is generally the task of the comic khoros, as the ‘heart’ and ‘voice’ of the comedy itself, to instruct and admonish the judges (Ekkl. 1154—62); to offer them bribes (Ekkl. 1140—3; Birds 1102—17; Clouds 1115—20); to abuse, even threaten them (Pherekr. Krapataloi fr. 102; Birds 1102-17; Clouds 1121-30). Comedy employs, for its own partisan ends, the very strategies of manipulation whose effects the institutional arrangements of the system endeavoured to counter. The genre which frequently rages against the operation of bribery, threats and similar abuse in the political realm ludically turns those very modes of action to its own ends, for the virtuous purpose of making its vision of political rectitude triumphant before the city. The paradox is integral to the perfor­ mance. Comedy’s self-reflexive interaction with its own judges also often merges the advice and threats it delivers to them with the same to the theatrical audience at large,

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and it is clear that, whatever the ‘official’ relation between the audience and its rep­ resentative kritai was meant to be, the latter were generally presumed to be properly swayed by collective sentiment. This allows Aristophanes, after a loss, to thematise, with all due care, the relationship of the poet to the audience as that of the wise adviser before the wayward masses, a paradigm that offers the poet as a serious con­ tender in the world of political leadership. That this situation promoted the dangers of theatrokratia was certainly felt by some.

Epinikian practice What the kritai inscribed on their tablets we cannot say for sure: a phyle's name, perhaps that of its khoregos, for dithyramb; the poet of drama, or perhaps again its kho­ regos. The language of comedy would certainly suggest that the khoros was very much conceptually central at this moment: the panel of judges for whom the Clouds we have was designed have enumerated for them a series of benefits they will receive ‘if they help this khoros, as is just’ (i 115—16). When the winning ‘khoros' had been deter­ mined, its poet certainly shared the glory of victory with its ‘leader’, whose oppo­ nents and enemies had to suffer what was deemed the considerable indignity of ‘seeing him victorious and being crowned’ (Dem. 21.63, cf. 55)·237 The language indi­ cates that this was no inconspicuous ceremony, and the emphasis on the visual, spec­ tacular quality of the moment points to what was an important, perhaps the most important, element of victory for a khoregos; the active recognition of his success over his peers before the vast Dionysian audience. A herald probably made the announce­ ment in the theatre; ivy (perhaps sometimes rose) garlands were set upon the heads of the victors.238 The city’s prizes were presumably distributed in the theatre — the great bronze tripods and bulls to the victorious dithyrambic khoroi; perhaps a goat to the tragic victor.239 The beasts awarded were doubtless led off in a celebratory procession of khoreu­ tai, khoregos, poet and associates to the place where the epinikia, the victory-celebra­ tions, were to be held, the beast destined to serve as the sacrificial animal at its centre. On the way the group was surely treated to the kind of informal, traditional epinik­ ian congratulation known from other agonistic contexts: having tainiai or victory­ ribbons tied onto them by their supporters, and being showered in petals or leaves (phyllobolid) ,240 The more permanent forms of celebratory memorials aside, the epi­ nikia is the final act of khoregic largesse that might be said to fall within the (infor­ mal) obligations of the office.241 The little we know about this event in the context of the dramatic festivals (and among that little, that which is not derived directly or indirectly from comic metatheatre), shows that it was not simply a sympotic or komas­ tic occasion (although the consumption of large amounts of wine could be construed as a form of worship for Dionysos), but also involved a sacrificial meal.242 It may have been extended to the khoros only, not the actors, probably by virtue of their repre­ senting the civic ‘core’ of drama.243 The epinikia was a form of ritual ‘thanksgiving’ for victory; hence the importance of sacrifice.244 The institution of a celebratory feast was associated in Greece with victory in three major agonistic spheres: battle, athletics and poetic-musical compe­ 102

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tition. Explicit references to Athenian festival epinikia are extremely rare and largely confined to those held in conjunction with the Lenaia, as in the case of the khoregos Antimakhos in the Akharnians who is reviled for having ‘dismissed poor me without a dinner when he sponsored a Lenaian khoros’ (1154—5). And the most famous epi­ nikia, that of Agathon in Plato’s Symposion, is generally understood to refer to a Lenaian victory. But it can hardly be doubted that they took place in connection with the Great Dionysia.245 However informal and separate from the ‘official’ events of the festival, the epinikia for drama must to some extent have been the culmination of the entire programme of agones, at least from the point of view of its successful partici­ pants. The choral epinikia of Athens are of a rather different nature from the epinikian practices that followed a victory in one of the great athletic festivals. A Dionysian victory was won within the city itself, against groups of one’s fellow-citizens, not against contenders drawn from different communities. And so it seems less likely that the epinikian practices associated with it were designed, as those for athletes were, to greet and to ‘reintegrate’ the victor within his home community.246 One might even air the possibility that the silence of our sources on choral epinikia in Athens may to some extent be a ‘structured’ silence: the victory of a khoros in Athens was always a victory of one part of the citizenry over another, and even when this was ‘in play’, such a victory could carry overtones of the dreaded form of internal rivalry that was a constant threat to the stability of Greek states, stasis. Moreover, the consistent depiction of the epinikia in comedy represents it as an occasion of great luxury, of indulgence in expensive and rare foodstuffs well beyond the reach of the ordinary man.247 There may be a degree of wishful thinking here on the part of comic khoroi, and it is certainly the case that the final utopian accomplish­ ment of many a comedy’s ‘Great Idea’, and the celebrations which attend it in the fictive world, are often merged, persuasively and metatheatrically, with the deside­ rated victory of the comedy itself within the festival.248 But there must also lie behind all this an expectation that the epinikia represented an occasion for especially gener­ ous largesse on the part of a khoregos — a form of non-egalitarian feasting which the democratic city tended to suppress or ignore. The rather ‘undemocratic’ character of this celebratory feast centred around a khoregos will have been all the more accentu­ ated if it was generally held in the private home of the khoregos himself.249 But even if it were held in the sanctuary of Dionysos, or at an urban sanctuary of the phyle, this special epinikian extravagance will have become a public spectacle in itself.250

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Part II

THE KHOREGIA IN ACTION: Social performance and symbolic practice

The principal aim of the preceding chapters has been to rehearse the known facts about the khoregia, and to place it within its most immediate classical context, the practical organisation of the many Attic festivals to which khoroi were central. At many points, however, this account had to pull away from larger issues which constantly made themselves felt: the wider significance to the Athenian polis and to individual khoregoi, for example, of the vast expenditure of resources that was engineered through khoregiai; the place that was thereby accorded to competition between these super-rich individuals in the democratic city, and between the collectives they Ted’; the implications, in terms of political performance and social relations, that followed from the existence of a choice of arenas for conspicuous ‘public service’ presented by the leitourgy system in general and the range of khoregiai in particular. In the following chapters I turn to these larger issues of interpretation. The over­ arching aim is to give to the khoregia something of the dynamism which it so clearly had as a vital institution at the heart of Athenian life and which has to a very large extent been ignored in modern scholarship. As should already be clear, this is much more than seeing one aspect of the Athenian theatre in action: it goes to the very bases of social interaction between Athenian citizens, rich and poor, to the texture of social relations under the democracy and to the style and self-presentation of the élite of wealth on the most conspicuous of all stages in the city. For the khoregia is an espe­ cially privileged field of Athenian social drama: this institution which enabled the city’s most spectacular festival, with its extraordinary centrepiece of drama and of the main symbolic form of Athens — tragedy — must itself be understood in ‘dramatic’ terms. This dynamism operates at two important levels: on the one hand, there is the perspective of the individual khoregos. He put great energies into representing himself as a ‘performer’ intimately associated with — indeed, scarcely to be distinguished from — his khoros, even though in fact he may frequently have been little more than a ‘financier’ who had nothing to do with the practical training and equipping of his khoros. The means and manner of his performance, the way he represented himself before a wider audience, at (and on) all of the various stages discussed at the close of the last chapter, give an invaluable insight into the mentality of those men upon whose resources and skills the democratic city depended. The khoregia becomes little less than the symbolic stage upon which the tensions and paradoxes of their position

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in the city are played out. Some of these men pushed the logic of this form of honour­ seeking and self-display to its limits — one thinks, as always in such contexts, of Alkibiades in particular, but he was not altogether exceptional - and produced a social performance in their khoregiai which was, in its way, as transgressive of the norms of democratic polis-life as the tragic scenarios in the very performances the khoregia supported. Then there is the broader perspective of the festival as a whole. There has been a considerable amount of recent work devoted to the interpretation of the festival in its entirety or in its parts.1 Largely through the comparative use of research from other disciplines, we have come to understand the importance of viewing festivals in Greek culture as revealing indices of social forms, structures, ideologies and their attendant pressures and tensions. The Great Dionysia has in this light been seen as a festival which ‘put the city on stage’:2 at once a celebration, a performance, of the strength and self-assurance of the polis, particularly in the period of Athenian imperial dom­ inance in the Aigean in the fifth century; yet at the same time this self-image, pro­ jected in the ensemble of ceremonies that constituted the framework of the festival, was set into a questioning, dialectical relationship with the dramas at its core.3 The performance of the khoregos, the leader pre-eminent in wealth and social position, has not been properly understood within this wider field of the festival’s dramatisation of the city. When it is, we find that the questioning thrust most immediately associated with Attic drama finds a parallel in a sociopolitical critique that is structurally implicit in the khoregia itself.

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The figure of the dramatic khoregos Two of the most distinctive features of the tragic khoregia which emerged from the general survey of Part I were its constant and apparently inalienable link to the indi­ vidual and its status as a competition. These three men were chosen each year simply on the basis of their great wealth; the Arkhon appointed ‘the three richest men from among all the Athenians’ ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 56.3). The twenty dithyrambic khoregoi of the Great Dionysia were officially identified with their phylai and even comic kho­ regoi came at some point in the fourth century to be nominated by the phylai, but the tragic khoregos remained entirely untouched by any such affiliations, or by dilution through a sharing of the duty in synkhoregia. Other leitourgists operating within the ambit of the same festival were, like the dithyrambic khoregos, associated with their phylai — the ten hestiatores, the hosts of the phyletic banquets, for example. Beyond the Great Dionysia we do find examples of this principle of individual and apparently non-representative leitourgic service, particularly in the trierarkhia. In other festival leitourgiai, however, it is only in the comparable cases of dramatic khoregiai at the various other Dionysia and in the khoregia for pyrrhikhistai at the Great Panathenaia or in such special services as the arrhephoria, that leitourgists are representing themselves before the people in quite the straightforward manner of the dramatic khoregos. It was, to be sure, a crucial dynamic of all leitourgiai that ample space be given to the notion of individual and personal service; the point is rather that under that general image there were important differences of manner and degree. The figure of the wealthy individual is thus most prominent and unencumbered in the dramatic khoregia at the Great Dionysia. Why should this be so? The subject­ matter of drama itself offers an illuminating context in which to consider this ques­ tion, if not a definitive answer. The ways in which the very notion of the individual is absolutely essential to Attic drama — in particular tragic, but comic too — have been the subject of endless commentary. Indeed, various theories centred on a notion of ‘the tragic individual’ have tended to dominate the entire modern history of tragic scholarship.4 In recent years, what had hitherto been in the scholarly tradition a largely ahistorical or anachronistic concept of the tragic individual implanted on the 109

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surviving corpus of texts has been replaced by one more firmly located in its histor­ ical and social context — the ‘historical moment’ of tragedy, to use Vernant’s phrase. Vernant, developing the work of Gernet, stressed the importance to our understand­ ing of tragedy of the contemporaneous rise of law as an autonomous area of human practice with institutions of its own. It was in the conflict between an older idea of wrongdoing as an external and irresistible force that swept the wrongdoer away with it, and the emerging concept of the individual agent as the source of his actions and more directly responsible for them that Vernant located the appearance of the quintessentially ‘tragic’ concept of man. This figure of conflict was caught more generally between the past and the present: a hero from epic or lyric myth caught in the world of the polis and its collective values — of, moreover, a polis which was at times strik­ ingly reminiscent of the democratic polis of its creator, Athens: At one moment the same tragic character appears projected into a far distant mythical past, the hero of another age, imbued with a daunting religious power and embodying all the excesses of the ancient king of legend. At the next, he seems to speak, to think, live in the very same age as the city, like a ‘bourgeois citizen’ of Athens amid his fellows.5

This penetrating view of the tragic individual will be seen to have profound and con­ stant resonance for the figure of the khoregos. For beneath all the official rhetoric which sought to accommodate the resources and energies of the élite to democratic ideology, the practices and motives of the khoregos show the continued resistances and tensions between past and present modes of sociopolitical behaviour within the con­ temporary city. In an important discussion of the pre-democratic funding of tragedy, Else obscured this angle when he wrote: The tragic choregos takes the place of the Peisistratidae as a patron of the drama. And he does so as a citizen of Athens. The whole institution of the choregia breathes a civic spirit: it is a device of the new democracy for spreading over the citizen body, or at least the richer portion of it, a function — and the honour attached thereto — which under the tyranny had been in the hands of the ruling house.6

This sounds rather too like the ‘democratic’ rhetoric of the orators which appropri­ ates the performance of the khoregia to its own highly inflected image of ‘civic-spiritedness’. There is an unease here suggested by ‘. . . or at least the richer portion of it . . .’, which cannot suppress the essentially non-egalitarian nature of the khoregia. Else sees an ideological break across a functional continuity between the pre- and postdemocratic organisation of drama, where I would suggest there is also a degree of ideological continuity, or, at least, certainly a very problematic inheritance. While I am far from suggesting that the khoregia should be seen as a tool for the cultural dom­ ination of a de facto political élite, it is difficult to imagine how on Else’s view such an institution could be so readily ‘democratised,’ when it had been so much a part, as all Greek khoroi were, of the socialising processes of the pre-democratic community. The issue becomes even more sharply focussed when one considers the nature of the rep­ resentation these men were funding. But another beneficial consequence of Vernant’s approach to tragedy was fully to no

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reinstate the khoros as one half of the basic structural dyad of the genre. The tensions played out in the tragic genre are also at work through this fundamental structural opposition:

This debate with the past that is still alive creates at the very heart of each tragic work a fundamental distance that the interpreter needs to take into account. It is expressed, in the very form of the drama, by the tension between the two elements that occupy the tragic stage. One is the chorus, the collective and anonymous presence embodied by an official college of citizens. Its role is to express through its fears, hopes, questions, and judge­ ments the feelings of the spectators who make up the civic community. The other, played by a professional actor, is the individualized character whose actions form the core of the drama and who appears as a hero from an age gone by, always more or less estranged from the ordinary condition of the citizen.7

The interaction between individual and collective is played out at another level in the institution of the khoregia. The pre-eminent individuals who served as ‘khoros-leaAers’ in Athens provided, and were strongly identified with, the collective core of tragedy (and comedy); while the polis, the collective par excellence, provided the heroic indi­ viduals. It is in the ‘crossed polarity’8 so typical of the tragic genre which this situa­ tion produced, that we should begin to consider the dramatisation of the figure of the khoregos. The khoregos is associated by this structural arrangement with the khoros, a cultural form closely tied to social and poetical practices of the pre-democratic city; yet the dramatic khoroi were manned by citizens serving in their capacity as such, and the sentiments expressed by many a tragic khoros have frequently been seen to chime with the normative ideals of the democratic polis.9 But because he is set before the city as a generous individual provider, chosen for his wealth in a city where the ties between wealth and power were still strong, and because, moreover, of the transgres­ sive licence which in some conspicuous instances at least he used the occasion to indulge, the khoregos is also a figure comparable to those individuals in drama of high social standing — kings, tyrants, heroes — whose very ‘individuality’, and in particular their trenchant attachment to standards of honour that are radically out of keeping with their surroundings, was the focus of many a tragic problematic. There is a vital interactive dialectic at work here, at whatever degree of consciousness, between the structure of the festival organisation and its dramatic poetry. In the very institution which enabled the performance of tragedy in the city, we can see enacted many of the problems which, in transmuted form, occupied the minds of the Athenians within tragedy itself. The demarcation between the civic frame and its dramatic content is, when viewed in this way, rather more fluid.

Leading a khoros Unlike its naval counterpart, the trierarkhia, the khoregia brought the benefactor onto a stage, quite literally, in the heart of Athens. Unlike the trierarkh, whose field of per­ formance was the seas and the dockyards, the performance of the khoregos had the

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unquestionable advantage of reaching its culmination in the theatron, the place par excellence (and by definition) for public gaze in the polis. He was, moreover, essen­ tially the one to whom the production of the spectacle was especially entrusted by the city. He was a competitor, vying with an energy which not infrequently erupted into violence, in the demonstration of his excellence, his arete — the key value-term of Greek aristocrats. The pool of those rich and willing enough at any one time to act as khoregoi at the Great Dionysia was sufficiently small that they should have formed a well-known and high-profile group before their civic audience in the lime­ light of the very much publicly-oriented society of the polis. Comparison with the trierarkhia also highlights some of the ways in which the khoregia was rather more ‘aristocratic’ in character as an arena for élite action and lead­ ership.10 Not only did the trierarkhia put its trierarkh much less in the public gaze, and never at an occasion of such symbolic concentration as a dramatic festival; the insti­ tution to which his services were directed - the navy - was generally perceived as a base of ‘demotic’ power, from at least as early as the days when its ‘father’ Themistokles, the self-styled man of the people, set his face to the creation of a large Athenian navy and probably in the process was instrumental in creating or significantly developing the basis for the leitourgical system of the trierarkhia.11 Such parentage as that may have given the trierarkhia a character to attract to it those rich who especially styled themselves as ideological democrats and who wanted to pursue the quest for military arete in the field not of the aristocratic cavalry or hoplite warfare so much as in that which mobilised the lower levels of the Athenian citizenry, the navy. Davies has shown that ‘it looks as if there was at any one time a virtual identity in size and composition between the class of men who performed the agonistic or festival liturgies and the class of men who performed the trierarchy’. He has also dem­ onstrated the extent to which, in spite of this overlap, the agonistic leitourgical group ‘was at once more amorphous and more open-ended than the trierarchical class’.12 This difference is in part explicable by reference to the powerful desire to avoid any suggestion that festival leitourgiai were strictly obligatory. But a further important difference between the actual composition of the two leitourgical groups concerns the hippeis. The roughly one-thousand-strong Athenian cavalry was, from the middle of the fifth century, provided by the second highest Solonian property-class, and maintained a somewhat aristocratic ethos.13 Like the highest property-class, they were not called upon for service in the navy (Thouk. 3.16.1), and they must have been exempt from the trierarkhia.14 They would have had no such exemption from khore­ gia, however, and few if any khoregoi will have come from below the census-level of the hippeis. Many a young cavalryman must have served as khoregos. Indeed, the two spheres of action, horse-rearing and khoroi, are traditionally associated with their aris­ tocratic kind. The fact may not be irrelevant to Aristophanes’ generally sympathetic portrayal of the hippeis as a group in his Knights. Unlike the khoregia, the trierarkhia did not resist the dilution of an individual focus. By the late fifth century our sources indicate that syntrierarkhia was in regular opera­ tion and individual trierarkhiai came to be farmed out, while the complicated symmory-system (developed extensively in the fourth century but never adopted for the funding of festivals) further dispersed the relation of a single Athenian to the lead­ ership of a particular trieres and its crew. At what point trierarkhs commonly ceased

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to serve in person, or when in particular instances they did not do so as the active military leaders of their ship, is notoriously difficult to determine, but it is at least clear that this practice of ‘hiring out’ a trierarkhia was very widespread in the fourth century.15 The difficulties of analysis are largely due to the fact that those formally appointed as trierarkhs who had hired out the office (sometimes even to non-citi­ zens), did their best not to publicise what could well be represented as a dereliction of their duties: that is exactly what Demosthenes calls it in the case of his enemy Meidias (Dem. 21.166). There is evidence of a desire to obscure this depersonalisa­ tion in relation to naval service as much as there is for the choral, but over the course of the fourth century the trierarkhia was becoming more akin to the relatively imper­ sonal eisphora, a fiscal tax imposed to meet special emergency purposes.16 The notion of personal service lies at the heart of the leitourgic system. These men gave of their wealth, their time and their expertise because they possessed all these resources to a greater degree than their peers, and because by giving in this way they reinforced their position in society as its ‘natural’ leaders. A spirit of noblesse oblige per­ meates the system, even when the obligation may have come to be increasingly an imposition from outside rather than the altogether free ‘spirit of generosity’ from within which it was claimed to be. The bonds of reciprocity established in this way are generally interpreted as involving a balanced exchange in which the rich secured the naval and festival health of the polis in return for various benefits. These benefits are, broadly speaking, regarded as having included the very right to keep their wealth; election to high office, military and civic; and indulgent consideration when on trial before the people. This is not the place for me to argue the detail of my own inter­ pretation of these relations; it is important, however, that before considering the aris­ tocratic style of the khoregia in more detail, I register my view here that this reciprocal relationship was as much built on social and political tensions as it served to ensure democratic social stability. So often the men who are claiming indulgence from the people by parading the enormity of their leitourgical expenditure are men whose commitment to the democracy was at best open to doubt and in many cases, demon­ strably non-existent. The very name of Athens’ choral leitourgia is a good place to begin considering its socio-political style, and its deep attachment to an ideal of personal service. The invention of the leitourgical khoregia is hidden within a term which long predates it. The semantics of the word are clear enough: a compound of \opo- (‘khoros’) and f)ye- (‘lead’), producing ‘leader of a khoros'17 And it comes with a rather elevated social and poetic pedigree. The name and the figure of the khoregos are at least as old as the seventh century, and given the appearance of choral performance in Greece with our very earliest doc­ umentation, they probably predate our literary testimony.18 The word appears in the very earliest remains of choral lyric poetry, in, among others, the Partheneia or ‘Maiden-songs’ of Alkman from archaic Sparta.19 In these poems, the khoragos is a figure of authority, the leader of khoroi which are engaged in ritual actions of funda­ mental social, religious and political importance to the community. In the longest sur­ viving fragment of a Partheneion (PMGF 1), the choral voice representing a group of young women engaged in a (possibly competitive) ritual of some sort sings of ‘the glorious khoragos', who ‘does not allow me either to praise or blame her in any way at all’.20 Here the collective choral voice of young women dramatically — within the

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performance of their song — addresses a figure whom they describe as their ‘leader’, and whose name turns out to be (in an inversion of the two terms in khor-agos), Hagesikhora (53, 57, 77, 79, 90), ‘Leader of the khoros"— evidently a ‘functional’name. This does not mean that it is not also a ‘real’ name, and members of Spartan royalty and aristocracy may have been so named as to evoke the important social and ritual functions they played in khoreia. Towards her the khoros expresses a variety of senti­ ments with strongly marked homoerotic overtones (e.g., 45—7). Claude Calame has very cogently interpreted these homoerotic sentiments as on the one hand central to the creation of a sense of the khoros" shared collective identity as a social group made up of coaevals, and on the other as implying a paedagogical relationship of superior­ ity between leader and followers, with all the distinctive features of an initiatory ritual into the world of (heterosexual) adult life — a ritual transition from the status of parthenos to that of^yne. What emerges most significantly for our purposes from this and other fragmentary appearances of the khoragos in early lyric is the image of a figure who is completely involved in the ritual actions of the khoros, as its focus of author­ ity and as a paradigmatic model of comportment for the collective khoros-members to emulate. She is, in the case of these ‘maiden-songs’, the focus of the rapt attention of the members of her khoros, and the model of proper ritual comportment to whose every move and instruction they are attentive. Scraps of another poem by Alkman give us glimpses of ‘beautiful, beardless youths of my age’ who are addressed as kho­ ragoi by a choral group in a closely analogous position to that of the young women.21 The ancient exegetical tradition tells us that these youths were pure-blood Spartiates from the highest echelons of aristocratic society, and that their leaders were drawn from the royalty, real or aspiring, of Sparta is shown by their names: Agido (in the case of the female khoros), Agesidamos (for the young men).22 These archaic Spartan khoragoi are thus the idealised leaders of their communities, model representatives of their age- and class-groups who figure in their society’s most important performative rituals. They are it seems the leaders, in the most engaged and practical sense, of the choral rituals enacted within these poems, the ones who set the khoros moving in the physical area of the dance-space, the guides and instruc­ tors of their subordinates. In aristocratic societies their function was actually filled by royalty and aristocratic youth. But the leitourgical khoregos has an even more elevated ancestry. For the foremost choral-leaders of all are the gods: Apollo, the Kharites and the Muses above the rest, but many others are associated in myth and ritual with the choral form, including Artemis and Dionysos. Dionysos, indeed, is a renowned leader of the dance, and his shadowy presence as khoregos can be felt behind and through all the khoroi of his elab­ orate and extensively differentiated festivals in Athens. While of Artemis, a dictum reported by Aesop (Prov. 9) has the Greeks ask, proverbially, ‘πού γάρ ή'Άρτεμις ούκ έχόρευσεν;’ — Tn what place does Artemis not dance?’ In the context of the archaic khoroi in the fragments of Alkman, the figures of the khore/agos in turn had as their model the divinity in whose honour the ritual was being performed, so that a clear hierarchical chain was established between divinity, khoregos and khoreutai.23 This notion of the gods themselves as khoregoi is widespread and very persistent in the Greek tradition, and it predates and survives well beyond the archaic period. It resur­ faces in the Athenian context where, despite the linguistic and social developments which ‘χορηγός’ had undergone, the Athenians did not hesitate to keep the older, 114

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divine image of the khoregos side-by-side with their leitourgical version.24 Indeed, in one recognisable case at least — a comedy given the title of Herakles the Khoregos — there is very possibly a conscious play between these two registers. The Athenians seemingly appropriated this word of divine and aristocratic choral leadership for the choral leaders of their own festivals, and their adjustment to its semantics was to be profoundly influential. The Athenian use of the term is gener­ ally explained simply as a linguistic survival from a time before the professional differentiation of tasks had taken place between the khoros-leader in the traditional, ‘practical’ sense — subsequently referred to most commonly as the khorodidaskalos (the trainer of the khoros) or the koryphaios (the ‘head-man’ of the khoros), depending on whether the function of instruction or of leadership in performance is being stressed — and the financier who himself hired or recruited such persons. In the Attic version of this differentiation of activities from an originally combined function of khoregos who saw to the material supply, the instruction and the physical leadership of the khoros, it is surely not trivial that it should be the "financier’ who maintains the pre­ stigious title of khoregos.25 One might have thought that if it were a question of allo­ cating titles simply on the basis of practical functions, the khorodidaskalos or the koryphaios would both be more likely candidates. The word continues to serve the useful function of concealing gaps which had appeared between the aristocratic ideal and the contemporary reality. For by effectively ignoring this process of differentiation, the Attic usage inscribes an implicit aristocratic ideology of non-professionalism, since it elides the necessary breach between himself and the professional choral experts; while at the same time it marshals the accrued authority of the figure of the khoregos to the side of these new ‘leaders of khoroi’ in Athens.26 At what level of consciousness we are to locate this particular shift it is impossible to decide; it is possible, however, to see how various individuals deployed and manipulated this difference, and I shall discuss a number of cases where there is a discernible gap between the degree of actual choral ‘leadership’ and the khoregos’ representation of his actions. The semantic development attracted the attention of scholars in antiquity. In Book Four of his work On Poems, Demetrios of Byzantion had explicitly commented on this linguistic change: ‘They used to call ""khoregoi”. . . not as nowadays, those who hire the khoroi, but those who lead the khoros, as the word itself signifies.’27 ‘Nowadays’ is the first century B.c., when a khoregia of sorts was still in existence in various Greek cities. The idea of hiring khoroi may represent a further development from the classical situation in which participation in khoroi was a civic service (although to what extent is debatable, and depends on just how one views the rela­ tion between khoregos and khoros, which evidently involved a form of pay, pioOos). But these khoregoi of Demetrios are essentially the same creature as their fifth- and fourth-century counterparts, and his etymological argument (‘the word itself signifies “lead” . . . ’) runs up against just this shift of function beneath the unchanging term.28 Linguistic conservatism is not likely to be a sufficient explanation here, given that it conspicuously did not maintain a grip on other terminology of theatrical institu­ tions throughout this period, and given too that there was no shortage of available alternative terms which put less stress on the activity of actually leading the khoros (e.g., XopocrTOiTTjs, xopoTTOios, and xopoÄSKTTjs)· The ideal which lies behind this misrec­ ognition of social reality is reflected elsewhere in the close association which khoregoi

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forge between themselves and the khoroi they ‘lead’.29 For no matter to what degree professionals took over the real business of choral leadership, a khoregia could never be undertaken with an altogether distantiated attitude. It was never a question of ‘writing a cheque’ and thereby being done.

Death in the didaskaleion The point is very dramatically illustrated by the way in which the unknown khoregos who commissioned a speech by Antiphon narrates the events central to the case (6.11—14). This speech - Concerning the Khoreutes (dated c. 419) — is fascinating for the window it opens on the conduct, in the private realm of the khoregos' own home, of the early stages of a rather unhappy khoregia.30 It will be worthwhile to discuss the circumstances of this case in a little detail, for in addition to being an invaluable example of the self-representation of a khoregos when under enormous pressures, it demonstrates another way in which the khoregia could be manipulated in the vicissi­ tudes of public life. For in the actions which lie behind the case, a young boy, Diodotos, who was training to serve as a khoreutes in a khoros at the Thargelia, con­ sumed a preparation designed to improve his voice which had the effect of killing him. For all that this was likely to have been a terrible and unusual accident — it is placed at the door of Fortune (Tykhe) by the defendant (§15) - it also shows that all and any measures were taken by rivalrous khoregoi to produce the best possible per­ formance from their team. In what can be deduced of the prosecution’s argument on the matter, which is admittedly not much, no objection appears to have been raised to the fact that these kinds of measures were being adopted in the training of the boys. It is simply a question of determining whether the khoregos was responsible for giving the (pappaKOV to Diodotos, and with what degree of compulsion he did so (§17). Here, albeit ‘accidentally’, the pressure of the agon and the desire for victory claimed a very real victim. Political intrigue and the conduct of a khoregia are bound intimately together in this case. It is indeed only because of the involvement of the speaker in other con­ tentious public trials that we hear of this story at all. While we have little knowledge of the circumstances of the case in the form of information external to the speech itself, it is clear that the speaker had a prediliction for finding and pursuing corrup­ tion and embezzlement in public office. This had led him into conflict with a clerk of the Thesmothetai and three citizens — Ampelinos, Aristion and Philinos — whom he impeached for embezzlement before the Council in early 419 (§§35if.) Their trial was to take place in late April. The Thargelia, for which he was a khoregos, took place at the start of May. When Diodotos died under the care of the khoregos, those facing trial saw their chance to have him rendered incapable of pursuing the case by putting pressure on the boy’s brother, Philokrates, to charge him with homicide. There was not enough time for the necessary formal investigations to be pursued by the Arkhon Basileus (§§42ffi), and so, despite the appearance of Philokrates before an ordinary Heliastic court to broadcast his alleged guilt, and again, so it seems, before the jurors in the trial for embezzlement, that trial went ahead, found them all guilty and imposed severe fines.

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As so often seems to be the case with the working of the Athenian legal system, this trial hardly stands alone as a discrete, institutional adjudication as to the facts and the justice of a particular social disturbance, but is a considered move in a complex and long-standing contest of honour, a feuding relationship of a kind for which the legal system ‘provided opportunities for the expression, extension, and exacerbation of social conflicts which threatened [the social] order’.31 Viewed in this light, the legal trial behind Concerning the Khoreutes has an affinity with the institution of the khore­ gia itself - both are sites of competitive hostility and the assertive pursuit of personal honour. It is worth imagining the scene in the people’s court when Philokrates mounted the platform and denounced the speaker as a homicide, claiming that he ‘killed [my] brother in the khoros by forcing him to drink a potion’ (§21). Playing on fears that were evidently felt by the city in respect of its young citizens in the hands of khore­ goi, Philokrates had been put up to this desperate and highly theatrical gesture, which could have little hope of producing any practical effect. He had not scrupled (if the speaker’s case is anything like credible), to use the death of his young brother — and on the very day he was being buried! (§20) - as a cover for his own implication in embezzlement that was soon to be exposed. After the conviction of the four men, Philokrates appears to have changed his tune, and sought a reconciliation with the khoregos (§§38—9). His reasons for wanting to do so may be made clearer by subsequent events. Between July and August, the khoregos was a member of the Council serving as Prytanis, and he apparently discov­ ered evidence of further corruption in three financial boards from which a number of private citizens — Philokrates among them - were reaping benefits. He instituted an investigation by the Council; Philokrates approached the new Arkhon Basileus and reopened his homicide proceedings, which this time had the desired effect of forcing the khoregos to withdraw from public life, including service on the Council, until the trial took place (§49). The corruption trial resulted all the same in the conviction of those accused, and the homicide case duly came to court (in the Palladion, it seems32) some time around November. These background details allow us to picture more clearly a particular dilemma faced by the speaker in his self-presentation. He is very keen to portray himself as inti­ mately associated with the care and training of his khoros, and stresses that he was only prevented from being more closely involved by his pursuit of embezzlers of demo­ cratic funds in the courts. Yet on the other hand, the more closely he identifies himself as the one who was in complete charge of what went on in the didaskaleion, the greater the risk of identifying himself as the one responsible for the boy’s death. As Antiphon presents the balance, he has it both ways: he would have liked to be more involved in the khoregia, but was kept from this by his laudable civic behaviour in ridding the city of the kind of disreputable men who are prosecuting him now. That he feels free to put such emphasis on the former image, of the involved khoregos, is a testimony both to the force of this ideal and, perhaps, to the weakness of his opponents’ case. The account the speaker gives of the ‘facts’ (cf. §10) of his khoregia is worth quoting here in full (§§11-13):

When I was designated khoregos for the Thargelia, and received by lot the poet (didaskalos) Pantakles33 and the phyle Kekropis in addition to my own,34

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I served as khoregos to the best of my abilities and as fairly as I could (έχορήγουν ώς άριστα έδυνάμην και δικαιότατα). I began by fitting out a training-room (didaskaleion) in the most suitable part of my house, the same that I had trained the khoros in when I was khoregos at the Dionysia. Next, I recruited the khoros as well as I could (ώ$ έδυνάμην άριστα), without inflicting a single fine, without levying distraint by force, without making a single enemy, but in the pleasantest and most convenient way for both sides I gave my orders and requests and they willingly and vol­ untarily sent . (§12) At first after the arrival of the boys I had no time to look after them in person (τταρεϊναι καί έτπμελεϊσθαι), as I was in fact engaged in suits against Aristion and Philinos . . . And so, since I was occupied with these matters myself, I appointed Phanostratos as superinten­ dent - a fellow-demesman of the accusers here and a relative of mine (he is my son-in-law) — and I envisaged that he would perform the task as well as could be (άριστα έτπμελεϊσθαι). (§13) In addition to him I appointed two other men: Ameinias of Erekhtheis, who seemed to be a good sort and whom his fellow phyletai had voted to convene and superintend the phyle on the various occasions; and another man of Kekropis,35 who regularly con­ vened this phyle each time. There was yet a fourth, Philippos, whose duty it was to purchase or spend whatever the poet or any of the others told him, in order that the boys might be trained as well as possible (άριστα χορηγοϊντο) and lack nothing owing to my preoccupation.

This account is peppered with no fewer than four statements of the excellence of his conduct of this khoregia — and άριστα, even in a democratic court, is not without pos­ sible hints of ‘aristocratic’ know-how (arete): the first is in §11, referring to his own general ‘choral leadership’ (έχορήγουν ώς άριστα έδυνάμην) in such a way that, even as he goes on to mention his enforced absence from the didaskaleion, serves to mini­ mise that absence by its claim for the excellence of his khoregia. His preparation of a part of his own private house as a didaskaleion for the training of the khoros, combined with the statement that this was the same space ‘that I had trained the khoros in when I was khoregos at the Dionysia’, might lead us to imagine that our khoregos really was something of an expert in choral matters himself, and would indeed have taken up the trainer’s staff to coach the boys in this instance had the needs of the city not pressed more urgently elsewhere. For his use here in particular of the word έδίδασκον of the former Dionysiac khoros creates the strong presumption that he himself had been the trainer/poet (didaskalos, as used of his deputy in §13) for the khoros on that occasion, acting in the undifferentiated role of khoregos we saw above.36 In the same section, the remark T recruited the khoros as well as I could’, shows us, in the first instance, that in the early days of this khoregia, before the legal troubles of the embezzlement case impinged, our man (claims that he) actually recruited his khoros himself. We have no reason to doubt this, and what is most interesting about the elaborate account of this recruitment is, precisely, the elaboration of what he did not have to do: no fines, no distraint with violence, no enemies made. Because he put his greatest powers — his social skills of arete — into the task, none of this was neces­ sary. What is implied by this negative statement is that ordinarily, in something less than a model khoregia, enemies could be expected to be made, fines levied and force 118

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brought to bear. In the delicacy of his own position in the current trial, we have a total suppression by this khoregos of the messiness and conflict which are recurrent motifs in other accounts of khoregiai. The third reference to the excellence of his leadership is in relation to the envis­ aged superintendence of Phanostratos (§12), and the quality and qualifications of his deputies are made to redound very much to his own image. He emphasises the very great pains he took to delegate his responsibilities to trustworthy men. Phanostratos was, conveniently, a fellow-demesman of his opponents as well as being his own sonin-law, hence bound by local and familial ties to both sides in the current dispute; Ameinias, a member of the other phyle to be represented by this Thargelian khoros, had experience as epimeletes of Erekhtheis in charge of the recruitment and supervi­ sion of khoroi; while the other, nameless deputy likewise had similar experience for Kekropis, giving a balanced representation from the two phylai involved, as well as the value of their considerable joint experience that had been recognised by the demo­ cratic bodies of the phylai which had voted them both formally to these positions. Finally, there was Philippos, who had his hand on the purse-strings and ‘whose task it was to buy and spend whatever the poet or any of these other men told him to, so that the boys might be trained as well as possible (άριστα χορηγοΐντο) and lack nothing owing to my preoccupation’ (§13). The use of χορηγεϊν here — with άριστα yet again — of the training the boys received in their singing and dance, as of the expense and care they received more generally during this period, reflects once more the gap that exists between the performance and its provider, but it is a gap which this speaker is keen to elide as far as possible. At a number of places this khoregos says that the actions and circumstances of his khoregia, including the death of Diodotos, were ‘public knowledge’ (§19, cf. 14, 22). It is of course in his interests at this point to represent events which in fact belong to the sphere of the oikos as more ‘public’ than they were, but the possible implication that the goings-on of a khoregia might make good public talk is plausible and illumi­ nating. When these witnesses are further specified, however, they are clearly the group present within the oikos: ‘Why, there were many who knew what went on, freemen and slaves, young and old, more than fifty in all’ (§22, cf. §19). The repeated and unusual reference to ‘children’ and ‘younger men’ must mean the fellow-khoreutai of Diodotos, who would have been the most likely witnesses to what went on. The detail that these came to ‘more than fifty’ suggests to me that fifty must have been the number of khoreutai in the Thargelian khoros. Otherwise this khoregos had a lot of young people hanging around in his house for no obvious good reason. Whoever he may have been, we should not be too influenced by the evidence that this khoregos was a keen enemy of public peculation into seeing in him a com­ mitted ideological democrat. The abuse of civic office for personal benefit was hardly confined to the rich, and the rich were doubtless all the more irritated when they saw the ordinary citizen reaping the benefits from access to power which they deemed to be their own by right. What is more, that our khoregos turned to, and was granted the services of, Antiphon, a staunch anti-democrat and principal architect of the oli­ garchic revolution of 411, cannot be without political significance.37 Antiphon 6 thus presents us with an interestingly ambivalent case of khoregic self-representation: despite the potential danger involved, the khoregos is eager to iden­ tify himself very closely with the practical conduct of the khoregia. This, as I have 119

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argued, reflects something of the aristocratic ethos of the khoregia. But it could be claimed that it reflects more significantly a democratic version of the participatory ethos to which the khoregia had been assimilated: the idea that the khoregia was a service, like any other democratic, civic service, which was for the good of the col­ lective as a whole. It was, to be sure, of a greater scale but this was simply because of the greater means of its performer. This is an evaluative conflict which we shall con­ front repeatedly throughout this study. I have already expressed some reservations about the coherence of a straightforwardly ‘democratic’ interpretation of leitourgiai, but I certainly would not wish to deny that this is another important rhetorical strand of the self-representation of the khoregos of Antiphon 6, as elsewhere: service to the collective good and self-assertion are in a constant tension.

Khoregic prestige Even as the extensive differentiation and deputation of specialised choral skills took place, the question of who was to recoup the honour of the performance and (in par­ ticular) the glory of a victory is regularly answered in favour of the one who had the desire and the material resources to put himself forward - namely, the khoregos. In the public arena, as a study of dedicatory practice shows, the khoregos" deputies — (apart of course from the poet, whose glory adds to that of the khoregos) — rarely rate a mention, and when they do it is almost always below that of their ‘leader’. In this respect the position of the khoregos is directly analogous to that of the competitor in the chariot-race, that most prestigious and aristocratic of all athletic contests.38 For the ‘charioteer’ regularly ‘competes’, wins victories and is elaborately praised for them although not having himself actually participated in the race. Like the chariot-victor, the khoregos works against the reality of a gap that separates him from the activity which gives him his title. And like the chariot-victor too, at least in the extant port­ folio of evidence, his audiences accede without demur to this state of affairs which is perilously close to seeing money ‘buy’ honour.39 As will be seen further, the symbolic appurtenances of victory, such as the monument or victory-poem, go a long way towards mediating this potential conflict. But perhaps, too, like those unusual ‘char­ ioteers’ who not only funded but themselves mounted their chariots (cf. Pind. Isth. 1.15—17, IG v. 1.213.8), the khoregos who served actively as a ‘khoros-leader" attracted considerable additional prestige. In fact there are occasions on which (at least in his own rhetoric), the khoregos overshadows even the poet. By virtue of the simple fact that he rather than the poet is the one who erects a monument to the victory, the khoregos thereby takes control of the expression and the future life of the glory won. A particulary fascinating instance of the way in which honour-hungry khoregoi accumulated in monumental form the symbolic capital won through their victories, is represented by the following epigram, the literary remnant of what must have been a lavish monument. This is also an excellent example of the way in which a khoregos, in this case for men’s dithyramb, seeks to represent himself as intimately involved in and responsible for the performance; and, more generally, of the aristocratic style that characterises a glorious khoregic victory. The epigram made its way into the manu­ script tradition of the Palatine Anthology (13.28), although it is virtually certain to be 120

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a dedicatory inscription designed to commemorate a victory of the Akamantid phyle in the men’s dithyramb at the Great Dionysia in the early fifth century.40

i 3

5 7 9 ιι

πολλάκι δή φυλάς Άκαμαντίδος έν χοροΐσιν~Ωραι άνωλόλυξαν κισσοφόροις επί διθυράμβοις αί Διονυσιάδες, μίτραισι δε καί ρόδων άώτοις σοφών άοιδών έσκίασαν λιπαράν έθειραν, οϊ τόνδε τρίποδα σφίσι μάρτυρα Βακχίων άέθλων έθηκαν. κείνους δ'Άντιγένης έδίδασκεν άνδρας. ευ δ' έτιθηνεΐτο γλυκερόν όπα Δωρίοις ’Αρίστων ’Αργείος ήδυ πνεύμα χέων καθαροΐς έν αυλοϊς. τών έχορήγησεν κύκλον μελίγηρυν Ίππόνικος Στρούθωνος υιός, άρμασιν έν Χαρίτων φορηθείς, αί οί έπ άνθρώπους όνομα κλυτόν άγλαάν τε νίκαν θήκαν ίοστεφάνων θεάν έκατι Μοισάν.

Often indeed the Seasons of the Dionysia have shouted for joy among khoroi of the Akamantid phyle at the ivy-bearing dithyrambs, and with headbands of finest roses have shadowed the shiny hair of skilled singers, who have set up this tripod for themselves as witness to their Bakkhic struggles. Antigenes trained these men; and Argive Ariston fostered their sweet voice well, blowing a sweet strain on his pure, Dorian aulos. Hipponikos son of Strouthon was khoregos of their honey-voiced cyclical khoros, borne in the chariot of the Kharites, who set a glorious name and bright victory on men by the grace of the violet-garlanded goddesses, the Muses. It is in the first place necessary to recreate imaginatively something of the original physical setting of this epigram, for it is only a disembodied fragment of the complete form in which its commissioner intended to express himself. The monumental struc­ ture of which it will have formed part incorporated the tripod (5) or tripods won by the khoregos and his phyle. That this tripod is said to have been erected by the singers for themselves' (5) lends the dedication a faintly ‘secular’ (for want of a better word) tone. As I shall discuss at greater length in a later chapter, these khoregic monuments hover uncertainly in their purpose between the secular and the sacred, an opposition with which I register at once my unease but which helps to capture something of their ambiguous status. Lines 5—6 seem to state quite plainly that it was the members of the khoros itself who set up the tripod. While not ruling out the possibility altogether,41 I suspect it is in fact another strategy by which to associate khoros and khoregos intimately, as being both jointly responsible for the victory and its memorialisation: the relative τών in 9 ‘of them Hipponikos was khoregos' then picks up — as if (fittingly, for this kyklic khoros) in ring-composition - the relative 01 of 5 used of the khoreutai, powerfully reinforc­ ing the link between ‘leader’ and group. The monument perhaps included, in addition to the tripod, a sculpture or relief of the kind known to have surmounted similar bases, and it was doubtless erected in a conspicuous public setting, such as the street named ‘Tripods’, or on some site near or even within the theatre itself. In the inscription, the khoregos is associated intimately with the members of his phyle's khoros, with the poet (6) Antigenes — the probable

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author of the epigram — and with the Argive trainer and auletes Ariston. Opening with a reference to the many previous victories of the phyle in elaborate language,42 the poem shifts unobtrusively in verses 4—5 from the generalised σοφών άοιδών ‘skilled singers’ — to a specific reference to the current victorious personnel. The epigram thus manages to invest the victory of the present khoreutai with the accrued store of kleos laid up to the phyle’s distinguished collective record. Further, it is a unique example of an epigram composed — more or less — in the style of the genre it commemorates - the dithyramb — and if Antigenes was indeed the poet, this fact too no doubt enhanced its prestige as a memorial.43 It must have represented a minor private commission on the part of the khoregos himself, and thus involved a change in the relation between the poet and his ‘patron’: from being effectively a poet of the polis as a competitor in the Great Dionysia, Antigenes thus becomes the poet of a victory-poem commissioned by Hipponikos. The self-conscious reference to the conferral of glory by the Kharites in the con­ cluding verses focusses the spotlight directly upon the khoregos Hipponikos, named significantly by patronymic rather than demotic. His name is, moreover, one of the most aristocratic in Athens, and this quality is (again, perhaps significantly, given line 10) indicated by the aristocratic achievement par excellence — victory with horses.44 His description as "khoregos of their honey-voiced circle’ uses an unusual direct object with the verb χορηγεϊν (a dative is the normal practice), implying, I would suggest, an inti­ macy of ‘choral leadership’ which is ideologically valued if historically anachronistic. For this seems to evince a desire to keep the sense of χορηγεϊν suspended a little uncertainly between the narrowly leitourgical sense of ‘providing a khoros’ and the more traditional one of full participation in — at the head of - the khoros. Some schol­ ars — among them Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge and Sir Denys Page — have even thought it quite plausible that the ‘chariot of the Kharites’ which is said to have carried the victorious khoregos here was a real chariot, which raises the striking possibility of a khoregos in a democratic choral competition involved in some kind of victory-parade through the polis and transported, moreover, in a vehicle of indelibly aristocratic asso­ ciations.45 While I find this somewhat unlikely in itself and an extremely perilous deduction from a piece of poetry such as this, it is very suggestive indeed that such imagery at least could be employed of a khoregos in this context. This is pre-eminently the language of athletic victors and the ritual of their re-entry into their home cities. Diodoros Sikelos, for example, gives an account of a fifth-century Akragantine victor being escorted into the city by three hundred chariots drawn by white horses (13.82.7—8).46 In the context of an Athenian democratic and ‘domestic’ festival such as the Great Dionysia, the chariot is surely a metaphor, although a highly charged one, and the question of the ‘reintegration’ of the glorious khoregic victor back into his community after having stood out so prominently from it may not be altogether irrelevant. By invoking the Kharites as divinities externally responsible for the conferral of ‘a famous name and bright victory’ on Hipponikos, and themselves acting, moreover, as the agents of the Muses, the epigram obscures — one might appropriately say mis­ recognises — the social dimension of the victory. Under the guise of an easy, ‘natural’ association between the Kharites and the khoregos there thus lies hidden the coercive binding power of a ‘politics of grace’.47 If a dithyrambic khoregos, who is, strictly speaking, representing his phyle, can thus 122

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appropriate the prestige of a Dionysiac victory surely the return in individualistic glory would be all the greater for a tragic khoregos. A somewhat facetious question poses itself here: namely, what would a commemorative epigram composed in the style of tragedy look like? A facetious question, perhaps, but it does reflect on a serious issue about the relative absence from the material record of commemorations in the polis of tragic khoregic victories won at the Great Dionysia. This is a question to which I shall return in my more general survey of khoregic dedicatory practice. There are cogent practical reasons why memorials for dithyrambic victories should be more prominent - the statistical superiority in the number of annual performances and, more significantly, the fact that the polis awarded a tripod to the victorious dithyram­ bic khoregos which he was evidently expected to set up, are among them. And that the dithyrambic competition was conducted between collective bodies (phylai) which were vital sub-groups of the democratic sociopolitical system must be the most deter­ mining factor in legitimising and promoting the memorialisation of victories won in it. In a field such as this it would be perilous to lay too much weight on an argument from the silence of the material record, when it is silent about so much else besides. I certainly do not wish to turn my back on my own arguments concerning the desire of tragic khoregoi for self-representation, but an attempt to answer the facetious ques­ tion does raise important issues about the status of tragic representation in the polis. In the case of dithyramb, it is quite unproblematic to pass from the khoregic sphere to the poetic: the khoregos, as Hipponikos shows, can happily harness the kleos of dith­ yrambic song to glorify his victory.48 With tragedy the situation is quite otherwise: the relationship of tragic khoregos to his production is rather more problematic. This most troubling of all Athenian cultural performances, which was so concerned with the dangers and allure of excessive individualism, so often embodying a particularly difficult form of heroic kleos, and which could be (albeit reductively) troped in other civic contexts to stand for behaviour antithetical to the order of the polis,49 was entrusted to these prominent men, ‘officially’ chosen simply because of their great wealth, crucial to the community yet often virtually alienated from it by their very prominence, their vast wealth and their political ideology. It is easy to imagine how in their case the bridging of such a gulf would be rather more perilous.

Khoregic patronage Grand and public acts of liberal generosity in a context of agonistic self-assertion are characteristic of the khoregia, and characterise it as aristocratic in spirit. The dynamic of khoregiai as ‘gifts to the city’ is essential. Leitourgiai fit into a range of forms that ‘noble giving’ took in classical Athens, each with their own distinctive political colours. We find for instance the highly traditional ‘euergete’ Kimon, who ‘fed the people’ from his own gardens; the supposedly ‘democratic counter-deployment’ ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 27.3) of public funds through civic misthos engineered by Perikles, and so on. This politics of donation did not take one single form, and the place the khoregia occupied in the civic scene and in different people’s performances at different periods is itself varied. Nor should we regard the performance of khoregiai as deter­ mined solely, or indeed predominantly, by narrowly political motivations, as though 123

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the symbolic capital accrued through prestigious choral victories was perceived as val­ uable only when converted — without residue, as it were - into public or military office: in the case of many rich men, the glory of victory may have been an end in itself, and one of a kind preferable to any available in the realm of diurnal, democratic politics. These issues are considered further in Chapter Four. At this point I want to concentrate on one important feature of khoregic giving which has escaped serious attention. The khoregos gave his khoros to the city, and thereby became involved in a rela­ tionship of kharis with it. But there is a more intimate circuit of generosity and its ties involved in the conduct of a khoregia: for the khoregos in the first instance also gives to his khoreutai and to the various others he engages with and for them. As we have just seen, this could take place in the realm of the private home, the place where ties of patronage — for such, clearly, is the nature of the relationship involved - could be most securely created and reinforced. Moreover, in terms of its general historical develop­ ment, the ethic of patronal generosity to the community itself began from a local starting-point, in the ambit of the household and its dependants, moving out thence to the local area or village in which the élite had their familial estates. In a brief but characteristically penetrating discussion, and one that is fundamen­ tal to any study of the topic, Moses Finley made clear the potential for relations of patronage which was inherent in the leitourgic system.50 He gave full weight to the role that leitourgiai played in the creation of popular support for individual members of the élite in their competition for influence and in helping to justify the demos’ entrustment of political leadership to them as a class.51 These two factors ‘warrant the inclusion of this peculiar form of community service under the heading of patron­ age despite the absence of a man-to-man patron-client relationship’.52 That absence was engineered by the polis, which in many respects suppressed the opportunities for relations of patronage to arise. But it is as much an absence in appearance as in fact, for the leitourgical system did indeed provide something approaching a ‘man-to-man’ relationship, though at the same time the existence of such a relationship was officially discountenanced.53 The evidence, slender as it is, for the kind of relationship that leitourgiai permit­ ted between the donor and the smaller circle of immediate recipients, as opposed to the wider civic audience, has received little attention.54 In addition to being an impor­ tant aspect of the khoregia in its own right, the glimpses we are given as to how this relationship was perceived throw some light on the vexed question as to the socioeconomic status of khoreutai in general in Athens, and of tragic khoreutai in particular. The first question concerns what actually constituted the relation of exchange, especially as regards its material and objective component. Our sources suggest that khoreutai were treated to an unaccustomed degree of material luxury, particularly in the question of their diet. There is a need to avoid taking on the exaggerations of the comic stage and its demand for gastronomic excess as the right of choral victory, but even a text like Antiphon 6 (cf. especially §13) points in the same direction. In later (and generally polemical) accounts, the luxurious life of khoreutai attains an almost proverbial status. In the fourth century, when voices critical of khoregic expense are heard more often than ever before, a contrast begins to develop between the hard life of the campaigning soldier, poorly provisioned as he seeks to defend the city, and the 124

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luxury of the khoregeion.55 This is taken to its extreme in the polemic of Plutarch’s Whether the Athenians were more renowned in war or wisdom (Moralia 345c—351b). In this curious display-piece, which for all its rhetorical overkill cannot be dismissed as alto­ gether anachronistic, the care and expense lavished by the Athenians on choral per­ formances — especially tragic performance — are contrasted, not at all favourably, with the inadequacy of their military preparations. The generals often ordered their men to bring along uncooked rations when they led them forth into battle; and, by Zeus, the trierarkhs, after providing barley-meal for their rowers and some cheese and onions, would embark them on their triremes. But the khoregoi set before their khoreutai eels and tender lettuces, ribs of beef and marrow, and they pampered them for a long time while they were training their voices and living in luxury (τρυφώντας). (349a)

Even though a number of these luxury-items are - rather suspiciously — otherwise known to us principally from their appearance in comedy, leaving open the possibil­ ity that this account may come via the comic stage and its distortions, the contrast can hardly be a complete fiction, and - more to the point - it is certainly based on a contemporary representation of the life of khoreutai, however idealised, distorted or coloured by wishful thinking that may be. The connection between training and these special luxury foods is arresting, given the carte blanche which the khoregos of Antiphon 6 gave Philippos for the purchase of any requirements for the ‘training’ (khoregia) of the boys there, and given too the perhaps somewhat experimental extremes the dietary régime of the choral trainers took in that case. Drawing on classical sources (again, comedy is clearly the most important of them), in a gloss for the word φαρυγγίνδην (Adespota 1185 Kock), ‘with yawning throat’ - Souda reports: ‘Attic writers mockingly refer to the gluttony of khoreutai thus.’ Similar evidence comes from another ancient scholar, commenting on a passage of Aristophanes’ Clouds (338-9). As the Cloud-khoros appears on stage, Sokrates is explaining to Strepsiades that it is they who feed (331) a rag-bag of wayward characters, prominent among them κύκλιων . . . χορών άισματοκάμπτας, ‘twisters of songs for cyclic khoroi’ whom, though lazy idlers, the Clouds feed ‘because they exalt them in verse’ (334). Strepsiades picks up the point with relish and cites a number of more or less parodic samples of dithyrambic exaltation of meteorological phenomena. He concludes with the remark, still in mock-melic language, that ‘Then, in return for that, they [the dith­ yrambic poets] gulp down slices of fine, large muraena and the flesh of thrushes’ (338—9). Beneath the distortions introduced by Aristophanes’ relentless antipathy to the dithyrambic poets, the scholiast’s remark that ‘he is referring to those who are entertained at the houses of khoregoi’ may well have a residue relevant to actual kho­ regic practice. And since the dithyrambic poet was regularly the didaskalos, the one who actually instructed the khoros and was therefore in contact with the khoregos for the period of the khoregia, the reference is likely to be not simply to the victory-feast — the epinikia — but to the more extended luxurious ‘hospitality’ afforded by the kho­ regos throughout.56 It would seem, then, that a principal material receipt of khoreutai was in the form of trophe, ‘nourishment’.57 In this respect, the basis of the relation between khoregos and citizen-khoreutai was analogous to that between the classical city and its citizens, 125

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for as Schmitt-Pantel has argued in detail, democratic misthos, the payments issued by the city for the discharge not simply of civic offices but for the basic political acts of participatory democracy - in the courts, Council and Assembly — was conceived of primarily in terms of ‘nourishment’, as a means of ‘feeding’ the citizen, even though it was distributed in the form of cash payment.58 Yet that democratic image of nour­ ishment was itself an adoption by the city of the aristocratic ethic of the return gift - a return for the political services rendered to it by the citizen. The ‘private’ version of khoregic trophe would — or certainly could — carry an aristocratic valence, rather than being perceived as the adoption of the model of democratic misthos (which in any case did not exist before the ‘Periklean’ period, and was thus not available as a model). This is an especially important point, for it helps to explain the rather fraught and what might seem petulant complaints about choral luxury mentioned above. These are not simply the disappointed tones of those who missed out on a special meal, but have a serious ‘political’ point at their base. If any attempt was made to depict choral misthos as a form analogous to the usual civic versions — we know of no such attempt — it was quite clear that the khoregos, and not the city, was the one assur­ ing their material comfort during the lengthy period of their preparations.59 But it is of course not only the difference of donor, but of the donation, that is crucial. Civic misthos did not extend to thrushes, eels and ribs of beef - indeed, one could not keep a family alive on misthos alone.60 More to the point, the divergence from an ‘ordinary’ diet or civic ‘nurture’ (trophe) that is marked in the sources for the khoregia is so great as to bring it into the realm of tryphe, precisely the word used by Plutarch to describe life in the khoregeion. The term suggests a ‘luxuriousness’ which carries with it in the Greek imagination a whole gamut of connotations of the deli­ cacy and excess thought to characterise barbarians and tyrants. Luxurious clothing is another focus for behaviour alleged to display tryphe, and given the famed extrava­ gance of some choral costumes — especially, if the vase-paintings are anything to go by, those of tragedy — one wonders what was the final fate of these costly items of khoregic expense and display. Some were doubtless ‘dedicated’in some manner at the end of the performance, especially if it had been victorious, and some found their way to the second-hand market, but it may be that they generally remained the pos­ session of the khoreutai themselves, and one of not altogether negligible value. But if this extravagant largesse in the form of trophe/tryphe was the principal element of exchange between khoregos and khoreutai, it was not the only one. Khoreutai received coin as well as kind, although the evidence, while clear enough, is not as full as one could wish. The mysterious Athenian known to posterity only by the two unflattering sobriquets of ‘Pseudo-Xenophon’ and ‘The Old Oligarch’ has left us, in the so-called Constitution of the Athenians, a text of great interest, since it offers a systematic, if not always well-reasoned, attack on the operation of democratic poli­ tics and society by one who unhesitatingly styles himself as belonging to the side of the ‘rich and good’ which stands, in his text, in a rigid set of polarities against ‘the poor and the bad’. Flores describes it well as a text intended for ‘collaborationist oli­ garchs’, though ostensibly attacking the demos.61 A fascinating passage which I dis­ cussed above in connection with the possible inauguration of the leitourgical khoregia sees the writer complain that the demos has done away with the proper observance of athletic and musical activities because it does not consider them καλόν — a term loaded with the connotation of aristocratic worth — and is no good at them anyway: 126

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(τούς δέ γυμναζόμενους αυτόθι καί τήν μουσικήν έπιτηδεύοντας καταλέλυκεν ό δήμος, νομίζων τούτο ού καλόν είναι, γνούς ότι ου δυνατός ταυτά έστιν έττιτηδεύειν).62 There is a clear point of cultural, but — overarching the cultural - of ideological resistance here, a question of ‘taste’, in which the alleged degeneration of culture is equated with its démocratisation - understood as its simple appropriation by the demos. The ruination seems to lie in the fact that democratic conditions have put an end to the exclusively upper-class monopoly on athletic and musical activities. The clear implication of the following remark is that not only khoregoi, but the members of khoroi too should be, and once (in pre-democratic days) were, exclusively members of the élite: Moreover, in the khoregiai and gymnasiarkhiai and trierarkhiai, they know that the wealthy act as khoregoi / lead the khoroi, while the demos is provided with khoroi / is led in khoroi, that the wealthy provide for athletic contests, but the demos is presided over in the triremes and in the athletic competitions, (εν ταις χορηγίαις αυ καί γυμνασιαρχίαις καί τριηραρχίαις γιγνώσκουσιν ότι χορηγούσι μεν οί πλούσιοι, χορηγείται δέ ό δήμος, καί γυμνασιαρχούσι οί πλούσιοι, ό δέ δήμος τριηραρχείται καί γυμνασιαρχείται. (ι.ΐβ)

The rich lead in khoroi, the demos is led: as the outline of a position of power, the whole expression, with its stark contrast of active and passive verb-forms, is lucid. I also note in passing that in this context, so ideologically biased, the use of the verb χορηγειν to mean not just ‘pay for a khoros" but something like ‘provide all the prac­ tical cultural knowhow for choral leadership’, is a further example of what I have argued to be a feature of aristocratic rhetorical self-representation in relation to the khoregia (this and the comparable use of the other verbs in this passage make transla­ tion very difficult). However, the hegemony implied by the expression is tempered by the demos’ coercive demand for money: ‘The demos certainly sees fit to take money for singing, running, dancing and sailing in the navy, so that it may become wealthy and the wealthy poorer.’ (άξιοι γούν άργύριον λαμβάνειν ό δήμος καί άιδων καί τρέχων καί όρχούμενος καί πλέων εν ταις ναυσίν, iva αυτός τε έχηι καί οί πλούσιοι πενέστεροι γίγνωνται.) The latter remark Finley aptly termed ‘a mere debating-trick’,63 but this passage does focus on a particular feature of khoregic expense which was most repellent cer­ tainly to this author: the khoregos (and other leitourgists) had to pay his khoreutai for their services. For it cannot be argued that they are ‘taking money’ from any other source (namely the polis); and the notion that the language could mean, in a general way, that they are ‘getting money out of’ khoregoi or the like, rather than actually being paid, does not do justice to the concreteness of the expression, even in an author who has no trouble bending language to suit himself. Yet it may be possible to get further behind this indignant and obfuscating tone and its rigidly polarised rhetoric. For the Old Oligarch’ puts himself completely outside the system of relations in the demo­ cratic city, and certainly would not acknowledge anything about a democratic insti­ tution like the leitourgiai that might very well have served the ends of some of his peers (those ‘collaborators’) happy enough (as evidently many were) to transfer the habits of aristocratic patronage to members of the demos.64 In case it might be thought that the evidence of the Old Oligarch’ is simply of

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too eccentric a character, or too extreme a position on which to base any general argument, I draw attention in addition to a passage of Demosthenes, from one of his many derisory attacks against Aiskhines for, among other things, his involvement with the theatre. In comparing the conduct of his own life to Aiskhines’, Demosthenes in the speech On the Crown (§265) produces an antithetical list of their occupations which are respectively praiseworthy and demeaning, active and passive. Among these are:

You were a schoolmaster, while I attended; you ministered for initiates, I was initiated [or perhaps, with a play on telos, T paid taxes’]; you were in a khoros, but I was a khoregos; you were a clerk, while I addressed the Assembly; you played the parts of the tritagonist, while I was a spectator; you were hissed offstage, and I did the hissing, (έδίδασκες [γράμματα], εγώ δ’ έφοίτων. έτέλεις, εγώ δ' έτελούμην. έχόρευες, εγώ δ' έχορήγουν. έγραμμάτευες, εγώ δ' ήκκλησίαζον. έτριταγωνίστεις, εγώ δ' έθεώρουν. έξέττιπτες, εγώ δ' έσύρριτον).65 It is telling that such a tone of contempt, for all its rhetorical overkill, could be intro­ duced in this way — and, moreover, in a context of public speech — to a description of the power relation between khoreutes and khoregos. It is also worth stressing the fas­ cinating parallel forms of unequal relationship with which Demosthenes establishes his contrast: that of the (minor and incompetent) actor and the spectator sitting in judgement, for instance; all of them set alongside the specifically political relation between the clerk of the democratic Assembly and the active participant in the Assembly. The extent of this form of patronage is rarely noted: at the Great Dionysia alone some 1,165 citizens were needed each year to serve in the choral contests.66 A substantial percentage of the citizen body was thus effectively under the pay of private individuals in this way for several months every year.67 Choral pay will have been very different in nature from the pay given to poets and actors, since unlike them it was not set and awarded by the Assembly, and so not under the control of the demos. The silence of our sources on the matter of choral pay may well represent, in part at least, a significant omission. An implication of all this evidence needs to be considered head-on: given that khoreutai were placed in this relationship involving the ‘ritualised affirmation of inequality’,68 is it possible to make any deduction about their socio-economic status? A minimal conclusion would be that khoreutai were in general likely to be of lower economic standing than their khoregoi — not a particularly surprising fact, given the importance of huge wealth to the discharge of khoregia — but an important one none­ theless. The extraordinary scale of classical Athenian choral performance might also suggest a certain ‘démocratisation’ of this activity: the expansion of the programme of festivals with a choral component in the fifth and fourth centuries evident from the survey above may well have opened up the realm of khoreia to more than a small élite.69 Urban dithyrambic khoroi alone will have demanded some two thousand men and boys to fill their circles each year; and that is to put to one side the many dra­ matic khoroi, the broad range of pyrrhikhistai and others. But that said, the evidence is still consistent with a likely preponderence of élite participants in even this expansive festival programme. Against any notion of the radical ‘démocratisation’ of khoreia is the persistent association, evident into the late fifth century, between participation in 128

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khoroi and highly traditional, conservative educational and social values. The best instance of this, and highly revealing, despite its embeddedness in a comic frame which does not offer easy and stable evaluative positions, is the appeal from the par­ abasis of Aristophanes’ Frogs that the city should employ once more politicians of good birth, those ‘noble and prudent’ (727) men, just, fine gentlemen’ (728). Unlike the false coin the city does in fact choose to use, these men were ‘reared in wrestling­ schools and khoroi and in mousike' (729). Even if the security of this strong association between moral worth, socio-economic standing and old-style education is to some extent undermined by the subsequent depiction on the lips of a comic slave of the ‘noble man’ (his master Dionysos) as someone who ‘only knows how to drink and fuck’ (740), this rapid shift of focus does not disturb the link between khoreia and élite values as such.70 If khoreia had indeed been opened to a somewhat broader social group, that will certainly not have prevented particular khoregoi from electing to recruit from their own social milieu. Indeed, we have seen that one piece of (very controversial) evi­ dence, the Pronomos vase, suggests that something like that happened for a perfor­ mance of tragedy in the late fifth century. And while the ‘Old Oligarch’ may have found the idea of any involvement in the ‘degenerate’ choral culture of democratic Athens completely distasteful, there were doubtless others who felt very differently, and who made the most of the presence of the vast audience at the Great Dionysia before which to ‘lead’ a khoros of ‘brilliant’ agathoi, whose education in the skills of choral song and dance was a significant feature of their social formation. The more intimate quality of the tragic khoros, very much smaller than that of phyletic dithyramb; its greater demands for technical proficiency; and the genre’s special prestige within and beyond Attike, may all have been factors encouraging a higher degree of élite participation. In the long run these factors also led to an increased professionalism, evident in embryonic form in the family tradition of the fifth-century tragic poet Karkinos whose sons were known as ‘tragic dancers’.71 ‘Professionalism’ of a sort may also be suggested for the late fifth century in the choice of a family to represent an untimely dead male member on his funerary stele in an image that very probably recalls his distinguished service in life as a khoreutes.72 The weighty symbolism of this choice should not be underestimated, especially in an age when such reminiscences of ‘professional’ careers in funerary contexts are extremely rare. Yet ‘professionalism’ is probably a misleading term. If the youth haled from an élite family (as much is implied by the quality of his grave-monument), this image may simply recall his excellence in a realm of mousike for long a preserve of the élite. The implications of making a living to support oneself that attach to ‘professional­ ism’ are probably quite inappropriate here. If ephebes did indeed dance for Dionysos in tragic khoroi, they will have been the élite from a group which even in the fourth century may not have extended down the socio-economic scale as far as the thetes. However, we have already seen the fragile basis for this theory of tragic choral conscription, although the image on which so much of its argument hangs does offer a tantalising prosopographical insight into the composition of a classical Athenian khoros. Many of the names of the khoreutai inscribed on the Pronomos krater are shared by known members of the Athenian élite of wealth.73 And they clearly declare the origins of their bearers among those ‘reared in the wrestling-schools and khoroi' of Athens — Kallias, Dorotheos, Nikoleos (sic),

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Dion, Philinos, Nikomakhos, Kharias; while two names in particular, Eunikos and Euagon, seem almost to lie on the threshold between aristocratic self-definition through agonistic excellence and the professional who takes his name from his exper­ tise.74 The long hair clearly sported by most of these khoreutai also marks them out, in this period, as self-styled aristocrats.75

Khoregos, koryphaios? To bring the argument directly back to the issue of khoregic desire for self-represen­ tation as a true ‘leader’ closely involved with his khoros, and in the process, eliding the gap between his rôles as ‘financier’ and ‘/e/io/w-leader’, I shall discuss a possible case where a khoregos actually stood in the ranks of his tragic khoros, doing so, moreover, in the rôle of koryphaios, the immediate successor in performative terms of the archaic lyric khora/egos. The general hypothesis that certain khoregoi actually may have served as koryphaios has a strong prima facie probability about it, given the evident presence as khoregoi of men for whom aristocratic traditions of education in mousike were impor­ tant. Given too the diachronic picture of differentiation from an earlier ‘combined’ figure of the khoregos, we might expect the occurrence of such an overlap to have been most likely in the earlier days of drama (and dithyramb), when the two rôles of poet and actor had certainly not yet separated. Book 8 of Aristotle’s Politics is devoted to the ideal educational training, in gym­ nastics (1338—9) and, especially, in mousike (1339ÎTI) of the free youth of a polis. Aristotle criticises the contemporary (late fourth-century) lack of a public system of such education (1337a), and sets about sketching parameters for his preferred system. In particular, he is careful to distinguish those musical activities that are and are not fitting for the formation of the ‘free man’ (ελεύθερος). His discussion provides rich evidence for, among many other things, the attitude of the ‘great and good’ at this period towards professionalism in music: ‘We may consider the assumption we have concerning the gods: Zeus does not sing and play the kithara to the poets himself. But we call such men [professional musicians] vulgar people (βάναυσοι) and the activity itself is not appropriate behaviour for a man unless he is drunk or having fun.’ Later in the same book Aristotle does recognise the importance of practical partici­ pation, though for strictly ‘non-professional’ purposes. One of his main reasons for deciding in favour of active learning is the need to cultivate the critical skills ofjudge­ ment that are vital for the citizen; and he even recognises a limited need for the young to take part in such performances themselves (1340b). The way to avoid the objec­ tion of ‘some people’ (i34ob4i) that this makes men vulgar is to place tight controls on the rhythms and instruments permitted. All forms of the aulos are the prime offenders here, since this instrument exercises an exciting (οργιαστικόν) influence rather than a moralising one (ηθικόν 1341a). The other great drawback of the aulos, and one that recurs elsewhere in ancient discussions and representations of the instru­ ment, is that it ‘prevents the use of logos’ (134^25). From an Athenian point of view, this renders it anathema to the man whose ‘free mouth’ was one of the most ideal­ ised features of his entire comportment, corporeal and political. It also makes it emi­ nently suitable for Thebans.

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Aristotle speaks of the adoption, and subsequent rejection, of the instrument by earlier ages — the pattern is significant, and it informs the entire Athenian system of representations of the aulos — discovered, tested and authoritatively rejected by the city’s patron-goddess herself, Athena.76 In those earlier times, however — roughly the period after the Persian Wars, when increased leisure and wealth produced a certain ‘high-spiritedness directed at excellence’ — the Greeks were led to take up all forms of learning without distinction, even auletike. Aristotle continues (1341333—7): ‘For in Lakedaimon a certain khoregos played the aulos for his khoros himself, and at Athens it became such a fad that almost the majority of free men took up aulos-playing; this is evident from the tablet which Thrasippos set up after being khoregos for Ekphantides.’ The reference to a Spartan xoppyos in the same breath as an Athenian leitour­ gical khoregos is fascinating, if too brief to permit any sure deductions about his normal role. It is Aristotle’s description of the craze among the Athenian upper-class for aulos-playing, however, which is most suggestive here. For it is clear that in dem­ onstrating the point by his reference to this khoregic pinax (mentioned with a casu­ alness that is in itself interesting) Aristotle means his reader to understand that the Thrasippos who was the khoregos for the (early-to-mid-fifth-century) comic poet Ekphantides was also his auletes:77 an instrumental variant of khoregic leadership in the performance ‘in person’, though one which (given the choice of instrument) we may not expect to have found favour with dyed-in-the-wool aristocrats — and perhaps it could only ever have been pulled off with comedy, where the natural supremacy of ‘the beautiful’ is regularly challenged.78 From this case of a comic khoregos participating in his production as the auletes for his khoros I turn to some striking evidence for a tragic khoregos serving as koryphaios, leading and controlling his khoros from a position at its head in the orkhestra. In 1954, a fifth-century base built to support a bronze statue was discovered at Varkiza, in southern Attike, in an area which probably belonged to the coastal deme of Anagyrous (figure 6).79 This carries an inscription which is, in the state of the extant evidence, unusual in many ways (IG i3 969): Sokrates dedicated this. Euripides was the didaskalos. Tragoidoi: Amphidemos Python Euthydikos Ekhekles Lysias Menalkes Son Philokrates Kritodemos Ekhyllos Kharias Meletos Phaidon Emporion This dedication is dated to between c. 440 and 431, and it is thus among the earliest surviving khoregic memorials. It is also one of the very few extant to celebrate a tragic victory.80 Because of its fmd-spot in a deme at a considerable distance from the city, it used to be thought to record a victory won at the Rural Dionysia of Anagyrous (for the existence of which this would be one of the only (possible) testimonies),81 but it is now generally recognised that it ‘belongs in the small but significant tradition of khoregic dedications by demesmen who preferred to advertise their urban

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Fig. 6. The base of the khoregic monument for tragedy of Sokrates discovered at Varkiza

(probably the Attic deme Anagyrous), of c. 435. It once carried a bronze statue.

successes not in the city but in their own demes’.82 The man who assembled this vic­ torious tragic khoros — and he may in doing so have been the man to have assisted in the first ever victory of the very small number won by Euripides in his career — was Sokrates of Anagyrous, a general in the Samian war in 441/0.83 He was also someone sufficiently disliked or feared, for whatever reason, to have attracted a candidacy for ostracism in 443 — a shadow that fell over other prominent khoregoi.84 This is the best piece of epigraphic evidence for the desire to memorialise the close association between a particular tragic khoregos and khoros in the enduring mon­ ument of victory. For it demonstrates with great clarity the strong distinction between the spheres of, on the one hand, actors and, on the other (khoregos-md-) khoros. Indeed, it has an air of exclusivity about it that is in keeping with the much more intimate relationship that was able to develop between the khoregos and his team. To modern eyes looking on this as a memorial of a tragic victory, the absence of any mention of the actors seems extraordinary. And it is the only surviving dedication which lists by name the members of a khoros; it is surely not a matter of indifference that that should have been a tragic khoros, and at the city’s most prestigious festival.85 Another reason for this sense of intimacy is the fact that this dedication was erected locally, and it is agreed that these tragoidoi must have shared membership of the relevant deme, Anagyrous. This is made virtually certain by the fact that they are named without patronymic or demotic: neither was needed, in this local context, where a familiarity with the circumstances of the event and with the participants 132

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themselves must have existed — deme society had a ‘face-to-face’ character that could not be realised at the city-wide level.86 As I noted above, this inscription gives us an insight into the procedure of tragic choral recruitment ‘on the ground’: although the formal requirement was (simply) for citizens as such (as opposed to foreigners), it is only to be expected that a khoregos would avoid the difficulties alluded to in Antiphon 6 (§i i) by selecting his friends or at least citizens of his own deme whom he knew personally — or those with whom he might have had, or wished to promote, a rela­ tionship of kharis. One should also never lose sight of the probability that, in a society with many opportunities for choral performance, some citizens must have developed a reputation for their choral skills that made them hotly sought-after during the periods of recruitment.87 One such is the Sannion mentioned by Demosthenes (21.58-9) who was a trainer of tragic khoroi and probably a star choral performer.88 That these tragoidoi are the members of the tragic khoros is not accepted as certain by all; but in an area where certainties are rare and probabilities gratefully accepted, we create unnecessary problems by doubting what is clearly a case of the use of the word TpaycuiSos in its earliest sense — to refer to the member of a tragic khoros.89 The question of why there should be fourteen in the list inevitably poses itself. Two major hypotheses suggest themselves: the first, that the absent fifteenth was an outsider in some way to this team that has a strong local character. The second — and the one that carries more conviction - that he is not absent at all, but present at the head of the dedication in the person of the ‘fe/wros-leader’, Sokrates the khoregos.90 The idea that an outsider was one of the team also brings with it the likely con­ sequence that he was the koryphaios, and something of a semi-professional like the Sannion mentioned above. This is surely the only reason a khoregos would have all but one of his group drawn from outside the local circle from which he engaged the rest. Perhaps philonikia may have overcome the desire to keep the team local, and sent him out for a ‘star’ singer-and-dancer, for as Demosthenes says, ‘as of course you know, if one takes away the leader, the rest of the khoros is done for’ (21.60). However, I strongly suspect that that is less likely for the 430s than for the 340s, the period in which Demosthenes is speaking, and that in any case, if a ‘star’ was employed, surely he would have attracted a certain prestige and may have added to the lustre of the victory; or, if such a move had at this date an air of professionalism about it which detracted from the victory, simply omitting his name would do little to ameliorate the ill effect. It is thus extremely likely that Sokrates Anagyrasios performed this tragic khore­ gia in person. Such behaviour calls to mind — perhaps quite consciously — the aristo­ cratic practices of lyric khoreia discussed above, and implies a great amount of invested time and effort on the part of a man who was clearly very prominent at the highest level of politics in the city. But we should not be too hasty to detect a conflict of spheres and interests here. In this connection, a passage from a discussion of his notion of ‘symbolic capital’ developed by the social anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu, drawing on extensive fieldwork in Kabylia, is illuminating: The acquisition of a clientele, even an inherited one, implies considerable labour devoted to making and maintaining relations, and also substantial material and symbolic investments, in the form of political aid against attack, theft, offence, and insult, or economic aid, which can be very costly ... As

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well as material wealth, time must be invested, for the value of symbolic labour cannot be defined without reference to the time devoted to it, giving or squandering time being one of the most precious of gifts.91

In a very important sense, of course, time spent on training for a tragic khoregia could by no means be regarded as time squandered, since the end to which it was directed was esteemed so highly in collective values. And evidently, from the point of view of Sokrates himself, the devotion of a substantial part of a year to this khoregia did not conflict with his perception of his own wider good. But the point is rather that Sokrates chose to give lavishly of his time in this instance, both to his choral team, and also to his own deme. By reinvesting the notion of personal service so fully through his own participation as leader of the city’s most prestigious variety of khoros — and by doing so, moreover, with the blessings of Nike — Sokrates engineered an especially successful symbolic performance. And symbolic capital has properties of great con­ vertibility. A glance at the few securely attested points in the career of Sokrates dem­ onstrates as much. In 443 he was under the shadow of ostracism. In 442 he was it seems engaged on a magnificent tragic khoregia at the Great Dionysia — surely under­ taken as an εθελοντής, voluntarily? — in co-operation with the brilliant young poet Euripides, and ‘leading the khoros" of local citizens (firming-up his power-base?) in person. This culminates in a victory, a symbolic signal, perhaps, of a shift in his for­ tunes, that was converted to election to the highest military office of the polis for the following year, 441/0 (the elections took place soon after the Dionysia). Leading a (tragic) khoros and leading a military collective were not, after all, such different activ­ ities — as another Sokrates argues at length in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (3.4, quotation from §6): ‘. . . whatever a man is in charge of, if he knows what he needs and has the power to get it, he will be a good leader, whether he is in charge of a khoros, a house­ hold, a city or an army’. It is, I think, possible that this form of direct participatory choral leadership was not confined to these few examples, and that possibility throws a fascinating light on the relationship between the performance of tragedy in the polis and the leading men (προστάται) at the head of the city’s many collective activities. The vision of Themistokles leading the khoros of Persian elders in the Phoinissai of Phrynikhos or of the Alkmeonid Perikles doing the same for the Persai of Aiskhylos is an attractive one. It is at least certain that the words to the glory of Athens uttered by the koryphaios in the iambic exchange with Atossa (232ff) could hardly come from more appropriate lips than Perikles’. At a more general level, it is particularly interesting to set the figure of the koryphaios within tragedy beside that of the khoregos ‘outside’ it. For unlike his lyric predecessors, the tragic koryphaios seems to have been distinguished from his fellow-khoreutai in only the most functional of ways: a better singer, more adept at guiding and controlling the movements of his troupe. But at the dramatic level, the koryphaios is hardly differentiated from the collective — speaking for it, to be sure, but in a manner which makes it hard to identify any distinguishing feature of this indi­ vidual from his group; as though he were the mouthpiece of convenience to facili­ tate the group’s interaction with the individual actors, the mediator between song and speech — and one, perhaps, with a degree of formal anonymity suited to a ‘democra­ tic’ collective. Unlike his satyric counterpart, the tragic koryphaios within the text and its action takes no observable role as a leader - or only in the rarest of instances.92

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In taking a participatory lead-róle in their khoregiai in this way, Thrasippos and Sokrates gave full weight to the partially moribund figure of speech used by many lei­ tourgical speakers in the courts who talk of their actions σώματι καί χρήμασι, ‘in person [lit. ‘with my body’] and with my resources’. For example, the brother-in-law of the Aristophanes whose property was at issue in the case for which Lysias 19 (of c. 388/7) was written cites his own father’s sparkling list of services to the city as a means of proving that he would not have withheld any of Aristophanes’ property from it after his death (the issue at stake in this trial). The speaker asks indulgence for men­ tioning what he has spent on the city and on his philoi, and goes on to have the clerk read out a list of his father’s leitourgiai ‘one by one’, a list that totalled the vast sum of some nine taiants, two thousand drakhmas (§59). He comments: ‘You hear, gentle­ men of the jury, the mass of them. For it was for as much as fifty years that my father performed leitourgiai for the polis with his resources and his person — χρήμασι καί τώι σώματι’ (§58). This combination of‘the body’ and ‘the resources’ of the leitour­ gist was one of the ideological supports of a system which, for all the control over it exercised by the polis, never saw the diversion of those very considerable resources to the treasury itself, thence to be redeployed, in the manner of modern taxation­ systems. A permanent system of taxation might well have brought connotations of an enforced ‘tribute’, which marked an unequal power relation, the subjection of one person to another, like the impositions on metoikoi or imperial tribute. Even though leitourgiai were legally enforceable obligations,93 and though the exemptions under attack are described by Demosthenes as a δωρεία (20.2), they are the kind of ‘gift’ which the élite will close ranks to insist upon.94 The entire relationship is ‘beautified’ — and mystified — by kharis, a term which usefully describes both the generosity of the benefactor and the goodwill and expected return his benefaction generates, and which moves that relationship between the hard world of a favour owed and the transcendent realm of divine ‘grace’. The emphasis on the body of the leitourgist keys into the ethic of active personal involvement, as though in every instance the speaker’s father had been present at the scene of the various leitourgiai, directing and participating in them himself. He may well have been, but the point is that this neat rhetorical topos, in relating the money deployed so closely to the person of the giver, smooths over any actual disjunctions that had opened up between the ideal and the reality. The ideological work of the expression thus makes, on the one hand, for an ideal of the rich and able leader, the person in whom know-how and wealth go together, by a sort of hendiadys that equates the person of the leitourgist with his wealth. But on the other hand it may also evoke a more egalitarian, participatory ethic — the ethic of the participatory democracy itself, according to which all should serve the city according to their respective means and skills. In this latter sense, the one with which in the arena of the courtroom élite speakers may well have sought most to imbue their self-representa­ tion, the notion of the ‘democratic body’ plays a central role. This is the ideal of the equality, independence and inviolability of every citizen’s body, of each citizen’s body as equal and interchangeable, and as the limit beyond which the power of others could not legitimately pass. That every citizen served the city ‘with his body’ virtually went without saying, for one of the most profound tenets of civic ideology maintained that the citizen perpetually holds his body in readiness to give it to the city, in peace as in war.95 In a society where the central notion of civic identity is predicated on constant

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participation in a range of political institutions, involving physical attendance by the citizenry at Assemblies, both local and central, in Councils and courts, the person viewed under his corporeal aspect (σώμα) becomes an important figure of the dem­ ocratic citizen. This egalitarian notion of the ‘expenditure of self’ in the service of the collective is thus made to serve the rhetoric of adequation of the super-rich between themselves and the ordinary citizen, through the idea of the universality and inviolability of every citizen’s body.96 But in virtually equating the citizen with his wealth, this expression remains in a tension with the egalitarian ideal even as it seems to recall it.97 For actual inequalities of wealth led to real differences in people’s abil­ ities to defend themselves, to sustain themselves and their oikoi, to participate in civic office and to have the necessary educational and social background to be able and pre­ disposed to speak in the Assembly. Thus, while many key-terms of aristocratic self­ definition - such as eugeneia, ‘good birth,’ and kalokagathia - were indeed applied in the rhetoric of public discourse to the demos and its communal values, underneath and in that very rhetorical process there remained points of contradiction and tension. In the following chapter, where the workings of this public discourse are studied more fully, it will emerge that this conflicted representation of leitourgiai goes to the very heart of conflicting notions of citizenship.

Khoregic performance The specific instances where khoregoi possibly entered the orkhestra as performers rep­ resent one extreme of the general phenomenon of khoregic performance. As 1 have argued, existing approaches to the khoregia have generally missed the extent and importance of its competitive and performative qualities, features which it shares with drama itself. In the study of Attic as of other societies, it is coming to be more widely recognised that those cultural institutions specifically and explicitly designated by the society as dramatic stand in an interactive, dialectical relationship with the paradramatic — the actions and interactions of individuals and groups outside the specially demarcated space and time of the theatre. The work of social anthropologists such as Victor Turner offers valuable insights for the study of the theatrical in a classical culture which can all too readily appear familiar and intelligible in terms of our own notions of drama. Writing with a theoretical and comparative perspective in one of his last discussions of the relationship between ‘social drama’ and ‘real’ drama on stage, Turner argued that the latter is essentially a metacommentary, explicit or implicit, witting or unwitting, on the major social dramas of its context: ‘Not only that, but its message and its rhetoric feed back into the latent processual structure of the social drama and partly account for its ready ritualization.’98 In Athens, the central sociopolitical institutions of the Assembly, the Council and the people’s courts in particular repay close study as sites in which many of the basic techniques and strategies that we tend principally to associate with the theatre play a vital role: the creation of convincing narratives of past events and of personal moti­ vations are as important — if not more so — to litigants in court attempting to con­ struct cogent accounts before an audience of critical spectators and judges as they are to actors, khoroi and poets in the theatre. There are spatial similarities (especially 136

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between the theatre and the Pnyx), they share a defining agonistic character, and in all these fora there are complex communicative interplays between élite individuals and mass audiences." The lines which are drawn to demarcate what constitutes modern theatrical experience have for a long time been mapped quite uncritically onto the ancient Athenian material, the substantial gaps in our knowledge being filled more often than not by an unthinking transference of modern ideas of theatrical organisation, production and performance, to the Greek context. As far as Attic society is concerned, the (perhaps typically bourgeois) opposition between ‘art’ and ‘politics’ is radically inapplicable, for the two do not have fundamentally separate spheres or discourses. Furthermore, as the evidence of fourth-century forensic speeches shows, explicitly theatrical motifs found their way into the discursive prac­ tices deemed effective in the public sphere of mass communication - a process that well exemplifies Turner’s point about the two-way process of interaction. Theatrical experience was used as a way of representing social experience, just as social experi­ ence was represented in complex and mediated forms in the theatrical representations of comedy and tragedy.100 As a figure bound to have social prominence by virtue of his great wealth, the khoregos effected a vital material and institutional link between the theatre and those other areas of social life that were the object of widespread civic attention. The best illustrations of the way the khoregia operated as performance derive from the narra­ tives of actual khoregiai which survive in the orators and historians. These tend to focus on points of transgression, as khoregoi consciously manipulate their position in the theatron before a mass audience. Although these incidents are framed as exceptional or abnormal, I shall argue further (chapter 4) that the behaviour they describe often lay just below the surface of the official constraints which were designed precisely to counteract the potentially explosive tensions of a highly competitive symbolic economy. This is an arena where, in a sense, transgression becomes the norm. Because of its special status as a full-length forensic speech centred on the khore­ gia, I shall devote a separate section to the discussion of Demosthenes’ Against Meidias below, where the evidence of [Andokides] 4, a text of rather more obscure origins, is also in place. But there are, in the first place, a number of important general fea­ tures of khoregic performance which need to be considered. In particular, the dynamic of the gaze and the role of visuality — the very means and essence of theat­ rical experience — are fundamental to its operation. The point is well illustrated by a fascinating story told of Nikias, who must vie with Alkibiades as the all-time khoregic performer and big-spender - frequently vic­ torious with khoroi, and never worsted. Plutarch draws a picture of Nikias winning popular favour with his khoregic largesse, as Themistokles had before him. Lacking the rhetorical skills of a Perikles or of the demagogues like Kleon, Nikias made his wealth an instrument of his politics (Nikias 3.1): ‘and he sought to captivate the demos with his khoregiai and gymnasiarkhiai and other such acts of philotimia, exceeding in lavishness and kharis all those before his time and his contemporaries’ (3.2). A story Plutarch recounts (3.3) shows Nikias as a highly skilled khoregic performer: during one of his khoregiai, a household slave of his appeared in the costume of Dionysos, very beautiful to see, and very tall, the down of youth still upon his face. The Athenians were delighted at the sight, and applauded for a long

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time. At last Nikias stood up and said he deemed it an unholy thing that one whose person had been dedicated to the god should be a slave, and he gave the youth his freedom. Whether this story has a basis in fact or not does not entirely determine its interest. There are many problems of detail — such as whether and where a slave could have been acting as Dionysos and if, as the passage implies, Nikias had provided him as part of his khoregia, did he form part of a khoros or was he an extra, since as far as is known, the khoregos did not provide actors?101 These questions aside, however, the story illus­ trates Nikias’ sensitivity to the audience’s response and his own performative gestures in keeping with this. Nikias, who prefers to let his money speak for him, displays his own liberality — and power — by freeing the slave before the mass citizen audience. The khoregia is here very clearly a site of power for the individual who can reduce the gap between slave and god. In a passage of his speech Against Ktesiphon (of 330), Aiskhines makes it clear to what extent the whole occasion of the tragic performances at the Great Dionysia pro­ vided a site (and an audience) for the self-promoting performances of individual cit­ izens who were not strictly part of the performances themselves. Aiskhines is arguing against the practice that had developed whereby, at the performance of tragedy, people (including demes and phylai) took the opportunity to confer honours and make various proclamations without the authorisation of the demos. This, claims Aiskhines, had the effect of inconveniencing spectators, khoregoi and actors (§43), and among the various self-advertising practices he condemns, he mentions that ‘others by the voice of the herald manumitted their household slaves, and made all Hellas their witness’ (§41). The calculated effect of such an action on its audience is stressed, and it is possible that the behaviour of Nikias might have been seen from a certain perspective as beyond what was authorised by the demos (despite the account of the demotic ‘acclamation’ in the theatre, which was not the same as the product of rea­ soned argument in the Assembly). It is particularly striking that virtually all the evi­ dence we have for this and similar practices points to the occasion of the performance of new tragedies — the phrase is Διονυσίοις τραγωιδών γιγνομένων καινών or similar — as the moment for such self-advertising activities. This was evidently regarded as the optimum moment for the kinds of symbolic practice under discussion. One of the primary objectives of the leitourgist was ‘brilliance’, λαμττρότης.102 In the many recitals of their leitourgic records that we hear from speakers in court, the fact that their performances had been undertaken ‘with brilliance’ - λαμττρώς stands, alongside ττροθύμως ‘with eagerness’ and φιλοτίμως ‘ambitiously’, as one of the most important descriptions of their actions. The term, moreover, attaches itself much more frequently to the khoregia than to the trierarkhia or any other form of ‘public service’. If in the forensic context the brilliance they speak of has lost some­ thing of its sheen in the distance travelled between the moment of performance and the courtroom, it is necessary to consider the term outside the particular constraints imposed by that context and to see how it fits into, and derives from, a series of cul­ tural and sociopolitical practices and deportments to which the gaze of an audience is central. Fifth-century Athens was too large to be considered a ‘face-to-face’ society as a whole, but the concept is useful for considering smaller groups.103 The local, semi-

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autonomous deme societies offer the most important examples. But there are many other possible ‘visual relations’ within the complex society of Athens, and one of these more relevant to the khoregia at the city’s central dramatic festival involves a rwn-symmetrical relation of the gaze; a situation in which a smallish sub-group of the Athenian citizenry is conspicuous because of its regular appearance on one or a number of the various ‘stages’ of Athenian civic life: on the speaker’s platform in the Assembly or in the courts, as a military commander or regular holder of civic office, or as a conspicuous leitourgist. In such scenarios, these well-known individuals would have been readily identifiable, because constantly watched, by the mass of the citi­ zenry. In these many contexts, the demos is the audience to its performing leaders; but it is explicitly and self-consciously in the theatre that the demos is constructed as watchers of, among others, its ‘choral leaders’. And it is thus no accident that the per­ formance of a khoregia in particular was often one of or in fact the first major action that a young man entering the public sphere undertook: the khoregos provided a spec­ tacle, and the khoregia was a spectacle of self-presentation.104 The very fact of being watched by so vast an audience was in itself an important part of the ‘return’ for their gift to the demos that khoregoi sought. Their own activ­ ities, and those of their choral team, were watched and, they hoped, admired above those of their rivals. This desire for the limelight, for courting the gaze of others, is recognisable as a characteristically aristocratic comportment. Vernant has shown the extent to which it underlies the very basis of aristocratic notions of the self, persis­ tent even in democratic Athens: C’est une forme essentiellement sociale de l’individu marquée par le désir de s’illustrer, d’acquérir aux yeux de ses pairs, par son style de vie, ses mérites, ses largesses, ses exploits, assez de renom pour faire de son existence sin­ gulière le bien commun de toute la cité, voire de la Grèce entière.105

The suggestion in the last phrase that the kind of glory most coveted by such ideo­ logical aristocrats was one that exceeded the boundaries of their own polis is conso­ nant with the rather more ‘international’ horizons of those who maintained traditional relations of guest-friendship across and beyond Greece - the reciprocal bond at the heart of aristocratic society in Greece from at least as early as ‘Homeric’ times on.106 The figure who best exemplifies this desire for ‘international renown’ from the period under consideration is Alkibiades. I shall discuss the dynamics of his khoregic career below, and the way in which his conspicuous expenditure, especially in the notorious instance of his Olympic victories in (probably) 416, demonstrated that for him at least the largest polis in Greece offered too narrow an audience for his performances. There was also a special link between the provision of khoroi in particular and lamprotes. It is because the thing ‘led’ by the khoregos is itself the focus of the gaze, of theoria (which can refer both to the activity of watching and to the spectacle of a fes­ tival), that its leader should generate most ‘brilliance’. The lamprotes which surrounds the successful khoregos and characterises his khoregia is continuous with the glorious effulgence given off by a well-equipped and trained khoros, and evokes the images of radiance that fill much early choral lyric — indeed, its ultimate model is the ageless brilliance of the dance-floor of Olympos itself. At work here in the rhetoric of lam­ protes is a form of ‘euphemisation’, the process whereby the realities of power at the

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base of a social relation are made unrecognisable as such. For the notion of ‘bril­ liance’, in ancient Greek as in many modern cultures, carries within its aesthetic valorisation a normative strategy that imposes - through the glare of the radiance that dazzles the viewer’s eye — a sense of its own unquestionable, self-evident • · 107 superiority. That khoregoi in democratic Athens should be in a sense the inheritors of the pre­ stigious ‘brilliance’ that aristocrats of earlier periods garnered through, among other things, the production and reproduction of their kleos by commissioning khoroi, focusses from another angle the issue of the ‘démocratisation’ of khoreia in Athens. The concentration of the material wealth of aristocrats in the seventh and sixth cen­ turies provided the enabling conditions in which choral lyric flourished.108 The sixth­ century Athenian cultural scene has been shown to have been characterised by a small but growing urban centre dominated by an ostentatious timocracy. The desire for display and public performance was shared by the older aristocracy of birth and the newer class whose status was measured in wealth. But still in the fifth century it is possible to speak of an ‘aristocratic’ (or, perhaps better, ‘timocratic’) construction of a self-image.109 Indeed, it may be that the need to generate such an image gains greater importance when the ascendancy of such classes and the ‘naturalness’ of their domi­ nation are challenged, as of course they fundamentally were in the fifth century, when very significant restrictions had been placed on the position accorded them in the city and on the fields in which they had traditionally expressed their excellence. Thus at that time a whole array of value-laden terms came to occupy a central place in class discourse, where they remained throughout much of the fifth and fourth centuries. And a common feature of most of these is that they stress the visibility of this class: γνώριμοι, επιφανείς, δοκιμώτατοι, χαριείς, even καλός.110 On the other hand, the fifth-century élite could not afford to be too stringently reactionary, and more often than not they are to be seen accommodating themselves to the dominant egalitarian ideology, in habits of clothing, for example. It has been argued that in the fifth century rich Athenian men abandoned ostentatious habits of clothing at a time when their material prosperity might have most readily facilitated them. Geddes takes the simpler sartorial practice as a visual sign intended to show their endorsement of the princi­ ple of equality, despite (I am tempted to say, because of,) real differences.111 In an environment where such restrictions applied, the office of khoregos certainly gave full rein to the desire of such men to dress (themselves and their khoroi) extravagantly and luxuriously. A wider consideration the importance of which has not been adequately recog­ nised is the fact that, whatever restrictions and impositions were put on the actions of the élite, the conditions of democracy offered them much greater scope for their performances. The breakdown of a fairly narrow political élite actually made possible more acutely individualistic displays, and their audience had certainly become much larger. Zoe Petre has written: ‘. . .les aristocrates athéniens semblent s’être accom­ modés des nouveaux cadres de la cité qui, s’ils ne reconnaissaient plus leur domina­ tion comme groupe, offraient un terrain beaucoup plus vaste aux exploits et aux ambitions d’une gloire individuelle’.112 It is important to situate the khoregia within these developments. As an emphat­ ically civic institution, this characteristic seems in one way decidedly out of place, but a strong thread of cultural continuity needs to be recognised. With particular refer­ 140

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ence to tragedy, recent writers have shown that as a genre it enacted the problemat­ ics resulting from the persistence of older forms of thought and society within the democratic polis. The figure of the khoregos himself can, as I have already suggested, be seen as an institutionalised point of mediation here — as the inheritor, in some sense, of that problematic past himself whose energies and wealth are harnessed for its dramatisation in a confrontation with the present. Another key term which highlights the theatricality of the khoregia is θαυμάζω and its cognates. Like λαμττρότης, θαυμάζω has a radically visual orientation. It is etymologically related to θεάομαι, the verb for ‘gazing at’ - ‘mostly with a sense of wonder (LSJ s.v.i) — and the verb used most often to describe the activity of spec­ tators in the theatre, who are sometimes called simply οι θεώμενοι. The reaction of ‘wonderment at the sight of [a person or thing]’ is precisely that which, we are told, greeted Alkibiades whenever he was khoregos, and, in another account of his motivations for behaving as he did at Olympia, he is said to have seen that ‘the fes­ tival gathering at Olympia attracted the affections and the admiration (θαυμαζομένην) of all men’ (Isokrates 16.32). It is also a response more generally associated with the audiences of drama, and in particular of tragedy. Plutarch summed up tragedy as a θαυμαστόν ακρόαμα και θέαμα,113 a ‘wondrous thing to hear and see’, and a very early Athenian dedication from the Akropolis speaks of a victory won at Athens by one Philon in ‘θαύματα,’ and this may refer to a dramatic or choral performance.114 The khoregos seems to have had as much or perhaps even more direct confron­ tation with the audience than did the poet, to have been more immediately ‘on display’. There were doubtless many moments during the festival when khoregoi were before the audience, vying for its attention: even if they did not actually ‘lead on the khoros" themselves, it is difficult to imagine them keeping a low profile at the moment of their khoros" entry. It is clear at any rate from the story of Meidias’ attack on Demosthenes, as told by Demosthenes, that khoregoi were right at the heart of things as their performances were about to take place in the theatre. One thinks further of the proagon and the pompe in particular as prime occasions in this respect, as partic­ ularly heightened moments of civic attention at which khoregoi were surely present and taking full advantage of their ‘spectacular’ and ‘publicising’ functions. And the khoregos was, after all, the person primarily responsible for the visual aspects of the tragic performance itself — in particular of course the costuming of the most domi­ nating physical presence on the stage, the khoros, but perhaps too for other ‘visual effects’. Aristotle’s great typology, made towards the close of the classical period, of the proper comportments in relation to the use of money - to some degree, the art of giving and receiving it — places megaloprepeia at the summit of these ‘virtues’. In his codification and explication of the ‘virtue’ of the megaloprepes man in book four of the Nikomakhaian Ethics (ii22ai8—H23a28), and of his counterpart in excess, the banausos man, and in deficiency, the mikroprepes or paltry man (1123 £28-3 4), Aristotle frequently employs examples from the sphere of leitourgiai, and more often than not, these are khoregic. Indeed, it is in such ‘grand works’ that the virtue of ‘munificence on a grand scale for a grand purpose’ is characteristically practiced. It is magnitude of expense that most distinguishes megaloprepeia from the related ‘virtue’ of ‘liberality’ (eleutheriotes): the megaloprepes is liberal, but the liberal man cannot necessarily be

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megaloprepes. The latter needs to be able to spend on a huge scale (μεγάλο-), and — most crucially - to do so ‘appropriately’ (πρεπ-). Vast expenditure in ‘good taste’ on ‘noble’ objects of collective value . . . the ideal leitourgist is very clearly the realworld model for this ‘artist in expenditure’ (ii22a34). In fact, leitourgiai fundamen­ tally inform Aristotle’s description of the megaloprepes throughout.115 When he turns from generalisation to example, the first instance at the head of his list of magnificent expenditures directed towards the collective - which is later described as the arena ‘bringing the greatest honour’ (ii22b35) — is ‘to be a brilliant khoregos? χορηγεϊν λαμπρώς. The ideal quality, and the ideological loading, of the definitions of this ‘virtue’ are clear. The ethical and philosophical system makes no attempt to conceal or to challenge the fact of the dependence of these ‘virtues’ on a base of social and eco­ nomic privilege. As Wood and Wood write, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between moral virtue and aristocratic style in Aristotle’s ethical code: Tn following Aristotle’s description of the virtues that are fundamental conditions for true happi­ ness and the realization of our full humanity, the reader is struck by the fact that as a whole they would be impossible of attainment by the great masses of Greek freemen.’116 Aristotle concentrates very much on the products, or achievements (έργα) of this munificence to the collective. These too must be ‘great’ and ‘suitable’, the object of their creator that shimmering ideal of Greek élite thought, τό καλόν, ‘the noble/beautiful’ (ii22by). These ‘achievements’ are the product of virtue, and their value is incalculable in terms of simple price, like some mere possession (i 122b 14—16). A familiar process of mystification is at work: the megaloprepes requires huge resources of wealth, but wealth alone does not suffice to produce the right effect. Elusive qual­ ities of taste and culture are elevated to the status of the highest social virtues. That wealth itself is ideally derived from one’s ancestors or connections (although it can come ‘from themselves’ 1122b3o), and the works of the megaloprepes are best suited to ‘the well born, the famous and the like; for all those things have an element of great­ ness and distinction’ (ii22b30—2). The ‘works’ of the megaloprepes presuppose, and create, an audience. The conno­ tations of‘conspicuousness’ and ‘visible distinction’ that inhere in the πρεπ- compo­ nent of μεγαλοπρεπεία are far from extinct. The works of the megaloprepes are things to be seen, things which stand out to the eye in the public realm: ‘. . . for the achieve­ ment most honoured is one that is great and noble, since a great achievement arouses the admiration of spectators, and the quality of causing admiration belongs to magnificence’ (. . . έργον δε τό μέγα καί καλόν, τού γάρ τοιούτου [sc. έργου] ή θεωρία θαυμαστή, τό δε μεγαλοπρεπές θαυμαστόν H22bi6-i8). Here we return to θαυμάζω.117 This last expression is tantamount to a statement that the quintessen­ tial self-expression of the megaloprepes is in liberal acts which have as their objective activities oriented towards viewing, and the viewing of which provokes wonderment; and wonderment is, according to Aristotle, an essential quality of that which is meg­ aloprepes. The assumed relation of intimacy between the giver and the object of his munificence also fits perfectly as a description of the khoregia that I have been out­ lining. Indeed, Aristotle is virtually suggesting that the identity of the khoregos, qua megaloprepes, is dependent on his ability to arouse admiration as a creator of the visual and himself an object of the gaze. Khoregos and khoros are intimately linked as objects 142

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of θαύμα. The visuality of the khoregia lies in its production of the spectacular through an ideologically loaded appropriation of a highly visual public sphere by a figure who is himself performing with his wealth. In Chapter Five I shall show how the practice of monumentalising a khoregic victory (again, in distinction from the trierarkhia118) by erecting an elaborate physical memorial of it perpetuated this men­ tality according to which the identity of the liberal man was founded upon the adoring gaze of others.

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Khoregia and democracy

Competition, victory, transgression: the power and politics of choral leadership The deeply aristocratic bent of Aristotle’s ‘great and conspicuous spender’ is clear. Yet Aristotle is careful to stress at many points that the proper objects of his expenditure are things for which ‘the whole city is enthusiastic’ (ii23a2), that his defining sphere of operation is τά κοινά, the concerns of the collective: ‘The megaloprepes spends not on himself but on public objects’ (ii23a4-5). This is what led Louis Gernet, writing of the leitourgy system, to his perceptive description of it as ‘a kind of nationaliza­ tion of the “gift ethic’”, which saw the conversion of the practices of aristocratic gift­ exchange between noble families to the ends of the city-state.1 The description is very apt for a system in which a moral coercive power is as efficacious as legal enforce­ ment. The city itself, rather than centres of narrower scale and interest such as the private house of a great family, has become the proper object of such ‘adornment’ by the magnificent spender.2 However, while Aristotle stresses the collective objectives on which the megalo­ prepes should lavish his wealth, he goes on immediately — almost as if to redress the balance — to point out that ‘It is also characteristic of the megaloprepes to furnish his house in a manner suitable to his wealth, for this is also a kind of adornment . . .’ (ii23a6—7). The sphere of the élite individual’s household is not to be ignored in this diversion of private wealth to the public realm. That too, in Aristotle’s scheme, must remain a site of appropriate extravagance. Just what the proper balance of outlay should be between the two areas, the collective and the individual (and familial), is a matter of constant debate. And the debate is of particular urgency in democratic Athens. This chapter is much concerned with the ambivalent status of the khoregia under democratic conditions. It takes as its focus two key terms in the portfolio of evidence relating to the Athenian leitourgical system, terms which come with a weighty her­ itage: philotimia and philonikia — ‘the desire for honour’ (often translated loosely as ‘ambition’), and ‘the desire for victory’. These are the twin spurs of leitourgical per­ formance. For Aristotle, the philotimos is a close relative of the megaloprepes. The great

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spender expresses himself characteristically in his brilliant execution of ‘those public expenses that are the favourite objects of ambition (εύφιλοτίμητα)’ (N.E. 1122^22), above all the leitourgiai. Philotimia describes the broader socio-psychological disposi­ tion that fires men and cities in the contests of public life, and the term is repeatedly associated in Athens with the performance of leitourgiai in particular. The step from the pursuit of honour to the pursuit of victory is straightforward in an environment where the pursuit of honour takes the form of more or less regularised competitive engagements. It is difficult to point to any major area of Athenian civic life that was not structured in the form of a contest: there was the contest for public office, and the daily contest of opposed argument in the major organs of political life; the contest for military command and the whole agonistic sphere of war; the contests for pres­ tige and property in Athens’ famously elaborate court-system; and the formal­ ised agones of festival competition that are our concern here. The democracy well and truly appropriated and further diffused the competitive practices of its predemocratic past.3 This desire for victory that animates Athenian public life (philonikia) comes with a dark double, philoneikia, ‘desire for contention’. As we shall see, the two are related by more than an accident of phonology. Indeed, between these two nearly identical words are situated the terms of an insistent problematic concerning the rôle and the proper limits of the pursuit of pre-eminence and power over one’s peers. I begin with some further consideration of the way the khoregia in particular operated as a competitive performance in the city, and one of enormous symbolic weight. The khoregic agones — and in particular, a number of famous khoregiai where, we are told, the fight for prestige spilt over into symbolic and actual violence — are a privileged site for consideration of a kind of ongoing debate in the Greek context about the motivating principles of philotimia and philonikia. That the khoregia repre­ sented an expenditure on the collective legitimated the extravagance of the individ­ ual philotimos, and domesticated such lavish expense to its democratic environment — the ‘nationalization of the gift ethic’. One could not spend too much on the demos. Yet at the same time the basic logic on which this expenditure was predicated — namely that it brought special ‘honour’ (τιμή) and a form of superiority over others — meant that excessive spending and victory inevitably conjured up the anti-democ­ ratic spectre of the tyrant.4 Furthermore, an array of practices surrounding the kho­ regia in Athens shows that there was something rather unusual about the kind of power that khoregic performance involved; and the existence of a range of legisla­ tion connected in particular with the choral festivals further implies that the notori­ ous cases of khoregic transgression should not be seen as extraordinary but rather symptomatic. I shall then consider in greater detail the way in which the all-important recip­ rocal relation of favours between the demos and its khoregoi (and leitourgists in general) was represented in Athens, especially through the speeches delivered in court by members of the élite, who figure their expenditures and victories as tokens of their civic virtue. This is where we would expect to fmd the most fulsome articulation of a democratic concept of philotimia, and it is indeed the case that speakers expend great energies on constructing an image of their efforts as oriented for the good of the col­ lective. Yet even so this democratic rhetoric is riven with contradictions and tensions; and it needs moreover always to be viewed against other discursive strategies for

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representing the place of leitourgical service in the democracy — in particular, in the rhetoric of the oligarchs or anti-democrats who objected to the imposition on their resources and so stress the element of compulsion. The place of the khoregia in the democratic city is particularly hard to pin down: a service for the good of all, a demotic exploitation of the few, a religious duty, a civic office, a sign of anti-demo­ cratic aspirations . . .5 The question of where the ‘strictly’ dramatic or poetic competition separates from the competition between khoregoi is curiously difficult to answer. But the avowed objective of the khoregos’ performance and of its desired victory — an objective asso­ ciated almost exclusively with him as opposed to his ‘team’ - is ‘honour’. The kho­ regic competition is a contest of honour among Athens’ male élite. It is indeed much more intelligible within the framework of an economy of prestige than in a frame provided by the model of a market economy. The members of such an economy are spenders of the kind of Aristotle’s megaloprepes, men who regard the deployment of their wealth to achieve the social returns of prestige, honour and victory in socially significant contexts as more desirable than the simple accumulation of wealth. The mentality was caught pithily by Gorgias in his description of Kimon as a man ‘who possessed money in order to use it, and used it in order to be honoured’ (Plu. Kimon io). In an economy of prestige the central ‘commodity’ - prestige itself - is funda­ mentally elusive and unquantifiable. Unlike wealth, it is conferred by others, and needs to be reasserted constantly, for it is something which by definition only comes into existence in the regard of others. In a theoretical introduction to the concept of an economy of prestige, Leppert and Lincoln have written that ‘. . . the sphere of prestige is a site where not only the hierarchical structures, but also the dominant values and controlling discourses of society are all constructed, contested, and con­ tinually renegotiated’, and this description admirably fits the portfolio of evidence for the Athenian khoregia.6 Victory and its rituals are a ‘hard’ token of the acquisition of the elusive com­ modity of prestige. And so when Athenians in the courts boast of their performance of leitourgiai to demonstrate their status as model citizens, where one might expect the simple statement that they had discharged these services, albeit lavishly, to suffice as an index of their philotimia geared to the common good, we find that victories occupy a prominent rhetorical place. Indeed, in these contexts, often a victory that might properly be thought to belong to a phyle is appropriated by the khoregos as his own. Such victory was the property of the individual, and marked him out as not only a good performer of leitourgiai but as personally touched by the glory of success, which had a divine quality about it. In emphasising victory in this way, khoregoi were not only showing that their efforts were so in tune with civic ideals and desires as to have secured a success; they were drawing on a deep-seated charismatic, almost transcendent, power that came with victory. Victory was thus the ultimate guarantee of prestige in an arena where one’s gains corresponded exactly to the losses of one’s peers. The best example is once again the leitourgic virtuoso of Lysias 21, who is always careful to specify the victories among his many services: at the Thargelia with a men’s khoros, at the Great Dionysia with a men’s khoros, at the Promethia with a gymnasiarkhia, with a comic khoros, and in the trierarkhic race at Sounion.7 This rhetorical habit of cataloguing victories in

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the courts has a material counterpart in a type of monument which displayed the record of an entire agonistic career rather than just a single victory. Victory in theat­ rical or athletic events could also be interpreted as an indicator of the waxing or waning of the power of the leitourgist more generally. And victory fed on itself: a victorious khoregia made victory in other arenas of political life seem more natural, such as election to high office; the process probably worked in the other direction too.8 To enumerate an opponent’s bad agonistic record is almost as good as reciting one’s own victories. Bad performers make bad democrats, and the losses of others, even when they were not direct competitors, can be turned to one’s own gain. The speaker of Isaios 5 bluntly asserts that one of his opponents, a certain Dikaiogenes, ‘has not done any good service to the city’ (§35). Despite the fact that ‘you’ (the demos) awarded him a property that brings him a yearly income of eighty mnai, he can give no good account of how he has spent it. ‘It’s worth your while working it out: he was khoregos for his phyle at the Dionysia and came fourth; and in tragedy and the pyrrhikhe he came last’ (§36). The speaker’s sarcastic pleasure at his enemy’s poor performance is hardly suppressed. ‘These were the only leitourgiai which he under­ took from such a large income and then only under compulsion, and this was the fine show he made as khoregos.’ Such a profoundly unglamorous record, despite Dikaiogenes’ enormous wealth, is taken as evidence of a contemptuous attitude toward the democracy, by the terms of a rhetoric in which leitourgic expenditure and success can be construed as the signs of civic devotion. In other contexts, however, khoregic victory itself is clearly something which brings a highly individualistic and anti-egalitarian form of glory. Dionysian prizes were of an unalloyed symbolic value. The prize of a victorious tragic khoregos, the crown of Dionysian ivy, was even less materially substantial than that received by his dithyrambic counterpart, the bronze tripod made at the expense of the polis, although the tripod itself was of course scarcely less symbolic in nature.9 The absence of any more substantial official prize suggests that the prestige of the victory was its own reward, but it is clear at any rate that any immediate material reward was vastly out of scale with the outlay required to achieve it. The more meta­ physical returns of prestige and other pleasures of victory need to be invoked, in addi­ tion to the potential ‘convertibility’ of agonistic prestige itself into election to office or special consideration in court. The point is effectively made in passing by Xenophon when, in the Cavalry Commander, he recommends the establishment of prizes for displays in the equestrian art in order to harness the powerful Athenian spirit of competition (philoneikia is the term used), and adds by way of supporting compar­ ison: ‘this is clear from practice with khoroi, in which many labours and heavy expenses are outlayed for trifling rewards’.10 For this keen observer of Athenian culture and its psychology of competition, the choral sphere is emblematic of the power of prestige to override any economic calculation in the pursuit of victory. The very intangibility of the return to the khoregos for his money and efforts is evidence that at other levels, the return must have been very real, that the symbolic capital involved was considerable.11

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Alkibiades, khoregos ‘to the envy of my fellow-citizens . . Rivalry had famously degenerated into open violence in the theatre during a Dionysia at which Alkibiades was serving as khoregos with a khoros of boys.12 Whatever the truth of the events, a story had secured a place among the many logoi in the rhetorical and historical tradition that told of ‘what Alkibiades did and what he suffered’, a story which focussed on his transgressive actions in the theatre as a khoregos. The incident is narrated at greatest length in Andokides 4, the speech Against Alkibiades whose ascription to Andokides has been doubted, and whose date and context of produc­ tion more generally are open to considerable debate.13 It makes a fascinating appear­ ance in an Athenian court some sixty years later, in Demosthenes’ speech Against Meidias, as a parallel but significantly different instance of khoregic violence to that at issue there. In Plutarch’s Life of Alkibiades, the incident takes its place as one of the many illustrations of Alkibiades’ ‘contemptuous and lawless spirit’, one of the many things that led the ‘reputable people’ in the city to imagine tyrannical aspirations (§16, cf. Thouk. 6.15). Alkibiades struck Taureas on the face ‘because he was ambitious for the victory’ (φιλοτιμούμενον ύττέρ τής νίκης). And the people were lenient to him because of his unsurpassed contributions of money, his khoregiai, his munificence to the city, the brilliance of his ancestry, the power of his words and the beauty of his body, as well as his experience and prowess in war — all these led them to give the mildest of names to his transgressions, ‘calling them the product of youthful spirits and ambition (παιδιάς καί φιλοτιμίας)’.14 The Andokidean account is worth considering within its wider context in more detail. For it not only demonstrates powerfully how philonikia was perilously close to philoneikia; it more vividly than any other single text represents the dynamic working of the khoregia in Athenian society, and shows how that dynamism operated on a base of conflict and contestation.

And remember Taureas, who was a khoregos competing against Alkibiades with a boys’ dithyrambic khoros. The law states that anyone may remove a khoreutes in the competition who is a foreigner, though it is not permitted to interfere with someone who has set to a performance. In front of you, in front of all the other Greeks who were watching in the theatre and with all the current Arkhons in Athens present, he drove him off with blows. The spectators were on Taureas’ side and hated Alkibiades, and so they were prais­ ing Taureas’ khoros and refused to listen to his; but he got no further for that, (§21) as the judges of the competition, some through fear, others through a desire to ingratiate, pronounced Alkibiades the winner, thinking less of their oath than of him. But I think it’s only to be expected that the judges should give in to Alkibiades, seeing Taureas, who’d spent so much money, was being treated with contempt, while they saw Alkibiades committing such gross transgressions and wielding enormous power. You are the ones responsible, because you don’t punish perpetrators of hybris; you chastise those who do wrong in secret, but adore those who flagrantly commit acts of violence. (§22) That’s why the young don’t spend their time in the gymnasia but in the lawcourts, and why old men fight our battles while young men make 148

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speeches — they take this man as their model, who carries his criminal excess so far that, after recommending that the Melians be sold into slavery, he pur­ chased a woman from among the captives and has had a child by her — a child whose birth is more transgressive than Aigisthos’, since his parents are each other’s bitterest enemies and his family is divided between those who have committed and those who have suffered the most extreme wrongs. (§23) It’s worth clarifying still further his recklessness: he has a child by this woman whom he turned from a free woman into a slave, whose father and male rel­ atives he killed, and whose polis he has obliterated, so as to make the son as bitter an enemy as possible to himself and to the polis: so powerful are the constraints of hatred that bind him. When you watch such things in trage­ dies you regard them with horror, but when you see them taking place in the polis you think nothing of them. Yet in the case of tragedy you don’t know whether the events have actually taken place or were fabricated by the poets; but with these you have a clear knowledge that they were committed in this transgressive manner, yet you treat them with casual indifference.

The strict legal management which the polis exercised over its Dionysian khoroi is manipulated and undermined by Alkibiades, arrogating, as khoregos, a control over proceedings in this public and highly visual civic space. The meaning of his perfor­ mance as khoregos is not lost on this author: in play are prestige, the abuse of power and the transgressive force of a charismatic individual who threatens all democratic boundaries. The theatre is the place for the dramatic, symbolic enactment of social tensions: of Alkibiades’ lust for tyranny’,15 of the agonistic relations between the pre­ eminent men of Athenian public life and between these and their audience of the demos. This account of Alkibiades’ performance construes it as a flagrant trampling underfoot of democracy — a demonstration of his own confident sense of his super­ iority over the judges of the festival competition, selected as we have seen by a care­ fully controlled process to represent the ten phylai of Attike; over the laws of the city; and, coercively or seductively, over the demos itself. What actually happened in the theatre — perhaps even what this author alleges to have happened — is beyond recovery. A marked and perhaps intentional opacity sur­ rounds the account of the actual thrashing, which will in any case have no doubt been a messy and confused affair. The more convincing interpretation of the text sees Alkibiades ‘driving out with blows’ a khoreutes in Taureas’ khoros whom he claimed to have been a foreigner. In the fracas, the citizen and khoregos Taureas was himself evi­ dently struck as well.16 On this view, Alkibiades is represented as self-interestedly manipulating the city’s concern for the civic purity of its khoroi, and as blatantly ignor­ ing the requirement, also encoded in law, that any ejection of a suspect khoreutes cannot take place once a performance is under way.17 His assault on his fellow-khoregos Taureas — or rather, to translate this inherently conflictual term more faithfully, his ‘anti-khoregos’ (avTiyopriyos) — at first causes his audience to side with Taureas and despise Alkibiades. They ‘side with him in his desire for victory’ (œu|jç>iàovikoûvtgûv ekeîvgûi), and their emotional response is translated directly from the men to their khoroi: they ‘praise’ Taureas’ khoros and ‘refuse to listen to’Alkibiades’ (are we to imagine blocked ears, or obstructive shouting?). The conflict between the men has merged completely with the conflict between their khoroi.18 But

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this good, ‘democratic’ attitude, according to Andokides, gave way to a seduced mass response of mesmerised admiration for the charismatic transgressor. In the first instance the judges themselves are criticised for ‘giving in’ to Alkibiades and setting him above their oath: they act through a combination of fear and the desire to ‘do Alkibiades a favour’. But with more than a touch of sarcasm, Andokides excuses the judges. It is only reasonable that they should have behaved as they did, given that Taureas who had spent so much money was being trampled underfoot, while Alkibiades was committing these terrible transgressions from the base of his enor­ mous power. Is part of the point that Taureas is an incompetent spender? Or does the author’s sarcasm simply press home the fact that, for all his great generosity to the people, it was only ‘reasonable’ that they should let him be abused? It is at any rate this compliance of the demos which is above all else construed by this author as the enabling condition for Alkibiades’ tyrannical transgression of the social order. The point is generalised: the demos adores flagrant transgressors (θαυμάζειν again); they love the spectacle of rich and powerful men behaving badly. The principles of inclusion and exclusion so central to Athenian political ideol­ ogy and practice inform this representation throughout: on the one hand there is the law of ‘civic purity’ manipulated by Alkibiades; on the other, the trope of transgres­ sive, ‘tragic’ generation is turned against Alkibiades to exclude him in polarised iso­ lation from the civic collective, as an anti-democratic confounder of the social order, murderer of citizens, breaker of the fundamental polarity of free man/slave, annihilator of a polis, a paradigm (παράδειγμα, §22) for the inversion of the norms appro­ priate to the generations — norms partly inculcated, as they had been for centuries of Greek culture, by participation in khoroi structured by age-classes. The date at which these events are generally supposed to have occurred would have seen Alkibiades well under the age of forty, and the khoregos for a boys’ dithy­ rambic khoros was, as we have seen, required to be at least forty years old.19 It is gen­ erally assumed that this is a fourth-century measure, not applicable to this fifth-century case; but perhaps just as likely that Alkibiades’ desire for khoregic victory had led him to transgression even before reaching the theatre. For even if it was not, strictly speaking, illegal for him to be a boys’ khoregos at this date, there would surely have been a social consensus that preceded the formalisation into law which preferred to see Athenian boys who were dancing at the Dionysia in the care of older, more restrained men. The young Alkibiades, we can safely assume, would hardly have been the type of whom all Athenians would have felt comfortable in making an exception to this rule. The double depiction of Alkibiades in this passage as both transgressive khoregos and a ‘tragic’ transgressor is eloquent indeed, and the close juxtaposition of these two images is hardly fortuitous.20 Alkibiades carries his tragic mode of action from the theatre into daily life. From his paranomia in the orkhestra it is an easy shift to the mas­ sacre of the Melians and his tragic performance there. And once again ‘you’ are to blame, for the demos is under the sway of representations and oblivious to the real horrors around it. The distinction drawn between the demos’ responses to tragedy in the theatre and ‘tragedy’ in the city equally implies a confusion, or a sense that the power of fictive representation is recognised and feared within the field of tragic rep­ resentation but not in the actions of those who pay for it: an implicit critique, perhaps, of the dangers involved in the public institution of tragic representations of a kind

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which did not go unvoiced by Athenians of various periods and ideological persua­ sions. The admiration and amazement, even longing, as well as the horror felt before the tragic hero helped shape the response to these larger-than-life figures on the civic stage whom the demos so often Tell in love’ with, only subsequently to turn from in horror. Even as the author seeks, for his own purposes, to drive a wedge between the cognitive and emotional responses of the demos, his account in fact points to a fasci­ nating continuity between the response to Alkibiades as a transgressor in the city and to the transgressive individuals of tragedy. Alkibiades as transgressive khoregos in the theatre evokes those figures from the very performance most intimately associated with the theatre in Athens. However tendentious this representation may be, it is clear that the behaviour of figures like Alkibiades in such charged contexts as this offered a potential frame for the Athenians in shaping their response to the figures of tragedy, just as the heroes of tragedy were called upon to gloss and characterise the actions of men like Alkibiades. In ‘Athenian history’ - both ours and theirs — Alkibiades is a figure exemplary of the problematic continued need under the democracy for an aris­ tocratic model of the individual: the khoregia, as I have argued, testifies to the same need at the level of central cultural institutions. We can scarcely treat this account as a transparent document giving direct access to Athenian life and history. The obscurity of its context of production and recep­ tion make the task of identifying its strategies of representation all the more difficult, and no less pressing. This text purports to be a speech of self-defence by a candidate proposed for ostracism. The author’s opening remarks depict the ostrakophoria as a grim form of contest in which he, Alkibiades and Nikias are engaged. He contrasts this agon with those that offer a crown to the victor (§2). This is one contest that inspires no philonikia in its antagonists. The agon of ostracism is in a sense the obverse of the prestige-rich agon of the khoregia.21 It is parallel to the extent that its ‘winner’ is a man of immense personal power or aspirations, but it operates as a form of insti­ tutionalised check on the dangers ofjust this sort of excessive, largely informal, status. This speech itself criticises the fact that ostracism did not allow speeches of accu­ sation or defence to be made (§3). This glaring internal paradox is a clear and prob­ ably self-conscious indication that the speech was not in fact meant for delivery on its purported occasion. Hence the view that it was a pamphlet circulated in a cam­ paign against Alkibiades, probably in the context of a proposed ostracism. But the paradox also points to an underlying rhetorical and ideological contradiction. Ostracism was in principle the democratic collective’s weapon against the over-pow­ erful individual, the aspiring tyrant, all the more effective for being outside all rule of law and reasoned argument; a rare occasion in the Athenian political environment on which no formal logoi were made. Yet here the speaker expends his considerable resources of eloquence in arguing, in a text which mimics the forms of public speech, that Alkibiades is the appropriate candidate for exile, infusing his representation with all the potency of tragedy’s images of the tyrant. In the climax to his account of Alkibiades’ individualistic self-assertion as Olympic victor in the chariot-race, the author echoes the dual response of the demos to ‘tragedy’ he alleged in the passage above: ‘. . .he shows that the democracy is worthless, by talking like a champion of the people while acting like a tyrant, since he has found out that while the word “tyranny” fills you with concern, the thing for which it stands leaves you undisturbed’ (§27; cf. §24).

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However, this mobilisation of a rhetoric of the collective good is undertaken flagrantly in the speakers own interests, to support a campaign for Alkibiades’ exile instead of his own. And the best he can muster by way of his own democratic cre­ dentials is a record of four acquittals for ‘hatred of the demos’ and participation in (anti-democratic) revolution. There is of course also his leitourgical record, which includes a tragic khoregia.22 The line between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ leitourgist is ever open to manipulation and interpretation. Understandably, the speaker prefers attack rather than elaborate apologia. The perspective of this speech is thus clearly split by having one eye on an imaginary democratic audience and the other on a rather smaller circle of readers. For the latter group, democratic credentials are of course likely to be a less urgent matter. They could, indeed, be a positive disadvantage. The disgruntled oligarch hiding behind the double shield of the text written to be read ‘by discerning Athenians’23 yet reproducing the familiar forms and tropes of demo­ cratic, public eloquence can scarcely conceal his irritation, born of envy, at the char­ ismatic power of Alkibiades, at his manifest success in transferring the habits and practices of an aristocratic ethos to the wider audience of the democratic polis. Alkibiades is a figure in Athenian politics around whose career focussed a con­ tinuous, more or less explicit, debate concerning the proper limits of honour- and victory-seeking as motivations for action in a democratic city. More than any other figure from antiquity, Alkibiades’ actions routinely display that ‘self-love’ which Aristotle regarded as characteristic of those obsessed with the pursuit of honour (Rhet. 1.1371b). At his very first appearance on the political stage of Athens in 420, conspic­ uous for his extreme youth and for the honour which already attached to him because of his illustrious ancestry, his motives for desiring a change of policy in the war are encapsulated by Thoukydides in the phrase cppovijiaaTi cpiAoviKcov pvavTiouTO (5.43.2): ‘he took an opposed stance because he was animated by a desire for victory’. And this opposition was driven, if we can believe Thoukydides, not by a judgement as to the better interests of Athens, but because of his pique that the Lakedaimonians had arranged the peace treaty with the Athenians through Nikias and Lakhes, over­ looking him and his ancestral proxeny because of his youth. The case of Alkibiades, indulged and adored by many, demonstrates what is clear from other quarters: that the question as to just where the proper limits of philotimia and philonikia lie remained an open question, never properly resolved. Alkibiades’ entire career illustrates the logic of pursuing the desire for victory to its end. And his own khoregiai in Athens were long remembered as prime examples of this extremism: he indulged in physical violence against his rivals, and he is represented as consider­ ing his khoregiai as signs of his power, and of his right to power; they may have gen­ erated resentment among the citizenry, but that consideration was overriden by the fact that the brilliance he demonstrated in them proved the strength of the city to rival states abroad. Considerations of power and its limits are never far away in clas­ sical reflections on the khoregia. Of all the agonistic performances to establish his position as the master at turning the charisma of aristocratic achievement to the ends of his own career — and, as he himself claims in Thoukydides, for the benefit of his city — his Olympic victory in the chariot-race is by far the most significant, the most surrounded by ancient anec­ dote and gossip. Alkibiades was acting in the dual capacity of Athens’ official repre­ sentative at Olympia, its theoros, in (probably) 416, and as an individual competitor. 152

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Having decided to avoid the athletic contests because ‘he saw that some of the ath­ letes were of low birth . . . and mean education’ (§33e), he engineered the unprece­ dented coup of entering seven chariots in the race (the most prestigious of all athletic events in the Greek world among the horse-mad aristocracy), and carried off first, second and (depending on whose publicity one listens to) third or fourth prizes. The scale of the victory was such that Alkibiades could be represented not simply as the victor without peer over his contemporaries. He had effectively defeated all past and future contenders.24 The event also bequeathed his son a legal case in Athens, arraigned to answer for his father’s misappropriation of one of the teams from the state of Argos (or from an Athenian who had engaged him to purchase it). The younger Alkibiades’ apologia argues for the coincidence between his father’s accumu­ lation of vast prestige before an enormous panhellenic audience with the benefit the city of Athens thereby gained: seeing that the festival assembly at Olympia was beloved and admired by the whole world, and that in it the Greeks made display of their wealth, strength of body and training and that not only the athletes were the objects of envy but that also the cities of the victors became renowned, and believing more­ over that while the leitourgiai performed here redound to the prestige, in the eyes of his fellow citizens, of the person who renders them (τάς μέν ενθάδε ληιτουργίας ύπέρ των ιδίων προς τούς πολίτας), expenditures in the Olympic festival, however, enhance the city’s reputation throughout all Greece . . . (Isok. 16.32) This contrast between domestic khoregiai and ‘international’ festival participation is highly illuminating. The younger Alkibiades has his own reasons to magnify the ‘civic’ virtues of his father’s Olympic achievement, since it is in connection with this that he is on trial. And it is clearly the case that a good deal of special pleading is needed for such an argument. The glory of the great athletic victor was always extremely volatile and difficult to contain within a civic, let alone a democratic, context.25 Certainly, others in Athens took a different view of the Olympic episode: ‘. . . and furthermore he keeps on squeezing the most out of this victory, as though he had not so much brought the polis into dishonour as won it a crown’ (Andok.

4.3i)· The striking deprivileging of the domestic khoregia in the speech of the younger Alkibiades proceeds by an argument about audience and the circulation of prestige: at Olympia the victor can impress all Greece with his wealth and education, and so reflect to the glory of his city; ‘at home’ he can impress only his fellow-citizens. This model of festival performance by the rich as little more than a display of power is clearly a tendentious one, sidelining for the moment the collective benefits derived from the performances supported by khoregoi. Yet that the argument can be made at all shows the purchase this view of the khoregia could be expected to have on a dem­ ocratic audience. In this light the khoregia was a display of wealth ‘to’ one’s fellow-cit­ izens (προς τούς πολίτας) ‘on behalf of’ oneself (ύπέρ τών ιδίων). That this view of the khoregia was put into the mouth of Alkibiades the elder himself by Thoukydides is further support of its currency, if not necessarily of the actual remembered use of the argument by Alkibiades. The occasion is the momen­ tous prelude to the Sicilian expedition, and in the famous contest in the Assembly

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between Alkibiades and Nikias over the right to command, Alkibiades adduces his festival expenditure, and above all his fantastic epinikian record, as the simple justification for his right to rule. His speech is full of the unabashed claims of the ren­ egade aristocratic individual in a democratic context. In an excellent discussion of ‘The Politics of Megaloprep eia’, Leslie Kurke describes this debate between Alkibiades and Nikias as ‘a veritable dialogue on megaloprepeia ,26 as the principle of lavish con­ spicuous consumption deriving from the practices of aristocratic gift-exchange comes into contact, and conflict, with the world of the democratic polis and a monetary economy. Alkibiades explicitly reasserts the aristocratic principle and is, moreover, successful on this momentous occasion in doing so.

It belongs to me more than to others, Athenians, to have command . . . and I think, too, that I am worthy of command. For those things for which I am railed at bring glory to my ancestors and myself, as well as advantage to my country. For the Hellenes, who had previously hoped that the city had been exhausted by the war, conceived an idea of its greatness that even tran­ scended its actual power by reason of the magnificence of my display as theoros at Olympia . . . (6.16.1—2)

Alkibiades is responding to Nikias’pre-emptive arguments to beware of‘someone too young to have command . . . who is looking to be adored (θαυμασθήι) for his hippotrophia and then, because of the vast outlay of money involved, to see how he may also get some profit from this command . . .’. Nikias’ judgement, endorsed by Thoukydides (6.15.2) and ignored in the outcome, is ‘not to let this man, at the cost of the city, make a brilliant personal display (ίδίαι έλλαμπρύνεσθαι), but rather con­ sider that such men damage the public interest while they waste their own property . . .’ (Thouk. 6.12.2). The figure of the excessive and transgressive spender is clearly outlined (and Nikias’ ‘such men’ — τοιούτους — suggests that Alkibiades was not seen to be a unique instance). Nor is the figure sketched a man who spends his fortune on women, drink, grand houses and fine food, but one who spends it all on civic enter­ prises. Alkibiades continues: And again, although whatever brilliant appearance I made in the city through my khoregiai or in any other way27 is naturally a source of resentment to the townspeople, yet before strangers this too gives an impression of strength, (καί δσα αύέν τήι ττόλει χορηγίαις ή άλλωι τωι λαμπρύνομαι, τοΐς μεν άστοϊς φθονεϊται φύσει, προς δε τούς ξένους καί αυτή ισχύς φαίνεται.) And that is no useless folly, when a man by his private expenditures benefits not only himself but also his city, nor is it unfair that one who has a high opinion of himself should refuse to be on an equality with others. . . (6.16.3)

If individualism and self-profit were the mark of the domestic khoregia in the speech of Alkibiades junior, the father maintains the claim for their civic value by insisting on the powerful impression they too (or at least the brilliance of their performers) gave to foreigners in the audience.28 Yet he too makes no attempt to conceal the neg­ ative effect such acts of brilliance have on his fellow-citizens, the resentment they produce among those who are meant to be their principal audience. As Macleod well observed, the fact that the resentment caused by his domestic khoregiai and other ‘bril­ liance’ is said by Alkibiades to have been ‘natural’ (φύσει), while the impression of

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power they encouraged in foreigners was just that, an impression (φαίνεται), implies that the honour Alkibiades and the city receive from foreigners is less real than the envy he incurs at home.29 Whatever the reality of Alkibiades’ attitude, this is illumi­ nating evidence of a position normally, and understandably, suppressed in ‘democra­ tic’ rhetoric. Yet this speech purports to be precisely that, a piece of democratic rhetoric, delivered before a major meeting of the Athenian Assembly.

Khoregic curses Khoregoi sought the help of more than mortal forces in their pursuit of victory. And the powers to which they turned were not the familiar figures of sunny Olympos. There is evidence for the use of ‘binding-spells’ (katadesmoi) — ‘a dark little secret of ancient Mediterranean culture’ - by rivalrous khoregoi.50 A katadesmos is a curse inscribed, generally on a thin sheet of lead, which is then folded or rolled up, pierced with an iron nail and buried with the corpse of one of the untimely dead (άωροι). Its intended purpose is to bring supernatural power to bear against one’s opponents — very frequently, one’s opponents in agonistic contexts, such as court-cases, loveaffairs, athletic competition (horses too are ‘bound’) or choral contests. The tongues of speakers are ‘bound’, as are the shoulders, arms, wrists and eyes of charioteers; the bodies of those inscribed are asked to be made ‘cold and useless’ as this lead.31 The whole practice, which was widespread, testifies to the anxieties generated within the psychology of a deeply agonistic culture. The form this response took was one that lay beyond the control of the legal and political mechanisms of society. The intense pressure of competition and the fear of failure made recourse to greater powers an attractive option, especially, it seems likely, for those who had less confidence in their chances of success. Some argue that one function of these curses was to remove otherwise intolerable tensions created by the high pressure of agonis­ tic social interaction, by allowing a ‘transfer of emotion’.32 The knowledge that one’s opponents were drawing on these same powerful resources may have helped in explaining or excusing failure; but they testify above all else to the deep roots and potency of the psychology of competition. Two of these lead disks from Attike are directed against men clearly involved in choral training and competition. One of them identifies its victims as ‘those who are with Theagenes’. This example, like many others, has no verb of binding, simply a statement — with repetition characteristic of such obsessive ritual — of the intended victims: ‘all the choral directors (διδάσκαλοι) and assistant choral directors (ύποδιδάσκαλοι) with Theagenes, both the directors and the assistant choral direc­ tors’.33 Theagenes, whom Faraone is surely right to identify as the khoregos, seems to have had quite a team behind him; a formidable opponent, who has become the target of this curse no doubt largely for that reason, in the hope that perhaps Hermes or Persephone will bring to nothing the efforts of all those skilled men. The khoregos emerges once again as the focalising figure of the performing ensemble, the one most responsible for the potential victory and thus the individual who is the target of attack — almost certainly, of course, from his rival khoregoi.54 The importance of victory explains (in part at least) that great silence which has

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smothered the vast majority of khoregoi who lacked some crucial factor for success. Faraone’s suggestion that these binding-curses were probably used in the main by ‘underdogs’, those whose need was greatest because of the unlikelihood of their success, offers a fascinating glimpse into the darkness surrounding those who never achieved the ‘brilliance’ of success.

The theatre of conflict A Greek festival does not only give expression to feelings of communion between its participants, conflict is also one of its essential social and psychological components.35 Such machinations were probably fairly common. The most detailed surviving account of a khoregia — that given by Demosthenes of his own in 348 — has his enemy Meidias mobilising all manner of destructive and obstructive plots against him, including the ‘corruption’ of his didaskalos. In this case, the implication is bribery rather than black magic. Bribery was clearly an alternative, and perhaps rather more effective, means of ‘binding’ one’s opponents. Demosthenes’ speech against Meidias merits a more extended discussion for its representation of the khoregia in dynamic operation — or, perhaps, in dynamic dys­ function. Like the khoregia of Alkibiades as recounted by Andokides and others, Demosthenes’ depiction of the events surrounding his leadership of a khoros of his phyle’s men on a spring day of 348 reveals just how intimately linked the khoregia as an institution was to the most fundamental concerns of democratic polis-society.36 The speech also presents us more powerfully than any other single text with a sense of the way the khoregia operated as a form of paradramatic social performance. The actions in and around the theatre of some of the brightest stars on the civic stage of Athens make better theatre than the actual festival agones themselves. Watched and judged by an audience in the same way as theatrical contests, the ‘contest’ between Meidias and Demosthenes in the theatre is the culmination of a long-standing per­ sonal enmity dating back over fifteen years. And it is highly significant that it is this episode in the theatre, rather than one of the many others that Demosthenes cata­ logues, that leads the orator at last to resort to a major legal trial, another medium of ‘contest’ (agon) — or at least, to begin to go down that path. For the violence and obstruction alleged against Demosthenes in the theatre, and the vexatious attacks on his khoregia that led up to them, have a symbolic power and intensity by virtue of the place and circumstances of their performance that other of the ‘crimes’ of Meidias did not quite have: violence against a khoregos before the assembled audience of Athenians and visiting Greeks during a major festival has a far weightier symbolic charge than, for instance, an unannounced entry into Demosthenes’private home and the use of offensive language in front of his mother and sister. Demosthenes constantly evokes the ramifications of the events surrounding his khoregia for the most cherished social and political concerns of the city. The violence done to Demosthenes’ body that day is not just a case of personal assault: in that action, Meidias has attacked the laws, the god Dionysos, the democracy, the collec­ tive citizen-body itself. If he goes unpunished, the people will be licensing rich and 156

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violent hybristai to do as they please, to exult in the confidence and strength their wealth gives them and to disregard, or actively to attack, the status of other citizens. The spectre of oligarchic revolution is not far away (especially §209). Beneath all the Demosthenic eloquence designed to head off the conclusion that the attack on him in the theatre was no more than the infighting of a competitive élite boiling over, a matter of the private enmities and anxieties of the rich that made amusing but not especially troubling spectacle, there remains a persistent sense — rein­ forced by the fact that the speech was almost certainly never delivered and the case not pursued — that what is primarily at stake here is a question of personal honour.37 Demosthenes would like his audience to imagine that the question of honour is one touching each and every one of them, a question of the most fundamental status of the democratic citizen and his privileges, the right to fairness before the law, and in particular the basic right of corporeal integrity, freedom from physical interference, especially from the range of aggressive actions that fall under the general rubric of hybris and that are designed consciously to reduce the ‘honour’ of another — ‘treating free men as slaves’ (§180). On this argument, the integrity of every citizen is threat­ ened by Meidias’ assault on Demosthenes, cast by himself in the role of the exem­ plary citizen. Yet the contradictions and tensions that lie behind this most delicate of rhetorical arguments, which seeks to convert himself, as a rich, honour-seeking kho­ regos at the centre of attention, into a democratic Everyman, remain dangerously exposed. For the form of honour which was most obviously at stake in the conflict between Meidias and Demosthenes was of the kind for which the élite habitually and characteristically fought, the form inalienably associated with the term philotimia, the acquistion of which was always won at the expense of one’s peers. Despite the palli­ ative fictions which Demosthenes holds up before his audience from time to time, the vast majority of them were not able to serve as khoregoi, and so they were not able to engage in the high-level form of philotimia that has, in the circumstances behind Demosthenes 21, degenerated into open violence. The charge for which Demosthenes prosecutes Meidias is for ‘wrongdoing with respect to the festival’.38 This covers a range of alleged offences that took place both throughout the actual days of the festival, in the theatre; and before it, in places in the city where Demosthenes was engaged in the preparation of his khoros. Yet under this rubric, Demosthenes also introduces dozens of events and alleged crimes that had absolutely nothing to do with the festival, but whose introduction has the effect of depicting Meidias as an habitual transgressor, an hybristes — a figure sketched in the colours of a tragic tyrant. By placing the specific within so generalised a picture, Demosthenes persuasively reduces the force of any suggestion that the festival offences were insufficient in themselves to justify a major public prosecution. And he can build up a contrast between himself as a ‘good,’ democratic member of the élite and Meidias as a ‘bad’, violent, rich anti-democrat. The account of the khoregia that emerges pre­ sents it as a grand civic performance of the heroic, committed member of the élite against the depredations of the transgressively indvidualistic Meidias, a performance before a range of audiences and with a series of supporting roles. But behind these rhetorical strategies we can detect the traces of an unease, a fear that his relations with Meidias, including the events of the troubled khoregia, will appear to his audience as little more than the workings of personal enmity. Demosthenes’ arguments thus involve a constant attempt to edit out his own individualistic motivations behind his

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khoregic performance, and correspondingly, a ‘conversion’ of Meidias’ crimes to more than acts in the pursuit of a personal enemy — which might well attract no moral opprobrium at all from an Athenian court. The story begins with a problem in Demosthenes’ phyle, Pandionis. Two years earlier, Pandionis failed to appoint a khoregos. The failure became publicly exposed when the time came for the meeting of the urban Assembly attended by khoregoi, Arkhon and epimeletai to see to the business under the polis’ care relating to festival matters. Recriminations flew back and forth between the Arkhon and the phyletic authorities. From the midst of this mêlée T came forward and volunteered to serve as khoregos' (§13). A saviour was at hand - a saviour both of the honour of Pandionis and, we are clearly meant to feel, of the order of the entire civic system. Demosthenes quelled the wrangling in the Assembly between central and phyletic authorities by this (highly performative) act of generosity; and he prevented the embarrassment at a polis level, with the shame it would bring in the presence of members of foreign states, of a dithyrambic contest with only nine phylai competing. The Arkhon would doubtless have come under serious criticism after such an outcome, as he was being vigorously abused before it. That Demosthenes was in attendance at this particular Assembly can hardly have been fortuitous. (Meidias was also apparently there.) But it will perhaps not do to undercut his self-portrait as a spontaneous, willing volunteer by suggesting that he may have attended this meeting in full knowledge that just this opportunity would present itself. And yet the dramatic volunteering of a major khoregia before an urban Assembly would be at least ten times more effective in its impact than one made, under the ‘proper’ circumstances, in the less pressured environment of a phyletic Assembly some months earlier. One might also ask why, given Demosthenes’ zealous pursuit of his phyle's col­ lective interests and honour, we do not hear of him having joined forces with his immediate colleague, the Pandionid khoregos for the boys’ dithyramb. The entire speech is silent with regard to this man. Indeed, everything Demosthenes says about ‘the phyle's khoregos' would strongly suggest to anyone unfamiliar with the system that only one existed. The men’s agon may well have been generally regarded as the more important of the two; but that will hardly justify Demosthenes’ total silence.39 Demosthenes’ almost epiphanic intervention was rewarded by the fact that his lot fell out first in the allotment of the right to choose auletai - hinting perhaps at a sug­ gestion of divine favour recognising and supporting his own efforts. As one ancient scholar put it, ‘Fortune worked along with his enthusiasm’ (Hypoth. 2.4). His civic audience at that Assembly (which he identifies with the current panel of dikasts) responds not unlike an audience at the theatre: ‘your cheering and applause were such as to show both approval and pleasure’ (§14). This narrative of individualistic action has almost heroic overtones, and testifies to the need and the desire of members of the élite to (re)create their glorious deeds before large civic audiences. ‘But this man Meidias, alone of everyone . . . was annoyed. . . .’ The stages of Meidias’ elaborate attempts to sabotage the khoregia from start to end are dramatically recounted by Demosthenes, and if they have any core of truth whatever, it is remarkable just how compelling a target Demosthenes and his khoros were for his enemy. Meidias devoted so much time and energy — and, probably, money — to the task of subverting Demosthenes’ khoregia as to make of his own actions

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a veritable ‘anti-khoregia . He began (as ever, according to Demosthenes) at the very start of the khoregia, with the recruitment of the khoros. Meidias opposed the release of Demosthenes’ khoreutai from military service, and so he was presumably active at the phyletic level, intervening with those in Pandionis responsible for making the call­ up lists. Next he is before the demos as a whole, proposing himself and canvassing for election as an epimeletes for the Dionysia. Demosthenes portrays the spirit in which Meidias entered on this office as bent only on vexatious obstruction of himself. However, given the burdens that came with being epimeletes, ‘it may have been no more selfish than Demosthenes’ own offer to be a khoregos'.40 One of the areas under the remit of the epimeletai was the discipline of the competing khoroi in the theatre, in addition to their role in organising the pompe (where disciplinary matters also figured). The polis evidently had reason to be anxious concerning discipline and good order in the theatre, since in addition to the epimeletai, the Council was given a role in maintaining order. A decree of the Assembly from 342 honours the Council for its ‘fine and just overseeing of the good order of the theatre’; and in 327, the epimeletai are referred to as ‘overseers of the good order in connection with the theatre’.41 We have good reason to assume that the ‘good order’ in question was as much — or indeed principally — concerned with the human population as with the physical condition and cleanliness of the structures. The very existence of the process followed by Demosthenes in response to his treatment by Meidias, the probole action instituted in the special Assembly held in the theatre after the festival, implies a degree of antici­ pated social disorder to be associated with the festival, as does other legislation men­ tioned in the course of the speech. Khoreutai were specifically under the charge of these epimeletai, who were elected ‘so that the khoroi should not be out of order in the theatres’.42 If Meidias’ standing for office as epimeletes did have an element of premeditated vexatiousness, it very prob­ ably lies in the fact that he knew it would make Demosthenes’ khoros accessible to him, even to some extent under his control. And it is an illuminating insight into the use to which an office designed to promote the order of the festival could be put — to prosecute a personal and highly disruptive campaign of khoregic sabotage. PickardCambridge suggested that the need for this disciplinary ‘overseeing’ of khoreutai in the theatre may be sought in the fact that they were given drinks before and after their performances.43 No doubt this particularly Dionysian element made of their group behaviour, as of the grand festival as a whole, a more boisterous, potentially explo­ sive, occasion. But the effect of wine is surely not the only reason that the city was so concerned for the need to invigilate theatral and choral order: the electricity of competitive discord will have been especially intense and dangerous at the moments around the agones themselves, when the various choral groups, primed for perfor­ mance, will have come into close contact in the confines of the region of the orkhestra. We need not single out the five hundred pre-adult Athenian males on at least one day of the festival as necessarily the greatest challenge to the maintenance of order. The events narrated in Demosthenes 21 show that the adult males in charge of such groups were themselves just as liable to get out of hand. A little later in the speech, Demosthenes recounts the almost comical obstruc­ tions of his khoros by Meidias in the theatre itself, claiming that ‘he blocked and nailed up the side-scenes, though they are public property and he held no official position’

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(§17). Whatever actions of Meidias’ this refers to, Demosthenes is almost certainly misrepresenting his status here, as the region around the orkhestra was probably just where one might expect to find the epimeletai as a performance was about to take place. It is surely the case that whatever Meidias was doing he at least would have rep­ resented it as perfectly within his remit as an overseer of choral ‘discipline’.44 Sensitive to the fact that the form that Meidias’ actions took in the early days of his khoregia may seem little more than one rich man’s deflation of another’s plans for glory, Demosthenes affects to pass over them ‘and everything else of that sort’.

I’m well aware that although I, who suffered the obstruction and insolence at that time, felt the same anger at each of those actions as at any other really serious one, to the rest of you who weren’t involved they would perhaps not appear worth a trial in themselves. But I’ll tell you about what will make you just as indignant as me. The subsequent events, which I’m going to relate, go beyond everything, and I shouldn’t even have attempted to accuse him of them now if I hadn’t convinced the Assembly immediately after the event. (§§15-16)

Demosthenes’ control of the pace of the narrative of the events leading to the day of the competition is truly masterly. The qualitative change from those offences which, he concedes, may not much anger those ‘outside the action’ to what ‘goes beyond everything’ is marked by a clearly-stated point of excess (έ'στι 5' υπερβολή τών μετά ταυτα); and that excess is correlated exactly with a shift from aggression directed against him as an individual to that which affects the city as a whole, even the gods. Demosthenes goes on to narrate an allegation of sacrilege. This is the start of the specifically ‘religious’ arguments which will form an important element of Demosthenes’ case. They help to transform the personal attack on him in the theatre into a crime against the god Dionysos. Impiety (asebeia) takes its place beside hybris in the armoury of Demosthenes’ allegations (e.g., §§51—5). But Demosthenes’ rhetoric is here, perhaps more clearly than anywhere else, straining at the seams. He plotted, men of Athens, to destroy my sacred clothing (I regard as sacred all clothing that one makes for the purpose of the festival, until it is used) and the gold crowns which I ordered as an adornment for the khoros, by raiding the goldsmith’s house at night; and he did destroy them - though not entirely, because he wasn’t able to. (§16) Demosthenes’ parenthesis gives the game away: although delivered with an off-hand air suited to an uncontroversial, normative remark, the belief it contains that festal garments — effectively the costume of a dithyrambic khoros — are ‘sacred’ (ιερά) until they are finished with, may not be as self-evident as he would like to imply. Athenians no doubt believed that the gods were delighted at lavish display which also reflected light on its mortal makers; but even so one might wonder how powerful a numinous charge the robes and garlands of a khoros would have had outside its special festival environment. ‘[U]ntil it is used’ explicitly recognises an end to the clothing’s ‘sacred’ status; whether that status yet existed in the goldsmith’s workshop must be an open question. As sketched by Demosthenes, the scene is indeed an extraordinary one (‘. . . everyone says they never heard of anyone in the city venturing on or carrying 160

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out such a deed’ (§16)). Although the use of ‘plotted’ might allow for Meidias’ hiring an agent, the business of tracking down the whereabouts in the Agora of the crafts­ man employed by Demosthenes and raiding his house at night seems to be ascribed to Meidias himself The testimony of the goldsmith, one Pammenes, certainly speaks of Meidias as the nocturnal intruder and saboteur, ‘having with him some other men’ (§22). Whatever the truth of these nocturnal exploits, they are unlikely to have been a complete fiction; and even if they were a fiction, they were one that an Athenian jury could be expected to believe (or at least enjoy) about a member of the élite driven to extremes of competitive frustration by the imagined glory of an opponent’s spec­ tacular khoregia. Meidias also infiltrated the khoregeion. He ‘corrupted’ (διέφθειρεν) the khorodidaskalos, whose name we never hear. Bribery is implied, and one wonders what form this sabotage from within could have taken. Whatever the didaskalos did to damage the chances of Demosthenes’ khoros, he did not for long escape the notice of Telephanes the auletes, a famous musician from Megara whom Demosthenes won the right to choose before all his rival khoregoi at the Assembly.45 Perhaps partly for this reason, Telephanes remained faithful to his choral team. He ‘saw what was happen­ ing and drove the man out’, taking on the business of co-ordinating and directing the khoros himself (§17). One wonders, as so often in this mid-to-late fourth-century context, if by didaskalos was meant a poet composing and directing a new dithyramb, as in earlier years, and if so, what became of his words, music and dance-steps once he himself had been dishonourably removed. Telephanes is explicitly said by Demosthenes to have ‘trained’ (διδάσκειν, §17) the khoros. The music to which the khoros danced and sang — so important in this period — was possibly his. If Telephanes had not been such ‘an excellent fellow towards me at that time . . . we should have been out of the competition, men of Athens — the khoros would have gone on stage untrained, and we should have been utterly disgraced’ (§17). Demosthenes identifies himself intimately with his khoros as a performer: his use of the first person plural for the verb of choral competition here incorporates himself fully as one of the active contestants, indistinguishable from the khoros itself. The ancient author of one of the scholarly introductions to the speech, in explaining the background of the khoregic system to his readers, writes: ‘the khoregoi competed against one another and were in conflict ...’(... ήγωνίζοντο προς άλλήλους οί χορηγοί καί ήριζον . . . (Hyp. 2.2)), a fact amply illustrated by the text, although of course on this occasion Meidias is emphatically not an active khoregos (something Demosthenes almost appears to have to remind his audience of, for fear that they will assimilate this conflict to one of those that regularly broke out between antikhoregoi). άγωνίζεσθαι is used equally of competing actors, poets and khoregoi, further evidence that their respective activities were not perceived as entirely distinct or of radically different orders.46 Indeed, in the course of this speech in which Demosthenes appears, and fashions himself, as such a ‘performer’, he uses this word in relation solely to the quality of khoregic performance. He speaks of the terrible consequences of letting rich and audacious men like Meidias ‘deprive’ khoregoi like himself of victory (khoregoi rather than their khoroi or phylai are stressed at this point) ‘even if my performance were better than anyone else’s’ (καν άμεινον άγωνίσωμαί τίνος, §66). Meidias’ actions are also brought within this theatrical representation, but he is the isolated tragic transgressor or comic villain: ‘[w]hen he entered the theatre, you

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spectators at the Dionysia booed and hissed. . .’ (§226). Corruption, or destruction, moral and physical (the Greek uses the same verb for both, (προ)διαφθείρω), is the defining quality of Meidias’ transgressive performance in his ‘negative’ khoregia. Meidias tried to ‘destroy’ the cloaks and crowns; he ‘corrupted’ the didaskalos; and finally he tried to ‘corrupt the crowned Arkhon’ (§17), as well as the judges for the men’s agon, against whom he used shouting, abuse and the force of his overbearing presence as they took their oath (§18). He also ‘got the khoregoi to gang up against me’ (§17). No bribery was needed here, however: the inherently competitive struc­ ture and psychology of the festival were easily harnessed against one khoregos whose preparations were certainly lavish and so, perhaps, particularly threatening to the others. The attempt to bribe the Arkhon is passed over without much comment, and were there any real substance to so serious a charge it would surely have arisen at his rendering of accounts or at least in the Assembly held after the festival.47 But the judges are another matter. Demosthenes has already mentioned this charge (§5), and he returns to it (§§18, 65). It must have formed one of the specific instances of ‘wrongdoing with regard to the festival’ that were levelled successfully against Meidias through the action of probole in the Assembly following the festival, and that are now being presented for a full legal trial. The effect of this violent and powerful man on the judges is very like that alleged by Andokides of Alkibiades. Like Alkibiades, Meidias was ‘demonstrating that his personal power is stronger than the laws’ (§66). The two ‘caps’ (κεφάλια, § 18) of these ‘youthful exploits’ (of a man approaching fifty) were the hybris perpetrated on Demosthenes’ body in the theatre, and the fact that ‘he was most responsible for the fact that the phyle which was superior in the agon did not win’ (§18): violence against the individual — but of a form that Demosthenes will soon expend much energy on ‘converting’ into violence against the citizenry itself; and the deprivation of the collective phyle of its due victory (and it is significant that at this point it is indeed the collective rather than the individual khoregos which is introduced as the proper recipient of victory). And yet this depiction of Meidias’ actions as pure transgression, as hybris against himself and, symbolically and poten­ tially, against any and all democratic citizens, seems to obscure a sense in which aggression not far short of actual violence between competitive khoregoi was regarded as normal. That Meidias was not a khoregos puts him in rather a different position, of course, and Demosthenes goes on to make much more of the fact. But we have already seen that as epimeletes, Meidias was in a role not so radically different from Demosthenes’. The sharp polarity between, on the one hand, the good, restrained khoregos Demosthenes, an officer of the state and ministrant of the god, and on the other the violent, out-of-control Meidias, holding no public post, is not as clear cut as Demosthenes would like his audience to believe. Demosthenes develops this contrast later in the speech with an account of two further scenes from the life of the Athenian theatre. He adduces them in order to con­ trast Meidias’ transgression as an hybristic non-khoregos, someone not contributing to the festival, with the restraint exercised by lawfully-competing khoregoi on occasions where they could legitimately have prevented an opponent from enjoying an advan­ tage in the competition. Yet more than anything else Demosthenes’ account implies that these events have the character of unusual exceptions, and that the behaviour expected of khoregoi will be to employ any means, lawful and at times not, to achieve 162

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nike. The first story concerns a man called Sannion who was a trainer of tragic khoroi (§58). He had been disfranchised for failure to perform military service. Perhaps (although Demosthenes does not say as much) his conviction had actually arisen out of a conflict between Dionysian and military duty.48 Even so, he was hired subse­ quently by a tragic khoregos — ‘Theozotides, I think it was’ (§59). This Theozotides was ‘keen for victory’ (φιλονικών, §59) At first the rival khoregoi were indignant and said they would put a stop to it, but when the theatre was full, and they saw the crowd assembled for the contest, they shrank from it; they let it go; no one laid a finger on him. So great is the forbearance arising from piety which may be seen in every one of you that he has been training khoroi ever since, and is not prevented even by any of his personal enemies, much less the khoregoi.

Though presented as a general proof of‘your’ (the demos’) pious forbearance and lack of violence, the story is clearly in the first place an illustration of the restraint of kho­ regoi, a group hardly isomorphic with the demos; and secondly, it has the character of a strange and exceptional show of restraint. One might go further, and suggest that for ‘forebearance arising from piety’ we might read ‘calculated assesment of the mood of the audience’, which wanted no interference to its tragic agon, and in light of which any action by a rival khoregos that interrupted the contest would translate into being ill-disposed towards his own performance.49 Demosthenes makes this clear in his description of the scene, in which it is explicitly stated to have been the sight of the full theatre and the crowd assembled for the agon that stopped the khoregoi from having Sannion expelled. And he subsequently deduces from these two incidents that the victory-hungry khoregoi exercised their restraint because they ‘took notice of your wishes and your enthusiasm for the festival. . . .’ (§61). Even according to Demosthenes’ image of the festival which stresses the role of social unity and good order, the wishes of the demos serve only to exercise restraint on the use of force, legal or otherwise, by khoregoi when they calculate that it will serve the best ends of their own success to do so. There is a powerful presumption behind these stories of legal enforcement or violence avoided in the past that khoregic philon(e)ikia would normally be expected to prevail over such restraint. The second story concerns a disfranchised choral expert for dithyramb rather than tragedy — one Aristeides of the phyle Oineis. ‘By now he’s an old man and perhaps not such a good khoreutes, but at one time he was leader of his phyle." Whether or not the ‘leader of the phyle" (ήγεμών τής φυλής) was a quasi-official position, it is clear that Aristeides was a choral performer of acknowledged skills.50 Perhaps his par­ ticipation in the khoroi of Oineis over the years had simply earnt him the informal title of its choral ‘leader’. Presumably at the ‘grass roots’ level of choral training and performance there was a whole vocabulary of practice of which we have simply the traces. It is, however, also clear that Aristeides regularly served the particular, practi­ cal function of the khoros-leader, linch-pin of a well-ordered khoros: ‘As of course you know, if one takes away the leader, the rest of the khoros is done for’ (§60). Demosthenes goes on to describe the mood in the theatre:

And yet, though there were many khoregoi keen for victory (φιλον(ε)ικησάντων51), none of them ever took advantage of this or 163

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ventured to remove him or prevent him. Because this had to be done by taking hold of him oneself, manually, and it wasn’t possible to summon him to appear before the Arkhon, as one would if one wished to remove an alien, everyone shrank from being seen to perpetrate this outrage (§61). Isn’t it a terrible and dreadful thing, men of the jury? On the one hand, of all the khoregoi who thought this would make them victorious, and who had in many cases spent all their money on leitourgiai, not one ever ventured to touch even those whom the laws permit them to; their attitude was so cau­ tious, so reverent, so restrained that, despite their expenditure and their involvement in the contest (dyoovicovTas), they still held off, and took notice of your wishes and your enthusiasm for the festival. Meidias, on the other hand, a private individual who had spent no money, just because he had a quarrel with someone and was hostile to him - someone who was spending money, and was a khoregos, and was a fully-enfranchised citizen — Meidias abused him and hit him, and paid no regard to the festival or to the laws or to the god.

Despite the fact that ejecting Aristeides from his khoros would have given other kho­ regoi a better chance of winning, these victory-hungry men — for whom, according to Demosthenes, victory was the only return for spending their fortunes on the demos — restrained their aggressive impulses once more. It would not be too difficult to imagine circumstances under which Demosthenes might choose to depict the employment of a disfranchised citizen in an important political khoros as an outrage, a threat to the security of the laws, to social cohesion and to democracy itself. Here, however, the idea of removing him is termed an ‘outrage’, in order to paint a picture of khoregoi showing restraint and a willingness to put the wishes of the people above their own individualistic ends. But the image is clearly partial; and it proceeds in any case from an assumption that khoregoi will pursue every available avenue to victory: ‘To do all these and similar things, men of Athens, because one is led on by eager­ ness for victory when one is a khoregos, is excusable . . .’ (§66). When Demosthenes later compares his own violent khoregia with the famous one of Alkibiades more than half a century before, he points out that unlike Meidias, who had struck Demosthenes, Alkibiades had been a khoregos when he resorted to vio­ lence, and that fact is held out as an entirely sufficient justification for his actions: ‘. . . what insolence did Alkibiades commit that was as serious as what Meidias has now been proved to have committed? He struck Taureas, a khoregos, on the face. All right, but that was one khoregos striking another . . .’ (21.147). h is as though he expected his audience to find assault between khoregoi a matter scarcely deserving mention. Demosthenes outlines the consequences as he sees them of allowing transgres­ sions like this to go unchecked - and they are formidable. His underlying argument is that the grounds for khoregic expenditure and competition need to be maintained as fair and rule-governed. Otherwise, if a khoregia is to become, like Demosthenes’, an occasion for personal enemies to harass and abuse one publicly, ‘who is so improv­ ident or so foolish that he would be willing voluntarily to spend a single drakhma? Surely no one’ (§66). Demosthenes goes on to outline what he would like his jurors to believe was the proper form of agonistic leitourgical psychology, the rationale of ‘good’ philotimia:

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The thing that makes them all emulous and willing to spend money, I think, is that each of them believes he enjoys equality and fairness in a democracy Now, I, men of Athens, was prevented by Meidias from obtaining those; apart from the insolence, I was also robbed of my victory (§67)

Rich and powerful men are willing to spend their money and compete for honour because they believe they have democratic equality and fairness. The link made here between democratic equality and the agonistic psychology of the élite is a little forced. Demosthenes glides lightly over an inherent paradox in his argument: the principle of equality is proffered as the basis for spectacular demonstrations of considerable inequalities, particularly of wealth but also of honour (time), that which democratic ideology asserts as fundamentally equal between citizens. And, from a broader histor­ ical perspective, it is certainly not the case that there was any necessary and inalien­ able link between the psychology of the agon and the sociopolitical form of democracy: on the contrary, the aristocratic obsession with competition is well doc­ umented, and Sparta, in many ways democratic Athens’political Other’, was the tim­ ocratic society par excellence, where competition was integral to political (especially military) as well as cultural life.52 Demosthenes goes on to bolster this argument for the democratic nature of kho­ regic competition by elaborating the most extended version yet of his argument that, had Meidias wanted to ‘cause me grief (λυπεϊν εμέ, §67) and seek honour himself from you quite legally’, he should have done so by the rules, and,

when I undertook in the Assembly to be khoregos of Pandionis, . . . stood up and undertaken the same duty for Erekhtheis, his own phyle', putting himself on equal terms and spending his money like me, he should have tried to take the victory from me in that way, though even then he shouldn’t have treated me with such hybris and blows. (§68) The khoregia provides an opportunity to bring pain to one’s opponents and honour to oneself. Furthermore, this course of action in legitimate pursuit of personal honour would also have involved giving honour to the demos (§69). Demosthenes once more completely ignores the potentially ‘democratic’ aspects of Meidias’ service as epimeletes; and for all his arguments about virtuous, democratic competition, the implication persists that some of the most intense and powerful forms of honour and victory to be won in the democratic city are those which infringe, or come close to infringing, upon the rules of the game. Like Andokides before him faced with Alkibiades, Demosthenes may well be dealing with the problem of the transgressor’s charisma, whose abusive treatment of a fellow élite may in fact have been a welcome part of his performance for himself and his audience alike. Demosthenes cites two further cases of khoregic restraint (§§62-5) before chang­ ing his line of argument. In these, men who were opponents in the narrowly politi­ cal arena are mentioned for the fact that they did not pursue their political conflicts through khoregiai: the famous fourth-century Athenian general Iphikrates did not mobilise his friends and wealth in support of his brother, Teisias, when he was an antikhoregos of Iphikrates’ bitter enemy, Diokles; and Khabrias ‘neither hit nor snatched away the crown’ of his enemy Philostratos when the latter was a victorious khoregos for the boys’ competition at the Dionysia. There is here, most interestingly,

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a default assumption that the khoregia will indeed be used - through one’s own spec­ tacular performance, or the obstruction of an opponent’s - as a significant move within a wider relation of political enmity. In the cases Demosthenes produces, the forensic and political agones of these men did not cross over into the agon of the fes­ tival; the Dionysiac khoregia remained free of the aggression of the competitive engagements of other areas of civic life. But a degree of surprise is registered that such aggression did not in these (carefully selected) cases make its way into the theatre. It was thus evidently an expectation that social conflicts should be enacted, even to the point of violence, at Athens’ most prestigious choral festival. As much is also shown by the extensive legislation and institutional arrangements that were in place, in the fourth century at least, for maintaining order. We have seen the way epimeletai and the Council were given a rôle in maintaining the good order of the choral competitors and of the theatre more generally. Then there are the ‘rod-bearers’ or ‘attendants’who operated in the theatre with some sort of policing duties, at the ‘hard edge’ of Dionysian disruption. In Demosthenes’ day, the ‘attendants’ (υττηρέται, 21.179), working under the instructions of the Arkhon, could be expected, for instance, to remove a spectator who had not obeyed the official announcements and was taking a seat to which he was not entitled. Among the tasks of these theatre-police was it seems the duty to enforce status-distinctions expressed within the arrangement of the theatre-audience. In an extraordinary passage of Plato’s Laws the Athenian looks back to the ‘good old days’ of Athenian musical culture when the silence of the crowd was maintained ‘by the order of the rod’ (ράβδου κοσμούσης, 700c). The reference is hardly to a specific historical institution: this somewhat totalitarian ‘good order’ in Athenian musical culture maintained by the rod is said to predate the rise of those poets who were ‘leaders of unmusical transgression’ (yood), and is styled so as to form a sharp contrast with the new musical ‘disorder’ at an aesthetic and ethical level. The remark does nonetheless seem to draw on a name given to attendants in the Athenian theatre (as at other Greek festivals) — ραβδούχοι or ραβδοφόροι. The khoros of Aristophanes’ Peace opens its parabasis (734) with a declaration that poets who praise themselves in their parabases should be struck by the rod-bearers — evidently a jocular transference of the police of propriety from the realm of social order in the theatre to that of good order or appropriateness in poetry itself. This is precisely the same kind of transfer­ ence present in Plato but made for very different ends. A scholiast on the Aristophanic passage explains it by reference to the rod-bearers who had a position at the altar ‘for good order’ (προς ευταξίαν), and who were in charge of the eukosmia of the spectators. Demosthenes secured his ‘adverse vote’ (καταχειροτονία) against Meidias at a meeting of the special Assembly which was held after the Great Dionysia, in the theatre; and he used a procedure to secure this vote called probole.54 Little is known about this Assembly, but it is clear that it was designed in large part to be diagnostic of the conduct of the festival which preceded it, a good example of the self-scrutiny and prediliction for accountability characteristic of democratic culture. That it was held in the theatre at all is significant, and marks it out as different from all other meet­ ings of the Athenian Assembly: it is the first clear example of what was a far com­ moner practice in Hellenistic Athens and in other cities where there was a less clear division between meeting-places for the civic population. It may consequently have

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had a slightly ambiguous quality in relation to the ‘normal’ Assembly gathered on the Pnyx. Demosthenes quotes the law which establishes this Assembly and the probole pro­ cedure used at it: The prytaneis are to convene an Assembly in the precinct of Dionysos on the day after the Pandia. At this meeting they are to deal first with sacred matters; next let them bring forward the probolai which have been made in connection with the procession or the agones at the Dionysia, all that have not been paid for. (§8)

The Athenian demos scrutinises the conduct of its festival immediately after it is over. The theatre-audience returns — purified of ‘outsiders’ — to discuss the whole activity in which it and its leaders were just engaged.55 The ‘sacred matters’ include a consid­ eration of the general conduct of the Dionysia by the Arkhon, but it seems that much of the point of this Assembly lay in the airing of allegations of wrongdoing or trans­ gression in connection with the festival (§9). By the later fifth century, it was evi­ dently felt that such an institutional mechanism was needed to counter the degree of social disruption that surfaced at the City Dionysia.56 The introduction, perhaps c. 420, of the theorikon, the ‘money for the spectacle’ distributed by the polis to Athenian citizens to cover the cost of the entry-charge to the festival, is likely to have had as one of its motivations a desire to maintain eukosmia in a theatre increasingly subject to disruption. That much of this will have been the by-product of the honour-seeking and selfassertion of khoregoi taking advantage of the unparalleled publicity of the festival is clear both from the background to Demosthenes’ speech and from a number of other incidents he recalls. It is noteworthy that the law specifies the procession and the agones as the activities in connection with which problems were anticipated. These are the two elements of the festival in which the status of participants was most aggres­ sively and spectacularly asserted. Among the cases of the use of the probole in the past cited by Demosthenes is that of one Ktesikles. This man was carrying a whip in the procession and used it to strike a personal enemy (§180). The demos actually con­ demned him to death at the eventual trial, since it was thought that hybris had led him to the action, not the drunkenness that he put forward in his defence. Ktesikles had spectacularly transgressed the proper status-distinctions of Athenian society, ‘treating free men as slaves’, publicly performing his personal enmity in the event at the core of the festival that displayed the citizenry to itself and the Greek world in its struc­ tured divisions and hierarchy.57 A similar concern with the maintenance of an order that was likely to be dis­ rupted by khoregoi can be seen to explain details of the legislation concerning ‘choral purity’. This included provisions, as we have seen, to ensure that it was a serious and expensive business for people (in practice this will have meant khoregoi) to eject a (sus­ pected) foreigner from a khoros. As was amply illustrated in the story of Alkibiades, this must have been designed to prevent or discourage khoregoi from vexatious or simply (if technically justified), disruptive challenges. It is in this context that we should place a story told of another khoregic transgressor, the fourth-century politi­ cian Demades. Plutarch’s account of a khoregia by Demades depicts it as another instance of 167

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performative social transgression (Phokion 30.2—3). In the Life, Demades’profligacy is set in polarised contrast to the virtuous poverty of Phokion ‘the good’: indeed, just as Phokion ‘made a display’ (sTTEÔeÎKWTo) of his poverty as a virtue (§30), Demades by contrast ‘made a great parade of his wealth, even though he was violating the laws to do so’ (30.2). To illustrate this characteristic transgressive display of wealth an account is given of a khoregia at the Dionysia in which Demades introduced a khoros of a hundred foreigners and brought along with him, into the theatre, the appropri­ ate 100,000 drakhma fine. Unless we are to imagine Demades somehow provision­ ing two dithyrambic khoroi (both categories for his phyle?), this magnification of choral size, especially through the introduction of foreign expertise, was perhaps all part of Demades’brash extravagance and conspicuous expenditure. According to this account, Demades succeeded in turning the punishment for one transgression into the occasion of another. The vast sum of the fine is not a sign of the democracy’s severe treatment and secure control of those who threaten its laws and ideals. It becomes instead a sign of the khoregos’ indifference to, even contempt for, those ideals, a form of illicit khoregic expenditure that through its very illegality and publicity is all the more attractive to the spender. The story of Demades’ transgression is surely not unrelated to the specific polit­ ical dynamics of his times, and in particular to the great collective sensitivity towards those ‘foreigners’ to the north, the Macedonians. This was an age in which Athenian civic corporatism and autonomy were increasingly open to threat, and a figure like Demades was not widely regarded as their greatest champion. This was the man chosen by Philip to negotiate peace after Khaironeia; and who was said to have pro­ posed deifying Alexander. Just prior to this account of his khoregia we are given an insight into the alleged source of his wealth: Antipater ‘could never satisfy him with gifts’ (30.2). That Athenian anxieties concerning the relation between Athenian and outsider should have been dramatised so clearly in the circumstances of Demades’ transgressive khoregia is very illuminating: Athenian khoroi, both in their songs and in their instantiation in the city, are one of the most important sites where such anxie­ ties surface. Demades’ introduction of foreign choral expertise would be especially piquant given the ambiguities surrounding his attitude towards Macedon, and given too the way Macedon had become a major appropriator of Athenian choral culture — especially tragedy.

Khoregic power The ‘love of victory’ which motivates these pre-eminent Athenian khoregoi constantly threatens to collapse into the ‘love of strife’. Between the two terms there is only an epsilon’s difference: φιλονικία and φιλονεικία. It is no surprise to find that at least one Athenian named his son Philonikos, ‘Lover of Nike’; nor that the name of this man — who was caught up in an acrimonious inheritance case in the early fourth century — is transmitted in most manuscripts of Isaios as Philoneikos, ‘Lover of Strife’ (5.29). In Athens, the line between love of victory and love of strife is an ambiguous one, in the theatre as in almost all manuscript traditions, where the two terms are routinely confused.58 168

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This ambiguity is particularly marked in contexts of khoregic competition, and clearly reflects the anxieties surrounding the proper place of victory and its pursuit within a democratic society. The pursuit of individual victory, especially by men of wealth, can lead to a rivalry that is destructive of the social order; to rivalry and conflict within the community rather than an energetic ‘rivalry for the good’ of the community. Victory in the Greek imagination and in the social context of a zero­ sum economy of prestige carries within it an indelible notion of superiority over others. It evokes the form of power most commonly termed κράτος, a term which views power as the operation of superior force over others, and which often stands in contrast to the term αρχή, used most regularly for the wielding of legitimate power within a civic context of rotating office-holding. Achievement in the leitourgic sphere was clearly marked by this somewhat illicit, transgressive sense of victory as the demonstration of superiority over others. That those others were one’s peers and fellow-citizens rather than ‘outsiders’ did not divert or ‘defuse’ the sense of aggressive achievement. On the contrary; the potential for such an exercise of power was evi­ dently part of the pleasure and reward of leitourgic, especially khoregic, performance. Yet a victory won over ‘one’s own’ was dangerously close to that spectre of Greek civic life, the horror of stasis, or ‘internal war’. A long tradition of poetic and philo­ sophical discourse described stasis as emphylos or ‘within the tribe (phylonf; and stasis was also a term used in contexts of choral performance and competition.59 There was a fine and sometimes fragile line between eirenic festival performance and violence within the city. Plutarch is a perceptive analyst of the phenomenon of khoregic prestige and power, even if his general discussion of poetic and khoregic performance in the trea­ tise Whether the Athenians were more renowned in war or wisdom is so critical of the massive outlay devoted to these activities by the Athenians as to suggest he did not fully appre­ ciate the particular lure and practical use to the Athenians of this form of competi­ tive performance. According to Plutarch, the enormous expenditure of resources and energy on the theatre by khoregoi led only, for the losers, to routine subjection to hybris and ridicule: ‘The result for the defeated khoregoi was to be abused on top of it all and made laughing-stocks’ (Mor. 349b). The language is strong, but the image it conjures is not beyond recognition in and behind the accounts of classical khoregiai we have: these men who had spent with such lavish hand but without success could be deemed the victims of hybris, the most feared of all injuries in a prestige-sensitive society, a major loss of personal esteem through an attack on one’s honour. We can hardly doubt that the agones of the Dionysia witnessed ostentatious exultation by khoregic victors over their opponents. Like many a tragic hero, defeated khoregoi were forced to endure the ultimate indignity of the laughter of their enemies, and in front of a famously vast audience. That the power which leitourgists wielded was emphatically not a species of legit­ imate civic office (arkhe) is highly significant. Khoregoi were given, as we have seen, certain specific powers of enforcement and punishment over other citizens, but the khoregia simply does not make sense as a ‘state’ office, and in the classical period it is never described as such. The special powers which were given to khoregoi do, inci­ dentally, show that even outside and prior to the agones the business of a khoregia could provoke social tensions. The khoregic speaker of Antiphon 6 is at pains to represent his khoregia as an untroublesome, peaceful affair where good social relations were

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maintained - for the good reason, as I pointed out above, that it did in fact end in disaster, with the death of a boy. In describing his model khoregia by so detailed a recital of its negative alternative, the khoregos implies that things were not always so; that the process was one of potentially aggressive personal negotiations, where the authority of the khoregos impinged on that of the boys’ fathers; where personal enemies could be made; and where force was sometimes needed. No comparable ‘office’ fell selectively upon so narrow, so pre-eminent and so wealthy a sector of the community.60 In a revealing passage of the Politics concerned with the selection of civic offices, Aristotle explicitly addresses the difficulty of defining or locating the khoregia in relation to arkhai in the strict sense — a problem which is both symptomatic of its ambivalent status under democratic conditions and which resonates in the light of historical developments in Athens after 322:61 ‘Nor is it easy to define this — which of the arkhai are properly so called; for the political com­ munity requires many officials, and so they are not all to be reckoned arkhontes, whether selected by vote or by lot - first, for example, the priests . . . and further kho­ regoi and heralds . . . (1299a:5—20). Aristotle is here emphatically not placing the kho­ regia under the sign of the legitimate wielding of civic power, while at the same time clearly recognising that it does represent an exercise of power in the civic sphere. The khoregia lacks many of the features of democratic arkhe which Aristotle and the Athenians themselves regarded as definitive: in particular, the selection of khoregoi by lot was impossible, since its fundamental principle of qualification was a straightfor­ ward criterion of wealth, a criterion which sat uneasily with democratic principles endorsing access to office for all, irrespective of wealth. The khoregia lacked the char­ acteristically democratic control of euthynai, the rendering of accounts at the end of office which could inspire fear of demotic severity and of attack from sykophants.62 The possibility has been raised that phyletic assemblies might have subjected their kho­ regoi and gymnasiarkhoi to a form of euthynai, but there is no solid evidence for the suggestion.63 Indeed, the attitude of phylai towards their khoregoi — at least their ‘officiallyexpressed’ public attitude — was, as far as we can tell, very much more grateful than critical. There is plenty of evidence demonstrating the response to a victory of one of their members — the award of special crowns and other honours, lavish praise per­ manently recorded — but we have no access to the sort of discussion that may have taken place at a phyletic assembly after, say, a spectacularly poor tenth place. The force of dependence on the goodwill of the rich and the status their wealth brought among their phyletai argue against the possibility of harsh criticism, although the psychology of victory will itself generally have served to punish such deficients with shame and perhaps to inspire other rich men of the phyle to greater efforts. For the tragic (and comic) khoregos there is no evidence whatever of such a procedure, and thus even this tenuous link to the controls of civic office is absent.64 It is difficult indeed not to look for a resolution of these tensions surrounding the ‘office’ of khoregos in an explanation which runs the risk of teleological determinism. For in the post-democratic period, the performance of leitourgiai was increasingly integrated with the holding of office (arkhai), and this assimilation of economic and cultural power with civic power seems almost to represent a logical progression under the changed political and economic conditions, while at the same time evincing an important thread of continuity with the status of leitourgiai under the democracy.65

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Phyletic honours The evidence for the awards given to khoregoi by their phylai is highly revealing of the relationship between them, at least in the fourth century, and deserves brief consid­ eration.66 Above all else the decrees show another dynamic in the circulation of pres­ tige surrounding the khoregia, as phylai draw on their status and dignity as major organs of the polis to load their khoregoi with further honour. The case of a Pandionid decree in honour of Nikias son of Epigenes, from near the start of the fourth century, is par­ ticularly illuminating.67 Pandionis awards Nikias with a crown for showing andragathia towards the phyle in acting as khoregos ‘well and enthusiastically’ (4—5), so that he won the boys’ agon at the Dionysia and the men’s at the Thargelia. In addition to the crown, the officers of the phyle (epimeletai) are to see to the erection of the stone permanently recording the honour in the shrine of Pandionis; and it seems that another copy was displayed in a location outside the shrine, probably on the Akropolis, to attract the attention of a wider public, doubtless with an element of competitive pride towards other phylai.68 It is clear that such initiatives on the part of phylai to honour their leading men before the widest possible urban audience — in particular, at the perfor­ mance of tragedy at the Dionysia — sparked resistance from urban authorities. The promotion could be construed as infringing on the powers of the city itself.69 The phyle stipulates a further project on this stone: the epimeletai are to add to it the names of all the khoregoi of the phyle who were victorious at the Dionysia, Thargelia, Promethia and Hephaistia from the time of the Arkhonship of Eukleides (403/2), that epochal year in which the city attempted to purge itself of the effects of the oligarchic revolution and re-establish the democracy on a more secure legal base.70 To date public lists from this momentous and highly-charged year in which demo­ cratic history began once more (and with a new script for official publications) was common enough, but it represents nonetheless a desire for a ‘clean slate’ which may have a particular significance in the context of a phyle’s memorialising the achieve­ ments of its rich and ambitious men. The decision to begin a record of victorious phyletic khoregoi from that date (and we should remember that there is no sign that the festival calendar was interrupted during the revolution) involves a decision, at whatever degree of consciousness, to be silent as to those who had been successful before the restoration. Whether or not any prominent khoregoi of Pandionis had actu­ ally been compromised, one might almost see in this action the phyle reclaiming the khoregia as a site for legitimate democratic excellence. We should in this connection note the force of Whitehead’s argument that the ‘virtue’ of andragathia (for which Nikias is here praised) seems to have been forged as a specifically ‘democratic’ quality at this time, a term which brought with it less of the elitist baggage of arete and the problematic connotations of philotimia.71 In similar vein, Erekhtheis honoured one Saurias around the middle of the fourth century (IG n2ii47) for a fine performance of a khoregia and a victory on the phyle’s behalf, as well as for fine performance of other leitourgiai. A crown and an exemption from leitourgiai were also awarded. That the period of exemption was (probably) only two years long is an indication that its value was largely symbolic and honorific, an expression of thanks rather than a significant material concession made by the phyle.72 Saurias seems to have had the additional and far from negligible honour of having

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been himself represented in the delicate relief-carving which surmounted this mon­ ument, forever seen in the process of being crowned by Nike.73 Some time later, in 326/5, an unknown Pandionid khoregos victorious in the men’s dithyramb is honoured for his ‘fine and philotimos’ performance with a gold crown worth 500 dr., for the [a]re[te] and [phi]otim[ia] shown his phyle.74 The award is on the lavish side, even if the valuable crown was probably dedicated after receipt by the khoregos, so convert­ ing the solid materials of this ‘honour’ to a more metaphysical form, further contin­ uing the circulation of his honour and increasing its value.75 These decrees testify to the great importance attached to the ‘big men’ of the phylai in the wider arena of polis action, men who had won victories ‘on behalf of’ their phylai.76 We see the phylai themselves ascribing the choral victories to their ‘leaders,’ (the khoregoi are always the subject of the verb νικάν), as though the collec­ tive’s experience of agonistic success was always to an important degree mediated through the figure of its khoregos. Nor is there any sign of any interest in recognising enthusiastic but unsuccessful khoregic performers.77 As ever, victory is paramount, and it unquestionably escalates the moral demand to honour.

The leitourgist and the demos There was no manner of employing wealth which seemed so appropriate to Grecian feeling, or tended so much to procure influence and popularity to its possessors, as that of contributing to enhance the magnificence of the national and religious festivals. This was the sentiment among both rich and among poor; nor is there any criticism more unfounded than that which represents such an obligation as hard and oppressive upon rich men.78

There can be no ideologically neutral deployment of wealth on the scale that was devoted to Athenian leitourgiai in any society; nor is a neutral interpretation of such deployment possible within that society or from the perspective of another. It should already be clear that in contemporary discourse there are few immutable positions and stable evaluative terms concerning the khoregia. This vast channelling of private wealth to public ends at the material and political heart of the city is always constructed and contested in rhetoric. The texts with the greatest claim to embody a truly democratic notion of philotimia are those of the ‘orators’, texts composed for delivery before the Council or before panels of mass democratic juries sitting in judgement on their speakers; texts composed too with a keen eye for the forms of argument and the values they reflect which will strike home under such conditions. These were speeches in which argument was always set forward on avowedly ideological grounds, where definitions of citizenship and democracy were at stake in a vital, not a peripheral or ‘purely rhetorical’ way.79 In the first place, the leitourgiai play a central rôle in an absolutely crucial discur­ sive strategy of rich Athenians: standing under judgement of the demos, they con­ struct a model civic identity in which the recitation of a list of leitourgiai, especially victorious festival leitourgiai, is a foundational element. From this emerges the ‘good’ democratic spender, the icon of a positive form of philotimia in which the ambitious 172

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man is awarded extra honour by the demos for the excellence of his pursuit of the communal good. A balance of reciprocal benefits, often construed as gifts and counter-gifts, between the demos and its élite leaders, serves as a crucial and delicate support for wider relations between the two. This ‘democratic’ representation of the khoregia betrays its delicacy at many points. The particular circumstances in which we hear these model democratic iden­ tities being constructed reveal to us figures whose attachment to democratic ideology was frequently open to question. Often it is the very issue at stake in the relevant trial at which they are speaking.,No doubt many — perhaps most — khoregoi throughout the classical period performed their services without exciting such fears for their motiva­ tions. Many had doubtless internalised the democratic ideology of the system. But the fact that the issue of their political devotion crops up in a number of speeches in the tiny percentage of surviving oratory shows how significant an issue it was; and further, that a figure like Alkibiades represents only one extreme point on a sliding scale. And at the seismic moments of oligarchic revolution the philotimia that inspired such service takes on the dark shadow of a philotimia which led to the overthrow of the democracy itself. Furthermore, this ideal of a ‘model democratic citizen’ is, as we have already seen, predicated on a number of principles which sit uneasily with dem­ ocratic values. While the attempts to convert philotimia into a more radically demo­ cratic ideal by gearing it to the broader spectrum of participation that the structures of a participatory democracy required seem not to have had much success: philotimia in Athens remained pre-eminently associated with the expenditure of large sums of money. The standard form of the topos which these élite speakers never ceased to employ before their audiences is something like this: These are my services to the city, given at great expense and personal effort, with great enthusiasm and magnificence. They are evidence of my conduct and character as a citizen, of my commitment to the democracy. They show that I cannot be the kind of person my opponent claims (and/or) in return for such benefactions I deserve a degree of ‘favour’ (χάρις).80 This rhetoric has an aggressive obverse, which generally takes the form of the claim that one’s opponent has spent little or nothing on leitourgiai, is therefore of bad civic character and undeserving of kharis. One of many variants is that, in contrast to those who have spent their entire fortunes on the demos, even pawned their household fur­ niture, one’s opponent has spent only (a small part) of his income, leaving the capital value of his property untouched.81 Such parsimony in spending on the demos is undemocratic; yet the democracy at other times showed itself extremely anxious that individual and family fortunes should not be allowed to be dissipated.82 If the trope of total expenditure of one’s fortune had more than a rhetorical reality, the addiction to philotimia of those who truly exhausted a fortune on khoregiai and the like can hardly have been regarded with total equanimity.83 The first extant example of the basic forensic trope comes from Antiphon: our earliest illustration of this ‘democratic’ rhetoric thus happens to be provided by a staunch ideological oligarch executed by the demos for his role in planning the rev­ olution of 411. It appears in the Tetralogies, and was thus not intended for actual deliv­ ery to a mass audience, but rather to serve as a kind of textbook illustration of how

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to negotiate democratic public discourse. The hypothetical defendant — on a charge of murder — assures his hearers that you will know me, on the basis of my past acts, as a person who does not act subversively or covet the property of others, but on the contrary, I have made several substantial payments of property-tax (eisphora), I have often served as trierarkh, I have served brilliantly as khoregos, I have often advanced money to friends, and frequently paid large sums under guarantees given for others. My wealth has come not from litigation, but from hard work; and I have been a religious and law-abiding man. If my character is such as this, you must not deem me guilty of anything sinful or shameful, (i .[3.12)

An ideal civic identity is constructed directly on the basis of glorious leitourgical ‘deeds’ (‘you will know me from my actions . . .’). The proper use of wealth is a pow­ erful proof of character.84 This self-image is at once democratic, and yet has attributes not shared by the demos: as provider of important economic and military funds and know-how, public banquets, loans for those in need and so on. Notable for their absence or marginality in this rhetoric of civic self-construction are accounts of bravery or exploits in the military sphere, or the illustrious discharge of democratic office.85 The rhetoric which aims to bring the élite speaker nearer to the demos and its sympathies in so doing points to the ineradicable economic and social gulfs between them. This ever-present major ideological gap in the workings of democratic politics and rhetoric is most sub­ tly and exhaustively both elided and manipulated in Demosthenes’ speech Against Meidias a full century later, and the example is especially resonant, given that the entire case is centred around the khoregia. As we have seen, Demosthenes weaves an elab­ orate rhetorical thread of arguments which both construct his own identity as a staunchly democratic citizen performing leitourgiai brilliantly and in keeping with the laws, while depicting his opponent as a delinquent leitourgist and threat to the democracy. The persuasive citation of past services here takes a new turn, as Demosthenes creates a democratic identity for himself and its negative obverse for Meidias through a very direct counter-cataloguing of leitourgiai. Not only has Meidias, some twenty years Demosthenes’ senior, performed no more leitourgiai than I have for you’ (§154), but Demosthenes, in accordance with the implicit prescriptions of the ideal leitourgist-democrat, began his service as soon as he possibly could, the moment he came of age.86 Here we confront a particularly significant motif of this rhetoric: the ideal life story’ which a member of the élite constructs for himself before the demos will often begin with the moment of entry into public life itself, and although we should not speak of a conventional cursus of leitourgical duties, this moment of arrival at adulthood, with the control of his prop­ erty by the young élite just out of the ephebeia, was often marked by the performance of a spectacular first leitourgia, and this will regularly have been a festival leitourgia.87 The higher the profile of the festival and the more spectacular the khoros, the greater the impact of this highly charged moment of entrée to the civic stage was bound to be. The speaker of Lysias 21 chose a tragic khoregia as his first public performance at the age of eighteen, and Perikles had made the same choice some seventy years before when, at the age of about twenty-two, he was victorious khoregos for Aiskhylos with the production that included the Persians. It is difficult to imagine a more symboli­

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cally resonant victory for the young Alkmeonid. There may have been a special asso­ ciation between the brilliant young jeunesse dorée of Athens and the genre of tragedy in particular at the khoregic level: not only did tragedy have its pre-eminent ‘dignity’, panhellenic prestige and popularity to recommend it to those interested in such things. That it presented its khoregos as a competitor from among all the citizenry, rather than as the representative of his phyle, may well have added to the perceived value derived from such an association in one’s first major public appearance. The locus classicus for the use of leitourgiai in composing a personal civic history comes again from Demosthenes’ lips, in the account he gives of his life in the major public speech On the Crown (18, especially §§256-67). Here he famously sets up a direct contrast between this narrative of his own civic progress and that of his oppo­ nent, Aiskhines. Demosthenes’ rhetoric superbly hijacks the whole business of com­ petitive self-construction in the opposed speeches of the Athenian courtroom by constructing Aiskhines’ own portrait for him. Demosthenes’ entry into public life follows the ideal scheme in copy-book fashion: ‘when I left childhood, in keeping with my circumstances I was in a position to be a khoregos, to serve as trierarkhos, to pay eisphora; I was deficient in no form of ambition (philotimia), either private or public . . .’By contrast with this brilliant career, when Aiskhines came of age, having been reared ‘in abject poverty’, he graduated from ‘sweeping the schoolroom floors’ and the like to serving as an assistant to his mother in her mystic initiations. No glo­ rious leitourgiai for Aiskhines, whose adult occupations scarcely rose above the level of those properly performed by slaves. Demosthenes is careful to make elaborate ges­ tures to avoid the implication that the difference in their careers can be ascribed simply to the advantages of wealth (especially §§256, 263), but this pre-emptive show of concern not to ‘turn poverty into a reproach’ merely licenses his superb and garish portraiture — alluding to, while not seriously countering, the fact that it was indeed his inheritance which laid the foundations of his own brilliant career. We fmd the khoregia continuing to serve this function in a rhetoric of self-repre­ sentation towards the end of the fourth century, and — most interestingly — doing so in the properly dramatic context of the prologue of Menander’s Sarnia. Here the young male speaker Moskhion presents himself as a ‘model son’ (zoff), opening the play — and with it of course the creation of his own dramatic persona — with a nar­ rative account of the first stages of a personal civic history. After adoption he was enrolled in the deme, becoming ‘one of the many’; the attainment of his majority was followed immediately by the performance of an outstanding khoregia. Brilliant service as phylarch and the provision of help to friends in need came later. The kho­ regia takes its place in this archetype of a good (élite) civic career, and it is all the more pointed, as the speaker himself realises, because he had been raised from poverty to wealth by his adoptive father: ‘because of him I was a human being’ (16) makes the normative quality of this élite ideal blatantly clear. To return to the earlier speech of Demosthenes (21) and its aggressive deploy­ ment of comparative civic histories: unlike that of Meidias, Demosthenes’ trierarkhia was not given under the latter-day ‘symmory’-system, whereby twelve hundred men jointly provided the funds for the ships, but it was performed ‘in the days when we served in pairs, and all the expenses came out of our own properties, and we found crews for the ships ourselves’ (§154). And yet Demosthenes still spends a great deal of time and energy persuasively redefining Meidias’ trierarkhia; aware that Meidias will

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‘drool on about’ this trireme (§160), he exposes the alleged motivations behind its provision, dismissing as ‘cowardice and unmanliness’ (§160) what Meidias will call philotimia. The allegation is that Meidias only chose to donate a trireme to avoid more perilous service with the cavalry (§162), and even then he didn’t embark on board himself but sent an Egyptian metic in his place, ‘while he himself stayed in Athens and committed at the Dionysia the acts for which he’s now on trial’ (§163). Not only was this ‘public service’ a dereliction of duty and act of cowardice: what should have been benefaction, the donation of private wealth to the public good (sugpysora, §166), was in fact a tax-purchase, a 2 per cent exemption: Meidias ‘spent the time transporting vine-stakes, cattle and doors to his house, and timber to his silver-mines; it was profit-making, not public service, this abominable man’s trierarkhial’ (§167 cf

155)· Leitourgical service is ever open to extremes of rhetorical construction and counter-construction. Demosthenes goes on to expose what he claims to be the purely rhetorical nature of Meidias’ leitourgiai, reducing them to mere words and, in the process, suggesting that the trope itself may more generally have been liable to such interpretation:

If performing leitourgiai, men of Athens, consists simply of saying to you, at all the meetings of the Assembly and everywhere else, ‘We are the men who perform leitourgiail We are the men who pay proeisphora for you! We are the rich men!’ — if saying that sort of thing is performing leitourgiai, I concede that Meidias is the most distinguished man in Athens; he wears us out at every Assembly with this sickening and tactless talk. (§153)88 Such boastfulness was a sufficiently familiar aspect of public life to find itself satirised in Theophrastos’ caricature of the ‘Boastful man’ (23.6). One man’s boastfulness is another’s democratic pride. Demosthenes, however, attempts to distinguish rhetoric from reality, with an extended and seemingly ‘objective’ comparison of his own and Meidias’leitourgic records, which ‘speak for themselves’. That list includes the casual and almost certainly unfair dismissal of Meidias’ tragic khoregia as a much less consid­ erable expense than Demosthenes’ dithyrambic (§156). Demosthenes concludes with a statement and a tendentious question: ‘So that’s how I have conducted myself towards you; but how has Meidias?’ The answer to his own rhetorical question should already be obvious, but Demosthenes does not stint in his elaboration:

So what is his distinction (AapirpOTTis)? What are his leitourgiai, his impres­ sive expenditures? I don’t see any - unless these are the items one considers: he has built a house at Eleusis so big that it overshadows everyone in the neighbourhood; he takes his wife to celebrations of the Mysteries, and any­ where else he wishes, in a carriage drawn by the pair of white horses he got from Sikyon; and he clears a way for himself through the Agora with an escort of three or four slaves, talking about ‘cups’ and ‘drinking-horns’ and ‘chalices’ loudly enough for the passers-by to hear. (§159) Well, when Meidias acquires possessions for the sake of his personal luxury and advan­ tage, I don’t know what use they are to the majority of you; but when he’s impelled by them to behave insolently, I can see that does affect many ordi­ nary people among us. That surely isn’t the kind of conduct you should

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honour and admire when it occurs; nor should you judge aspiration to honour (φιλοτιμίαν) by these criteria — whether a man builds a distinguished house or possesses a lot of maidservants or fine furniture: you should look for a man whose distinction and aspiration to honour are in things of which the majority of you all have a share. You’ll find that none of this applies to Meidias. Demosthenes dismisses Meidias’ actual services and sarcastically lists in their place items of personal extravagance, of a clearly élitist and anti-egalitarian quality: the sort of display of private wealth that the prevailing democratic culture frowned upon and that could be deployed to trigger images of the tyrant indulging his personal pleas­ ures at the direct expense of everyone else. In the process he offers a brief and pen­ etrating homily on philotimia, producing one of the clearest examples we have of a democratic definition of the virtue. The distinction he produces between a good and a bad philotimia and their related forms of spending is certainly clear, at least at the ideological level. And yet the clarity of the distinction is undermined in its practical application, since whatever the truth of Demosthenes’ interpretation of Meidias’ motives and the depiction of his personal comportment, the very fact of his consid­ erable leitourgical record is certainly sufficient indication that other interpretations of Meidias’ civic service were possible. But even more revealing is the fact that the very same sword can be turned against Demosthenes himself, a man whose democratic credentials seem so watertight. When Aiskhines attacks the public record of Demosthenes, he accuses him of embezzle­ ment, adding ‘You are rich and you serve as khoregos to your own pleasures’ (σύ δε πλουτεΐς καί ταΐς ήδοναϊς σαυτού χοργηγεΐς, 3*240). Aiskhines has chosen his words with care, puncturing in this pithy phrase the image of Demosthenes the good civic spender by bringing the language of public and private into this uneasy alliance. Aiskhines shows the difficulty of maintaining clear evaluative distinctions between a good, democratic and a bad, pleasure-seeking khoregia. In so doing he offers an indi­ rect commentary, many years afterwards, on Demosthenes’ khoregic career. For there was pleasure too, though it is heavily shielded by an arsenal of civic tropes, in Demosthenes’ own khoregia, a pleasure of which Meidias had deprived him to a certain extent, so stinging him to retaliation. There were risks in insisting too loudly on the brilliance of one’s own khoregic record. It was earlier in this same speech that Aiskhines famously referred to Demosthemes’ having ‘sold’ (3.52) the hybris against him from the punch he received in the theatre and the preliminary vote of the demos (the probole) for thirty mnai. For his part Demosthenes tries — and his eloquence is brilliant in the attempt — to extend the ‘democratic’ rhetoric of leitourgic service to assimilate the khoregia itself to a kind of ordinary public duty. This long speech is in fact diffused with a rhetori­ cal strategy that seeks to elide all difference between himself as a member of the élite and his demotic audience. From the very opening paragraph Demosthenes closes this gap by addressing his audience as though every man among them were in a position to spend a fortune on khoroi: ‘My own reaction [to the assault] was just what the reac­ tion of any of you to hybris would have been . . .’ This assimilation is crucial to Demosthenes’ success, yet whatever the socio-economic status of the dikasts was in reality, they were certainly not all potential leitourgists, and so were incapable (except

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imaginatively, which may be crucial) of fulfilling the norm outlined by Demosthenes in this sentence.89 Although he will position himself among those rich enough to protect themselves when it suits his argument (e.g., at §§111—12, ‘[I am] neither one of the most friendless nor particularly poor’, cf. 124), his usual practice is to create a fiction of equality between himself and his listeners which can lead to some extraor­ dinary statements: ‘If every one of you was not struck and not all treated outrageously while serving as khoregoi, you know of course that neither were you all khoregoi at the same time, and no one could ever abuse you all with a single hand’ (§219). Given that only a couple of hundred Athenians at any time were able to afford to act as khoregoi, Demosthenes’ words are indeed true; but for Demosthenes the value of the statement lies in the way it ties his audience closer to him at just the point at which the real gulf between them was at its greatest.

It was crucial to the balance of the leitourgic system that these contributions were seen to be made freely. If it was not always feasible to represent them as spontaneous benefactions, it was all the more important that they should not appear to have been undertaken under compulsion. The legal control exercised by the demos over the wealth of the rich had to be delicately concealed, not just as a matter of propriety or courtesy, but because essential to continued good relations between the two was the positive ‘good’ for the giver of being seen to give generously and freely, to display those virtues admired and indexed by Aristotle. The sharp edge of the law is the great­ est enemy to that form of gift-giving which is an obligation studiously masked as magnanimity. This is the issue at stake in Demosthenes’ major speech of 355, the Against Leptines (20), a speech directed against a proposed law which would do away with the customary exemptions and reliefs for leitourgists. Demosthenes plays heavily on the democratic rhetoric, and the élite stands to lose both economically and polit­ ically. One of the main arguments in favour of the law seems to have been a degree of abuse of the system of exemptions that had led to some leitourgists shirking their duties, but Demosthenes elaborately details the importance of not doing away with the structural basis of the system because of a few malefactors. Most significantly, if they take away ateieia, the demos take away their own power to give, since exemption is a form of return gift extended to the leitourgist from the demos. And if they ‘honour’ no one with such gifts, they will prevent everyone from showing philotimia. This idea — that the desire to be ‘brilliant’ before the demos was dependent principally on the prospect of an ‘honour’ in the form of a year’s exemption from further immediate duty — is evidently a rather partial if not quite false view of the nature of the ‘honour’ that was being sought by khoregoi. But this ‘democratic’view of the roots of élite phil­ otimia is nonetheless a crucial means of ensuring that the threat of increased compul­ sion was kept at a distance from leitourgic performance. The demos is encouraged to see itself as an equal in a relationship of reciprocal benefactions with its élite. To breach the terms of such a relationship would implicate the demos in ‘baseness’ (§6). Elevated thus to the social and moral status of the élite themselves, the demos is reminded by Demosthenes that, like good aristocrats, their reputation matters more to them than their wealth. He reminds them too that they are like their ancestors, those men of the glorious Periklean past who ‘when they accumulated vast sums of money, spent it all for honour (υπέρ φιλοτιμίας)’. By this deft assimilation between the contemporary demos as a whole and its past leaders, Demosthenes represents the

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demos to itself as motivated by the same principles and desires as its honour-hungry leaders. The importance of maintaining a relationship lacking coercion between the demos and its benefactors is thus highlighted, and that relationship is invested with a more egalitarian quality. In fact, however, the nature of this imagined relationship is that of one between élite equals. Just as a good khoregos is a good democrat, the demos is an élite who knows the proper way to treat his philoi. The importance of a notion of reciprocal giving to the leitourgy-system also makes less strange the often extremely blunt demands of leitourgists to be shown ‘gratitude’ (χάρις) in the courts. It has been suggested that in the earlier fifth century the store of demotic indebtedness thus generated would have been regularly ‘con­ verted’ into political power of a more direct sort, such as election to office, while in the later fifth and fourth centuries the emphasis is on forensic favours.90 I suspect that in fact the apparent difference is something of an optical illusion caused by the nature of the surviving sources, and that in both periods leitourgic brilliance could be con­ verted into a range of favours. Leitourgiai which had been performed after an unsuc­ cessful antidosis action were those most obviously performed under obligation. Knowledge of an antidosis behind an opponent’s public services — and perhaps simply the allegation of one — was a powerful weapon, since it offered such an apparently clear index of motivation, a proof of unwillingness to serve the people. Demosthenes incorporates this into his armoury when he claims that Meidias’ leitourgic record is not deserving of any kharis because he acted under the compulsion of antidosis.91 Fissures in the rhetoric of democratic voluntarism threaten to appear on several occa­ sions, when a speaker mentions an unsuccessful antidosis claim at one point, and later employs the standard appeal for kharis on the basis of his voluntary benefactions.92 Members of the Athenian élite were masters of the ‘dialectic of kharis’93 and though the relationship was presented as one between equals, the demos was generally in the position of the partner recognising the benefactions made to it. According to the classic formulation of the ‘Periklean’ Funeral Oration, the one who returns a favour is always in the weaker position: ‘He who confers a favour is more secure, in that through his goodwill for the one upon whom he has conferred it, he keeps the feeling of obligation alive; but the one in his debt is more listless, knowing that when he repays the kindness in his turn it will count, not as a favour bestowed, but as a debt repaid.’ (2.40.4)

A prime example of the way in which a leitourgist constructed his civic identity on the basis of his leitourgic gifts comes from the mouth of that not obviously commit­ ted democrat, the young man who delivered Lysias 21. As we have seen, he opens his defence, on the capital charge of bribe-taking, with an overwhelming barrage of ser­ vices rendered the city. And it is prefaced simply by the plea: ‘and further, please listen, I ask you, to some other considerations, so that you might know the kind of man I am as you cast your vote’ (§1). ‘What kind of man I am . . / It could not be clearer that the speaker wishes and expects his conduct as a democratic citizen to be construed on the basis of his vast leitourgic expenditure. What remains of his further argument shows a subtle reworking of the simple request for kharis in recognition of his devo­ tion. An even more civically-minded portrait can be created by affecting to repudi­ ate the benefits that accrue to the leitourgist under the conventional arrangement:

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After so many dangers encountered in your defence — [the speaker has also cited a range of military exploits, principally at sea] — and after all the good things I have done the city, I now request, not a gift for my reward, as others do, but that I be not deprived of my own property; for I consider it a dis­ grace to you also, to take it both with my will and against my will. I do not so much mind having to lose my possessions; but I could not put up with being subjected to hybris, and the impression it must produce on those who shirk their public services — that while I get no credit for what I have spent on you, they prove to have been rightly advised in giving up to you no part of their own property. (§§11-12)

This elaborate repudiation of a gift owed is of course a refusal in name only (and the demand in fact appears in the closing paragraph of the speech). But the feigned gen­ erosity permits him a subtle reproval of the demos, based once more on the crucial issue of voluntarism and motive: I have given so enormously to you willingly that it would be a disgrace for you to take from me against my will. He then commutes the issue from one of material injury to a matter of honour (hybris), yet the connection between the continued possession of his wealth and his honour is clear. For good measure he implies that the real outrage lies in the deleterious effect his conviction would have on the leitourgical system as a whole, making those who have shirked giving satisfied that they have thereby missed out on no benefit from the demos. And finally, towards the end of the speech, in the context of a somewhat allusive claim to the effect that he is no oligarchic sympathiser (§18), he offers a rhetorical and appar­ ently radical redefinition of what constitutes ‘true’ public service: ‘Consider that the most onerous of leitourgiai is to maintain throughout one’s life an orderly and circum­ spect behaviour, neither overcome by pleasure nor elated by gain, but showing oneself such as to be free from blame or the thought of prosecution in the mind of any fellow­ citizen’ (§19). This final divorcing of leitourgic service from money is extremely illu­ minating, especially coming from one whose ‘credit’ based on pure economic outlay could hardly be higher. In a sense what is outlined here might be regarded as a gen­ uinely democratic notion of leitourgic service, in that it is quite free from the vagar­ ies of different opportunity based on differentials in wealth. The role of economic factors in civic ‘virtue’ is elided in favour of a notion that is entirely political and ethical. The fact that this comes fom the mouth of an exceedingly rich leitourgist suggests that the traditional argument based on a direct equation between money spent and democratic commitment may have been wearing thin, that under certain conditions at least it was advisable to eschew a defence based primarily on the ‘evi­ dence’ of one’s wealth, however much of it had been lavished on the people. The full extent to which he can push a line of argument that presents the demos themselves as the culpable party emerges a little later when he ventures: In my opinion, men of the court - and let none of you be angry at this — there would be far more justice in your being declared by the Commissioners to be holding my property than in my being prosecuted now for holding public moneys. For my attitude towards the city is shown by the fact that, while I am frugal in the private use of my means, I take pleasure in the dis­ charge of my public services: I take a pride, not in the residue that is left to me, but in the amounts I have spent on you. (§16)

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Though presented with an air of intentional paradox, the fact that he can put forward such an argument at all demonstrates the degree of liberty (and it is more than a ‘purely rhetorical’ liberty) that men who have spent so lavishly can take. And the same is true of much of what he says: ‘. . . you ought to pray to the gods that the others may be such good citizens . . .’ (§15).94 In the light of the charge to which this defence is probably responding — bribe­ taking in office — a passage from another speech written by Lysias (19, of 388 or 387) is particularly suggestive. The speech comes from an inquiry into the property of a man named Aristophanes, now dead, whose wealth when seized by the city had turned out to be less than anticipated. His surviving son has to erect the traditional elements of a solid civic identity on behalf of the dead father, arguing that his lavish leitourgic record is such as to prove that he was not a man to keep his wealth from the people - this in face of the fact that the demos had executed him for profiteering at the city’s expense. We find another disavowal of philotimia as the motive for mentioning this suspect father’s services:95 . . . forgive me if I mention what he has spent on the city and on his friends; I do this, not for the sake of philotimia, but to bring in as evidence the fact that the same man cannot both spend a great deal without compulsion and covet some of the public property at the gravest risk. There are, indeed, those who spend money in advance, not with that sole object, but to obtain returns of twice the amount from the offices to which you have chosen to elect them. Now, not once did my father seek office, but he has performed all the khoregiai, he has been trierarkhos seven times, has made many large contribu­ tions of eisphora. That you might know of these things, they will be read out one by one. (§§56-7)

It would be hard to see how one could demonstrate more explicitly an attitude towards leitourgiai as a ‘proof’ of one’s innocence: the list, deposited in the court and recited by the clerk, serves as an intrinsic proof. But the interesting point here is the practice of offsetting the allegation of money-making, perhaps bribe-taking, in public office with the fact of one’s great donations to public projects. There is a certain fra­ gility in an argument used to demonstrate one’s civic rectitude which can be turned to suggest a subversive use of democratic office for personal ends.96 It is as though the charge of bribe-taking in particular called for the most elaborate self-defence based on leitourgic ‘gifts’ to the demos since in a sense δωροδοκία is the inverse of ληιτουργεϊν. But the rhetorical disavowal of philotimia is extremely revealing. The term now evidently triggered memories of the ambitions of men, or of a class of men, whose ‘pursuit of honour’ in performance of great public services was indelibly associated with a more radical pursuit of honour, with a betrayal of that delicate reciprocal rela­ tion with the demos upon which philotimia remained a precarious democratic virtue rather than a destructive vice. Philotimia ceases to be the objective for reciting one’s services. They are instead ‘evidence’ of a civically-minded attitude towards money, one’s own and that of the city. And yet in the process of this repudiation one still manages to have the glorious list read out to the court, no doubt in the hope that it will nonetheless dazzle by the splendour of its achievements. 181

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It is surely no coincidence that this civic rhetoric of public service was most ear­ nestly invoked by those whose commitment to the political system of democracy was most open to doubt. Thus Euxitheos, the rich young Mytilenaian defending himself against the charge of murder in Antiphon 5 (c. 418), includes in his speech (§74) what might otherwise seem the rather extraneous defence — of his father: T must also make a defence for my father . . .’ Euxitheos’ father had remained in Mytilene during that city’s oligarchic revolt from Athens in 428 and was evidently implicated in it, a fact which his son seeks to ameliorate, describing it as ‘participating in an error under compulsion’ (§76). He goes on to assert, however, that ‘the city has never lacked any leitourgia at all — neither your city nor the Mytilenaians’ — but he performs khoregiai and pays taxes’ (§77). It seems likely that these services are to be distributed chiastically — khoregiai for Mytilene, taxes for Athens.97 It is noteworthy, however, that the force of the Athenian model of civic virtue was such that citizens of subject-states on trial in Athenian courts did their best to conform to it, even if, as is likely in this case, the khoregiai had nothing to do with Athens and ‘τέλη’ was a somewhat flattering term for the 5 per cent flat-rate of imperial tribute or the rents due to the Athenian kleroukhs. Politically suspect subjects evidently stood in an analogous position in rela­ tion to the imperial city as did suspect leading Athenians towards the demos: and Antiphon, a master of eloquence and oligarchic revolutionary who was himself to feel the sting of a democratic court not long after, was a well-chosen logographos for such a defendant. A number of other speeches of Lysias give sharper insight into the relation between individual leitourgists and the prevailing political system. In Lysias 25 (of c. 399), the speaker is defending himself against an allegation of subverting the democ­ racy during the time of the Thirty. He argues that there was never any cause, public or private, for him to have wanted a change of government, and then goes on to state rather baldly, with no further connection: ‘For I have been a trierarkh five times; fought in four battles at sea; contributed many eisphorai in the course of the war; and performed my other leitourgiai as amply as any citizen’ (§12). However, in this instance, the ‘natural’ assumption that such actions are those of a true democrat is not left unarticulated, presumably because the speaker was not uni­ versally thought to be one. He goes on to state candidly that he spent more on lei­ tourgiai than he was legally obliged and gives as the reason: ‘. . .so that I might be better thought of by you, and if any mischance should befall me, that I might do better in court’ (§13). This sounds very much like the voice of a besieged member of the élite laying bare a fundamental motive behind the leitourgic system. It points dra­ matically to the reciprocity of dependence in relations between individuals and col­ lective in the polis, by indicating that, at certain critical moments at least (in agones of various kinds, such as this trial), élite individuals depended upon the goodwill of the demos. However, the elaboration of the point which the speaker goes on to give detracts from any notion of the sovereignty of the demos by highlighting the distance between the wealthy individual and the demos. He does this by speaking of the lei­ tourgic system as a democratic institution which works to his own advantage, since through it he can buy the favour of the majority (the plethos). If this image of the power of the leitourgic gift can be presented when the élite are — quite literally - at their most defensive, it is important to imagine their potential effect when entirely free from the humility of one seeking a (return) favour. 182

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A few years previously (c. 396), the topos had been applied to a family in a speech (18) in defence of a man whose father’s property was under threat of confiscation. Doubts had been cast on their sympathies during the revolution of 404, and to remind his audience of the good relations between his family and the demos, the speaker mentions their many large eisphorai — ‘and they have perfomed the leitourgiai most nobly: they have never once evaded any of the other duties enjoined on them by the city, but enthusiastically performed the leitourgiai’ (§7). The ambiguity surrounding the position of the leitourgist, and uncertainty concerning how his actions will be perceived in a democratic context, are captured in the rhetorical question the speaker goes on to ask: ‘And yet whose misfortune could surpass ours, I ask you, if under the oligarchy we are put to death for showing goodwill to the multitude, while under the democracy we are stripped of our property as being ill-disposed to the multitude?’ (§8). The ambiguity is more apparent still in the case of the speaker of Lysias 7 (dated after 397), who is defending himself before the Areopagos against the serious charge, punishable at this date by exile and the confiscation of property, of removing the stump of a sacred olive-tree from his land. He asks his hearers not to put greater trust in what his enemies have said than in matters with which they themselves are famil­ iar. Instead, he suggests they base their considerations on what he has said, and from the rest of my conduct as a citizen (και εκ τής άλλης πολιτείας). For I have performed all the duties laid upon me with greater enthusiasm than was required by the polis — as trierarkh, taxpayer, khoregos, and in the rest of the public services, my lavishness was second to none of any other citizen. (§31)98

The speaker quite explicitly presents his ‘life as a citizen’ (this must be the sense of πολιτεία here) as based on his performance of leitourgiai — ‘more eagerly’, of course, than officially required.99 A tantalising fragment of Isaios throws this rhetorical usage into sharper focus: ‘I think that the greatest of the leitourgiai is to lead one’s daily life in an orderly and restrained manner’ (35 (Forster)). The argument is possibly that of a less rich — or a less ‘enthusiastic’ — citizen trying to persuade his listeners to over­ look a less than illustrious record of services. Or perhaps it is part of the rebuttal of a wealthy opponent’s arrogant citation of his benefactions. In any case, behind what seems to be a metaphorical reinvestment of an overworked trope lies the very real equation at the heart of this civic rhetoric between civic life and civic service. I dis­ cussed the close association between the body of the citizen and his resources above. In a social and linguistic context where one’s life and livelihood, one’s material means of existence, are regularly equated (cf. the double sense of βίος), this construal of one’s politeia on the basis of one’s financial ‘gifts’ to the city comes as no real surprise. Yet when one considers the radically anti-egalitarian implications of such a definition, subsequent historical developments appear all the more intelligible. The rhetorical bias of Lysias 26 (of 382) is the opposite of that of the previous two cases. Here the oligarch Euandros is under attack in a scrutiny for the office of Arkhon before the Council. His prosecutor anticipates his use of the standard leitour­ gical topos, and in undercutting it, demonstrates that other ways of representing the relationship of leitourgiai to power and the democracy were certainly possible. He says that he has heard Euandros will make only the briefest reply to the actual charges, and

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talk at length about the huge amounts of money he and his family have spent on the city; in what an ‘honour-loving’ (philotimos) spirit they performed their leitourgiai; and how many noble victories they have won under the democracy (§3). His pre-emptive response to these arguments is extremely revealing:

As far as the leitourgiai are concerned, I say that his father would have done better not to perform them than to spend so much of his substance: for it was through these things that he won the trust of the demos and overthrew the democracy; and so his actions must stay longer in our memory than the dedications he made after his leitourgiai. (§4)

For all the rhetorical overkill, this passage shows that leitourgiai could be pictured quite unambiguously as a means to power for pre-eminent individuals, that the line between brilliant civic service — with its spectacular memorials - and counter-demo­ cratic subversion could be a fine one, open to argument and interpretation. And the man in question was no Alkibiades. He seems in the outcome to have been given the office for which he is under scrutiny. The inadequacy of the term ‘democratic’ to cover these rhetorical strategies becomes clearer than ever: the topos which sought to accommodate the wealthy, powerful individual to a democratic civic ideal has been taken apart and turned against its users, who can now be depicted as subverters of that very democracy, using leitourgiai as a power-base.100

The demos as oppressor? Another and quite different evaluative discourse circulated in Athens concerning the leitourgiai that might best be dubbed ‘oligarchic’ — perhaps somewhat less problemat­ ically so than its ‘democratic’ counterpart carries its name. According to this, the system is figured as a means devised by the demos to extort their wealth from the rich, ‘so that they may become rich and the rich poorer’, in the words of its most ardent exponent, the ‘Old Oligarch’. And yet this position, at its extreme, evidently expresses the view only of those among the élite who objected in principle to the political status quo and to the power of the demos to insist upon the performance of public services, to make any claims upon the wealth, the persons and the culture of the élite. Significant within this group were the rich so-called ‘quietists’, those whose sympa­ thies discouraged them from active participation in democratic public life and whose primary response was to avoid all contact with it so far as was possible.101 For these men, the very idea that the demos might be in a position to confer ‘honour’ (time) on them was absurd. The rhetoric of the besieged élite, with its emphasis on leitourgiai as impositions, is clearest from its caricature in Theophrastos, who has his Oligarchic Man charac­ teristically ask ‘When shall we cease to be ruined by leitourgiai and trierarkhiaiW (Char. 26.6). It is not easy to disentangle the ideological content of these objections from the serious possibility that the burden of leitourgic service genuinely threatened the economic position of some families, particularly in the fourth century when demands on the rich seem to have increased, in the absence of imperial wealth.102 However, given that no estate worth less than three taiants was likely to attract leitourgical obli-

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gâtions (and given the general principle that it was the estate and not the individual which was liable to leitourgical service), rich men will still have been in possession of large fortunes when the city ceased to require them to perform. Furthermore, a noto­ rious obsession with money — its acquisition and retention — is characteristic of the ancient stereotype of the oligarch who, in his extreme manifestation, is as patholog­ ically incapable of spending money on non-essential goods as the megaloprepes is addicted to extravagant expenditure. The stereotype is schematically defined by Plato. His oligarch makes ‘a hopeless competitor in the city for any victory or any other form of noble philotimia", ever afraid that his ‘spending desires’ will be awoken and drive him into a rage for philonikia (Rep. 555a). So attached is he to his money that the oligarch even neglects his own education (paideia). The metaphor the philosopher uses to explicate this is far from idle: the oligarchic man has ‘established a blind man [that is, wealth] as the leader of his khoros" (τυφλόν ηγεμόνα του χορού έστήσατο, Rep. 554b)· The choral meta­ phor for the oligarch’s hatred of expense, and in particular for his rejection of expense even for paideia, draws on a complex of familiar ideas that links paideia, choral per­ formance and choral leadership - especially that form of choral leadership which brings with it financial expenditure. That it is impossible to maintain a neat distinction between the different and at times apparently conflicting motivations for leitourgic expenditure, or between the attitudes of fixed political ‘types’ with regard to the khoregia, is also shown by a comic caricature of the rich man riddled with anxieties for the precariousness of his wealth, who imagines himself assailed on all sides, yet ‘when elected khoregos, provides his khoros with gold robes and wears rags himself’.103 For all his ‘oligarchic’ fears for his wealth, the khoregos covers his khoros in gold. This image shows very well the degree to which the symbolic value of a khoregia outweighed more mundane calculations as to the rationality in strictly economic terms of making lavish expense. Actual oligarchs who objected to what they regarded as licensed theft of their property by a régime whose legitimacy they scarcely recognised exercised fairly extensive possibilities of avoidance. It has been cogently argued that the city had no systematic method for evaluating the property of the wealthy (nor did it attempt to produce one). Such assessments as there were — and these, significantly, existed only in the area of fiscal tax, the eisphora — were produced by the owner of property himself; and as far as we know they were never used in connection with leitourgiai.104 Consequently rich men who wished to suppress the extent of their wealth, and thus the likelihood that they would attract the attention of Arkhons or those looking for targets at which to launch antidoseis, could convert it into what the Athenians called ‘invisible property’ (ούσία αφανής), as distinct from ‘visible’ (φανερά) property. Gabrielsen, who has elucidated the importance of this distinction, points out that it is primarily a conceptual one, one of attitudes towards property: ‘to make one’s wealth invisible means that, legally or otherwise, it cannot be associated with its owner; con­ versely, to make wealth visible means that it becomes attributable to, and acknowl­ edgeable by, its owner’.105 The real importance of the distinction as far as the leitourgic system and its ideo­ logical apprehension are concerned is to underscore the degree to which the rich could choose to make their property disappear and so not serve as leitourgists. As a consequence a further feature of the democratic virtue of the ideal leitourgist

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consisted in being the sort of person who keeps all his wealth in the realm of the visible. Perhaps the best example is Demosthenes’ final appeal to the jury in the trial to recover his property from his guardians:

If I recover my patrimony through your help, I shall naturally be willing to perform leitourgiai, being grateful to you for restoring to me my estate; while this man [Aphobos, his former guardian], if you make him the owner of my property, will do nothing of the kind. Do not imagine that he will be willing to perform leitourgiai for you on behalf of property which he denies having received; rather he will conceal it so as to make it appear that he has avoided these services justly. (28.24)106 That, some forty years later, Demosthenes was himself the object of precisely the same accusation, of behaviour that was neither just nor community-minded nor democratic’ (Dein. 1.70), is as much an indication of the availability of the topos for rhetorical exploitation as of a change of political heart in Demosthenes. But it is also clear that, even in an earlier age, when the city depended less on the wealth of its great families than in the later fourth century, one of the most important incentives to spending in the civic sphere was the feeling that ‘invisible’ wealth was of as little use to its possessor as it was to anyone else.107 The writings of two ideological outsiders within the democratic context, Xenophon and Isokrates, provide some further depth to the nature of this oligarchic distaste for leitourgiai. In a dialogue devoted to the subject of estate-management, the Oikonomikos (y.jff.), Xenophon’s Sokrates tells the story of his meeting with the ‘worthy but self-complacent gentleman’, Iskhomakhos (behind whom many have seen the figure of Xenophon himself).108 Sokrates is after a definition of the καλός κάγαθός, and the attempt to produce one occupies the rest of the work. Iskhomakhos launches the debate with an opposition: ‘Some people might use that term of me in conversation with you, Sokrates. However, when they challenge me to an antidosis over a trierarkhia or khoregia, nobody looks for “the gentleman” (τόν καλόν τε κάγαθόν), but they call me plain “Iskhomakhos,” my father’s son (πατρόθεν).’ The ‘Athenian gentleman’, so the claim goes, is no longer able to define himself or be rec­ ognised by his leitourgic services as a καλός κάγαθός. Leitourgiai are here viewed as the impositions of a system which disregards the attributes of élite status. There is a clear chagrin detectable at the operation of legal procedure encroaching on an area of aristocratic self-definition. What had been the realm of aristocratic largesse is now controlled by the equalising, individuating power of the law, where even that most prized of possessions, birth (ττατρόθεν), is figured simply as a means of identification for an administrative end. Isokrates provides perhaps the most typical oligarchic formulation, just before the middle of the fourth century, in his discourse On the Peace. In a passage railing against the degeneracy of the city’s post-Periklean leadership, he paints a city ‘full of mean­ ings’. For some are driven to rehearse and bewail amongst themselves their poverty and privation, while others, the multitude of duties enjoined upon them, the leitourgiai and all the nuisances connected with the symmories and with anti186

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doseis. For these are so annoying that those who are in possession of proper­ ties find life more burdensome than those who are constantly in want. (§128)

One would like to feel able to assume a degree of self-irony in this image; and yet these complaints from a core among the rich are so insistent as to suggest a major focus of ideological tension. This sensitivity and its potentially grave consequences were not lost on Aristotle, for whom ‘the rich, the group of those who perform lei­ tourgiai from their properties’, formed a distinct and necessary element within the structure of a politeia (Pol. 4, 1291433—4). Aristotle, writing on the basis of extensive research into scores of historical politeiai, goes so far as to state that the detrimental effects of leitourgiai imposed on the estates and incomes of the ‘notables’ often cause the latter to combine in anti-democratic revolution (Pol. 5, 130544—7). On the whole, it seems that in Athens the delicate balance between obligation and honorific ‘giving’ that lies at the heart of the leitourgical system was successfully managed so as not to expose the element of obligation unduly. But the objecting voices were not silenced - until, with the abolition of democracy, a closer union between the benefactor of the community and the holder of political power was restored. It is important to avoid adopting a simplistic teleology when faced on the one hand with the tensions within the rhetoric of public service in democratic Athens and on the other with the later assimilation of leitourgical and political power; with, in addition, hugely significant moments such as the oligarchic domination of the Four Hundred, during which the right to citizenship was restricted ‘to those Athenians most capable of being leitourgists in their persons and in their wealth’ ([Aristot.] Ath. Pol. 29.5) — a redefinition of citizenship based directly on a form of leitourgical ‘census’.109 That the oligarchs should have felt comfortable in co-opting to share power in their régime the top of the existing leitourgical class in this way is very revealing. It is clear that something which had always been implicit in the leitourgical system had come to be given unambiguous recognition under the pressure of the changing sociopolitical conditions of late classical Athens. The other side of Aristotle’s warning about the political dangers of putting excessive leitourgical impo­ sitions on the ‘notables’ is the advice he gives to oligarchs to attach leitourgiai to the most important magistracies, ‘in order that the common people may be willing to acquiesce in their own exclusion from office and may sympathise with those who have to pay so high a price for the privilege’ (Pol. 6.7, 1321431-42) ,110 Whether we ascribe the direct implementation of this lesson in Athens at the end of the fourth century to Aristotle’s student Demetrios of Phaleron, the arrangements for choral funding from that time on and the personnel we find in charge of it, and in positions of power in the city, certainly imply that the lesson had been learnt.111

The ‘love of honour’: a history of conflict Philotimia and philonikia, the twin spurs to khoregic performance, are a rhetorical and ideological battleground in democratic Athens. But these absolutely fundamental

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sources of social action come with a long history, which still needs to be written.112 Such a history might well be little less than a study of that elusive but spectacularly productive phenomenon, the ‘agonistic spirit’ of the Greeks. Here I shall take only a brief, schematic glance at the way much of early Greek literature meditates on the ambivalence of these powerful forces within public life. This will show not only the degree to which these sources of motivation so intimately linked in classical Athens to leitourgical performance were ever at the heart of Greek society’s most fundamen­ tal structures, practices and self-conceptions; it will also give some sense of the par­ ticularity of the democratic — and tragic — moment, in which tensions long present became all the more acute. The common idea that the competitive pursuit of honour by individuals was, in early Greek societies if not later, the unproblematic engine of action, is a great over­ simplification, even misrepresentation. To restrict oneself simply to the briefest con­ sideration of Homeric epic: in his important study of philotimia, Whitehead writes that the response of an Homeric hero to the question ‘was the “love” ... of τιμή a good and laudable thing?’ was ‘an unequivocal affirmative’.113 The pursuit of glory in epic war is, it is true, imbued with a transcendent, almost divine, quality as the pin­ nacle of mortal action, and the concomitant accumulation of honour in social and material form is vigorously espoused by all Homeric heroes. And yet, what an indi­ vidual Homeric hero might affirm, the epic that most monumentally encoded these heroic values for all subsequent Greek culture is rather more hesitant to assert. For the mainspring of the entire narrative of the Iliad is a massive dysfunction in the oper­ ation of the ‘philotimic’ social system, in the quarrel between Agamemnon and Akhilleus, a dysfunction that derives from conflicting views as to what constitutes the superior claim to honour and social standing. This triggers a radical questioning by Akhilleus of the point of the entire heroic enterprise at Troy and of the honour­ system which underpins it.114 The conflict which drives the epic narrative is born of tensions within the honour-system of the Greeks, and it leads to terrible destruction of their own kind: it is all too easy to forget that the Iliad is in an important sense less the epic of the Trojan war than of a kind of internal war between Greeks. That is what its proem announces as its principal concern (i.i—7). When the central and shaping conflict of the epic is represented as a destructive war between Greeks that will deprive myriads of the chance of a ‘good’ heroic death, the pursuit of honour must be regarded as a matter of troubled reflection rather than simple affirmation.115 For all its undoubted affirmation of the worth of the aggressive pursuit of honour in the interests of the individual or the family, Homeric epic at the same time encodes the tensions and the loss which such a high-pressure system of social organisation generates.116 A similar argument could be made for the Hesiodic epic that is much concerned with the proper sources of social action, the Works and Days. In this world where the valorised goals of individual and group activity are the rather more fundamental ones of survival through the productive use of the land, the imprint of a highly competi­ tive form of social organisation is still clear, and - equally clearly - it is once more a source of anxious reflection rather than simple affirmation. In a prominent position at the very start of his poem (11—41), immediately after the proem, Hesiod presents his theory of the ‘twin’ Erides, in which he famously attempts to distinguish a good from a bad form of ‘strife’ or ‘contention’. This piece of poetic and social rumina­ 188

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tion could be taken as an icon of the recurrent difficulty in Greek society of many periods in establishing the limits at which ‘healthy’ competition within a social group becomes unacceptable violence. The latter Eris promotes war and conflict, and involves men in neikea (29, 33, 35), that contentious behaviour which is often hard to distinguish from the ‘victory’ (nike) won in agonistic contexts. The former, ‘good’ Eris, Zeus ‘set in the earth’s roots, much the better for men’ (18-19). She incites the lazy to work, and instills a sense of competitive emulation or envy in a society where the labour of one’s peers, and its beneficial products, are always open to view: ‘neigh­ bour vies with neighbour as he hastens to wealth’ (23—4). The impact of this ‘good strife’ in the social sphere is summed up epigrammatically: ‘So potter is piqued with potter, joiner with joiner, beggar begrudges beggar, and singer singer’ (25—6). This attempt to distinguish good from bad Eris points to an anxiety at a deeper level concerning the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of conducting such a clean operation. Indistinguishable by name from her degenerate younger sister,117 ‘good’ Eris appears to have been conjured into existence by Hesiod, and the description of her effect on ‘rivalrous’ men shows signs that it is derived from matter traditionally associated with her more violent sibling: West points out that the anger and resent­ ment (κότος and φθόνος) which she produces ‘are not in the spirit of the good Eris’, and probably derive from proverbial wisdom concerning competition that existed before the good Eris herself.118 Pucci puts the point more radically: ‘it is possible to see that the line drawn by Hesiod does not separate anything . . . the separation of the two kinds of Discord [Eris] remains a wish’.119 Even putting aside the problems in sustaining this distinction, the prominence of the theory itself in the Works and Days, and the perceived, pressing social need that gave rise to it (obviously far wider than Hesiod’s personal dispute (neikos 35) with his brother Perses), all point to a per­ sistent anxiety concerning the nature and proper limits of competition. In the world of the developed polis, there was always a fine and troubling line between healthy competition within and to the benefit of a community and the horror of stasis, of internal discord: the problematic of the Hesiodic twin Erides writ large.120 Indeed, with the widening of access to the political sphere in many commu­ nities in the archaic age and beyond, the potential for agonistic interaction was increased and generalised. Although it lacks any context, whether commenting on the vicissitudes of a particular fifth-century or a mythical city, or making a broad gen­ eralisation, a fragment of Pindar (210 Sn-M) unmistakably displays an evaluative tone which reflects this feared link between excessive ambition and social instability: ‘[most dangerous are] men in the cities intent on excessive philotimia, or stasis, a glaring source of pain’ ([χαλεπότατοι δ] άγαν φιλοτιμίαν | μνώμενοι εν πόλεσιν άνδρες | ή στάσιν, άλγος εμφανές).121 If the reading adopted here can be counted safe, Pindar directly equates an excess of philotimia with stasis itself.122 The addition of ‘excessive’ (άγαν) in Pindar implies a belief that a more mod­ erate form of philotimia may exist which might not be detrimental to the social order. Once more, absolutely crucial differences between kinds and degrees of philotimia need to be signalled explicitly, because the terms used for them are dangerously iden­ tical. This linguistic problem — and the deeper dilemma of which it is symptomatic — reappears in the theoretical reflections of Aristotle on the philotimos man over a century later. The anxiety has a continuous lineage from Homer to Aristotle, despite major differences of emphasis and application with historical change. In his great 189

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attempt in the Nikomakhaian Ethics to identify and entabulate the ideal social virtues, along with their corresponding vices in excess and in deficiency, Aristotle comes up directly against the problem of philotimia. Whereas for instance the virtue of courage fits nicely as the mean between the vices of cowardice and rashness (noybi—4), with the virtuous pursuit of honour - that greatest of all external goods (cf. 1123b!8, Rhet. I.i30ob26—8) — there is an intractable problem with the all-important middle term:

He who exceeds in these aspirations is called ambitious (philotimos), he who is deficient, unambitious (aphilotimos); but the middle character has no name. . . . Consequently the extreme characters put in a claim to the middle position. And in fact we ourselves sometimes call the middle person ambi­ tious (philotimos) and sometimes unambitious (aphilotimos): we sometimes praise a man for being ambitious, sometimes for being unambitious. (ii07b29- uo8a2) The ‘pursuit of honour’ is a kind of battleground in which the realm of ideal prac­ tice is a no-man’s land contested by the adversaries of excess and deficiency. A stable place on the grid for the ‘virtue’ of philotimia escapes the codifier, as the extremes threaten constantly to collapse into one another, depending on evaluations ever open to reassessment. But the philosopher is not willing to admit that that which has no name may also have no stable identity, and so is forced into an uneasy compromise, postulating as normative what is a virtual contradiction in Greek terms, the ‘praise of the nameless’:

As the middle ground has no name, the two extremes dispute as it were for the empty space. But where there is excess and deficiency there must also be a mean. Now men do seek honour both more and less than is right; it must therefore be possible also to do so rightly. It is therefore this middle name­ less position with regard to honour that we really praise. (1125^7—22)

Thoukydides, the great analyst of violence between and within classical poleis, antic­ ipated Aristotle in the attempt to finesse a distinction between ‘good’ and ‘had’ phil­ otimia. The strategy he uses to distinguish between the ‘struggle which is advantageous for the city’ (as the Theban elders of the Ο. T describe it (879—80)) and egotistical, narrow self-interest that could threaten the life of the community, was to draw a line between instances of illegitimate, ‘private’ (ίδιος) philotimia as opposed to the good, ‘public’kind, ‘in the interests of the demos’ (δημόσιος).123 For the historian, Perikles was the model of philotimia motivating action in the interests of the greater glory of the polis, both in his own life (cf. 2.65.7), and in the ideology he espoused for the polis as a whole (2.44.4). The politics of his successors were by contrast motivated by "private ambitions’ (2.65.7) which proved deleterious to the city. And at 8.89.2 he makes the point that the same spirit of self-seeking competition was even more destructive under an oligarchy. Yet the fact that Thoukydides also ascribes to philoti­ mia (and to philonikia) a central role in the causes of stasis in one of his most extended passages of analytical generalisation concerning social and political processes (3.82) — and that he does so, moreover, without making any explicit qualification as to the kind of philotimia involved — suggests, what is evident from other quarters, that he viewed the deleterious form as the principal and ‘natural’ or default type, from which 190

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the Periklean ideal was itself a rare deviation. Moreover, the period of Periklean ascendancy was in Thoukydides’ eyes ‘rule by the first man’ (2.65.9) and a democracy only in name. If this could be regarded, with whatever degree of distorting nostalgia, as an age in which public life was characterised by a fruitful coincidence between the ambitions of leading men and the collective project of the city, the unusual success of the age was dependent on this special arrangement of power, a nominal or ‘aris­ tocratic’ democracy. The demos, in its political and imperial projects, as in its choral contests, was still ‘led’ by its great men (cf. 2.65.8). It is clear that the assessment as to whether an action counts as an instance of ‘public’ or ‘private’, ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ philotimia will always remain just that — an assess­ ment. This is certainly true in the realm of the courts, where the actions of leitourgists, and the nature of the leitourgiai themselves, are open to fundamentally opposed interpretations. The concept of philotimia lies at the heart of motivation, where clear distinctions between ‘private’ and ‘public’ factors may not exist even in the mind of the performer, and where particular instances will always be open to rhetorical manipulation and (mis)representation.124 It is possible to trace the outlines of another and more radical attempt to ‘democ­ ratise’ the concept and practices of philotimia. This is the ideological project put in Perikles’ mouth by Thoukydides, according to which any citizen may demonstrate his ‘love of honour’ in a willingness to die for his city on the field of battle; while in the realm of civic life, ‘love of honour’ is held up as the positive motive behind par­ ticipation in even the humblest levels of democratic government, attendance at the mass Assembly or on the panels of courts, the holding of minor office and so on. That this vision of philotimia as a basic ideal for supporting the participatory form of democracy appears only fleetingly and in some of the most ideologically freighted passages of Athenian writing (such as the Funeral Orations) should discourage us from hurrying to mistake the ideological image for the reality.125 These fractures in the ideology of philotimia are all of a part with the manner in which Athenian democ­ racy was unable or unwilling to operate in a manner quite free from aristocratic prin­ ciples and practices. Wealth and birth still counted for much; a number of major civic offices remained closed to many, while some were filled according to a criterion of wealth. And ‘public service’, the arena which promised the most desirable form of ‘honour’, remained, for all the period of Athenian democracy, indelibly associated with a form of lavish expense from which the vast majority of the citizenry was excluded.126 The democratic credentials of philotimia were even more profoundly shaken at the heart of the classical period. We have already come across a number of indica­ tions that the term became indelibly associated with the aspirations of the oligarchic revolutionaries who successfully, if only briefly, overthrew the democracy twice in real and violent stasis in the closing decade of the century. The fact that these seismic events of social conflict were perceived as the products of the very principle which was in the same period intimately associated with ambitious leitourgical service for the demos by its leaders demonstrates the extremely delicate balance of potent forces at work here. Nor were the ambitions of the oligarchs necessarily seen as qualitatively different when expressed in anti-democratic revolution and in khoregic performance. As much is proven by, for instance, the passage of Lysias 26 discussed above in which it is alleged of the oligarch Euandros and his family that their grand leitourgical record

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served as the very basis for their plans to overthrow the democracy Philotimia always had the propensity to slip into excess. The underlying tensions in the effort to accommodate élite aspirations to the needs of democratic society had broken their containment, and things were never to be the same after the appearance of this ‘fatal breach of mistrust’.127 It took nearly half a century before philotimia could once again be held up, without qualification and careful distinctions being made, as the motivating source of leitourgical performance in Athens. By the middle of the fourth century the philotim- terms were in place as qualifiers of public service in the mouths of those who wanted to appear before the demos in a positive light.128 The demos itself was now using philotimos as a term of approbation in a range of its honorific inscriptions, and in the performed announce­ ment of honours (usually in the theatre) which they frequently included. But rather than concluding from this that philotimia had at last been successfully democratised, bleached of all its threatening potential, this operation should in fact probably be seen as in part a reflection of the different needs of the age, at a time when, rather less brashly confident and economically buoyant than its imperial ancestor, the fourth­ century city looked to the resources of its wealthy men with a greater sense of depen­ dence. If the honour of being publicly recognised as philotimos is now held out as an inducement to the performance of khoregiai, it is equally from this time that the most lavish forms of khoregic memorialisation date. And there is a crucial observation to be made concerning these fourth-century honorific practices: no surviving decree of the Assembly or Council of the city honours a khoregos for his duties, only those from a phyletic or deme context. The cogent explanation has been proffered that services like the khoregia, while directed to the good of the city as a whole, in practice effectively benefited a smaller group.129 In the case of the city khoregiai, their perform­ ers could be deemed already to have received enough honorific return for their efforts in the publicity and prestige these events had brought them. Perhaps even in this age philotimia was not so domesticated as to encourage the city to feel happy to honour publicly and permanently individual urban khoregoi for their successful demonstration of it.130 And it is telling that this ‘democratic’ language needed virtually no modification when it was turned to praise the city’s benefactors in an age when democracy was no more. That it was not only in extreme or revolutionary contexts that the pursuit of competitive excellence by agathoi could continue to appear a threat to social unity is clear from a number of other fourth-century Athenian sources. Plato’s portrait of Meno as an ‘ordinary agathos' defines arete, the virtue competitively sought after by the agathoi, as ‘to be capable of taking an active part in politics, and while doing so, to be capable of helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies within the city, while taking care to suffer no harm oneself at their hands’ (Meno yiezff). This account of virtue does not go unchallenged in the dialogue; but neither is its image of a significant strand of élite attitudes to the realm of the political in fourth-century Athens eccentric. On this view, politics represents a sphere in which to excel and to put into action the aristocratic ideals of helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies. A notion of the proper goal of political participation as purely or even pri­ marily the good of the collective is entirely absent from this account. The Meno is hardly a text of democratic inspiration, but it does purport to be the view of an ‘ordinary’ and engaged member of the Athenian political élite, not a ‘qui-

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etist’ nor a known anti-democratic activist. It is not surprising to find a similar atti­ tude in the works of Xenophon, an Athenian but no admirer of classical Athens’polit­ ical régime. The frequent and generally very positive images of philotimia and philonikia in his works are in keeping with his marked preference for the more overtly ‘timocratic’ organisation of Spartan society. When he does recognise and praise Athenian philotimia, however, it is striking that he focusses above all on its pre-eminent expression in the choral sphere, a sphere of traditional aristocratic excellence.131 One of the most fascinating general accounts of philotimia is part of his imaginary discus­ sion between the poet Simonides and the tyrant Hieron, in which the poet cites phil­ otimia as the quality which distinguishes man from the beasts and — even more revealingly — which distinguishes a ‘real man’ (άνήρ) from a ‘mere human’ (άνθρωπος).132 Philotimia has been made a normative quality of being human, and as a result its description comes with a profoundly ideological weighting. Simonides goes on to argue that the tyrant is right to endure all the burdens tyranny brings because he is honoured above all other men, an argument which signals once more the link between tyranny and philotimia pursued to its extreme point — the ideal of becoming the ultimate, sole ‘winner’ in the contests of manly prestige. The fact that Hieron himself refutes this argument with the rejoinder that the honours of a tyrant are not ‘true’ honours since they originate in fear rather than spontaneous gratitude, does nothing to deny the fundamental link between philotimia and the achievement of social status and power. One final instance of classical Athenian reflection on philotimia (again, from a hardly democratic environment): a highly idealising account of philotimia is sketched in the speech of Phaidros in Plato’s Symposion. Phaidros places the accent on the power of eros as the return which should motivate the pursuit of excellence in the public arena. The degree to which philotimia amounts to something like ‘the desire for recognition and approbation of the self by others’ emerges very clearly from this account. Eros, explains Phaidros, is ‘the shame that we feel for shameful things, and ambition for what is noble’ (επί δε τοις καλοϊς φιλοτιμίαν, ιγδά). Without this ‘it is impossible for a city or person to perform any high and noble deeds’. Philotimia is the obverse of the shame which restrains men from base acts, and the ‘high and noble deeds’ (μέγαλα καί καλά έργα) which it engenders certainly encompass the sphere of action of the khoregos.133 The gaze of the beloved exercises a control (more potent than that of the community as a whole) on the actions of the individual, ensuring that they remain in keeping with the noblest of ends. The aristocratic tenor of this definition of the motivation for participation in public life could not be clearer. The ‘competition’ of homoerotic eros has been harnessed to the agonistic structure of public life so that its rewards, rather than those of wealth or power, can be held up as the rather more metaphysical and noble goals of public action. This relation between eros and public action is picked up and taken a step further in Sokrates’ account of Diotima’s teachings. The woman from Mantinea explained philotimia as a symptom of the mortal desire to partake of immortality: Only glance at the philotimia of the men around you, and you will have to wonder at the unreasonableness of what I have told you, unless you are careful to consider how singularly they are affected with the love of winning a name, “and laying up deathless glory for all time to come.” For this, even

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more than for their children, they are prepared to run all risks, to expend money, perform any kind of task, and sacrifice their lives. Do you suppose,’ she asked, ‘that Alkestis would have died for Admetos, or Akhilleus have sought death because of Patroklos, or your own Kodros have welcomed it to save the kingdom of his children, if they had not expected to win “a death­ less memory for valour,” which now we keep? Of course not. I hold it is for immortal distinction and for such illustrious renown as this that they do all they can, and so much the more in proportion to their excellence. They are in love with what is immortal.’ (208c—e)

Diotima’s shift into epic diction (‘laying up deathless glory for all time to come’) and her glossing of philotimia by reference to the classic heroic motive of the pursuit of immortal glory through ‘great deeds’, signal the aristocratic lineage of the classical notion with little ambiguity. In a manner that points ahead to Aristotle’s definition of the megaloprepes, the expenditure of money significantly takes its place alongside other forms of risk-taking pre-eminence, particularly the classic form of warfare. And it is most telling that Diotima shifts unobtrusively from a description of such philotimia of ‘the men around you’ to that shown by figures of heroic myth — Alkestis, Akhilleus and Kodros. Mortals who spend money and run risks because they are in love with honour share this fundamental quality with heroes: both groups are in fact in love with immortality.134 One might wonder whether all Athenians would have felt com­ fortable with this comparison. It remains a powerful paradox of philotimia under the democracy that these mortal ‘lovers of the immortal’ sought to secure that immortal­ ity in part through their support of the premier cultural form for the exploration of the meaning of the heroic heritage in the contemporary polis, the city’s tragic drama.

Tragic ambitions In the previous chapter I highlighted the way in which the figure of the dramatic kho­ regos reverberates significantly against the nature of the production entrusted to him. The broader discussion of philotimia and philonikia in this chapter has given further depth to that expressive dialectic between Athenian society and its dramatic produc­ tions. Perhaps as importantly, it has shown that the contextual Athenian discourse on these matters outside the theatre, in the courts and Assembly as well as in the reflection of historians and philosophers, is far from presenting a stable evaluative background against which tragedy’s intense critical scrutiny and problématisation of philotimia and philonikia takes place. The whole realm of action and motivation, of social interac­ tion between groups and individuals, out of which the production of drama emerged in the city was itself a matter of urgent and ongoing social contestation and reflection; and at times, of open violence. Tragedy is certainly the most complex of the many cultural forms supported by the ambitious energies of the city’s élite. And tragedy is the most important public forum in the city where the issues surrounding philotimia could be most thoroughly scrutinised, with all the productive ‘distance and proximity’ of the tragic medium. For Dionysian drama, especially tragedy, returns insistently to the problems generated by

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the attractive but often destructive allures of time and nike:135 what are the acceptable limits of the pursuit of honour by a pre-eminent individual within a community, par­ ticularly a community with a markedly egalitarian self-image? Where and how is one to demarcate the conflicting demands of the civic collective against the claims of such individuals, or of the smaller interest groups with which they identify, notably those of their own oikos? How to adjudicate the balance between the benefits conferred by the skills of such men and the danger their prominence poses? What consideration, in terms of social power and position, should be given to familial wealth, and inher­ ited status? What are the acceptable limits of the pursuit of victory, especially by indi­ viduals and their philoi, and sometimes by entire communities? What count as acceptable means and motives? What weight is to be given to the ‘charisma’ of the victor (what kharis is appropriate as his return for success), especially when his actions are set against the background of a society of democratic tincture? It would require another book to pursue in any detail the multiform reflections on these issues. A full analysis would also consider the importance of this agonistic mentality at the formal level, from the rhetorical agones at the heart of so many dramas to the contest of prestige and ‘victory’ at the metapoetic level, which sees one trage­ dian ‘rewriting’ and more or less explicitly challenging the vision of his predecessors. The formal contests of words that are so basic an element of the tragic genre are a major resource for structuring tragic rumination on the pursuit of honour and victory, and at a further level, for a thorough critique of victory in rhetoric itself, that ‘political tool par excellence’ of the democratic city.136 Tragic agones never produce a stable ground for judgement of the issues they have raised, and their ‘victors’ carry away hollow prizes. Frequently those who might seem clearly to have ‘won’ the moral and rhetorical agon lose in the test of the results. Tragic victories cast long moral shadows. A highly selective glance will have to suffice. In a major monument of the genre, Aiskhylos’ Oresteia, the grand narrative of reciprocity and revenge is woven from a series of conflicts clearly enunciated as claims to ‘honour’ and structured as critical moments of nike in the balance.137 The violent acts perpetrated across the generations by members of the house of Atreus are claimed as ‘victories’ of one side over the other, each pursuing its cause with an empassioned sense of its own justice and the honours consequently due. Yet at the very moment their actions are hailed as victo­ ries by their perpetrators, they are revealed to be profoundly tainted and ‘unclean’, condemned to be counterbalanced by another act of violence with its own claims to supremacy and justice. The ‘victories’ won over members of the same family are specifically represented as a form of domestic stasis, which, in accordance with a long tradition of Greek thought, could only ever be termed an ‘evil’ or ‘ugly’ victory.138 Each successive victory is exposed to radical scrutiny and re-evaluation; until the very logic of this polarised mentality of self-destructive victory is itself confronted and contested in the Eumenides. Much of the work of the final play is devoted to converting the self-destructivenes of this zero-sum logic of conflict into a form of victory in which there are no losers, in which the Erinyes are persuaded that their ‘defeat’ in court is not such at all, and involves no loss of honour and status (‘you have not been defeated . . .’ 795). As a result, the forces of violence which the Erinyes embody can be turned to beneficial effect ‘outwards’ from the city of Athens rather than being let loose within it, to

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replicate in the city, as in the house of Atreus, a terrible career of internal violence. These aggressive, ‘honour-seeking’ forces can rather be deployed in a ‘rivalry for the good’ of the whole city. After the ‘conversion’ of the Erinyes, Athena proclaims in an extraordinary expression that ‘our rivalry for good is the victor for all time’ (νικάι 5' αγαθών έρις ήμετέρα διά παντός, 974-5)· The Eumenides seeks to turn victory and its motivating powers of violence into a clean and righteous form, with the polis as its agent (915, cf. 1009), and the enemy being ‘beyond the gates’ (864, cf. 903). That this whole process is profoundly freighted with ideological wishful thinking is clear.139 In that respect and others it stands in a direct line of tradition with the Hesiodic attempt to distinguish ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Eris, performed now on the grand scale of the tragic trilogy and the institutions of a powerful polis, and in the context of one of the most tempestuous periods of social and political change in Greek history. But the degree to which the questions thus raised are radicalised, and the fact that the ‘solu­ tions’ and ‘answers’ proposed to them, so hard-won in themselves, are left open to further questioning rather than neatly closed, marks the major escalation in the sen­ sitivity of those questions in the democratic context, as well as in a willingness to expose them more fully to an intense public scrutiny. Tragedy is by Aiskhylos’ time well and truly the city’s great mythic sounding-board for the vicissitudes of its own ‘ambitious’progress, as individuals and as a collective.140 In the case of many Sophoklean and Euripidean heroes (and heroines), it is an adherence to a sense of honour beyond limits which society can tolerate that leads, precisely, to tragedy, and that generally ends in their isolation and death.141 It is far from clear, however, that this is simply a case of outmoded (and anti-democratic), notions of honour projected through these distant and larger-than-life mythic figures the better to demonstrate the dangers of the archaic and selfish values they incarnate. They are not simply (or even largely) blandly negative paradigms held up to itself for collective abhorrence by the democratic polis which established the tragic agon (by drawing on the cultural and material resources of the city’s ‘great men’). As Griffith has recently and lucidly put it,

for every aristocratic monster . . . we can point to an aristocratic savior . . .: often the two coexist in the same imposing person . . . Without such figures there can be no tragedy — not just because there can be no grand mistakes, but because there can be no grand, ‘serious’ action (σπουδαία πράξις) at all. If Greek tragedy is intended to instantiate Athenian civic ideology, then we must acknowledge (what is in any case likely enough) that even this most authentically democratic ideology (like many, less authentic, others) still comes with a strongly aristocratic spin.142 It is a basic and important paradox of the tragic genre that the empassioned and often self-destructive attachment to notions of honour and victory by such figures is fre­ quently revealed, in the outcome, to be far from antipathetic to principles which might be termed ‘democratic’, or at least which have a strong claim to being more beneficial to the wider community than to any smaller group within it. Antigone is the finest example. In undertaking to bury her dead brother against the edict of the strategos (8) and legitimate spokesman of the city, Kreon, Antigone sees herself as sup­ porting the ‘honour’ of her family (e.g., 5, 22, 77—8), as well as winning for herself an honour which she terms the finest ‘glory’ (kleos 502—4, cf. 72). And, if Haimon’s 196

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sources and honesty can be trusted, the talk among the people of the city themselves is that Antigone has indeed won great honour by her actions (692—700). It might seem that Antigone’s actions, with their apparent attachment to familial and personal honour, above and against the interests of the city which her brother attacked, significantly align her with pre- or anti-democratic modes of action and ideals. But even while this is to some extent the case, the course of action pursued by Antigone in defence of these forms of honour and ‘victory’ turns out to be more beneficial to the troubled city than that espoused, with all the rhetoric of democratic collective action and responsibility, by its lawful leader. For Kreon, on the other hand, identifies himself unambiguously with the inter­ ests and values of the polis — and the terms in which that polis is evoked are much more reminiscent of the fifth-century democratic city that was watching the tragedy than of Bronze Age Thebes. Kreon looks to the security of the polis above all else in the aftermath of a war that threatened its destruction, and seeks to enforce the ban on the burial of a traitor to his own city that might have been in accord with con­ temporary Athenian practice. He defines honour as something that is won by those who show themselves well disposed (suvous) to the polis (209-10), and he espouses a general image of the ideal citizen as one able to ‘rule well and to be ruled’ (especially 661—76), a view that lies at the heart of the democratic system of alternating office­ holding. Yet this and other aspects of Kreon’s ‘good’ democratic rhetoric and prac­ tice are hardly straightforwardly endorsed by the test of events in the tragedy. He clearly identifies his own individual views and commands as too exactly the simple expression of the will of the polis, without ever once showing any sign of making recourse to the opinions of others (e.g., 736-9). There is little sign of ‘being ruled’ here from the man who is as much a tyrant as a strategos. Of course, the situation in which he finds himself is one of extreme emergency, but the rigidity with which he maintains his position is at least as excessive as Antigone’s (cf. e.g., Haimon’s words at 705—23). And when in the end the seer Teiresias reveals his actions to have been impious and flawed (1015 Teiresias: ‘it is your will that has put this plague upon the polis’ cf. 1064—90), his intransigence in the matter of victory and honour is seen to have threatened the wellbeing of the city much more than Antigone’s.143 It is neither the case that Antigone simply pursues her commitment to her oikos to the detriment of the city, nor is Kreon the unproblematic embodiment of the collective values of a (quasi-) democratic polis in face of this atavistic threat from within. Antigone is no archaic aristocrat at odds with Kreon’s democratic politics. But it is the fact that there existed within the ideological horizon of the theatrical city multiple and conflicting strands that makes possible, indeed necessary, this kaleidoscopic procession of view­ points on the issues at stake in this and many other tragedies.

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One of the most important sources of our knowledge of the khoregia are the material remains of the monuments that were designed to record the victory and to perpetu­ ate the glory brought to those who had achieved it beyond its ephemeral moment in the theatre. The khoregic monument has indeed been an effective machine of kleos.1 Scholarly consideration of these monuments has on the whole been conducted in a certain isolation from the study of the theatre and the dramatic festivals. It has, understandably, been the province of the archaeologist and epigraphist. Few hand­ books indicate that the most enduring trace of a performance at the Dionysia may well be a monument to the glory of the man whose wealth had made it possible. Yet the khoregic monument is in one sense the culmination of Dionysiac performance, almost its crowning stage: we have seen the immense force of the trajectory towards victory that powered these competitive performances, and the monument that solem­ nised that victory in thanksgiving to Dionysos and displayed it forever to passers-by can be seen as bringing a definitive clarity to the agon. As we shall see, the latter func­ tion appears significantly to outweigh the former. It is no accident that these are known and classified as khoregic victory monuments rather than dedications to Dionysos. The monuments are also important to any consideration of the politics of the theatre. For this special practice of competitive self-display through the creation of physical structures (e'pycx in the most concrete sense), is a practice with clear parallels and antecedents in the competitive culture of aristocracies, but one that was nurtured within a democratic culture whose ideology generally eschewed the demonstration, if not the existence, of great differentials in wealth and the social power it brought. Yet it is hardly overstating the case to describe these monuments as monuments to the continued power of individual (and familial) wealth within the democracy. Ultimately, the possession of the potent force of honour which attended victory in Athens’ most prestigious choral and dramatic festival was substantially appropriated by the men who had, effectively, paid for it. It is a nice irony that the demos took on the rôle of collective khoregos only at a time when it had lost much of its autonomy and democratic power. The erection of a khoregic monument was the final step in an epinikian practice which began with the proclamation of the judges’ verdict in the theatre and the sub­

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sequent acclamation and crowning; which doubtless also involved some kind of victory parade and an exclusive feast of the choral team (epinikia). The monument prolonged the moment and perpetuated the power of victory. At the centre of this dedicatory practice was the prize: the live animal was ritually consumed in the epi­ nikia, while the more permanent material reward in the dithyrambic competitions, a large bronze tripod manufactured by the polis, was to be erected at the further expense of the khoregos, and with a greater or lesser degree of elaboration in its mon­ umental setting. We can only visualise in a speculative way the passage of the tripod from the theatre to its final resting-place, but the attempt is worthwhile; not least because the issue of what happens to a victory-tripod is bound to be a delicate and highly political question, as a fascinating story from Herodotos indicates.

The politics of tripods In Book i (144), Herodotos gives a brief account of a league of five Dorian commu­ nities who acted together in matters religious and political. He tells their story as a parallel for his principal concern with the lonians, for the question of their ability to act collectively in the face of threats from Persia is at the centre of his narrative. Herodotos provides an aetiological account which explains how this league, now called by the name of the Pentapolis (‘Five-poleis’), came by that name, having for­ merly been known as the Hexapolis (‘Six-poleis’). The story centres around the common sanctuary of Triopian Apollo; and a festival to that god, admission to which was jealously controlled by the member-states. Not only were other, neighbouring Dorians excluded from the Triopian sanctuary and its competitions; any member of the Hexapolis who committed some offence in relation to the sanctuary was also excluded.

Long before, in the agon of Triopian Apollo, they assigned bronze tripods to the victors, and those who got them were not permitted to carry them off from the sanctuary, but had to dedicate them there to the god. A man of Halikarnassos, whose name was Agasikles, won a victory and then disre­ garded the rule by carrying the tripod to his own home and fastening it up there. Because of this offence, five cities — Lindos, lelysos, Kamiros, Kos and Knidos — debarred the sixth city, Halikarnassos, from their association. Agasikles’ transgression demonstrates the overblown pride of the victor, full of his success, in disregarding the collective sanction that in this case insists on keeping the object of value and victory - a bronze tripod — in the joint sanctuary of the six com­ munities, dedicated to the greater glory of its god, and of the league itself. By bearing it off as a victor to his own home his actions take on a very different meaning. Agasikles was asserting the importance of the honour he derived as an individual from the victory, and that of his household, above the honour of the league. The serious­ ness with which such an infringement was regarded could hardly be more forcefully demonstrated: the polis to which the transgressor belonged, and which presumably had taken no steps to stop its renegade tripod-thief, is forever expelled from the league.2

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Agasikles carried off his tripod from the sanctuary to his home, just like the ath­ letic victors depicted on sixth-century ceramic who are seen marching off from the site of their success with their tripod over their head, supporting its considerable weight themselves, framed by its legs as though they were its first — living — support;3 and just as the heroic paradigms Kastor of Lakedaimon and lolaos of Thebes in Pindars First Isthmian are said to have ‘grasped the prizes of very many contests and adorned their homes with tripods and cauldrons and bowls of gold’ (18—20). These figures show that there were alternative models of tripodic dedication to the strict practice of the Pentapolitai. A prize tripod, or one commissioned as a votive offering by a victor or ostentatious visitor, could be dedicated at the site of one of the great ‘interstate’ games,4 but the private home or perhaps a sanctuary of the home polis was also a possible place for the dedication of a prize won in contests between Greeks who were in a sense both representing themselves and their poleis, at a contest that was a panegyris, a gathering for which the local communities provided a more or less ‘neutral’ space. Wealth and prestige radiated out from the centres of the main panhellenic games, as well as circulating back to these sites in a wide range of dedicatory practices. A comparable model of the dedication of a prize tripod away from the site of performance is seen in the poetic sphere with Hesiod’s famous victory ‘with a hymn’ at the funeral games of Amphidamas in Khalkis (ILD. 650—9). The final recip­ ients of the ‘eared tripod’ in that case are, appropriately, the Helikonian Muses, who ‘set me on the path of fine singing’.5 Variations in the patterns of dedication will always have political consequences, for at stake is the precious commodity of prestige, circulating in an economy in which the potentially competing interests of individuals, families, cities and leagues are involved. Although not entirely exclusive of ‘external’ involvement, the Athenian Dionysia was profoundly modelled on social structures internal to the polis of Athens itself. What was the required or desired pattern for the circulation of the prestige gen­ erated by victories won here? Could there have been ‘rules’ comparable to those of the Pentapolitai concerning the final destination of the victor’s tripod? Is it possible to detect tensions within the Athenian economy of agonistic prestige? On the one hand, it is clear that the glory of victory was to be conserved within the city, for the tripod was the prize of the democratic phyle; but it was also the prize of a rich indi­ vidual on his own account, and his desire to appropriate and advertise that success had to be reckoned with, as a force that may pull it away, symbolically at least, from the civic ‘centre’ in which it was won. However, in the case of the Great Dionysia, there is a convenient coincidence of collective and individual interests, for the place of competition — the very heart of the most populous city in Greece — was also prob­ ably the most desirable location for an individual to erect the permanent sign of his success. The tripod is a dedicatory object with an extremely ancient history, and conse­ quently it carries many associations: an item of aristocratic exchange, as well as the prize of agonistic victory, — athletic, military or ‘cultural’; but associations with oracles and the afterlife are also prominent. And from the very earliest times, the tripod was a sign of wealth and prestige.6 A link between its eschatalogical and epinikian aspects may be found in the dedication of tripods won in athletic contests to the spirits of dead heroes, for which the funeral games of Patroklos (Iliad 23.264) provide a glori­ ous aetiology. The Apollonine associations of the prophetic tripod made it also fitting 200

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as an object of dedication to him, and we ought perhaps to invoke this cui tic famil­ iarity in the case of the Thargelian tripod, rather than assume it is a secondary trans­ fer from the Dionysia.7 It is reasonable to speak of a genuine appropriation of this highly symbolic object by the Athenians, for in no other city was its award and dedication so pronounced and so long-lived and, more significantly, once linked to the agones of the Great Dionysia, the tripod declined as an object of dedication elsewhere.8 Tripods were dedicated on the Athenian Akropolis from at least the eighth century, but it was with the decision to make the bronze tripod the prize for the political khoroi of the Dionysia that its Athenian future was assured. Whether it was previously much asso­ ciated with Dionysos is unclear, but it was certainly thereafter ‘the victory-prize awarded in the precinct of Dionysos’, the bronze cauldron at its crown assimilated (by some at least) to the Dionysiac utensil par excellence, the mixing-bowl.9 Its prominence thereafter on the material horizon of the city of Athens is demonstrated further by the fact that the second-century Attic historian Heliodoros devoted an entire book to ‘The Tripods at Athens’.10 The institution of the tripod as the prize at the classical Dionysia may be part of a wider deployment of the object in connection with the eponymous heroes of the Kleisthenic phylai. Their great monument in the Agora, a crucial site of democratic publicity and process, was framed by two huge bronze tripods, ‘a suitable attribute for heroes’.11 The ‘démocratisation’ - or ‘Kleisthenification’ - of the tripod in this way may indeed have assisted in its fall from popularity as an object of élite display else­ where.12 But whether or not there was a specifically political dynamic at work, the tripod was still in Plutarch’s time a symbol of the Dionysia itself, and of its essentially Athenian quality. In some ways it became a symbol of the success of the festival, and of Athenian choral and dramatic supremacy in the Greek world. When it appears as a prize on Delos in the early fourth century, its use is very probably an imitation, or imposition, of the Athenians. Through its association with the Dionysia, and more especially with the khore­ gia, the Athenian tripod also came to be (or rather to be once again) a symbol of wealth. In Plutarch’s polemical accounting of the relative value of Athenian expen­ diture on military and dramatic matters (Plu. Mor. 348d), the tripod is advanced as a symbol of their collective extravagance in the latter. The tripod was more than a prize, more than the sign of success in the most brilliant form of cultural competition in Athens. It was a sign of the resources and social standing of a small Athenian élite. And it was read as such from an early date. The rhetorical practice of ‘citing the tripod’ is seen at work in the fourth century, and its history is probably as old as the khoregic monument itself.

The rhetoric of tripods A speaker in an inheritance trial early in the fourth century draws his case to a close with the reassuring reminder that he and his family know how to use wealth to the benefit of the community:

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And our ancestors who were in possession of this estate and left it behind them performed all the khoregiai, made many substantial contributions for you to the war-fund and performed the trierarkhia without break. And as evi­ dence to these things those men erected in the sanctuaries dedications from their surplus funds, memorials of their own virtue (μνημεία τής αυτών αρετής), both tripods in the Dionysion which they received as victorious khoregoi, and also in the Pythion . . . (Isaios 5.41) Here we have the ideal civic interpretation of the tripod: imbued with a certain piety as a gift to the gods in a way we rarely come across elsewhere, but pre-eminently a ‘reminder’ of the great donations which preceded and produced it, and of the arete thereby demonstrated. The individualistic agonistic pride and aristocratic ethos of the khoregos are not ignored, although we should note the casual but telling use of detail here: these monuments were constructed from a ‘surplus’ of funds, as if to convince his hearers that nothing that might have been spent on the demos itself was kept back for this memorial to the individual and his family. This democratic interpretation of the khoregic monument has been well characterised by Ober as involving an ‘inter­ action between the elite’s desire to compete and to impress and the masses’ author­ ization of his displaying a symbol that indeed impressed them’, ‘. . . the choregic monument served as a metaphor for the ideal relationship among honor, wealth and the state’.13 Under the conditions of the democratic court a speaker can point to ‘the tripod that stands over there’ (Isaios 7.40), no doubt with an appropriate gesture, as the concrete index of a man’s philotimia, and as the visual proof that he has not hidden his riches away for his own private enjoyment. However, it is perhaps telling that no speaker in surviving texts ever points to his own khoregic monument with an assertion of its proof of virtue: it is always the mon­ uments of ancestors that are at issue.14 Perhaps the restraining force was a sense of the vulgarity of such a gesture; more probable is the political sensitivity of too direct a claim on one’s own account. Moreover, the monument was very much ‘open to inter­ pretation’: the leitourgical record of Euandros provided the foundation, his prosecu­ tor at a dokimasia-trial alleged, upon which he overthrew the democracy, ‘so that our memory of these deeds must be more abiding than of the dedications he has set up as records of those services’ ( Lys. 26.4). A play on the sense of έργα — which can refer both to the (evil) ‘deeds’ of anti-democratic revolution and to the ‘works’ of khoregic monuments, allows his prosecutor a telling reinterpretation of the meaning of these ‘memorials’. The civic ideal is always open to aggressive reinterpretation: Yet my father left to each of us, my brother and myself, an estate of fortyfive mnai merely, on which it is not easy to live, while your fathers were pos­ sessed of such wealth that each of them set up a tripod in honour of khoregic victories at the Dionysia. And I do not begrudge (φθονώ) them this, for it is the duty of the wealthy to provide for their fellow-citizens. ([Dem.] 42.22)

The claim that the speaker has no envy for his opponents’ spectacular use of their familial wealth may or may not ring sincere. But despite the cover of these tropes of good civic service it is surely hoped that envy (φθόνος), the sentiment Alkibiades openly claimed as the response among the citizenry to his khoregiai, will be sown among his audience of judges. 202

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The practice is attacked from quite a different, but highly revealing, angle, by the Sokrates of Plato’s Gorgias. The exchange in that dialogue between Sokrates and the rhetorician Polos begins with Sokrates’ claim that rhetoric is not a skill, a tekhne, at all, but ‘a kind of proficiency producing gratification and pleasure’ (462c). On Sokrates’ terms, rhetoric in fact becomes one of the practices subsumed under the category of kolakeia, or ‘flattery’, and sits there in the undistinguished company of cookery and personal cosmetics. The discussion moves quickly on to the question of power, as acquired in practice by rhetoric, and to the relationship between power and what constitutes the ultimate good for each man. To refute Sokrates’ argument that true happiness consists in acting with justice (470c), Polos cites the contemporary figure of Arkhelaos, the tyrant of Macedon. He had acquired the throne through some of the most extreme forms of injustice, which included having the legitimate heir, the seven-year-old son of Perdikkas, thrown into a well and reporting to his mother that he had fallen in while chasing a goose (471c). No doubt, says Polos with heavy sarcasm, Sokrates will find some Athenians to agree with him that Arkhelaos, by birth a slave but by dint of his unjust actions one of the most powerful men alive, is in fact the most wretchedly unhappy of all the Macedonians, and not the happiest. Sokrates says Polos is trying to refute him ‘rhetorically’, like someone in an Athenian court, whose dynamics he goes on to sketch. Here one side adduces ‘many witnesses to any statements they may make — and reputable ones too’ while the other produces one, or none. But in all of this justice is completely lost. A man can be ‘crushed by the number and reputation of the false witnesses brought against him’ (472a). Sokrates’ pointed detail that the successful forensic rhetorician will provide witnesses who are ‘reputable’ signals that it is the power of reputation, of the externals of gen­ erally recognised social standing, of wealth and, at base, of the kind of coercive social force that the tyrant Arkhelaos used, which in fact prevails in the courts. He contin­ ues (472a):

Now I’m sure just about everybody, Athenians and foreigners, will agree with you on the points you make, if you like to bring forward witnesses against me to testify that I am not speaking the truth: if you like, Nikias, the son of Nikeratos, will testify for you, along with his brothers; their tripods are standing in a row in the precinct of Dionysos; or, if you like, Aristokrates, the son of Skellias, whose fine offering again is in the Pythion; or if you like there is the entire house of Perikles, or any other family you want to select from this place. But I, alone here before you, do not admit it; for I am not compelled by your argument — you only attempt, by producing many false witnesses against me, to oust me from the reality and the truth.

Sokrates is bringing home his point about the role of‘reputable’witnesses in Athenian courts by suggesting Polos will adopt the same procedure now in their argument. And for his examples of such men whose reputation, based on social power, prevails in democratic contexts over justice and the truth, he chooses khoregoi — or, to be more precise, he adduces past khoregoi whose victory-monuments themselves provide a form of self-evident testimony, according to this representation of the logic of dem­ ocratic institutions. What these monuments testify to is clear and does not need spelling out: they are the public indices of reputation. Indeed it is they that create the impression that these men ‘seem to be something’ (472a). The monuments of two 203

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illustrious khoregoi, the ‘house’ of Perikles or any other sungeneia (the implication here being of the control of politics by ‘aristocratic’ families ‘of good birth’) - these are the witnesses that Polos will be able to call upon to demonstrate that the life of the tyrant is enviable. This critique of democratic rhetoric is all the more effective for focussing on an example in which dialectic or systematic argumentation of any kind plays little or no part whatever: the tripod is a ‘self-evident’ proof. This Sokratic play with the topos amounts to a critique of tensions inherent in its actual usage in the political world which go beyond the hostility of the disillu­ sioned philosopher. For, in an argumentative move as full of rhetoric as that which he is criticising, Sokrates implies a link between the witnesses and the point they are adduced to prove: the lives of these men, as symbolised by their khoregic victory­ monuments, will stand as proof of the desire to be a tyrant, and a grossly unjust and opportunistic one at that, rather than an ordinary citizen. The Platonic Sokrates effectively singles out the khoregic victory-tripod as the surest possible sign (on a dis­ reputable system of proof, but that does not affect the point) of men’s lusting after tyranny. These khoregoi have not been chosen at random: Nikias, ‘whose name is derived from “victory”’,15 is the paradigm of the successful agonistic grand spender in the public sphere, and he clearly left behind him a very substantial khoregic edifice. As for Aristokrates, the fact that two homonyms, a grandfather and grandson, were both prominent, victorious and gloriously memorialised khoregoi, has led to some confu­ sion, but also confirms Sokrates’ citation.16 The name is apt for a pair of illustrious khoregoi, and for the point Sokrates wants to make. He has even, it seems, bolstered his ‘rhetorical’ argument with an etymological one. If that seems a little tenuous, one should recall Aristokrates’ appearance in the Birds of Aristophanes (of 414 b.c.). In conversation with Tereus, the two Athenian quietists who are off to found a new city tell the bird-man that they’re looking for somewhere ‘more comfortable’ (124) than Athens. Taking them to mean a polis that is better suited to their political inclinations than democratic Athens, Tereus says: ‘You’re clearly looking to live under an aristoc­ racy’, to which Euelpides replies: ‘Me?! No way! I’m disgusted by the son of Skellias’ (125—6). This is clearly a case of like name, like nature. A leading politician and general of the Peloponnesian war, Aristokrates is ‘the best-known member of a liturgical family that can be traced both forwards and backwards for several generations . . . whose Theramenean inclinations . . . found their logical expression in his service as taxiarch under the Four Hundred’.17 But even this close association with the oligar­ chic coup was overlooked and he regained the confidence and votes of the restored democracy in 410 after a timely volte-face. He met his end, however, as a general at Arginousai. Platonic citations are every bit as considered as those of the most cunning rhetor. For Aristokrates was one of the few people who came into contact, albeit indi­ rectly, with Sokrates in one of his rare moments of conventional civic service, and a famous occasion it was. As president of the Council during the confusion following Arginousai, Sokrates refused to put the illegal motion concerning the execution of the generals in their absence to the vote.18 As if to jog our memories (in the 380s and later), a little further on in the dialogue Sokrates reminds us of how ‘last year’ (thus dating the dialogue fictionally to 405), ‘I got laughed at for not understanding the voting procedure’ (474a). In light mode, Sokrates — or rather, Plato — reminds us of his principled attach­ 204

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ment to law in the political realm, although this was to no effect before the blood­ thirsty demos. Sokrates thus figures as the model of his own ideal of justice. His ded­ ication to true justice kept him from this grossly unfair and illegal decision of the demos, acting collectively with the wilfulness of a tyrant. His own approach would have saved from death the very man whose life he had just held up as evidence for the Athenians’ admiration of the wayward transgression of the tyrant. The citation of the khoregic monument was to play a comparable role in the historiographic tradition. Most of the ‘Great Men’ around whom the narratives of Athenian history have taken shape figure with glorious khoregic exploits to their credit. And the monuments they erected were used from an early period to provide historians with certain kinds of information they sought: Aristotle himself stands at the head of this tradition, as the passage from his Politics in which he mentions well­ born Spartan and Athenian khoregoi, on the basis of epigraphic evidence, indicates.19 It is with Plutarch that we begin to see the practice in full operation, although the second-century (b.c.) Athenian historian Heliodoros was clearly an important prede­ cessor.20 Plutarch opens his Aristeides with a rehearsal of conflicting accounts con­ cerning his wealth. He cites three proofs given by Demetrios of Phaleron of Aristeides’ riches: the fact that he had been Eponymous Arkhon; his ostracism; and, ‘third and most important, that he has left behind him in the sanctuary of Dionysos victory-dedications, khoregic tripods which were on display even in our day, preserv­ ing an inscription like this: ‘Antiokhis was victor. Aristeides was khoregos. Arkhestratos was didaskalos' (1.3). The language clearly suggests autopsy on the part of Plutarch. But he goes on to argue that this last proof, ‘although it seems strong, is extremely weak’ (1.4), explaining that such signs of the performance of khoregiai are in themselves insufficient to guarantee the wealth of the dedicator, since poor but ‘good’ men ‘wage no savage and relentless war against the gifts of friends, but while they consider those taken to be stored away and increase the receiver’s wealth as ignoble and mean, they reject none which promote philotimia not bent on gain and brilliance’ (1.5). This last statement is a clear expression of the ethic of the social evaluation and use of wealth which as we have seen received its fullest expression in Aristotle’s ideal of the megaloprepes. The compressed explanation given by Plutarch of the curious phenomenon of ‘good men’ borrowing money to perform khoregiai shows just how much more was at stake than a desire to display one’s wealth, just how alluring the prestige and sym­ bolism of khoregic performance were. The discussion about the evidential value of tripods does not end there, however. For Panaitios (second century b.c.) had sifted the records of victorious khoregoi from the time of the Persian wars to the end of the Peloponnesian war, and found two Aristeides, neither of whom is the son of Lysimakhos;21 in the case of one of these it is the presence of the patronymic which allows the historian to trace the true lineage of his Great Man. Plutarch is evidently impressed by the technique of his predeces­ sor: ‘this argument of Panaitios deserves to be more closely examined’ (1.7). One can safely assume that these monuments have had the effect apparently desired by their dedicators (excepting, of course, the confusion over names). Plutarch is not interested in writing a history of the collective entities of the Athenian phylai nor of the demos: the memorials and records of their victories have become the source-material for a discussion of the wealth of khoregoi.

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Choral memorials As Amandry has shown in his fine study of the tripods won at the Dionysia, these were objects of formidable size.22 They were manufactured at the commission of the polis in accordance with a design which changed little over a long period. No records of the city’s commands concerning its Dionysian tripods have survived, but we find something directly comparable in a set of accounts for expenditure by the Athenians in connection with Delos dating from the early fourth century. One entry reads: ‘Tripods as victory-prizes for the khoroi, and payment for the manufacturer: 1,000 dr.’23 The sum is substantial, especially if, as is probable, only two tripods were involved. The dithyrambic tripod came in two sizes, a larger one for the men’s cate­ gory which was some five metres in height; and a smaller, but by no means diminu­ tive, one for the boys’ competition. This was around three metres high.24 Even an Olympic athlete would have had difficulty haling off one of these by himself. Their scale seems not to be that of the individual — appropriately, for an object made by the polis and designed to honour one of the tenth collective parts of its totality. We are perhaps to imagine these objects as sitting at the back of the orkhestra during the performance of their respective dithyrambs on the first two days of the competitions, the tangible symbol of victory present before the assembled and com­ petitive crowd. And when the judges’ verdict was announced, the tripod (and bull?) was presumably surrounded by the khoros and tied with victory-fillets, its poet and crowned khoregos prominent among the crowd. Perhaps the khoros as a group fifty strong carried off the tripod and drove away the bull, but whither?25 The most likely destination is the site where the epinikia were to be held, and as we have seen, little is known about normal practice in this connection. The region of the sanctuary might have served this end; or an urban sanctuary of the victorious phyle. Or it may well have been held in the home of the khoregos himself. Whether Dionysian tripods ever remained in the place where Agasikles had transgressively nailed up his we do not know. But the passage of such an object through the streets of Athens to the home of a victorious khoregos would have underscored in a most forceful manner the rôle of the élite individual and of his family’s wealth in this collective victory. One Aiskhraios of Anagyrous erected a tripod he had won in the boys’ agon of the Dionysia of the previous year: where it had been displayed in the mean time, and how unusual his actions were in taking some time to bring it back to the city, we cannot say.26 But there is, as we shall see, some tantalising evidence that some dramatic khoregoi (who did not receive a tripod) chose to commemorate their victories won in the city in the local setting of their deme — that is, at or near the site of their oikos.27 We in fact know of no specific ‘rules’ governing the erection of tripods or kho­ regic monuments more generally in Athens. However, the tension between obliga­ tion and honour which is a defining feature of the khoregia resurfaces in this context. The question goes to the heart of the nature of the khoregic monument. Was a vic­ torious khoregos at the Dionysia obliged to erect a monument? Did such an obligation have a legal force, or did it consist in the moral and social compulsion derived from the phyletic affiliation of the dithyrambic agon?23 If so, was the analogous impulse to establish a monument for a dramatic victory weaker, and does this explain in part the near absence from the material record of such monuments in the city? No definitive

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answer can be given to any of these questions, but it is hardly possible that legal force of the kind sometimes imagined could be brought to bear on a civic benefactor, espe­ cially not a victorious one. Non-victorious khoregoi might at some time in the Lykourgan period have been required to ‘dedicate’ aphiale (effectively make an extra monetary contribution) at the end of their performance of a khoregia, but this is in keeping with the special circumstances and aspirations of that period, and such evidence as there is for this practice shows that the victor was excluded from the obligation.29 The compulsion on a khoregos was rather of the social and moral kind, the fulfilment of an obligation that could be construed as being owed to his phyle (or to his dramatic khoros), to the god, and to himself. These different sources of motivation need not have been in tension, but the khoregos, as the ultimate provider of the funds for making a monument a reality, operated with a basic liberty of action. The strong­ est obligation was clearly the last: for the monuments show themselves to be the prime means by which a khoregos comprehensively appropriates a victory and preserves it in his name. One can in fact turn the argument about obligation on its head, and stress that a khoregos had, through his victory, won himself the right to erect, in perhaps the most conspicuous space of the city, a display of his achievement and pre-eminence in a society that ordinarily and officially discountenanced individual self-praise and pro­ motion. Victory may even have allowed a khoregos to indulge in that form of perma­ nent self-presentation most hedged about with qualms and prohibitions in the Greek, and especially in the democratic, context: for there is some evidence that a khoregos could have an image of himself, as khoregos, cast or carved on his monument (figures

7 and 8).30 The fact that the polis awarded prize tripods to the winners in the dithyrambic agones of the Dionysia and not to those in drama had a profound effect on their respective dedicatory practices.31 The vast bulk of the epigraphic and other archaeological remains of khoregic monuments erected in the city to commemorate victories won at the City Dionysia relates to dithyramb, and there is much less that unambiguously concerns tragedy and comedy. I have already raised the issue of why this might be so, and shall return to confront it more directly below. For all its size, the Dionysiac tripod seems to have been a fairly plain object, man­ ufactured from an inexpensive metal and with rather less attention to aesthetic elab­ oration than was given the prize amphorai awarded at the Panathenaia. Another very significant qualitative difference distinguished the Dionysiac prize from its Panathenaic equivalent: the tripod was not the symbolic component of a prize that also included a material element of substantial use- or exchange-value for its owner (high quality olive-oil). The value of the tripod was of an unalloyed symbolic quality. In the face of the standardised nature of the prize object, khoregoi responded by creating for themselves a sphere in which individual self-expression had a great degree of free rein. They invented an extraordinary range of monumental settings for the same simple object. The Aiskhraios who took some time to dedicate the tripod he had won in the boys’ agon might if pressed have explained the delay by the fact that he was having his tripod plated in silver: a neater example of competitive one-upman­ ship in this ‘improvement’ on the state-issued tripod one could hardly find. The shift from bronze to the ‘nobler’ metal has a powerful symbolic force.32 More generally,

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Fig· 7· A fragment of a (?) khoregic relief from Athens with an adult male in a himation

standing beside a tripod taller than himself

Fig. 8. A fragment of relief carving, possibly from a khoregic monument for drama or dithyramb. The image shows an adult male in long himation and a small, bearded satyr seizing a large tripod which sits on a two-tiered base.

the drive towards diversity in dedicatory practice speaks eloquently for a desire to resist any pressure dictating uniformity in the manner in which a khoregos should present the democratic city’s prize. It also demonstrates a dynamic of competition taking place between khoregoi over time: in the latter part of the fourth century in par­ 208

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ticular (at least on the available evidence), there seems to have been a veritable agon between khoregoi of different years - and, in one striking case, between victorious kho­ regoi of the same year — to outbuild one another with monuments on a grand scale. The siting of any dedication is a matter of enormous significance. And centuries of religious tradition dictate that the ideal place for dedication is the sacred precinct of the god himself. What we know of the dedicatory practice of Dionysian khoregoi shows a certain avoidance of the actual sanctuary of Dionysos on the south-east slope of the Akropolis. Instead, victories won at the City Dionysia were normally memo­ rialised in the area around the sanctuary, including in certain spaces within the theatre itself, adjacent to the sanctuary; or along the course of the street known as ‘Tripodes’ - ‘Tripod Street’ (figures 9 and 10). Whether khoregic monuments were placed within the actual perimeter of the sacred wall of the sanctuary is unclear: no monu­ mental bases have been found here, and the absence may well be significant.33 It cer­ tainly does not seem to be the case that the sanctuary was filled with dedications and khoregoi were thus forced to spill beyond its boundaries. Rather, this absence distin­ guishes the khoregic monument from most other forms of dedication — indeed, it combines with a number of other indications to suggest that these were unlike a regular offering to a god. The language of the khoregic inscription is unlike that of most dedications: no divine recipient is mentioned, and a verb of dedication (άνατίθημι) is used only rarely. The urban khoregic inscription presents itself as a recorder of victorious personnel rather than a dedication. It presents itself as a μναμα χορού (Anth. Pal. 6.140), a ‘memorial of the khoros’, rather than a gift to Dionysos. It is difficult to trace any neat pattern of chronological ‘spread’ across the various areas of dedication: older monuments do not seem to have crowded the southern areas in and around the theatre and sanctuary, and to have made their way systemat­ ically up the course of Tripodes.34 For example, near the theatre on Tripodes, a mon­ ument with a base of only two square metres has been so placed as to occupy the entire space between two older monuments in what was a particularly sought-after stretch of the road (figure 9, no. 9).35 And a number of monuments of the late fourth century are prominent in and around the theatre. Some of these owe their special position to the major redevelopment of the theatre conducted in the time of Lykourgos which changed the physical properties of the site substantially and created a new range of desirable locations for the placement of monuments which khoregoi promptly filled: most important among them the sheer and extremely high, vertical scarp of rock cut artificially from the south face of the Akropolis above the theatron (the κατατομή), which came into existence during these operations to increase the capacity of the theatre.36 The comprehensive alterations effected in this period may also have displaced earlier khoregic monuments. The forces that led to this massive investment in the theatre by the polis also prompted a vigorous burst of monumen­ tal extravagance in the following decade.

The street of tripods How long before his time the street Pausanias familiarly refers to as ‘Tripodes’ was so called by the Athenians we cannot say. But the name may well be ancient: many of 209

Fig. 9. The theatre and sanctuary of Dionysos in Hellenistic Athens, with the Periklean Odeion and the beginning of the Street of Tripods.

0

so

100

200

300 m

Fig. 10. The Athenian Akropolis and environs, indicating the course of the ancient Street of Tripods. The letter ‘L’ marks the location of the monument of Lysikrates. The other foundations to the north and south of this point, including one on the eastern side of the road, are also those of khoregic monuments.

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the other topographical terms used by the periegete in Athens are confirmed as clas­ sical. After leaving the region around the Ilissos, Pausanias approaches the Akropolis (1.20.1) and explains: ‘There is a road leading from the Prytaneion called “Tripodes.” They name the place after certain temples, rather large for the purpose to which they are put, on which stand tripods, made of bronze, but enclosing most memorable arti­ facts. For there is a Satyr, of which Praxiteles is said to have been very proud . . ,’37 Pausanias’ brief description conjures a sense of the extraordinary spectacle this street must have offered, its choral monuments making it one of the most popular places of promenade in ancient Athens, a place to see and to be seen in. Demetrios of Phaleron is said to have been particularly fond of it as a place for a stroll after break­ fast, and the best-looking boys of Athens, we are told, took advantage of his peripa­ tetic habit by gathering there to catch the eye of the rich and powerful man (Athen. 12.543a). The street was of generous width (6—6.5 m), and descended gently in its southerly course. Along its sides were structures Pausanias identifies as ‘temples’. He is without any doubt thinking of the large-scale khoregic monuments built to support the tripods which so dominated the horizon of this street as to give it its name.38 Pausanias characterises the individual tripod, and Tripodes as a whole, as a site of visual riches. The victory-tripods on top of their monuments enclose ‘most memor­ able artifacts’,39 and he goes on to refer to a particularly famous satyr of Praxiteles which anecdote claims to have been one of the sculptor’s two most prized works. Evidently it formed part of a khoregic monument (Athen. 13.59), an indication that the leading sculptors of their time were called upon by khoregoi to produce work for their memorials. In a nearby ‘temple’ he saw another satyr, a boy offering a cup (1.20.2) , and beside him an Eros and a Dionysos, made by the otherwise unknown Thymilos. This has been thought to be the cult temple within the sanctuary perim­ eter, but the group is more likely to have formed part of another khoregic monu­ ment in the shape of a naos. One might also speculate as to the origin of the paintings inside the sanctuary itself which depicted moments from the mythology of the god: his role in returning Hephaistos to heaven; the punishment of Pentheus, and of Lykourgos; and scenes from the story of Theseus and Ariadne (1.20.3). While these images (whose date we cannot specify) were probably part of the public adornment of the sanctuary, it was certainly a familiar practice for khoregoi to enhance their mon­ uments with paintings as well as with relief and free-standing sculpture. When he resumes his account of the theatre a little later, Pausanias apparently describes, without referring to it by the name of its khoregos, the monument of Thrasyllos, ‘a cave in the rocks under the Akropolis. This also has a tripod over it, and in it are Apollo and Artemis slaying the children of Niobe’ (1.21.3). It is more than likely that these figures were painted on the interior walls of this cave converted into a khoregic monument. Pausanias is quite precise as to where the street began: it led from the Prytaneion, the symbolic centre of the city, its common hearth where perpetual fire burned and the place where the Eponymous Arkhon had his headquarters. The great procession of the Dionysia, as we have already seen, passed from the Prytaneion, sent by the Arkhon, down Tripodes to the sanctuary of Dionysos. It now seems certain that the Prytaneion referred to by Pausanias was situated in the ‘Old’ Agora, whose location is still uncertain: the (uneasy) consensus which put it close by the north-east slopes of the Akropolis, somewhat to the south-west of its well-excavated successor, has 212

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recently been challenged by Robertson, who argues that we should imagine it directly at the east side of the Akropolis.40 Tripodes thus serves as a link between the two most important sites where Dionysos had received worship in Athens, and where moreover he had been honoured with choral performances. In one sense Tripodes in the classical period thus provides a ritual link with the earliest days of agonistic per­ formances in Athens for Dionysos. The relocation of the Prytaneion further to the east shortens the course of Tripodes: it used to be thought to cover a distance of over 800 metres, but this may well have to be revised.41 Its general course is clear: from the Prytaneion it curved around the great eastern slope of the Akropolis, reaching the sanctuary of Dionysos from the north-east, near the south-west corner of the Odeion of Perikles. It is unclear whether we should regard its formal end to be at the entrance to the sanctu­ ary, which is generally placed directly opposite the south-west corner of the Odeion; or at the entrance to the theatre at its eastern parodos, some thirty metres further to the north-west. The question may be entirely academic and faintly irrelevant, for even if the sanctuary was the destination of Tripodes, khoregic monuments certainly lined much or all of the further stretch of road (at least on its eastern side) from the corner of the Odeion to the parodos of the theatre. The enormous range of scale, shapes and styles in evidence for even the relatively small number of khoregic monuments that survive in whole or part is not only a matter of increased elaboration over time, nor a move from a restrained and unadorned ‘classical’ simplicity — the Periklean ideal of ‘loving what is beautiful without extravagance’ (Thouk. 2.40.1) — to a rather more indulgent and effusive (proto-)Hellenistic complexity, the decadence of a democratic culture in decline. A diachronic shift towards larger monuments can indeed be detected, particularly in the last third of the fourth century, but one of the most recent archaeological discover­ ies has shown that the ‘naiskos’-style of khoregic monument, the large temple-shaped structure which so struck Pausanias and which was long thought to be a development of the later fourth century, in fact goes back to the fifth. The decline or absence of democracy is not a necessary prerequisite for grand khoregic display.42 The most simple monument was a plain quadrangular stone plinth, or an arrange­ ment of two or three such forms of decreasing size, organised as a stepped tier, with a large enough upper surface to accommodate the feet of the tripod: (roughly 2 m2 was needed for a tripod won in the men’s agon). The inscription was of course on the face of the base exposed to passers-by. Part of the base might be decorated with relief sculpture: images of the prize tripod and bull, of Nikai, of the khoros, of the khoregos himself, were all possible. Although the quadrangular form dominated Dionysian monuments, the shape of the base could vary: a cylinder was possible; or a column; and, towards the close of the fourth century, bases in the form of triangular capitals appear, with concave sides and placed above a column. In the region of the katatome, tripods even seem to have been affixed directly into niches in the stone; presumably an inscription was placed nearby.43 At the other end of the scale the tripod seems almost to have become little more than an excuse around which to build a major architectural complex advertising the resources and cultural expertise of the khoregos: among the remains of these are structures of considerable architectural and artistic complexity and innovation. 213

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Inscribing victory Before considering the monuments in further detail, it is appropriate to make a brief survey of their most eloquent component, the khoregic inscription. For the inscrip­ tion is in a sense the most vital part of the monument, forever reproducing the orig­ inal announcement of victory in the theatre, and co-opting in order to do so the voice, as well as the gaze, of the passer-by. Those surviving from dithyrambic perfor­ mances at the classical Dionysia form a substantial and coherent corpus.44 Their lan­ guage has already begun, by the middle of the fifth century, to settle into a formulaic pattern which remains characteristic for well over a century. This presents the essen­ tial details of the mortal agents responsible for the victory: the name of the phyle, listed as the victor - e.g. (IG i3958, c. 445), ‘Akamantis was victorious’ - [AKo|pavTis [sviKa]; its individual khoregos, ‘Leagros was khoregos’ — [Afojypos [s/opEyE]; and the poet, ‘Pantakles was the didaskalos’ — [F[cxvt]o(kA£s [sSibao-KE]. By the last quarter of the fifth century, the name of the khoregos’ father has appeared; as has the use of the identifying demotic.45 Thereafter the patronymic becomes virtually de rigueur, the demotic is slightly less regular in its use.46 In the ‘official’ inscriptional records of Dionysiac victories maintained by the polis, as preserved in the so-called ‘Fasti’ (IG ii223i8), demotics are the rule. No khoregos has his patronymic there. Whether this form of identification can be regarded as a subscription to the ideology of the post-Kleisthenic democratic system is unclear (and we should recall that the record was probably erected in the Lykourgan period); but the individual monuments may well be drawing attention to a form of prestige and inherited position which the city’s records pointedly ignore. Another element of the standard information provided by a khoregic inscription is the name of the Eponymous Arkhon. His inclusion is appropriate, given his role as general overseer of the Dionysia; but it is clear that his presence has little more than the character of an administrative aid, designed to mark the date of the Dionysia in question. The victory can hardly be felt to rebound to his glory. The fact that his name is often carved in smaller letters suggests as much.47 Under the name of the victorious phyle there sometimes appears the category of the agon, and when it does, it is in the genitive plural: Oivsis evikq TrodSov (IG i396i); this is doubtless an abbreviation for yopcoi iraiScov, ‘with a khoros of boys’.48 The first explicit reference to the boys’ agon dates from some time after 450 (IG i3g6i), but the fact that a performance-category is not specified in other early inscriptions need not mean that the boys’ agon had not yet been introduced. The monuments themselves, with their tripods of different size for victorious men and boys, will have proclaimed their agon at once to any Athenian viewer. The last element to take a place as a ‘standard’ item in khoregic inscriptions is the name of the auletes, always before the Arkhon and generally after the poet, although in the 330s and 320s poet (didaskalos) and auletes vie for placement before one another.49 Many of these non-Athenian musical experts, both didaskaloi and auletai, attracted from all regions of Greece and beyond, are remembered by posterity only thanks to their success at the Athenian festivals. Their place of origin is often indi­ cated by an ethnic,50 and only one auletes has earned himself the honour of being recorded with his patronymic. This is Oiniades son of Pronomos from Thebes, and 214

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the reason for the exception is clear. His was an especially illustrious family of Theban musicians, his father the most famous of all Greek auletai.51 The tendency to include the musician on khoregic inscriptions reflects the great increase in the acknowledged importance of his contribution to a victorious team. The high degree of consistency in the appearance of these elements, and observ­ able changes in their configuration in particular decades, make it legitimate to speak of the ongoing development of an economic formula for khoregic inscriptions. But it was a formula that always permitted of greater elaboration: the deployment of poetic inscription is not confined to the early examples of Simonides’ and Antigenes’ epigrams.52 And in a system of such economy of expression, any variation will be highly significant. But what makes variation an especially sensitive matter is the fact that this relatively terse account is the final and lasting record of the glory of so pre­ stigious a victory. This point lies behind the implicit critical commentary on the actions of Theophrastos’ ‘Illiberal’ man, who inscribes none but his own name on his khoregic monument. The development by which the auletes appears and comes to greater prominence on khoregic inscriptions is clearly intelligible in terms of his increased importance to the overall competition. More striking and less readily mapped as a simple diachronic change is the general, submerged tension which exists between the collective phyle and its khoregos as claimants for the greater share of victory’s prestige, on a monument built at the expense of the khoregos yet proclaiming the victory of a tenth of the dem­ ocratic citizenry. Variations in the ‘formula’ can justifiably be read as attempts by kho­ regoi to take over a greater share of this prestige, even to lay explicit claim to the victory as personally their own. Khoregos and phyle vie for initial placement across the period. In the fifth century the phyle’s primacy is virtually unchallenged, but from the first decades of the fourth until its close there is a roughly equal division of honours, with examples of both spread across most identifiable decades.53 One observable factor is that the larger-scale monuments regularly set their khoregos above their phyle: a clear indication that the epigraphic choice to place the name of the khoregos first can be directly related to a broader desire to maximise personal glory through lavish display.54 The further step which sees a khoregos proclaim himself explicitly as victor (rather than simply khoregos) on his monument is taken before the middle of the fourth century.55 Of course, every monument is effectively a statement of khoregic victory, and as we have seen, in other contexts — in the courts, in the pages of historians and philosophers, khoregoi regularly speak or are spoken of as the active victors in festival competitions. But the choice to link the khoregos directly with the verb νικάν in a per­ manent and public epigraphic record — for so long the privilege of the phyle — is a significant one. The extreme of omitting mention of the phyle altogether is an option which may, very rarely, have been exercised.56 This is close indeed to the vice of the Illiberal man — indeed, in a democratic contest where a tenth of the citizenry thereby has its due prestige sidelined, such behaviour might be felt even to exceed that of the hypothetical Theophrastean tragic khoregos.57 The same desire for a monument that is less than generous in its distribution of glory is one of the motivations behind another kind of khoregic dedication that we have already encountered from time to time. This is the personal ‘catalogue’ of victory, a monument with an inscription listing a series of past agonistic successes; or 215

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a more regular monument to which subsequent wins were added. On these ‘thesauroi’ of prestige the khoregos feels under no obligation to mention the efforts of his colleagues; he may even ignore the phyle in whose name a victory has been won.58 There is often a family dynamic to these dedications: IG ii23022 has a distich appended to its recital of the dedicator’s victorious career: ‘Having given such a dem­ onstration to his children, he led them on to strive all the more for virtue.’59 The decree honouring a double victor and the appended list of victorious khoregoi erected in its sanctuary by the phyle Pandionis early in the fourth century could be seen as a countermove by the democratic collective to create a monument to its group achieve­ ment in the agonistic festivals of the city.60 But whereas the aim of this form of inscription seems principally pour encourager les autres in the phyletic context, the mon­ uments of the collected victories of individuals and families advertise their successes in the open space of the city.

The early period What of the period prior to the earliest surviving khoregic inscriptions (c. 450)? What can be said of the forms which the commemoration of Athenian khoregic victories took in the first half of the century? It is hardly surprising that the material record offers little from the decades preceding 480, from the days when Pindar won a dithyrambic victory in Athens, especially given that the Akropolis may have been an important early site of dedication for choral victories; and another potentially prom­ ising locale, the old Agora, remains unexcavated.61 Two of the earliest khoregic monuments, known from the literary tradition, in fact relate to drama: that of Themistokles in 477/6, commemorating a tragic victory with Phrynikhos by a pinax', and the victory of Thrasippos with the early fifth­ century poet Ekphantides, also commemorated by a pinax. The likelihood seems strong that the pinax, a highly frangible object, was a common form of early dedica­ tion. But I leave these for separate discussion below with the other material relating to dramatic monuments. The honey-voiced circular khoroi of dithyramb leave the first traces of their victories in the epigram by Antigenes already discussed at some length in Chapter Three. Its transmission in the literary tradition leaves us with no clear indi­ cations of its monumental setting, nor of the place of dedication, but it probably dates from as early as 490—480. The fact that a substantial poetic inscription was produced for and accommodated on a monument demonstrates a degree of special outlay. All the information (except the name of the Arkhon) which is provided by the more for­ mulaic khoregic inscriptions is here, transformed by the grace of poetic elaboration. The epigram has a very proud tone, and it puts great weight on the mortal achieve­ ment: the dedicated tripod is ‘a witness to their Bakkhic struggles’ (rather than, say, a gift to Dionysos). Its boast that the khoroi of Akamantis had been garlanded many times before is especially brazen if the phyletic competition was not much more than fifteen years old. But the claim seems to have been warranted.62 If phyletic and more particularly khoregic claims to attention prevail in Antigenes’ epigram, in the earliest epigraphically attested inscription certainly relat­ ing to choral performance in Athens, it is the poet rather than the khoregos or phyle

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who seems to take first place.63 This is a puzzling, four-line fragment assembled from three stones found on the Akropolis, which has been dated as early as 500 but is perhaps closer to 480—470.64 I print the text of IG fS^^bis, and a tentative transla­ tion:

- uu ρας ho[..5...]Tov Ά0ένεσ[ιν χο]ρδι άνδρδ[ν] - UU τες σοφ[ίες] τόνδ' άνέθε[κ]εν hopov [εύχσ]άμενο[ς· π]λείστοις δέ [χ]οροϊς έχσο κατά φύ[λα] [άνδ]ρδν νι[κε]σαί φέσι ττ[ερ]ί τρίποδος. [?Diago]ras wh[en he fir] st [?won] with a khoros of men at Athens dedicated this marker of his wisdom having [vow]ed to do so; he asserts that with very many khoroi abroad, through the tribes of men, he was victorious about the tripod. No completely satisfactory reconstruction has been offered, but it is relatively clear that the epigram records the erection on the Akropolis by a poet of a horos or marker ‘to his wisdom’.65 The poet appears to commemorate his first victory won at Athens, and with a khoros andron — the term that becomes formulaic for the men’s dithyramb. In the last two lines a fascinating contrast is set up between this victory won at Athens and the many others he claims he has won beyond Athens, ‘throughout the tribes (phyla) of men’.66 The poet asserts his internationalism — he is well-travelled and widely successful, and it is almost as though he is simply adding his victory at Athens to a list of those already won elsewhere. The poet’s freedom to express matters in this way gives us a glimpse of the early democratic Dionysia from the perspective of an outside participant, something we largely lack for later, better-documented days.67 In keeping with this buoyant tone of independence, there is no clear indication of the existence or role of a khoregos in this epigram, although he has been introduced in an hypothesised lost first line naming him as the dedicator of the monument;68 while the reference to the competition-category, the men’s khoros, is simply generic and says nothing of a victorious phyle. But the tripod in the last line is perhaps the most cryptic element of the whole: does the poet’s claim to multiple victories elsewhere, made ‘around the tripod’, have a quite physical sense, implying that the ‘horos of his wisdom’ is in fact a periphrasis for a victory-tripod on this very monument? In that case the absence of the khoregos becomes all the more perplexing, and we should need to assume that this tripod was not of a kind with that familiarly awarded to phyletic khoregoi. Or is the reference to the tripod to be taken more closely with the verb νικεσαι, so that the claim is to have been victorious ‘with respect to a tripod’ — effectively, to have won a tripod frequently elsewhere? The latter may seem more awkward, because it would involve the mention of a victory-tripod on a monument commemorating a competition in which the tripod was famously the prize, but without reference to that tripod (which was pre­ sumably dedicated elsewhere by the khoregos). Yet the competitive spirit of Greek poetic culture could readily extend to a kind of rivalry for the symbol of prestige — the prize tripod — between those who had jointly achieved it, poet and khoregos, and we may have here a view of that ‘struggle’ from the poet’s side. If this is indeed a very early epigram, it may even point to a slight resentment that the tripod had been ‘taken over’ by the Athenians as the award not of poetic sophia (something it had long been

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and still was elsewhere), but of managerial and economic pre-eminence. In this light the epigram is very much a statement ‘about the tripod’. A similar dynamic — of (foreign) poetic assertiveness in the face of the Athenian khoregia s appropriation of a traditional epinikian symbol and prize of poetic success - could lie behind the claim in Simonides epigram 27 (P) that the poet ‘carried off fifty-six bulls and tripods before setting up this pinax . . .’ Unless we decide this ‘error’ is a sign of late composition, the assertion that the poet won tripods as well as bulls can also be viewed as in part a poetic attempt to ‘reappropriate’ the tripod from the khoregos. This epigram, like that just discussed surviving on stone, is a poet’s memorial to his own successful career. Like the Akropolis dedication, it surely refers to his international or panhellenic career, not simply, or even primarily, to victories won in Athens.69 The reference in another Simonidean epigram (28 (P)) to the arkhonship of Adeimantos places it squarely in Athens and in this early period, in 477/6. This is khoregic in the sense that it commemorates a particular Athenian choral success, and the khoregos Aristeides and his phyle, Akamantis, are featured promi­ nently, as victor and as "khoregos for a khoros of fifty men who had learnt their beau­ tiful [dance]’.70 We hear in this once again a more elaborate version of the formulaic khoregic inscriptions which survive from later decades. But the poet is careful to forge a particularly strong association in the closing lines between his instruction of the khoros and the glory - the ku5o$ (5) — that the monument is itself designed to perpetuate: ‘and about his training glory followed Simonides, the octogenarian son of Leoprepes’. Not long after these poetic commemorations of choral victory were composed and formed into monuments, a neck-amphora and a deep drinking-cup (skyphos) were fired in Athens whose imagery makes clear reference to choral victories of the Akamantidp/zy/e.71 And they do so by in some sense depicting khoregic monuments: in the first case, a three-tiered base supports a tripod with the familiar lion’s-paw feet. Although most of the tripod is lost, it was evidently being dressed, perhaps tied with tainiai, by a winged Nike. And on the top step of the base, in just the graphic space where we would expect to find the khoregic inscription on a real monument, we read, in the language familiar from such inscriptions: ‘The phyle Akamantis was vic­ torious.’ (The significance of the far from usual ‘Glaukon is beautiful’ on the bottom step will be addressed below.) On the skyphos, it appears that the same phyletic name - Akamantis - was placed in the pictorial field beside, rather than on, a tripod-mon­ ument, whose base was in this instance cylindrical, perhaps a Doric capital decorated with rings. While one would hesitate to draw too definite conclusions concerning the practices of contemporary khoregic memorialisation on the basis of this iconog­ raphy, it is clear that these images reflect familiar general types of khoregic monu­ ment in the early part of the fifth century. The monument is represented at a second remove in the world of the symposion and its imagery, to act as a more private form of celebratory memorialisation, and to assist a victorious khoregos, very probably, in the celebration of his epinikia.

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‘They name the place after certain temples, rather large for the purpose to which they are put . . Lusieri to Elgin: 7 would remind you, my lord, of the Monument of Lysicrates. Possibly with money your Excellency will find means ofgetting it from that French Capuchin who resides at Constantinople, and is head of the Monastery/ Elgin to Lusieri: 7 see with the greatest satisfaction that you have the statue from the Monument ofThrasyllus. Continue your acquisitions, and add to my obligations — the lantern of Demosthenes!!!'72 The most famous of the large-scale khoregic monuments are those of Lysikrates and of Thrasyllos. They owe their fame to their survival in their original settings and vir­ tually intact until the present day (in the case of Lysikrates’) and to the 1820s (Thrasyllos’). From their conception these were grand and lavish structures designed to attract attention to themselves; by Elgin’s time they had become, in the world of English fashion and scholarship, prize objects among the desirable antiquities of Old Greece, ripe for acquisition and imitation. Their special fame in England was due to the work of the two young architects James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, whose journey to Athens in 1751 to ‘measure and delineate with all possible diligence what­ ever we might fmd there’, was to have such a pioneering and profound influence on the Greek Revival in European architecture, taste and scholarship.73 The first volume of The Antiquities ofAthens appeared in 1762, over a decade after the visit to Athens. The second was another twenty-five years in preparation, so that the Antiquities of the first were for a quarter of a century the only physical remains of ancient Greece fully revealed to a public increasingly avid for Hellenic style. And among these was the monument of Lysikrates, which received its first full modern architectural study at the hands of Stuart and Revett (figure 11).74 Although ‘The Lantern of Demosthenes’ had long since been known to travellers, it was these glo­ rious drawings, still unsurpassed (though corrected in some details), which made the monument familiar to a wider audience outside Greece. And it was the amateur scholarship ofJames ‘Athenian’ Stuart which correctly identified the original purpose of the building, perhaps for the first time in the modern period. This did little, however, to dislodge the popular name, recorded from as early as the twelfth century, of‘The Lantern of Demosthenes’.75 This extraordinary monument was erected to celebrate the victory of Lysikrates with his phyle, Akamantis, in the boys’ agon of 335/4. Lysikrates’ inscription, quite conventionally, cites his patronymic as well as his demotic. His auletes, Theon, appears in the second line, apparently in a more prominent place than his poet, Lysiades the Athenian.76 The monument was well sited for maximum visibility, standing not far from the mid-point of Tripodes, near the most easterly extreme of its course, where the road curves gently to the south-west (see figure 10). It evidently stood at an inter­ section; and the street which heads off to the west at its side may have been a major processional route that headed to the western end of the Akropolis, passing through the upper region of the theatre (in its late-fourth-century extended form).77 Lifting the tripod some ten metres above the level of the road on its higher, western side is this extraordinary construction: its base a tall podium (2.93 m) of red breccia blocks

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Fig. ii. The khoregic monument of Lysikrates (335/4 b.c.): the design of Stuart

and Revett, 1762.

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with a blue-grey layer of Hymettan marble on top. The distinctive tholos begins with two circular steps of the same bluish marble, while a further curved step and all the rest of the structure above is of white pentelic marble. Such polychromy is familiar from other fourth-century and Hellenistic architecture. The central, circular body of the monument is a colonnade of six Korinthian columns. Their intercolumniations are closed up by neatly-fitting wall panels which conceal half the column, and between their elaborate capitals, the top part of these panels (to a height of about 57 cm) is carved into relief images of tripods, two per intercolumniation. The architrave, which carries the dedicatory inscription (IG ii23042), is part of a ring-shaped piece with a continuous frieze at the top (the frieze is roughly 23 cm high). The cupola, fashioned from a single block, is ‘thatched’ with carved laurel leaves, and from its centre there rises an elaborate column-like, triple-armed ‘akroterion’formed from six rings of acanthus leaves and a capital of acanthus and tendrils.78 Although many of its unusual or innovative features are paralleled individually elsewhere, many are seen here for the first time considerably in advance of their sub­ sequent appearance, and their combination produces a quite unique structure.79 In general terms, it is the best evidence for the start of the architectural development in Athens towards the more elaborate, innovatory, individualising Hellenistic style over the tighter economy of forms of the earlier period. That such stylistic innovation and its quality of assertive individuality should first show themselves in khoregic monu­ ments is not surprising: like the grave-monument, which shows a similar tendency at this period towards ostentation, this trend in monumental practice has been seen as marking a break with political as well as architectural tradition, a rupture with the city-state ‘corporatism’ of the classical age, and intimating the personality cult of the Hellenistic type.80 The stylistic change should not deceive us into imagining that kho­ regic display had necessarily begun to operate with a completely different dynamic in this period. Even at the height of city-state ‘corporatism’, there was always a tension between the collective ideals of the polis and the more or less acknowledged pre-eminence of individuals. Such innovation of form is facilitated, even encouraged, by the function of a khoregic monument; or rather, one might say, by its lack of a strongly functional char­ acter. The khoregic monument imposes few practical specifications. It does not need to admit of human entry, although it may. These grand monuments have grown beyond the role of supporting a tripod, and in the process they have gathered archi­ tectural forms from almost any source. The temple is, unsurprisingly, the principal quarry for forms, but the monuments’ intimate connection with the media of mimesis, where visual and verbal imagery were paramount, and their own primary function as structures of imposing display, encouraged further the innovative introduction of various forms of sculpture and painting relating to the world of Dionysiac perfor­ mance. These are certainly not cult ‘temples’ in any regular sense. The unusual use of the very high podium base is intelligible in this light. In terms of functional architec­ ture, this is quite extraordinary, since no building so founded is meant to be entered. It becomes, unambiguously, a monument of pure display. And the choice of such a base is surely motivated by a competitive desire to elevate the structure to a height above its fellows on the Street. There are two major points of debate remaining in the reconstruction of the monument which both have important consequences for the interpretation of its 221

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desired original effect. In the course of his meticulous architectural study, Bauer has argued that the monument was not in fact a closed tower, but that the intercolumniation facing the street was originally meant to be open; and the central tholos was on this view designed to accommodate a statue, probably of Dionysos. The second point concerns the precise manner in which this monument displayed its victors tripod. Did it stand on a further abacus on top of the flowery ‘akroterion’? Or did the akroterion serve as a central support for the tripod, standing beneath its cauldron and within its legs in an arrangement familiar from tripod dedications elsewhere? (figures

12 and 13).81 The latter issue has fewer ramifications for our sense of the overall impact of the original monument, although a tripod on the dizzy heights above the capital would further elevate the whole by more than a metre, and so make its attempt to loom over the offerings of others, as over passers-by, all the more emphatic. However, a monu­ ment designed to display a statue through an aperture in its cylindrical body is rather different from an entirely closed tower. If Bauer’s interpretation is correct, and if the statue within was one of the god, the Lysikrates monument becomes functionally more akin to the other ‘ naiskos’-style khoregic edifices seen by Pausanias: like a little temple with a cult-statue, although hardly used in the way a regular temple was. Indeed, if there was a statue in this building, it was none that allowed any easy access for a potential devotee. This was Dionysian display, not a home for an image of cult. If the traditional closed colonnade interpretation stands, the building is one of purely exterior surface; a structure that looks only outwards. Its smooth cylindrical exterior accentuates the fact that this is not a building to be entered, or indeed to do anything to but gaze up at.82 And a viewer’s gaze from the road would strike the inscription at a steep angle and a distance of over eight metres. Under such conditions it was surely illegible. It hardly mattered: the inscription is certainly much more than a nod to tradition, but the construction of such a prominent edifice will have been a matter of keen inter­ est, its creator and Dionysiac victor much spoken of in the city. The frieze too (figure 14) may not have been easily ‘legible’. In addition to its height and the angle of vision involved, the circular shape of the frieze will have made a continuous examination of the whole difficult (only partly alleviated by the position of the monument at a cross­ roads). What will have been most open to the viewer is that part directly above the inscription, facing the road: the ‘central’ scene of a reclining, youthful Dionysos at his ease, stroking his panther and flanked by two satyrs, also seated on rocks; framed beyond them by another pair of satyrs, serving wine from the two enormous kraters that define a boundary between this scene of calm divinity and the violence beyond. To the frontal viewer, that violence will have appeared only at the margins of the scene. In the regions beyond, satyrs old and young club, bind and burn the pirates (if such they are) in a scene apparently set on a rocky shore.83 Their only ‘escape’ is a transformation under the god’s power into dolphins. One of the extraordinary ‘dolphin-men’ occupies the position on the western (rear) side of the frieze corre­ sponding directly to that of the god on the east. The visual opposition established by this arrangement underscores an opposition at the heart of the myth.84 At least since the time of Stuart and Revett, it has been surmised that the frieze in some way relates to the content of the successful dithyramb of Lysiades.85 Although not open to any proof, and running the risk of demanding too isomorphic a relation 222

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Fig. 12. The khoregic monument of Lysikrates (335/4 b.c.): the reconstruction of Amandry.

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Fig. 13. The khoregic monument of Lysikrates (335/4 b.c.): the reconstruction of Bauer.

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W I

E

Fig. 14. The frieze from the khoregic monument of Lysikrates.

between poetic and visual imagery, this is prima facie a compelling notion: that this appropriately ‘circular’ image of satyrs and their god should allude in some way to the song of the Athenian Lysiades which the kyklios khoros sang. That narratives involv­ ing Dionysos and his satyr-companions should have been matter for dithyramb should not surprise. And there is even some room for open-mindedness concerning the pos­ sibility of a masked form of dithyramb, especially given our profound ignorance of the genre in this period. A khoros of satyr-boys is not an impossibility.86 If Lysiades’ poem did indeed deal with a tale of the Tyrrhenian pirates and their failure to recog­ nise the godhead of the young man they kidnapped, we should hardly speak of a weakening of the moral force of such Dionysiac narratives in the later fourth century.87 But whatever its relation to the poem, it can be no accident that the moment turned to the permanence of celebratory stone and presented to the viewer is that of victory. The achetypal victory of Dionysos himself over those who fail to recognise him here crowns the victory memorial, the image of the recumbent god cup of wine in hand - positioned directly above the name of the khoregos and his phyle. The mortal victors imitate their god, at a distance, as he indulges to the full the pleas­ ure of victory over his opponents.88 335 was, of course, the year of Alexander’s accession to kingship. Later in the same year, the insurrection of Thebes against its Macedonian garrison (with some Athenian financial aid) resulted in the annihilation of the birthplace of Dionysos. The overwhelming political question within Athens continued to centre on relations with Macedon, while material prosperity and military strength were beginning to improve under the effective stewardship of the aristocrat Lykourgos. The previous year had seen the major reorganisation of the ephebeia, when it seems to have become for the first time a compulsory two-year period of service for Athenians after their reception into the citizen body. Its messes were organised by phyle, like mature military squad­ rons and dithyrambic khoroi: the Akamantid boys of Lysikrates’ gloriously successful khoros would no doubt go on in the not-too-distant future to train together as ephebes. The efflorescence of phyletic choral performance in this period and its proud memorialisation to which Lysikrates’ monument testifies, should also be viewed as part of a larger civic reinvigoration of these years. Such elaborate khoregic display under a democratic régime, even a ‘moderate’ 225

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one, may not have appeared without controversy But a more precise politics of design has been divined in Lysikrates’ monument. McCredie has argued that many of the features which make this monument so distinctive can be related to Macedonian influence; a number of them are paralleled elsewhere in works of Macedonian style and patronage. The monument of Lysikrates, on such a reading, takes a stand on the pressing question of the city’s relations to Macedon through its architectural sympa­ thies with Macedonian style. Although the argument has considerable force in many specific points of style, the monument is probably so unusual as to make any firm conclusions drawn from such comparisons between the small range of existing exam­ ples quite problematic, or at least inconclusive.89 But the very possibility of such direct political expression through the architecture of a khoregic monument is fascinating. And it is certainly highly plausible that Lysikrates belonged to that group of the very rich in Athens which desired a rapprochement and the avoidance of war at almost any cost.90

Oligarchic extravagance The location, date and form of two other major khoregic monuments are well known: those of Nikias and of Thrasyllos. We owe our knowledge of these to acci­ dents of fortune. Most of the architectural members of Nikias’ grand structure were carefully reused in the third century a.d. to fortify the southern side of the entrance to the Akropolis known as the Beulé gate, to be identified, reconstructed and asso­ ciated with their original foundations only in 1910 by Dinsmoor.91 Thrasyllos prob­ ably owes the continued fame of his monument to the relative inaccessibility of its position, in the face of the rock-cutting high above the top of the theatre. Even on a meagre sample of three, the large-scale khoregic monuments of whose form we have some fair knowledge demonstrate a truly remarkable range of formal variation. And as those of Nikias and Thrasyllos are the epinikian monuments for vic­ tories won in the same year and festival (the Great Dionysia of 320/19), the variety is demonstrably not simply a matter of changing tastes. The significance of the date of these two monuments has not been fully recognised. If Lysikrates’ monument rose at the start of a period of new prosperity and civic regeneration — including the specific renewal experienced in the fabric of the theatre itself — those of Nikias and Thrasyllos date from a time when the Lykourgan stewardship was well and truly over. And so too was the independence of democratic Athens. It is surely more than a coin­ cidence of survival that we know of two grand khoregic monuments, including one on the scale of a good-sized temple, which were the ultimate products of khoregiai from the year immediately following the end of democracy. In 322 Athens surren­ dered unconditionally to the Macedonian regent Antipater, and a garrison in the Peiraieus secured a constitution late in 322/1 according to which all political activity was reserved for those with a property qualification of 2,000 dr. (Diod. 18.18.4). After Antipaters death in 319 there was a brief democratic restoration, until in 317 Kassander enforced a limited franchise (this time on a slightly wider base of 1,000 dr.), and Demetrios of Phaleron was appointed as the epimeletes of the city. It is very tempting to understand these two lavish displays of personal wealth and 226

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public assertiveness under the narrow, aristocratic oligarchy of 322—318, as something of a celebration of its arrival. The ostentation of khoregoi under democratic condi­ tions is demonstrable, and appears to have flourished unchecked. The extravagance of Nikias and Thrasyllos, which in a single year made a very considerable impact on the physical space of the theatre, seems to represent an expression of enthusiasm that there was now a tighter coincidence between political and cultural power. ‘Nikias, son of Nikodemos, of the deme Xypete, dedicated this after being victorious with Kekropis in the boys’ contest (άνέθηκε νικήσας χορηγών Κεκροττίδι τταίδων). Pantaleon of Sikyon played the aulos. The song: the Elpenor of Timotheos. Neaikhmos was Arkhon.’

This inscription recording the fact high on the architrave of his monument (IG uses the verb νικάν with Nikias’ name in a novel act of epigraphic appropri­ ation. The innovation can surely be referred in part at least to the particular political and historical circumstances surrounding the victory. Here for the first time a Dionysian khoregos ascribes to himself the active role in winning; the phyle becomes the instrument of his victory. Also distinctive within the conventions of urban kho­ regic inscriptions is the use of the traditional verb of dedication, άνατίΟημι. Thrasyllos, in the same year, employs these same two innovations. Perhaps the scale of their two monuments offers a partial explanation for the verb, laying greater emphasis as it does on the act of dedication. Perhaps the expression has a slightly oldfashioned air.92 The rest of Nikias’inscription reflects special circumstances attending his victory. And it is the earliest evidence we have that, as with tragedy and comedy, a famous dithyramb could be accorded a repeat performance at the Dionysia. Timotheos of Miletos had been a great and controversial innovator in melic poetry in the latter part of the fifth century but had attained the status of a classic by the closing decades of the fourth — so much so as to be suitable matter for Athenian boys to perform.93 Euripides’ supposed consolation to the musical enfant terrible that ‘soon the audience will be at your feet’ ([Plu.] 795d) appears to have been true, if rather slow in becom­ ing so. This is the only extant khoregic inscription to cite the ‘song’ (άισμα) in this way, and its presence on the monument doubtless added to it the prestige born of respect which had helped Nikias secure victory in 320, in an age which created and vaunted fifth-century ‘classics’. What kind of performance a dithyramb of perhaps some ninety years’ antiquity would have been in 320 we can hardly guess. The auletes — Pantaleon of Sikyon — will have been the vital custodian and transmitter of the clas­ sical tradition.94 We might speculate that Nikias himself had a say in choosing a classic rather than a contemporary dithyramb in this age of especially strong conservative tendencies.95 Nikias built his monument in what, on the available evidence, is a very unusual location (figure 9). It was to the west of the theatre, not far from its western parodos, and it is the only khoregic monument to have been identified in an area which must have been another highly effective place for display. This was guaranteed by its line of access to the theatre and its proximity to a staircase that led up to the peripatos, the important road which passed through the upper reaches of the theatre.96 Nikias perhaps deterred any potential rivals in this region by the sheer size of his building. Its foundations were a massive 16.68 X 11.79 metres, of a scale to invite comparison ii23O55)

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Fig. 15. a = the khoregic monument of Nikias (320/19 b.c.);

b = the Stoa of Eumenes (second century b.c.).

with the actual temple of Dionysos Eleuthereus, and larger than its older companion (figure 15). For all its extravagant scale, his monument shows architectural conser­ vatism, especially in comparison with a structure like that of Lysikrates. Nikias’ mon­ ument was in the shape of a fully free-standing hexastyle Doric temple: something which the spatial constraints on Tripodes probably made unrealisable there. It had a frontal portico and square cella (figure 16). Oriented slightly north of west, it had its back to the theatre, and there was an open space in front of it. Its columns were roughly five metres high. Some clever economy was shown in the materials used: poros limestone for the walls and triglyphs that would be painted blue; marble for the more visible columns, antae, architrave, metopes, cornices and pediments.97 Such economy is, of course, relative. This would have been a construction of enormous cost to be borne by a single individual: and to the known architecture itself we must add elements of more highly-worked sculpture, internal or external; perhaps interior painting. Just how this building presented its sponsor’s tripod is not known, but it cannot have stood on the pediment, which was too confined a space. Dinsmoor thinks that it was almost certainly placed in the cella’.98 The significance of this movement of the tripod from the exterior to the interior should not be missed. This was truly a temple to Nikias’ victory. As we have already seen, the great fifth-century general Nikias Nikeratou ‘whose name is derived from “victory”’ was a khoregos without peer. His khoregic dedica­ tions in Athens were evidently a notable landmark in their day and long after. The Platonic Sokrates refers familiarly to the tripods of Nikias and his brothers as ‘stand-

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Fig. 16. The khoregic monument of Nikias (320/19 b.c.): the reconstruction of Dinsmoor.

ing in a row in the Dionysion’ (Gorg. 472a), and Plutarch apparently saw ‘his temple in the Dionysion supporting khoregic tripods’ (ο τοϊς χορηγικοΐς τρίττοσιν υποκείμενος έν Διονύσου νεώς: Nikias 3.3)· There has been much energy expended in trying to relate the identified remains of the later Nikias’ monument to that of his famous homonym." The two should be dissociated, however. Their sponsors were probably not even related, and we who deal in fragments are prone to finding homo­ nyms excessively persuasive - almost as persuasive as the desire to have the substan­ tial remains of the khoregic monument of a famous fifth-century Athenian. Plutarch probably saw the monument of the elder Nikias and his brothers with their tripods aloft, and the fact that Plato does not specify just what kind of structure supported this row of tripods can count for little: his hearers did not need to be told.100 Plutarch described it as a ‘temple’, and we should add that testimony to the evidence for fifth­ century khoregic monuments on a large scale.

As Nikias built to the west of the theatre, his successful colleague in the men’s agon was taking over a unique site to the north and east of the theatre’s central axis. He may not have been able to match Nikias for sheer size, but he may have had the edge in location. A cave had appeared in the katatome when the upper reaches of the theatre-cavity were being dug out in the 340s.101 It was at the very top of the highest row of seats in the new upper tier beyond the diazoma, and commanded a position some thirty metres above the orkhestra from the sheer rock of the Akropolis itself. The top row of seats was actually interrupted to provide space for a small set of steps 229

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Fig. 17. The current state of the khoregic monument of Thrasyllos.

to the monument.102 Dionysos was fond of caves, and may well have found especially pleasing one which appeared suddenly in the region of his theatre. But as with all the other khoregic monuments that attain the size and shape of ‘naiskoi’, Dionysos had to share the honour of this place with his mortal hosts. The natural recess of the cave determined the general form of Thrasyllos’ mon­ ument: a distinct rectangular entrance (still visible: figure 17) was carved out of the 230

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rock and in front of it was fitted a facade consisting of three Doric pilasters, the central one slightly narrower than the outer two, resting on two steps, and supporting an epis­ tyle bearing the inscription (IG n23O56). This was in turn surmounted by a frieze adorned with eleven marble garlands carved in relief. It is generally assumed that the tripod was originally mounted, possibly on a further quadrangular base or stepped socle, above the centre of this frieze. It has long been held that the architectural inspiration for this unusual design is very likely to have been the south-west wing of the Propylaia of the Akropolis.103 Similarly, the monument of Nikias is thought to have been modelled on the central, hexastyle portico of the Propylaia. It is as though these two private fourth-century monuments are quoting the great classical work on the heights above them. In doing so, these khoregoi under the oligarchy as private individuals imitate at their own expense and for their own prestige one of the most glorious civic monuments of the demos, a building which, perhaps curiously to modern sensibility, occupied a place in civic rhetoric and ideology on a par with the Parthenon itself. Demosthenes waxes lyrical on a number of occasions on the inheritance of his age from the fifth-century demos of ‘immortal possessions . . . the beauty of the memorials set up in their honour — yonder Propylaia, the Parthenon, porticoes, dockyards. . .’ (Dem. 22.73).104 The architectural ‘quotation’ by khoregoi of this symbol of classical glory and supre­ macy is parallel to its citation by fourth-century orators as one of the great monu­ ments to which Athenians of the present should ‘look up’. However, if the two practices share a strand of nostalgic conservatism, they certainly part ways on the manner in which they seek to situate the present in relation to the past. It is one thing to try to imitate the ways of ‘the men who built the Propylaia and the Parthenon’ (Dem. 22.13); it is another altogether to do so by vying, as an individual, with their collective masterworks. The detailed reconstruction of Thrasyllos’monument is somewhat vague because we depend largely on descriptions and drawings made by Stuart and Revett and others who saw it in the eighteenth century.105 It was all but completely obliterated by Turkish bombardment in 1827, and even when ‘measured and delineated’ by Stuart and Revett, the monument was much changed (figure 18): in the first instance, by the additions made by Thrasyllos’ son, Thrasykles, some fifty years later. The space between the pilasters was at some point roughly blocked up, and later studies have argued that there were in the original design large doors with jambs of Hymettan marble (figure 19).106 The same examination found that the natural cave had to some degree been shaped by the builder into a small chamber, 6.2 X 1.7 m and about 6 m high. It was surely in here that Pausanias saw the Apollo and Artemis slaying the Niobids: very probably a painting or relief sculpture across the back, or around all the walls. Whether its imagery related in some way to the subject-matter of the dithy­ ramb sung by the men of Hippothontis we cannot say.107 This was composed by Karkidamos the Sotian, with aulos-music by Euios the Khalkidian. Once again the auletes was, it seems, a more prominent figure than the poet. Euios — an appropriately Dionysiac name for an auletes — has left more of a mark than Karkidamos. His name is associated with certain musical innovations, and he was one of the many Greek actors, musicians and dancers who performed at the massive wedding celebrations of Alexander and ninety-one other members of his court with women of the Persian aristocracy in Susa.108 Evidently a musician of some stature, his 231

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Fig. 18. The khoregic monument of Thrasyllos (320/19 b.c.), as seen by Stuart

and Revett, 1787.

close association with the (now dead) king certainly did not disqualify him from per­ formance in an Athens under Macedonian control. In 271/0, over thirty years after the reform of the khoregia, Thrasyllos’ son Thrasykles served as agonothetes for the Dionysia. He commemorated the occasion by adding an attic to his father’s monument, which principally consisted of two pedes­ tals on which to mount tripods and inscribe the following (IG n23o83):109 ό δήμος έχορήγει, Πυθάρατος ήρχεν.

ό δήμος έχορήγει, Πυθάρατος ήρχεν.

αγωνοθέτης Θρασυκλής Θρασύλλου Δεκελεεύς.

αγωνοθέτης Θρασυκλής Θρασύλλου Δεκελεεύς. Πανδιονίς άνδρών ένίκα.

Ίπποθωντις τταίδων ένίκα.

Θέων Θηβαίος ηύλει.

Νικοκλής Άμβρακιώτης ηύλει.

Πρόνομος Θηβαίος έδίδασκεν.

Λύσιππος’Αρκάς έδίδασκε.

This agonothetic inscription maintains the tradition of its khoregic predecessors in recording the names of victorious phylai, auletai and didaskaloi. But now both cate­ gories of dithyramb are inscribed on the same monument, since as agonothetes Thrasykles was in charge of organising both, and not personally involved in any formal competition.110 Thrasykles’ is a particularly expressive example of the familial ‘thésaurisation of kleos’ we have seen operating in the khoregic sphere. By this layer­ ing of the son’s achievements over the father’s victory, the khoregic monument becomes a treasure-house of the family’s public glory in the successful support of political khoroi over two generations. Thrasykles may have had the particular motiva232

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Fig. 19. The khoregic monument of Thrasyllos (320/19 B.C.): the reconstruction of Welter.

tion of deriving glory from connecting his service as agonothetes to the lavish display of personal wealth and competitive excellence by his father under the old system, especially if we endorse the traditional view of the agonothesia which sees it as in part calculated to put an end to the extravagance of khoregic monuments, ‘restricting [them] to simple memorials erected under public supervision’.111 Thrasykles may have to some extent circumvented this civic constraint by appeal to the altogether traditional and hardly objectionable value of generational continuity and familial solidarity. Thrasyllos’ khoregic monument in time had to share the dizzy heights under the

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Fig. 20. The current state of the theatre of Dionysos, viewed from the south, with the remains

of the khoregic monument of Thrasyllos visible as a dark square aperture above the top rows of seats. Note also the two high columns above this, which also very probably served as the bases of khoregic monuments.

bastion of the Akropolis with others: the two high Korinthian columns still standing on stepped bases behind and above it supported tripods, raised to a height not far short of the Akropolis itself (figure 20).112 Aiskhraios dedicated his silver-plated tripod ‘above the theatre’, and there are traces elsewhere in cavities of the katatome suggest­ ing that khoregoi sought to utilise this commanding location. It may have been here that, some time in the late fifth century, Andokides ‘set up his tripod on a high spot opposite the limestone Silenos’.113 It is becoming increasingly clear that monuments on a large scale were not excep­ tional. A number of other khoregic inscriptions survive on fragments of architraves or similar architectural members, and so imply monuments of considerable size and complexity. In the seventeenth century the French traveller Guillet de St Georges described a building in the immediate vicinity of Lysikrates’ monument of similar structure (circular, with a domed roof), which was known as the Lantern of Diogenes.114 Recent excavations in the region of Lysikrates’ monument have revealed the foundations of similar structures.115 While closer to the theatre, at the south-west corner of the Odeion, at the point where the road turns north to head for the eastern parodos, the remains of a monument have been found whose dimensions are second only to those of Nikias’. Its foundations measure approximately nm X 7.4m. This

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spot must have been a prime location for display. It was the point where the main southerly course of Tripodes ends, and the procession would have slowed down here before heading into the sanctuary, which lies directly ahead. No space on the exca­ vated north side of the road at this point is unoccupied by khoregic foundations. Crowds leaving the sanctuary would have this corner directly in front of them, and its khoregos seems to have taken full advantage of the site. His monument was in the shape of a stoa, adding yet another to the range of forms adopted by khoregoi, the roofed colonnade so well suited to the display of paintings and sculpture (figure 9 no. 7).116 It was not far from this spot, as he passed the entrance to the sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus one night in 415, that the informer against the Hermokopidai, Diokleides, claims to have seen large numbers of conspirators ‘coming down from the Odeion into the orkhestra’ (Andok. 1.38), and to have ‘crouched down between the column and the stele on which there is the general in bronze’. The topographi­ cal reference is of course casual, and demonstrates an assumed familiarity with the place and its monuments among his dikastic audience.117 The general in question is very probably Miltiades, and his presence here is a noteworthy indication of the way in which this area, crowded with khoregic monuments, was also regarded as espe­ cially suitable for the commemoration of other great civic benefactors. Their com­ memoration on the road leading to the theatre is analogous, at the spatial level, to the use of the moment just prior to the tragic agon for the ‘live’ proclamation of honours to the contemporary successors of such men. Although these grand structures do seem to proliferate in the later fourth century, one must avoid the danger of basing an analysis of the sociopolitical significance of khoregic monuments on a crude criterion of size. In the earlier decades of democ­ racy the erection of monuments by individuals to celebrate their successes seems to have been subject to considerably greater constraints. The fact that in the fourth century it could be claimed in a public court that the Athenians of the fifth had erected no statue of one of their number between the time of the tyrannicides and that of Konon illustrates how very hesitant the fifth-century demos was thought to have been in honouring even its greatest military and political benefactors in this way.118 Stories of the kind about the horrified demotic response to the suggestion that Perikles might pay for the construction of the Parthenon from his own private funds testify to a similar attitude towards monuments in the democratic city linked to a par­ ticular individual’s name. In Plutarch’s account, Perikles made the offer when accu­ sations that he was wasting public funds were levelled against him, adding that T will make the inscription of dedication in my own name’ (Per. 14.1). A lavish monument with an individual’s name cut on it was a matter of heightened political sensitivity in a democratic culture. The khoregic monument is the licensed version of the threat­ ened excessive, transgressive generosity of Plutarch’s Perikles. Even if they were gen­ erally on a smaller scale than some of their fourth-century successors, we should not underestimate the potential impact of the earlier khoregic monuments, whose purpose always hovered ambiguously between self-praise, collective celebration and religious dedication.

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Dramatic memorials Khoregic monuments erected in the city celebrating victories in drama won in the city remain elusive: put at its most extreme, we can say that there is no clear example of such a monument relating to the Great Dionysia in the material record.119 The reasons for this are bound to be complex. Some of these reasons, practical and ideo­ logical, I aired in Chapter Three. A closer look at all the evidence for specifically dra­ matic monuments in Attike as a whole shows that they did indeed exist; but reinforces all the same the somewhat surprisingly obscure place the memorialisation of dramatic victory apparently occupied in the city of Athens.120 The lack of a specific collective affiliation for drama to compare to the phyletic formation of dithyramb must be a factor of prime importance. This major organisa­ tional and ideological difference can be adduced to explain the difference in the award of prizes: with no tripod awarded to dramatic khoregoi, and apparently no prize at all of material durability, dramatic commemoration took on more diverse forms, whose remains are harder to identify because they are not as formulaic as those for dithy­ ramb. And they were perhaps often less durable than the weighty bases needed to support the great tripod. But I shall also suggest that we may need to look to the nature of the dramatic agones themselves. There may be a sense in which it was con­ sidered rather more difficult to make the shift from representation to civic reality and permanent record in the case of tragedy and comedy. The khoregic monument of Sosikrates the bronze-merchant, Stratonikos and the Arkhon Basileus Onesippos certainly does record victories (of tragedy and comedy) won in the city, but at the Lenaia (figure I).121 That it is an unusual monument in its form (a herm), in its location (the Agora) and in the circumstances of its erection (possibly during the arkhonship, and by the Arkhon), is clear. But since it is the only surviving example of its kind, we cannot say just how unusual it was in its time. As I pointed out above, the form of its inscription presents it very much with the quality of an official record, a kind of small-scale victors’ list rather than an individual cele­ bration of agonistic successes. The strongest candidate for a surviving Dionysiac monument for drama is at best a remote and — significantly — rather oblique case (figure 21). It is an inscription added to the right-hand side of a monument designed to commemorate a victory with a khoros of boy pyrrhikhistai at the Great Panathenaia, probably that of 375/4 or 370/69. The remains of this second inscription, which is roughly contemporary with the first, records that the khoregos, a man from the deme Pallene, was victorious in an agon of the Dionysia in the City.122 The nature of the agon is lost, and the restoration of the boys’ dithyramb is far from certain. There is no sign of the dedication of a tripod nor of a phyle in the inscription. What may just possibly tie the victory to drama at the Dionysia are the five letters in the last line, of a slightly smaller size than the others: AMYMQ- (see the bottom image). Against Poursat’s restoration of ‘Amymon made this’ — which would constitute a virtually unique case of an artist’s signature on a khoregic monument — David Lewis aired the possibility of reading Amymone, as a reference to a play-title.123 The Danaid Amymone gave her name to Aiskhylos’ satyr-play with his Danaid trilogy, and in 364 a tragic Amymone by Nikomakhos came third at the Lenaia.124 There is enough space for the inclusion of

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Fig. 21. The remains of a fourth-century (c. 370 b.c.) khoregic monument for a victory in

pyrrhikhe at the Great Panathenaia, and for another victory at the City Dionysia.

further titles on this stone, and so it is just possible that this is the record of a tragic victory at the Great Dionysia, one in which the khoregos himself claimed the title of victor (eviKa).125 Even if it is, however, its secondary position on the side of a mon­ ument designed for the victory with the pyrrhikhistai makes of it a less than fully demonstrative statement. This was not a monument conceived as a record of tragic victory; it is one on whose back a tragic victory may have found a place. That dramatic khoregoi received no durable prize that lent itself to dedication has been taken as a sufficient explanation for the absence of dedications.126 But this is only an explanation deferred, since it is necessary to inquire further as to why the city might have chosen not to award its dramatic khoregoi with a more permanent prize. And furthermore, the absence of a prize comparable to the tripod would not in itself be reason enough for the absence of dedications: it was, after all, an ancient practice in the Greek world to commission ex voto dedications to adorn the sanctuaries of deities in whose honour success had been achieved.

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One of the most explicit pieces of evidence for classical practice among victori­ ous dramatic khoregoi is the statement of the speaker of Lysias 21 (§4) that after a victory with a comic khoros in 402, he dedicated the σκευή - how or where he does not say, but it is an act which he explicitly reckons as part of the 1,600 dr. he had spent on the khoregia as a whole. In the context of choral performance, σκευή refers prin­ cipally to the costumes and masks of the khoreutai. But does the speaker mean by such a ‘dedication’ some form of less than permanent ‘adornment’ of the sanctuary or its environs with the actual costumes and masks of his victorious khoreutai, hung there for the pleasure of the god of costume and transformation, as for passers-by? Or do his words, as seems to be the case, imply that the cost of dedication was an item to be reckoned with among the expenses of his khoregia, and thus suggest rather that the dedication of the gear was effected by its transformation into another form first? The well-known honorary decree from the deme of Aixone shows that garlands — and masks — could be turned into marble to create an enduring record of theatrical victory and of its more ephemeral materials, and this process of petrification was clearly one means which dramatic khoregoi could adopt (figure 22).127 Terracotta, bronze, even painted wooden tablets are possible alternative materials for such a process of trans­ formation of the theatrical equipment, and it is in these rather more varied — and rather less durable — plastic media that dramatic khoregoi may often have created their memorials. In fact, both the less and the more permanent forms of such memorialisation seem to have been employed. The difference between the two may have been principally a matter of development over time from the simpler to the more elaborate type; but it is perhaps as likely to be due to the relative enthusiasm of khoregoi.128 A character in Aristophanes’ Geras, a visitor recently arrived in Athens, asks for directions to the Dionysion. The reply locates the sanctuary by the practice of dedi­ cating frightening masks there: ‘It’s where the mormolykeia are hung up’ (130 K—A, c. 420?). These ‘bogey-faces’ are the grotesques of comedy and perhaps the more ter­ rifying faces of tragedy, set up there by their khoregos, at least in the case of the choral masks.129 Their eerie presence in the sanctuary of Dionysos can serve, at least in a comic vision of Athens, to define it to a stranger. Another comic trace of the prac­ tice was divined by Webster in Kratinos’ Seriphioi (218 K—A), in a mythological and theatrical environment which may extract great metatheatrical potential not only from the epinikian practice of suspending actual gear in the sanctuary, but also from the custom of petrifying it first. Instructions to ‘raise up the brikeloi [another kind of tragic mask] here’ may, in the context of the story of Perseus, play on the transfor­ mation of the Seriphians into stone by the hero, who thus returns with stone ‘masks’ (prosopeia) ‘which he dedicates as a sign of his own victory and an omen for Kratinos’ victory’.130 Though speculative, this interpretation is very attractive. And if the Seriphians formed the khoros of the play (as, judging from its title, they may well have), the metatheatrical allusion may have been precisely to the familiar habit of khoregoi dedicating stone representations of the masks of their khoreutai, rather than those of actors. Another early fifth-century text of relevance to this practice is Aiskhylos’ satyr­ play Theoroi or Isthmiastai. In the first part of the fascinating if tantalisingly obscure long fragment of this work surviving from papyrus (78a Radt), the satyr-khoros is absorbed in fascinated admiration for the images (εΐκούς, ι; είδωλον, 5) of themselves with which they have been presented, and with which they proceed to regale the god, 238

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Fig. 22. A monument from the Attic deme of Aixone honouring two khoregoi for comedy at

the local Dionysia (probably c. 313 b.c.), with a relief of Dionysos and satyr cup-bearer and, above, five comic masks.

Poseidon at the Isthmos: T bring this offering to the god to ornament his house, my lovely votive picture’ (11-12, cf. 19—21). The satyric ‘invention’ here is perhaps not simply that of the practice of adding terrifying antefixes to the cornices of temples.131 It may also allude to the practice of suspending theatrical masks — here of satyrs - at

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Fig. 23. A late fifth-century fragment of an Attic volute-krater showing masks hanging

beside columns in a Dionysiac environment.

the end of a (successful) performance. In the world of Aiskhylos’ satyr-play, this ‘new’ form of dedication seems to be of a part with the satyrs’ turning away from Dionysos, to practice athletics instead (2çff., 63ff.). The shift is marked by the fact that it is their new master, Poseidon, who receives the dedication, not Dionysos. The satyrs have ‘hung up their (theatrical) masks’, they have abandoned the Dionysiac world and ded­ icated themselves to Poseidon. And when Dionysos rebukes them for this, his remark that they are ‘wasting my money’ (χρήματα φθειρών έμά, 35) has a curiously ‘khoregic’ ring to it. If the satyrs’ very first suspension of their ‘masks’ from the temple in some sense acts as an aetiology for the practices of dedication after service in a Dionysian khoros, it seems in this scene of the Theoroi to represent an end of that service altogether. But had more of the work survived we would doubtless see that their defection to athletics was temporary. Iconographie material has been found to support the literary testimony for this practice. A fragment of a late fifth-century Attic volute-krater found in Samothrace (figure 23) shows, on one side, Dionysos on a couch, with two columns in the space above his head. Between the capitals of these hangs a mask with short hair, probably of a male, and to the left of the left-hand column, a long-haired female mask. These are to all appearances theatrical masks, probably tragic, and they are very close in date to Lysias 21.132 It would be pressing the iconographie register with demands for an excessively concrete level of reference to insist that these columns necessarily repre­ sent either a particular part of the sanctuary of Dionysos or the bases of khoregic monuments, but the general dedicatory environment is clear enough.133 The practices of theatrical dedication are represented at one remove in these lit­ erary and iconographie sources, in the comic and satyric performances which gave rise to them and on the utensils of the symposion probably designed to assist in their 240

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Fig. 24. The remains of a khoregic monument for drama from the Attic deme of Ikarion.

celebration. But we have at least one clear material example of the skeue of a dramatic — possibly a tragic — performance having been commemorated in stone at the expense of a khoregos. It is a large fragment of relief carving from the deme of Ikarion (figure 24), and so probably relates to local performances, not urban.134 The preserved part shows most of four masks, three of which Green identifies as Papposilenos, a king and a satyr. The fourth (bottom left-hand) is the most worn, but may be an old woman. The performance of satyr-play in the demes is not more clearly attested than this, but is not improbable in itself.135 But whatever the masks are intended to repre­ sent, their diversity makes them unlikely to be khoreutai. We thus seem to have a kho­ regos commemorating a performance through a representation of actors’, rather than (or in addition to) choral, masks. The differentiation between the spheres of respon­ sibility for khoros and actors that we have observed in the city may well have been more blurred, if indeed it existed at all, in the deme context.136 What distinguishes this most strikingly from comparable remains is the presence on the epistyle above the relief of a fragmentary inscription, incised on a stone taenia: ‘------- ]o was khore­ gos’.137 Many other remains with theatrical and more generally Dionysiac associations may well derive from khoregic memorials, especially when their find-spots are in and around the theatre and sanctuary. The needs of khoregic memorialisation may indeed have been one of the principal motivating forces behind the production of much theatre-related ‘art’. Unfortunately only in a limited number of cases are the physi­ cal remains accompanied by inscriptions which explicitly identify their origins as the creations of khoregoi. Important candidates for consideration as the remnants of khoregic memorials, although they lack such inscription, are the two reliefs of comic khoroi from the third quarter of the fourth century which were found in the Agora. The fact that, well into the fourth century, comedy is here identified and memorialised principally by 241

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reference to its khoreutai must raise some doubts about the familiar account of the decline of the fourth-century khoros, as it certainly testifies to its continued conceptual centrality.138 Another example is a marble relief with six masks which was found in the area of the theatre of Dionysos, and so is more likely to have been a memorial to an urban victory.139 The masks are generally regarded as tragic, and seem to represent an old bearded man, a young man and four young women: a khoros of parthenoi as well as actors? Although the Ikarian mask-relief was very clearly a khoregic dedication, we are on less firm ground with this piece. It has been suggested that this fragment may survive from a monument dedicated by actors rather than a khoregos, and this is a period when such alternative - perhaps rival - forms of self-memorialisation by the acting community start to become prominent.140 But it is perhaps as likely to have been a khoregic dedication (note the continued representation of the khoros, if that indeed is what the young women are meant to be), one in which the khoregos dedi­ cated in permanent form the skeue of the entire performing group. One form of monument which the literary tradition significantly attests for dra­ matic khoregoi is the pinax. Themistokles is said to have employed a pinax for the com­ memoration of his tragic victory with Phrynikhos in 476, and one Thrasippos for his comic victory with Ekphantides. That the khoregiai of both dramatic genres are recorded as being memorialised through pinakes in their early days is striking. I have already discussed the comic case in connection with ‘khoregic performance’, and argued that the khoregos Thrasippos was probably depicted on his pinax playing the aulos for his own khoros. The presence of an auletes with the khoros on one of the Agora reliefs may give an idea of the sort of thing produced by Thrasippos many years earlier, if in a different medium. According to Plutarch, Themistokles’ pinax carried a formulaic khoregic inscription on it. Whether it also bore an image, and where it was suspended, we are not told. Plutarch’s language does not imply, as it sometimes does when he cites other inscriptions and monuments, that he has seen this pinax for himself.141 Thephwc is a tablet, generally of wood, clay or bronze, and it was associated pri­ marily with visual imagery, although it could include writing, or indeed have only written signs on it (the Greek ambivalence of ypdcpeiv indicates that the distinction was less radical). A pinax was often attached to an image of a deity, or some part of their sanctuary, or hung from sacred trees. The importance of the pinax as a surface for graphic representation is evident early and persists. As the sole component of a dedicatory memorial, a pinax would represent a much less substantial structure than the stone base needed to support a tripod, and is much less likely to have survived.142 It is possible that a khoregos might have attached a pinax to a more substantial piece of dedicatory work, a statue or group of statues, for instance, but there is no good evi­ dence for this. We are encouraged once more to consider why such a distinction in practice between the genres should have arisen. It should be added that very much grander claims have been advanced for the khoregic pinax. At the end of the last century, the dedicatory pinax of victorious kho­ regoi assumed a role of huge importance in the history of Greek art. In the fertile soil of the silence of our sources a theory took root: that the imagery on Attic vases which seemed to show tragic subjects derived from substantial pinakes dedicated by tragic khoregoi. The vase-iconography was assumed to be a more or less exact reproduction of the large-scale painting, and the images of both original and reproduction were

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assumed to depict a ‘scene’ from or a ‘summary’ of the contents of the victorious works.143 Two principal motives lie behind the genesis of this theory. On the one hand, there was the desire to recover lost tragedies: if even a small percentage of the Attic and South Italian vase-images with mythical scenes could be claimed to have such a clear and direct relation to particular, successful Attic tragedies, one came a few steps closer to recovering a store of lost treasures. On the other hand, art historians ever hankering after the entirely lost glories of Greek painting saw in this theory a route, however dim, to the masters of large-scale pictorial art. Vase-painting, that largely despised art, was thus given the virtue of concealing here and there copies of the mas­ terpieces which only men of the social, economic and cultural background of khore­ goi could have afforded to patronise. All of which rests on a chain of uneasy assumptions about the role of Greek art, artists and iconography, in addition to being based on virtually no solid evidence.144 It may well be that dramatic khoregoi did indeed regularly commission pictorial representations (in the form of pinakes, other painting or relief sculpture) relating to their victorious dramas. But the theory which conjures these from vase iconography should be treated with great caution. From the latter days of the classical khoregia we have the reference in Theophrastos to an equally insubstantial form of memorial for tragic victory, the ‘Illiberal’ man’s wooden tainia. This sketch begins with the statement: ‘“Illiberality” is a certain neglect of philotimia when it involves expense, and the illiberal man is the type who, when he has had a victory with tragedies, dedicates to Dionysos a tainia made of wood with his own name and no other inscribed on it’ (Character 22.1—2). Here again we see the transformation of the ephemeral into the more enduring, although in this case not to a degree deemed ‘proper’ for the occasion. The tainia was generally a light fabric ribbon or band tied around the head or body of a victor or beauty, or onto the prize symbolising his victory: a number of vases show tripods being garlanded with tainiai by winged Nikai.145 The tainia was not a prize in itself, rather it was a less formal, visual and physical sign of victory, and a thing of no material value:146 Alkibiades comes to the symposion in order to share the tainiai that cover his head with Agathon, to celebrate his success as a tragic poet and his beauty (Pl. Symp. 2I2e). This parody of khoregic dedication, written late in the fourth century, depends on the existence of a long tradition of the practice by which philotimoi khoregoi accu­ mulated in monumental form the symbolic capital won through their victories. The whole logic of this Character shows that the wooden tainia is a contemptibly mean monument, and the implicit expectation is in fact that a victory with tragedy deserves much more, that it was in this capacity that real philotimia might best be expressed. In commemorating his victory at tragedy, the ‘illiberal’ man excludes any mention of the other personnel responsible for it from its most enduring memorial. In this extreme and parodic case there is not even a mention of the poet. In this behaviour, mean in itself — wood compromising a future that marble might have secured and a nobility which gold would have offered — different strands of self-interest, the symbolic and the strictly economic, are at variance with one another. Just what an appropriately ‘liberal’ form of tragic commemoration would be, Theophrastos does not make clear. But the assumption that a tragic khoregos could choose from a range of dedicatory objects, media and epigraphic practices, is extremely interesting and important. It may

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well form part of the reason that the tragic khoregia was chosen as Theophrastos’ example here over the dithyrambic.

Remembering Dionysos in the demes If memorials erected by khoregoi to dramatic victories in the city remain elusive, by stark contrast they are relatively plentiful in the demes of Attike. The following survey of khoregic dedicatory practice in the demes is worthwhile in itself: the relation of the local to the central system is a matter of considerable interest, although it cannot be treated in detail here. And the analysis shows that any inhibitions there may have been in the urban context concerning dramatic dedication did not operate in the demes. Can the practice of demesmen be used to fill the gaps in our knowledge of urban practice? Or is there an essential and significant difference between the loca­ tions and their forms of Dionysiac worship? Khoregic monuments (as well as decrees honouring khoregoi) represent one of the most enduring signs of the collective life of the demes and, most significantly, they demonstrate a desire to lavish wealth on local theatrical activity, as well as to perpet­ uate its memory and that of its benefactors, in a manner directly comparable to prac­ tice in the city. Much of the evidence for the existence of the khoregia in the demes of Attike in fact consists of dramatic khoregic monuments. Of the twenty or so victory dedications identified with some security, sixteen certainly or very probably are for (or include) dramatic victories.147 And of a number of demes that have left little or no material record it can nevertheless be said that tragedy and/or comedy were presented at their Dionysia with khoregic support: the organised choral culture of the deme Dionysia was dominated by theatrical performance.148 The dithyrambic khoroi which loom so large on the horizon of the city’s choral culture are correspondingly less conspicuous, almost invisible. Dithyramb in the demes is found with some certainty only in fourth-century Akharnai (IG n23106) and as an innovation in the Peiraieus introduced in the later fourth century by Lykourgos. The two khoroi, one of boys and one of men, which a Theban who had been resi­ dent in Eleusis, Damasias son of Dionysios, was honoured for ‘preparing at his own expense’, and ‘giving specially to Demeter, the Ko re and Dionysos’ ‘so that the Dionysia might be exceedingly fair’, were not necessarily dithyrambic (though they were not dramatic either), and they were clearly an exceptional addition to the Eleusinian festival. This fact seems to provide part of the motivation for the very con­ siderable honours bestowed on Damasias who, I strongly suspect, was himself a musical expert, perhaps a refugee from the destruction of Thebes returning the favour of sanctuary offered him in Eleusis.149 His ‘students’ (paOr|Tai) showed the same orderly and philanthropic behaviour as their master towards the Eleusinians, and since this behaviour was concretely expressed in the preparation of these two khoroi, their ‘master’ was surely a khorodidaskalos, they his assistants, perhaps even khoreutai.150 Only one monument from outside the city, but from an area under Athenian control, certainly celebrates a dithyrambic victory (IG n23093, early fourth century), and that derives from the Dionysia held on the island of Salamis. The little we know about this festival suggests that it was of a very distinctive character. The Arkhon of

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Salamis, one of whose main duties was the organisation of this festival, was an appointee of the Athenian demos, and Salamis itself was not a deme, rather an Athenian possession occupied as — perhaps - a kleroukhy (from as early as the sixth century), and never integrated into Attike.151 Although we can say little about them, this special status of the place distinguishes the choral arrangements of the Dionysia on Salamis sharply from those in any deme. The Arkhon appointed by the Athenians himself appointed khoregoi, from whom we do not know, but Athenian land-owners on Salamis, and, more especially, those who chose to reside there, are the most likely candidates.152 The fact that IG ii23O93 adopts a khoregic inscription modelled directly on the type familiar from the city of Athens, in addition to the fact that a bronze tripod was the prize (or at least the object dedicated in this case), makes of the Salaminian khoregia a candidate for being an active Athenian transfer of its khoregic system beyond the city.153 Taylor has convincingly argued that the Salaminian Dionysia was one of the most important occasions through which the ‘unofficial demos’ of Athenians resident on the island (while registered in mainland demes) forged a sense of their rather special community identity — slightly apart from Attike, yet belonging to it, the home of Athenians yet never integrated into the deme system. The festival thus offers a strik­ ing instance of a local Dionysia within Attike but not based on the deme structure — indeed, one might well wonder whether the wealthy Salaminians investing in this fes­ tival also put their time and wealth into the Dionysia in their ‘official’ demes. That the Salaminian Dionysia existed at all is a clear sign, as Taylor points out, that the pop­ ulation was ‘a real community with a group identity’, since they all could go to the mainland to celebrate the festival if they wished.154 It would be interesting to know how many non-Salaminian Athenians attended this Dionysia. The physical marginal­ ity of the island would have presented some but hardly an insuperable impediment to attendance; the extremely local character of the festival may have made of it a rather more ‘closed’ affair. Reflection on the specific nature of the one event testified for this early fourth­ century Dionysia — the boys’ dithyramb — reinforces this image. The programme may, of course, have been more extensive than this. It is quite likely to have had other cat­ egories of performance, although drama is only in evidence much later, in the second century. And the performance is recorded only by a lucky find of a victor’s monu­ ment. But that ‘boys’ khoroi' exist at all in such a context is very suggestive, especially given the signs of parallel practices in their commemoration on Salamis and in Athens. For such competition, even more than drama, is likely to have focussed on and helped mould the identities of its participants as members of the community. It is thus perhaps a little surprising to find it in what must have been a very small community on Salamis; and yet, if Taylor’s image of an ‘unofficial demos’ on the island with a sense of its own distinctiveness is right, the performance suits. It would be fascinat­ ing to know what subdivisions of the ‘unofficial’ demos competed in these choral teams. Dithyrambic agones for Dionysos outside the city thus have the appearance of being exceptional: it might not be going too far to say that the performance and memorialisation of dithyramb in Attike has a ‘centripetal’ quality. The demes may have offered a training ground for choral and poetic performance in the city, but the very prominence and scale of the Great Dionysian and Thargelian (to which one

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could add Panathenaic) kyklioi khoroi, with perhaps more than 1,600 Athenian men and boys in their circles each year, may have largely filled Attike s needs, and exhausted its resources. 1 As far as khoregic memorials are concerned, we are thus presented with a rough contrast: on the one hand, we find a large number of urban victories in dithyramb celebrated in the region of the Akropolis sanctuary (and in the Pythion to the south for the Thargelia), while in the demes there is little trace of dithyrambic performance or memorialisation. On the other hand, the material evidence for dramatic khoregic monuments from city victories erected in the city is nugatory, while it is (by compar­ ison) ample from the demes. Before considering whether there may be any significance to this pattern, and whether it is reasonable to use the deme monuments as evidence for the (largely lost) practice followed in the city, a few words are needed on the nature of the deme monuments themselves. The diversity of practice and the evidently tenacious maintenance of their inde­ pendent festival traditions by demes makes an affirmative response to the latter ques­ tion perilous. The patterns of festival organisation pursued by demes — so far as these can be divined — are so varied among themselves and in comparison with the city, that while institutional parallels and imitations can be detected, multiplicity prevails. Such evidence as there is for dramatic khoregic dedications in the city also implies diversity, as we have seen. Yet the fact that diversity characterises both is hardly of itself a compelling argument for shared traditions or direct influence. Where influence can plausibly be detected, as when rural khoregoi for tragedy dedicate tripods, it takes the form of the adoption of the dedicatory practice for dithyramb in the city by tragedy in the demes, but one can hardly put too much weight on such evidence. A complicating factor has been the difficulty of identifying the phenomenon of the khoregic dedication erected in the deme but celebrating an urban victory or vic­ tories. It is now relatively clear that this was an important potential use of khoregic prestige at the local level, and for the purposes of considering the memorialisation of urban dramatic victories, these might be regarded as especially significant evidence. The two most important instances are both from Anagyrous. One of these, the monument of Sokrates and his team of tragoidoi from the 430s (figure 6), has already been considered. The other is a ‘comic’ epigram of an unknown khoregos, dating from the second half of the fourth century (IG ii23 101). This deserves a brief discussion of its own. It takes the form of an epinikian epigram celebrating, it seems, two khoregic victories in comedy; it survives on a stone that was presumably erected in the theatre-region of Anagyrous, and was found in the church of All Saints near the modern town of Vari:

ήδυγέλωτι χορώι Διονύσια σύμ ττοτε έν[ίκων], μνημόσυνου δε θεώι νίκης τόδε δώρον [έθηκα], δήμωι μεν κόσμον, ζήλον ττατρί κισσοφο[ρονντι]τουδε δε ετι ττρότερος στεφανηφόρον ε[ίλον αγώνα]. I was once victorious at the Dionysia with a khoros of sweet laughter, and I have [set up] this gift to the god as a memorial of the victory — an adornment for the deme, and a spur to emulation for my father, crowned in ivy. Even before him156 did I [take] the crown-bearing [agon]. 246

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There are evidently two victories involved here — one of the ‘speaker’, which may have been won some little time past (ποτέ, i); and another, subsequent victory of his father (3—4). The monument then is perhaps best viewed as a record of the victories of both generations, erected not long after the second. But it looks back with a bois­ terous insistence to the earlier, and the monument effectively belongs to it.157 Although some believe that the description of the victory as an ‘adornment for the deme’ implies that it was won at a deme festival, Whitehead is surely right to argue that such honour can only have been won for the deme outside it, and he places this ‘in the small but significant tradition of choregic dedications by demesmen who pre­ ferred to advertise their urban successes not in the city but in their own demes’. The prestige of comic victory won in the city is exported back to the local sphere for the benefit of the family: this was ‘a success which in real terms was nothing to do with the deme at all. Whatever the kosmos for the Anagyrasioi as a whole in the achieve­ ments recorded on IG ii23 101, it was of necessity less than that for the individuals and the family whose ambitions and financial resources had brought them about.’158 The self-representation of the khoregos in this small poem is fascinating: in the first place, we see the by now familiar intimacy of the relation depicted between kho­ regos and his khoros. The khoregos’ victory was won with the khoros. Even in the later part of the fourth century, a victory of comedy in Athens can be described in this khoro-centric manner. Once again, the actors are sidelined; and not only the actors. There is not a whisper of the poet here, who, it might reasonably be suggested, deserves a mention of some sort in the lasting record of victory. This khoregos, whoever he was, has managed to appropriate the victory so totally as to push the komoidodidaskalos out of view altogether - no mean feat, if Aristophanes’ self-presen­ tation is anything to judge by.159 But what is most striking about this victory-epigram is the way in which it deploys the language and topoi of the performance it commemorates. The opening words — ήδυγέλωτι χορώι — are part of comic discourse’s own language of (meta­ theatrical) self-description. A passage of choral advice to the judges of the competi­ tion from the end of Aristophanes’ Ekklesiazousai (1156) calls upon ‘those who are having a nice laugh’ (τοϊς γελώσι δ' ήδέως) to ‘vote for me’, a stylisation of comedy’s function as to produce sweet laughter that was a part of the genre’s own self-descrip­ tion, even if it was not the preferred model of Aristophanes (cf. CEG 2.550). Even more intriguing is the particular narrative implied by this little poem. Here we have a son winning a victory as comic khoregos in the city, and that victory acts as a spur to his father to try - with success - to do the same: his head is now crowned with the victor’s ivy. The epigram goes to some trouble to underline the sequence of events, for the good reason that it is very much not in accordance with the norm, which dictates that sons should imitate the models set by their fathers. This is indeed a norm explicitly endorsed on another khoregic inscription, this time from a winner at the Panathenaia (as gymnasiarkhos and in euandria) and with a boys’ dithyrambic khoros at the Thargelia. In this rather more dour epigram we find the expected rela­ tionship: Tn displaying such models for his own sons, he leads them on to make greater efforts for excellence themselves.’160 In our comic epigram, however, it is the father who imitates the son, who follows the paradeigma set by him. Here we have a standard theme of comedy, most fully exploited in Aristophanes’ Wasps: the inversion of the norms expected of the generations.161 Our khoregos is playing Bdelykleon, who

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has to give his infantile, old father detailed instructions in adult life. As Philokleon announces to his fellow-syruposiasts: Tm not in charge of my own property yet; I am so young, and kept so very strict. My dear son looks after me . . .’ (1354—6). In this epigram life imitates comedy, as it deploys one of the central concerns of Attic comedy to the end of commemorating victories by a family who evidently elected to specialise in this particular type of choral leadership.162 As monuments, these two form an interesting pair: Sokrates’ with his unique choral roll-call on a square base that supported a statue of some kind; 3101 with its epigram that turned choral philotimia into a minor comic narrative and its self-con­ scious reference to its own improving effect on the deme. The fact that they bring with them to the deme a prestige born of city victory is vital to their conception and presentation. That it is the prestige of dramatic, and never of dithyrambic, victory, is striking. The phyletic affiliations of dithyramb made its prestige much less open to such transportation, and the flourishing life of drama in the demes made the prestige of a victory with drama in the urban centre a symbolically powerful commodity. Another possible candidate for membership in this category of dedication is an early fourth-century (c. 380) monument from Halai Aixonides (IG n2309i): a cylin­ drical marble base that supported a statue and whose inscription records two victo­ ries in comedy, followed by two in tragedy.163 In each case the dramas as well as the poet are named: Ekphantides’ Peirai, Kratinos’ Boukoloi, Timotheos’ Alkmeon and Alphesiboia, Sophokles’ Telepheia. For an origin in the city speak the illustriousness of the poets (although the force of this argument has rightly come to be seen as over­ rated) ; the fact of the multiple dramas presented by the tragedians (although there is no good reason to deny this to Rural Dionysia); and, perhaps, the probability that the monument commemorates victories won in the fifth century and was erected either later in life by the khoregoi themselves or by their descendants or deme.164 Such a retrospective action might be more credible if the victories had been won at the great city festivals, although if Halai Aixonides had been able to attract these poets itself, the events no doubt merited later commemoration. A further point that perhaps inclines slightly in favour of city victories is the fact that the khoregoi were in all four cases single victors. In demes khoregoi often operate in pairs. The two khoregoi, Epikhares and Thrasybolos, were doubtless demesmen of Halai Aixonides, and the very fact that they had such distinguished khoregic records in the city, in both dra­ matic genres, over a period of some years (perhaps as long as 457—406), was in itself quite sufficient motivation for erecting this monument.165 That there is no sign they were related puts this monument in a rather different category from those which collect multiple familial successes, and perhaps makes its erection by the deme itself a little more likely. It then becomes a catalogue of great victories won by demesmen in the city, a ‘treasury’ of demotic glory derived from urban dramatic successes. Generalisations on the basis of this evidence would obviously be reckless. That two of these monuments involved ‘big names’ on the poetic horizon of Athens (Euripides, Sophokles, Ekphantides, Kratinos) may be the work of chance; but it may reflect one of the more powerful motives behind this phenomenon. We cannot assert that the celebration of urban dramatic victories in the deme in any sense replaced urban celebration. Nor can we use such a tiny sample of very diverse monuments in any sense to reconstruct dedicatory practice: an essential quality of these monuments is that they reflect their erectors’ choice not to site them in the city.166 What we can say 248

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is simply that ‘taking the victory home’ to the deme was an important potential dynamic of dramatic khoregic prestige. As far as their form is concerned, this group of monuments cannot be significantly distinguished from their purely rural peers: great flexibility characterises both. Among the latter we find the relief sculpture of masks from Ikarion already mentioned; bases in a range of shapes — a high pillar; various quadrangular forms, sur­ mounted by a statue; by a tripod; or by a further column and crowning statue. One base records the dedication to Dionysos of ‘the statue and the [altar]’.167 The dedica­ tion of an altar would be unique in the khoregic context, and one wonders whether it and the statue may have been intended for cult use in the Dionysion. This is an environment in which the scale of participation can allow the individual khoregos to employ his wealth in a manner that has a much more significant impact on the overall cultic and festival life of the group in receipt of his largesse than would be the case in the vastly grander urban scene.168 I mentioned above that one of the khoregic monuments relating to Akharnai and recording three joint khoregoi was perhaps in the shape of a small building. If not, it was a very large rectangular base. There is one other very substantial rural monument, from Ikarion, a semi-circular, roofed building in the form of an exedra, over three metres high and nearly five metres long in its interior arc (figure 25).169 A bench ran along this interior curve of the monument; two antae supported the architrave which carried the inscription, and there was ornamentation on the roof — perhaps akroteria at the corners, and in the centre there seems to have been a small structure designed to house sculpture. The form of this monument is unique among all khoregic dedi­ cations, and it begins to compare in scale and ambition with some of the larger city monuments, although unlike them, interestingly, its shape and the presence of the internal bench may be thought to make of it a rather more ‘inviting’ and inclusive structure, for all its impressive size.170 Its three victorious dedicators, like those of another Ikarian monument (IG n23095), were almost certainly related, perhaps father and sons. It thus fits into the now familiar category of monuments displaying a family’s success and wealth, a type even more common in the rural than in the urban context. There is one clear sense in which rural khoregic dedications differ from their urban counterparts. The inscription on this unusual building in Ikarion demonstrates a phenomenon which is shared by a considerable proportion of rural monuments: they describe themselves as ‘dedications’ (αναθήματα) with a consistency and explicitness equal to that with which the urban monuments avoid the term. In roughly half the corpus of inscriptions the verb άνατίθημι is used with (IG n23094, 3096, 3101) or without (IG ι3909, ii23095, 3098, 3106, SEG 34 no. 174) an explicit reference to the recipient god, Dionysos, and it is probably to be restored in a number of the more fragmentary cases (e.g., IG n23io8 (but cf. SEG 31 no. 163), Thorikos ix no. 5). One hesitates to speak of the greater ‘religious feeling’ of the rural as opposed to the urban forms of dedication, of the closer integration of local drama in the worship of the god, but the difference in inscriptional practice is striking. And it is in keeping with this greater emphasis on the divinity in whose honour the victory was achieved that a rural khoregos could dedicate an altar or an image of the god as part of the return for his success. The point is perhaps that, in the local context, close patronal relations between rich, prominent individuals and the rest of the community are more easily seen as coextensive with and central to the fundamental promotion of local religious life.171 249

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Fig. 25. The semicircular khoregic monument of Hagnias, Xanthippos and Xanthides from the

Attic deme of Ikarion: reconstruction of Biers and Boyd.

What light if any might this not insubstantial portfolio of rural monuments cast on the principal issue with which I opened this discussion, the reasons for the lack of urban dramatic khoregic monuments from the record? The most important conclu­ sion, viewed from the urban centre, must be a negative one: it is crucial to recognise the degree of independence of the theatrical life of the demes, to see that they main­ tained their own traditions, their own systems of organisation. Their relations to the theatrical and choral life of the polis itself were complex, and certainly cannot be treated as nothing more than a simple case of analogy or imitation of the greater unit by the smaller. The deme khoregic arrangements served as a means for individuals, for families and for teams of demesmen not necessarily related to work together to garner pres­ tige and prominence of a completely local nature. They engaged in a competitive and culturally-affirmed deployment of wealth and skills, in a manner analogous to the city’s leitourgical system, but the monuments which have remained to their victories are perpetuating a form of glory which cannot simply be assimilated to that won in the city. It would involve an insensitive disregard of the particularity with which the Greeks tailored dedications and epinikian monuments to the needs of their particu­ lar circumstances to assume that Dionysian practice in the demes was a good guide 250

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to lost urban practice. And even if the demes were imitating urban practice, we should still be left with the perplexing need to explain why the urban dramatic models should have survived any less well than their rural counterparts, or than the fifty-odd exam­ ples of dithyrambic monuments in the city.172 This rather negative conclusion requires at least one major qualification. It is likely that some aspects of the means of commemoration in the enormously prestig­ ious city festivals were sometimes taken up in the deme context. But the one possible case that we can point to is particularly unilluminating on the matter of possible urban theatrical monuments. Indeed, it could be argued that, if indeed a borrowing, it implies the absence of a clearly identifiable theatrical idiom of commemoration in the city. For it seems to show demotic khoregoi for drama drawing on the dedicatory practices of dithyramb in the city. At least one dramatic khoregos for tragedy in the demes (Ikarion, IG n23099), and perhaps a second (Paiania, IG ii23 0 97), dedicated a tripod to commemorate their tragic victories.173 Both monuments date from around the middle of the fourth century — a time, in other words, at which the bronze tripod was well established in Athens as pre-eminently the prize and symbol of choral victory in the urban contests for dith­ yramb. It is possible that the tripod was awarded as a prize for tragedy in the deme of Ikarion.174 However, given the range of forms that commemorations took in Ikarion, evident even from so small a sample of (five) khoregic monuments, of a number of which at least it can be said with some certainty that a tripod was not dedicated, it seems much more likely that Mnesilokhos son of Mnesiphilos dedicated the tripod on his own initiative; and quite probable that he did so in imitation of the urban com­ petitions for dithyramb.175 It is perhaps pertinent that this unusual tripod dedication is that of a single khoregos, not of a team. Elsewhere in Athens, the tripod is predom­ inantly a prize awarded to a collective, or to an individual as the representative of that collective. Is the Ikarion tragic khoregos arrogating to himself the prestige of a prize object that normally in the choral culture of Attike has supra-individualistic associa­ tions? Rather than trying to make the deme material fill a gap in the urban record, the possibility should be aired that the apparent contrast between the khoregic practice of commemoration in the two is due to more than the simple fortunes of survival; that the difference may be significant, even complementary. Is there a sense in which drama and its commemoration are more ‘at home’ in the rural regions of Attike? If dithyramb in Athens — its performance and commemoration — is ‘centripetal’, is drama ‘centrifugal’? Such terms may be too vague to be of much use, but it is fair to say that tragedy retained a strong attachment, however symbolic, to the rural milieu from which myth and tradition asserted it derived.176 Dionysos chose Ikarion as the place of his first epiphany in Attike, and Ikarion was the home and first performance­ site of Thespis: like its god, tragedy itself came to the polis from the outside. It is not a question here of historical origins, but of representations of the past and an expres­ sion of its meaning in relation to present practice. The evidence of cult practice pro­ vided in particular by the sacrificial calendars of the demes shows that no other deity was as popular as Dionysos in the demes: ‘Far from distancing themselves from Dionysus, which is an attitude peculiar to myth rather than cult, the rural population of Attica appears to have been on excellent ritual terms with the god.’177 Even the myths associated with the ‘urban’ Dionysos, Dionysos Eleuthereus, and with the

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origins of his cult in the city, represent the god’s advent from the outskirts of Attike, and the resulting complex of ritual activities which constitute the historical City Dionysia have more the character of a reception of the visiting god rather than the provision of a permanent residency.178 Such an interpretation of the overt identification with tragedy in the demes with an eye on ritual and mythic representations would certainly not be inconsistent with the more ideologically-oriented analysis I offered above of the possible ‘difficulties’ involved in commemorating tragic khoregic victory in the city. To imagine that Dionysos’ presence as god of drama in the heart of the city is properly a transitory one, a special visitation, can be correlated with the fact that tragedy — and comedy — are ‘politically dangerous’ performances in a way that dithyramb seems never to have been. The concentration of tragedy in particular on the failure or dysfunction of political structures; on the momentary but seismic and destructive intrusion of the ‘outside’, of the ‘wild’, into the heart of home and city; on hostility between the spheres of the household and the polis, and especially on the destructive nature of the royal household; on the dangers of the pre-eminent individual - these are the­ matics that, from the point-of-view of the polis, demand that something of a cordon sanitaire be maintained around their presence, that they be managed by a certain confinement to a controlled, ‘special’ time and place. And here we might reflect again on the fact that the polis awarded no durable prize to the khoregoi of drama, to those principally responsible for its instantiation in the city. Might this, even as it speaks of the absence of a need to award such victors with anything more than the great pres­ tige of their victory, also imply a civic view according to which tragedy and comedy in the city are ‘meant’ to be more closed off from the rest of the life of the city, to be isolated in the special time of the City Dionysia? Such confinement will, however, have been opposed early on by khoregoi whose personal interests were served by per­ petuating their own victorious rôle in supporting the city’s drama: thus the practices of dedicating pinakes and skeue of which we hear. Yet these could reflect, by their somewhat ad hoc and transitory character, as well as by their apparent lack of a con­ sistent idiom, a practice of dedication which grew up in the absence of any that was officially directed or sanctioned.

The khoregos in ceramic Another medium in which khoregoi commemorated their victories is that of ceramic. Much Attic iconography that has been plausibly related to the world of the theatre and its choral contests should probably have its origins ascribed to the commission of the khoregos. In some cases the argument for a commission is based on the presence of imagery related to victory in a choral context, and the utensils of the symposion decorated in this way are to be imagined as having been designed to order to assist practically in the celebration of the victory, at the epinikia itself.179 The imagery of victory participates directly in its immediate celebration and serves as a more personal memorial of the occasion than the public monument, one that may well have formed part of the khoregos' ‘gift’ to the immediate circle of khoreutai. In other cases the presence of the khoregos has been detected within the image

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itself: ‘civilians’ within scenes otherwise populated by figures from the world of the theatre and myth are sometimes interpreted as khoregoi who have entered the iconographic realm. Such images, although in no way open to proof, are highly suggestive for the way in which they may constitute a visual code for the representation of the khoregos. One quite extraordinary krater from Apulia, which surfaced only in 1988, stands in a class of its own. It may well show us the figure of the khoregos — and, effectively, the institution of the khoregia itself — actively dramatised on the comic stage in a Greek city of fourth-century south Italy. In all but the last case, which proclaims its connection to khoregoi of some sort by the label ΧΟΡΗΓΟΣ over two of its figures, and excluding also the Attic amphora from Nola which unambiguously depicts a phyletic khoregic monument, there is little but plausible hypothesis to support the argument that these objects were pro­ duced at the will of khoregoi. The problematic series of questions around the circum­ stances of the production and intended use of Attic ceramic in general is hardly confined to this set of pieces, however. Indeed, their probable relation (whatever its precise nature) to a particular sphere of Attic culture — the dramatic festivals — gives them a more convincing explanatory context for their creation and use than many others. That victory in Athenian musical and athletic competitions was reflected in the imagery of Attic iconography is not in doubt. The great prize-amphorai awarded, full of olive oil, and with images of contestants on their exteriors, to victors in Panathenaic agones, are one of the most clear-cut uses of the famed Attic ceramic for the purposes of awarding agonistic success. In their case, the question of commis­ sioner is clear: it was the polis itself. And since they formed part of the prizes awarded in categories in which many competitors were non-Athenians, they exported the fame of Athena’s festival, and at the same time of her potters and painters, to all corners of the Greek world, and beyond.180 In the dramatic festivals of Athens the principal victors were predominantly Athenians: the phyletic divisions of the citizenry, khoregoi, tragic and comic poets. That phyletic victories generated ceramic with related imagery is beyond doubt. A fine example is the red-figure krater of the late fifth century signed by the potter Nikias, with his full patronymic and demotic (figure 26).181 On this, three compet­ itors in the torch-race wear a distinctive spiked headband associated with the race. The central one — the runner who ran the last course, or the phyletic hero? - stands beside and looks at a flaming altar, holding his burning torch above it as a winged Nike entwines a tainia around his other arm. His headband is inscribed ANTI OX, for the phyle Antiokhis. And it testifies to the sense of collective achievement character­ istic of phyletic events that the deme of this celebratory krater’s potter — Anaphlystos — was part of the phyle Antiokhis. An Antiokhid was called upon to provide the uten­ sils for the celebration of his own phyle’s success - presumably by the man in whose hands the responsibility and honour of achieving that success lay, the gymnasiarkhos.182 What trace have the hundreds of phyletic victories in khoreia left in this medium? The more public monuments to these victories show that success here was accompa­ nied by a powerful desire for commemorative display. Froning has assembled a sub­ stantial corpus of vases with imagery which plausibly relates to dithyrambic victories. In many of these the identifying iconographic sign is the prize-tripod, in the process of being dressed by Nikai, sometimes with dancers, musicians and satyrs around it; in

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Nifi. A