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 I M A G I N I N G T H E C H O RU S
I N AU G U S TA N P O E T RY

From archaic Sparta to classical Athens the chorus was a pervasive

feature of Greek social and cultural life. Until now, however, its recep-
tion in Roman literature and culture has been little appreciated. This
book examines how the chorus is reimagined in a brief but crucial
period in the history of Latin literature, the early Augustan period of
the 20s and teens bce. It argues that in the work of Horace, Virgil,
and Propertius, the language and imagery of the chorus articulate
some of their most pressing concerns surrounding social and liter-
ary belonging in a rapidly changing Roman world. By re-examining
seminal Roman texts such as Horace’s Odes and Virgil’s Aeneid from
this fresh perspective, the book connects the history of musical cul-
ture with Augustan poetry’s interrogation of fundamental questions
surrounding the relationship between individual and community,
poet and audience, performance and writing, Greek and Roman, and
tradition and innovation.

LAUREN CURTIS is Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Bard

College.
I M A G I N I N G T H E C H O RU S
I N AU G U S TA N P O E T RY

L AU R E N C U RT I S
Bard College, New York
 University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107188785
DOI: 10.1017/9781316986677
© Lauren Curtis 2017
This publication 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 published 2017
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
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ISBN 978-1-107-18878-5 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
 In loving memory of
George Curry Hall and Sarah Elizabeth Hall
 Contents

Acknowledgements page ix
A Note on Ancient Texts and Translations xi
List of Abbreviations xii

Introduction: The Chorus in the Augustan Imagination 1

Greek Chorus, Roman Chorus 2
Dancing with the Pen: Towards a Roman Choral Poetics 12
An Augustan Poetics 19
Intertextuality and Performance 25
Overview of this Book 29
1 Imagined Choruses from Alexandria to Rome 32
Callimachus’ Choral Voice 35
The Epic Chorus: Apollonius’ Argonautica 42
Choruses of Young Women in Hellenistic Poetry 52
Catullan Choreia 60
2 Dance and Desire in Propertius’ Elegies 71
Narratives of Performance in Propertius 1.3 75
Propertius 1.3: Choreia and a History of Elegy 78
The Dancing Body and the Unrolling Book: Beginning Propertius 2 87
Publica … Aura: Cynthia and Public Ritual Dance 94
Propertius 2.30: Cynthia and the Muses 101
3 Horace and the Erotics of the Lyric Chorus 108
Horace’s Lyric Women 110
Odes 2.12: Licymnia’s Lyric Choreia 114
Gyges Steps into the Chorus: Odes 2.5 123
4 Canon, Community, and Chorus 130
Choral Beginnings in Odes 1 and 3 132
Odes 2.19: Horace’s Choral Education 137
Reclaiming the Chorus in Propertius 3 139

vii
viii Table of Contents
Horace’s Carmen Saeculare: A Metaphor Made Real 149
Odes 4: Models for a Choral Community 158
5 Virgil’s Aeneid and the Relocation of Ritual 173
Relocating Ritual in the Lusus Troiae 175
Aeneas’ Nymphs and the Transformation of Tradition 184
The Salii of Arcadian Evander 195
6 Foundational Choreography in the Aeneid 199
Models of Choral Foundation in Dido’s Carthage 202
Choral Underworlds: Troy 209
Choral Underworlds: Elysium 215
Aeneas’ Shield and Cosmic Choreia 219
Dances of Death at the End of the Epic 227
Epilogue: ‘Now All the Earth Will Dance!’ 235

References 239
Index Locorum 260
General Index 263
 Acknowledgements

This book began its life as a PhD dissertation in the Department of the
Classics at Harvard University. My greatest debt is to Richard Tarrant and
Albert Henrichs, who nurtured the project from the beginning and under
whose generous, learned, and humane guidance it has undergone its many
transformations. As the book was going to press, Albert passed away. For
so many of us, his loss is incalculable. But it is an honour – and something
of a comfort – to acknowledge that his influence is felt on every page.
This is a book about community, and one of the greatest pleasures of
writing it has been the intellectual companionship I have been fortunate
to find along the way. At Harvard, Gregory Nagy and Richard Thomas
served as readers for the dissertation and gave many helpful suggestions,
for which I am grateful. Emma Dench and Leah Whittington helped me
frame my ideas at crucial moments, and Kathleen Coleman has been an
inspiration throughout. Thanks to Alison Keith and Harry Morgan for
discussion of Latin elegy and Roman dance, to Barbara Kowalzig, Pauline
LeVen, and Tim Power for many stimulating conversations about choreia,
and to Micah Myers, Nandini Pandey, John Schafer, and Tom Zanker,
who helped me improve many drafts. Audiences at the SCS, CAMWS,
CANE, Columbia University, the ENS de Lyon, and the Villa Vergiliana
have heard versions of several chapters, and much lively and helpful feed-
back has been incorporated. Zoa Alonso Fernández, Sarah McCallum, and
Naomi Weiss have been partners in this enterprise since it first tried to
become a book. Their careful reading and their constant ἑταιρεία have
been invaluable.
The final version of the book came into being at Bard College, where
I have found an intellectual community like no other. Special thanks
to my colleagues in Classics, particularly Carolyn Dewald and Daniel
Mendelsohn, who both read large parts of the manuscript with enor-
mous care. I am also grateful to Kate Laing and Alexa Murphy of the Bard

ix
x Acknowledgements
library for their assistance with bibliography, and my research assistant
Rachel Hodes.
The dissertation could not have been written without the support of a
Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, which enabled me to pursue my studies
in the USA, nor the unparalleled resources of Harvard’s Widener Library,
where most of the dissertation and then the book was written. I thank the
library’s staff for welcoming me back summer after summer and providing
a haven for the book’s completion.
At Cambridge University Press, my thanks go to Michael Sharp, the
production team, and the two anonymous readers whose detailed and
thoughtful reports have much improved the book. Needless to say, any
errors that remain are my own.
I owe a deep and lasting debt to the extraordinary teachers who have
inspired me to pursue ancient literature as a passion and as a profession.
Without Dorothy Woodman, my first and best teacher, I would never have
become a Classicist. Chris Pelling and Bill Allan were important mentors
during my undergraduate days at University College, Oxford, and it is a
pleasure to acknowledge the impact they have had on me.
Finally, the support of friends and family has made this project possible,
along with so much else. Warm thanks are owed to Andrea Flores, Alex
Guth, Andrew and Jen Johnson, Maisie Sather, Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and
Thomas Clay, Ann Whitehill, and Teresa Wu. My parents, Janet and Phil,
and my sister, Faye, have given me their unconditional support even when
my work took me further away than they could have anticipated. More
than anyone else, Rob Cioffi has sustained this book, and its author, with
generosity, love, and patience for many years.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, George Curry
Hall, and his sister, Sarah Elizabeth Hall. Proud, self-sufficient, and unsen-
timental, they always brushed off any attempt to express thanks. But with-
out their belief in the value of education, this book could never have been
written.
 A Note on Ancient Texts and Translations

Unless otherwise specified, I use the most recent Oxford Classical Text
for Greek and Latin authors, except for Callimachus (Pfeiffer), Horace
(Shackleton Bailey), and Theocritus (Gow 1952). All translations are
my own.

xi
 Abbreviations

Journals are abbreviated according to the conventions of L’Année

Philologique. Greek and Latin authors and works are abbreviated according
to the format of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Additional abbreviations
are given below.
ANRW Temporini, H. (ed.) (1972–) Aufstieg und Niedergang der römis-
chen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren
Forschung. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Baehrens Baehrens, E. (ed.) (1880) Sexti Propertii Elegiarum Libri IV.
Leipzig: Teubner.
Barber Barber, E. A. (ed.) (1960, 2nd edn) Sexti Properti Carmina.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Briscoe Briscoe, J. (ed.) (1998) Valeri Maximi Factorum et Dictorum
Memorabilium Libri IX. Stuttgart: Teubner. 2 vols.
CA Powell, J. (ed.) (1925) Collectanea Alexandrina. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
CIL (1863–) Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin.
Coleman Coleman, K. (ed.) (2006) M. Valerii Martialis Liber
Spectaculorum. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ernout Ernout et al. (eds.) (1947) Histoire Naturelle, Pline l’Ancien.
Paris: Belles Lettres.
EV (1984–91) Enciclopedia virgiliana. Rome: Istituto della
Enciclopedia italiana.
Fedeli Fedeli, P. (ed.) (1984) Sexti Properti Elegiarum Libri IV.
Stuttgart: Teubner.
FGrH Jacoby, F. (ed.) (1923–58) Die Fragmente der griechischen
Historiker. Leiden: Brill.
Georgii Georgii, H. (ed.) (1905–6) Tiberi Claudi Donati ad Tiberium
Claudium Maximum Donatianum Filium Suum Interpretationes
Vergilianae. Leipzig: Teubner.

xii
 List of Abbreviations xiii
Goold Goold, G. P. (ed.) (1990) Propertius, Elegies.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
G-P Gow, A. S. and Page, D. L. (eds.) (1965)
The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gow Gow, A. S. (ed.) (1952) Bucolici Graeci.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hansen Hansen, P. A. (ed.) (2005) Hesychii Alexandrini
Lexicon. III. ∏-Σ. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Helm Helm, R. (ed.) (1984) Hieronymi Chronicon.
Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. 2 vols.
Heyworth Heyworth, S. (ed.) (2007) Sexti Properti Elegiae.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ihm Ihm, M. (ed.) (1907) C. Suetoni Tranquilli Opera.
I. De Vita Caesarum: Libri VIII. Leipzig: Teubner.
IG (1873–) Inscriptiones Graecae. Berlin.
ILS Dessau, H. (ed.) (1892–1916) Inscriptiones Latinae
Selectae. Berlin: Weidmann. 3 vols.
Jacoby Jacoby, K. et al. (eds.) (1967–85, repr. of 1885–
1929 edn) Dionysii Halicarnasei Quae Exstant.
Stuttgart: Teubner. 6 vols.
Kannicht Kannicht, R. (ed.) (2004) Tragicorum Graecorum
Fragmenta. V. Euripides. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht. 2 vols.
Krenkel Krenkel, W. (ed.) (1970) Lucilius, Satiren.
Leiden: Brill. 2 vols.
LIMC (1981–2009) Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae
Classicae. Zurich: Artemis.
Lindsay Lindsay, W. M. (ed.) (1913) Sexti Pompei Festi De
Verborum Significatu Quae Supersunt cum Pauli
Epitome. Leipzig: Teubner.
Marshall Marshall, P. K. (ed.) (1991, 3rd edn) Cornelii
Nepotis Vitae cum Fragmentis. Stuttgart: Teubner.
Martini Martini, E. (ed.) (1896) Mythographi Graeci,
II.1.61–128 (Antoninus Liberalis). Leipzig:
Teubner.
Meyer Meyer, W. (ed.) (1874) Pomponii Porphyrionis
Commentarii in Q. Horatium Flaccum. Leipzig:
Teubner.
xiv List of Abbreviations
Morel Morel, W. (ed.) (1982, 2nd edn) Fragmenta Poetarum
Latinorum Epicorum et Lyricorum praeter Ennium et
Lucilium. Leipzig: Teubner.
Nachstädt Nachstädt, W. et al. (eds.) (1971) Plutarchus Moralia
II. Leipzig: Teubner.
OLD Glare, P. G. W. and Stray, C. (eds.) (2012, 2nd
edn) Oxford Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Pfeiffer Pfeiffer, R. (ed.) (1949–53) Callimachus. Oxford:
Clarendon Press. 2 vols.
PMG Page, D. L. (ed.) (1962) Poetae Melici Graeci. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
ROL Warmington, E. H. (ed.) (1935–40) Remains of Old
Latin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4 vols.
Santini Santini, C. (ed.) (1995) I frammenti di L. Cassio
Emina: Introduzione, testo, traduzione e commento.
Pisa: Edizioni ETS.
Scheid Scheid, J. (ed.) (1998) Commentarii Fratrum Arvalium
Qui Supersunt: Les copies épigraphiques des protocoles
annuels de la confrérie arvale (21 av.–304 ap. J.-C.).
Rome: École française de Rome.
Sens Sens. A. (ed.) (2011) Asclepiades of Samos: Epigrams
and Fragments. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shackleton Bailey Shackleton Bailey, D. R. (ed.) (1985) Q. Horati Flacci
Opera. Stuttgart: Teubner.
SH Lloyd-Jones, H. and Parsons, P. (eds.) (1983)
Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin/New York: De
Gruyter.
SIG Dittenberger, W. (ed.) (1915–24, 3rd edn) Sylloge
Inscriptionum Graecarum. Leipzig: Hirzel. 3 vols.
Skutsch Skutsch, O. (ed.) (1986, revd edn) The Annals of
Q. Ennius. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
S-M Snell, B. and Maehler, H. (eds.) (1987–9, 8th edn)
Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis. Leipzig: Teubner. 2
vols.
ThesCRA (2004–12) Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum.
Los Angeles, CA/Basel: Getty Publications.
 List of Abbreviations xv
T-H Thilo, G. and Hagen, S. (eds.) (1986 repr. of 1881–7 edn)
Servii Grammatici Qui Feruntur in Vergilii Carmina
Commentarii. Leipzig: Teubner. 3 vols.
TLL (1900–)Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Berlin: De Gruyter.
TRF Ribbeck, O. (ed.) (1871) Tragicorum Romanorum Fragmenta.
Leipzig: Teubner.
TrGF (1971–2004) Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
TrRF (2012–) Tragicorum Romanorum Fragmenta. Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
VE Thomas, R. and Ziolkowski, J. (eds.) (2014) The Virgil
Encyclopedia. Chichester/Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Vian et al. Vian, F. et al. (eds.) (1976–2006) Nonnus, Les Dionysiaques.
Paris: Belles Lettres.
Voigt Voigt, E.-M. (ed.) (1971) Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta.
Amsterdam: Athenaeum.
Wessner Wessner, P. (ed.) (1902–8) Aeli Donati Quod Fertur
Commentum Terenti. Accedunt Eugraphi Commentum et
Scholia Bembina. Leipzig: Teubner. 3 vols.
West West. M. L. (ed.) (1989–92, 2nd edn) Iambi et Elegi Graeci.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2 vols.
 Introduction
The Chorus in the Augustan Imagination

For dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from a noble upbring-
ing: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words. Do I have to I add
that one must also be able to dance with the pen – that one must
learn to write?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols or
How to Philosophize with the Hammer

On 3 June 17 bce, Rome came together to witness a remarkable spec-

tacle. As the culmination of Augustus’ three-day ‘Saecular Games’ (Ludi
Saeculares), which had included Greek and Roman theatrical productions,
sacrifices, and prayers to welcome the dawn of a new age, a chorus of
twenty-seven boys and the same number of girls stood in the temple of
Apollo on the Palatine and performed a lyric hymn. Singing and danc-
ing through the sacred and civic centre of Rome, the same chorus took
to the Capitoline and performed their hymn again. Somewhere in the
crowd, or perhaps even directing the children’s song, the poet Horace
heard more than fifty young voices raise his Sapphic stanzas to the rafters
of the gods’ homes.
Horace’s innovative hymn blends archaic Roman carmina traditions
with Greek lyric elements that include its Sapphic metre, the hymnic form
of the paean, and a group of performers who characterize themselves at the
close of the song as ‘a chorus taught to speak the praise of Phoebus and
Diana’ (doctus et Phoebi chorus et Dianae / dicere laudes, 75–6). Horace’s
identity as poet hovers below the surface of these closing lines: he is the
unnamed figure who ‘taught’ the children to sing the gods’ praise. But the
sphragis chooses to foreground the performers rather than the poet, asking
the audience to view them as Roman inheritors of a Greek tradition that
embodies both musical and social harmony: the chorus.
This book stems, in part, from a desire to understand Horace’s Carmen
Saeculare not just within the traditions of Roman religion or Greek lyric,

1
2 Introduction
but also in the context of a literary landscape at Rome that was in the
process of redefining the relationship between performance and autho-
rial identity. It seeks to understand how Augustan poetry assimilates,
interprets, and reimagines the idea of the Greek chorus. I see the Carmen
Saeculare as the most radical and overt expression of an Augustan interest
in chorality, part of a wider trend in the poetry of this period towards res-
urrecting the chorus as a cultural and literary idea.
The central argument of the book is that during a brief but crucial period
of literary innovation at Rome in the 20s and teens bce, the idea of the chorus
becomes an active metaphor for the construction of a distinctively Augustan
poetics. Choreia, the notion of group ‘dance-song’, permeated ancient Greek
cultural, social, and political life. Through the continued performance and
spectatorship of choral genres such as tragedy, comedy, and lyric hymns
throughout the Greek world, individuals performed their place in society and
poets located their work within the history of tradition. Among the poets of
early Augustan Rome, the chorus is reinvented as a metaphor that articulates
and interrogates some of their own most pressing concerns surrounding social
and literary belonging in a rapidly changing Roman world.
The chorus’ traditionally civic, collective, and ritual character, as well as
its deep and hallowed history as a medium for the production of poetry,
allow it to become a space for Augustan poetry to probe the relationship
between individual and community, poet and audience, performance and
writing, Greek and Roman, tradition and innovation. By weaving an inter-
connected thread of poetic language around the idea of the chorus – what
I call an ‘Augustan choral poetics’ – Propertius, Horace, and Virgil pursue
and position this project as a self-reflective dialogue across genres.

Greek Chorus, Roman Chorus

The book as a whole, then, is concerned with the chorus as a cultural and
literary phenomenon. Individual sites of allusion to Greek authors will
be important too, since the chorus in Augustan poetry is often imagined
through detailed and specific allusions to Greek texts. But the idea of the
chorus qua chorus is the central focus of this study. What, then, does the
chorus mean for Greeks, for Romans, and for us?
The chorus was a fundamental part of the song culture of the Greek-
speaking world.1 It was practised (at least) from the time of the Homeric

1
On the term ‘song culture’, see Herington 1985. Overviews of Greek choreia include Webster 1970,
Mullen 1982: 3–89, Henrichs 1996a, and Calame 2001 (1977 edn rev. and trans.). Lawler 1964,
 Greek Chorus, Roman Chorus 3
poems and still thrived in Greece under the Roman Empire.2 Plato, whose
Laws represent one of the most important and extensive ancient discus-
sions of Greek choreia, gives its broadest and most inclusive definition:
‘choreia is the totality of dance and song’ (χορεία γε μὴν ὄρχησίς τε καὶ
ᾠδὴ τὸ σύνολόν ἐστιν, Leg. 654b). Thus, chorality expresses all the com-
ponents of what Greeks called mousike: music, dance, and song, which
were considered to be indissoluble parts of a whole musical experience.3
While the practice of choral dance-song varied widely across the Greek-
speaking world, two overarching features define the chorus as such: its con-
nection with ritual, and its association with social cohesion. Greek choreia
was inherently connected with the worship of the gods. In its dramatic
forms, centred primarily at Athens, the chorus was the centrepiece of the
three genres − tragedy, comedy, and satyr play − that anchored the dra-
matic festivals of Dionysus. Outside of drama, the ritual chorus tended to
be organized around types of religious utterance for the gods: for instance,
the paean, the dithyramb, wedding songs, and, more loosely, hymns.
The collective nature of the chorus can be seen at its most literal level
in the observation that choral dance is by definition a group activity.
There can never be a chorus of one; a group must come together to make
the dance through the harmony of their voice and the rhythm of their
bodies (dance that is not performed by the group is generally not called
choreia in Greek, but rather orchesis).4 This last fact is deeply connected
to the role and meaning of the chorus in Greek society. As the concord
of bodies and voices, the chorus represented and instantiated the collec-
tive nature and harmonious order of the community at large.5 Choruses
usually performed in a festival setting in which the community shared,
and often recounted and re-enacted, through their song and dance, their

Lonsdale 1993, and Naerebout 1997 focus on dance more generally; their discussions frequently
encompass the chorus. The recent essays in Murray and Wilson 2004 and Athanassaki and Bowie
2011 treat the chorus’ role in a range of social and cultural contexts. The contributions in Gagné and
Hopman 2013 focus on the tragic chorus with many points of connection to wider choral culture;
those in Billings, Budelmann, and Macintosh 2013 combine ancient choruses and their modern
reception.
2
On the continuation of Greek choral culture under the Roman Empire, see Bowie 2006.
3
Cf. a Roman inflection of this formulation, Servius ad Verg. G. 1.346 (T-H): ‘chorus’ proprie est coae-
vorum cantus atque saltatio (the ‘chorus’ is properly the song and dance of people of the same age
group).
4
On the distinction between choral and solo dance in Greek culture, see Olsen 2016.
5
On the chorus’ deep connection with the creation and maintenance of community, see esp. Bacon
1994–5: 11–20, Wilson 2003, and Kurke 2012. See Kurke 2007 on the social and ritual role of choruses
at Thebes, Kowalzig 2007 on the chorus as a social and economic force across the archaic and classi-
cal Mediterranean, and Stehle 1997 (chs. 1–3) on how choruses perform the gendered relations of a
community.
4 Introduction
mythical stories.6 Again, Plato puts it most strikingly when, in the same
passage of the Laws, he says that the gods gave humans the chorus and
therefore ‘joined them to each other’ (ἀλλήλοις συνείροντας, Leg. 654a). At
Oec. 8.3, Xenophon gives the chorus as the first in a series of analogies for
the kind of order that should also be found in a household:
ἔστι δ’ οὐδὲν οὕτως, ὦ γύναι, οὔτ’ εὔχρηστον οὔτε καλὸν ἀνθρώποις
ὡς τάξις. καὶ γὰρ χορὸς ἐξ ἀνθρώπων συγκείμενός ἐστιν· ἀλλ’ ὅταν μὲν
ποιῶσιν ὅ τι ἂν τύχῃ ἕκαστος, ταραχή τις φαίνεται καὶ θεᾶσθαι ἀτερπές,
ὅταν δὲ τεταγμένως ποιῶσι καὶ φθέγγωνται, ἅμα οἱ αὐτοὶ οὗτοι καὶ
ἀξιοθέατοι δοκοῦσιν εἶναι καὶ ἀξιάκουστοι.
There is nothing, wife, so useful and fine for mankind as order. For a cho-
rus is composed out of people, but whenever each one does what he likes,
then it appears simply as confusion and is unpleasant for the audience. But
whenever they compose themselves and give voice in an orderly fashion,
these same people seem at once worthy of being watched and heard.
According to Xenophon, the chorus’ harmonious music and movement is
a prime example of a community’s greater sense of order.7
As a mirror of society and a means by which its norms might be incul-
cated, the chorus was comprised of performers who represented the com-
munity’s hierarchies and distinctions. In archaic and classical Greece,
choruses tended to be comprised of citizens, not of professional danc-
ers; thus, the chorus literally put the community itself on stage.8 Second,
choruses in Greek myth, literature, and social practice were usually segre-
gated by age and gender. Choruses of young men and choruses of young
women, for instance, represented a particular segment of society when
they performed, highlighting the importance of the chorus as a collective
experience for them.9 Indeed, chorality and education were deeply inter-
twined in the Greek imagination, so much so that the Athenian in Plato’s
Laws asks, ‘So won’t we consider the uneducated man to be without choral

6
Nagy 1990 is fundamental on the chorus’ ritual re-enactment of myth through mimesis. Cognitive
approaches to performance have led to increased interest in the psychological means by which the
ancient chorus invites the audience’s identification and participation with the performers through
‘kinesthetic empathy’. See Olsen 2017, and Peponi 2012 on mousike and aesthetic response in Greece
more broadly.
7
As Wilson 2003: 165 notes, this ideal of the chorus as representative of social order remains in Greek
culture well into the Roman period. As Wilson puts it, ‘[the chorus] remained for centuries a major
cultural institution for social re-creation and reflection, particularly for reflection on issues of social
cohesion’.
8
Moreover, choregia was a public service at Athens, with the city’s wealthiest citizens subsidizing its
performance. On the changing role of the chorus and of the practice of choregia in Athenian drama,
see Wilson 2000.
9
See Calame 2001.
 Greek Chorus, Roman Chorus 5
training, and the educated man sufficiently chorus-trained?’ (οὐκοῦν ὁ
μὲν ἀπαίδευτος ἀχόρευτος ἡμῖν ἔσται, τὸν δὲ πεπαιδευμένον ἱκανῶς
κεχορευκότα θετέον; Leg. 654b). His interlocutor, Cleinias, fervently
agrees. In Greece, learning to join the chorus was equivalent to learning
to participate in the community and its values.10 This even goes as far as
equating the performance of choreia with the acquisition of civilization
at large. As Simon Goldhill memorably puts it, paraphrasing Plato, ‘no
chorus, no culture’.11
I have been talking about the chorus as a marker not just of culture, but
above all of Greek culture. Since this claim has great relevance to how the
chorus was understood by Roman authors, let me unpack it further. In an
analysis of the role of chorality in Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians,
Barbara Kowalzig points out that there is nothing uniquely Greek about
the practice of group song and dance. It was part of many ancient cultures,
including Hittite and Egyptian – and, as we will see in the next section, it
was part of Roman culture too.12 But crucially, in the Greek imagination
their choral culture, as I have characterized it above in the broadest of
strokes, was distinctive.
Herodotus, when describing festivals of Dionysus in Egypt, makes the
surprising statement that everything is just like in Greece, except that the
Egyptians have no choruses (Hdt. 2.48). As Kowalzig argues, Herodotus
makes this statement because of the Greek cultural values he attributes
to the chorus. Choruses for Dionysus, along with those for Apollo, were
associated most strongly with community and civic identity in Greece.
While Dionysus was in many ways a transcultural god, Herodotus may
be emphasizing here that this civic aspect of his character is not celebrated
in the same way in Egypt as in Greece. This, Herodotus hints, is because
of the different valences of its song culture, which did not emphasize, as
Greek choreia did, citizenship and participation.13
When, after the classical period, Greekness began to be performed
on a wider stage, the chorus became part of the practice and rhetoric
of Hellenicity. According to Plutarch, Alexander celebrated his return
from Egypt with choral festivals − both tragic choruses and dithyrambs

10
On the relationship between choreia and society in the Laws, see Prauscello 2014 and the contribu-
tions in Peponi 2013. Kowalzig 2004: 48–9 discusses how Plato’s choruses relate to those of Greek
polis religion.
11
Goldhill 2007: 48. Cf. the story in Polybius of how the Arcadians turned from savages into a civi-
lized society once they created choral institutions (Polyb. 4.20–1).
12
Kowalzig 2013: 181.
13
Kowalzig 2013: 181–2.
6 Introduction
(kuklioi khoroi) − in terms of a Greek, and specifically Athenian, choral
culture.14 Even more striking is how choreia is integrated into Alexander’s
discourse to Diogenes of Corinth, as reported by Plutarch, about his
mission of Greek cultural dominance in the East (De Alex. fort. 1.332a–b
Nachstädt):
εἰ μὴ τὰ βαρβαρικὰ τοῖς Ἑλληνικοῖς κεράσαι διενοούμην καὶ πᾶσαν ἤπειρον
ἐπιὼν ἐξημερῶσαι, καὶ πέρατα γῆς ἀνερευνῶν καὶ θαλάττης ὠκεανῷ
προσερεῖσαι Μακεδονίαν, καὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα σπεῖραι καὶ καταχέασθαι
γένους παντὸς εὐδικίαν καὶ εἰρήνην, οὐκ ἂν ἐν ἀπράκτῳ τρυφῶν ἐξουσίᾳ
καθήμην, ἀλλ’ ἐζήλουν ἂν τὴν Διογένους εὐτέλειαν. νῦν δὲ σύγγνωθι,
Διόγενες, Ἡρακλέα μιμοῦμαι καὶ Περσέα ζηλῶ, καὶ τὰ Διονύσου μετιὼν
ἴχνη, θεοῦ γενάρχου καὶ προπάτορος, βούλομαι πάλιν ἐν Ἰνδίᾳ νικῶντας
Ἕλληνας ἐγχορεῦσαι καὶ τοὺς ὑπὲρ Καύκασον ὀρείους καὶ ἀγρίους τῶν
βακχικῶν κώμων ἀναμνῆσαι.
If I did not intend to mix foreign things with Greek, and to civilize each
continent as I advance, and seeking out the furthest reaches of land and
sea, to set the boundaries of Macedonia by the Ocean, and to spread the
ways of Greece and shower its justice and peace on every nation – I would
not sit luxuriating in idle power, but I would strive to imitate the frugality
of Diogenes. But as it is, forgive me, Diogenes, that I imitate Heracles and
emulate Perseus, and following in the footsteps of Dionysus, my family’s
first founder and ancestor, I wish for the victorious Greeks to dance in cho-
ruses again in India, and remind the savage mountain people beyond the
Caucasus of Bacchic revels.
Alexander’s words are full of dance language. The dominance of Greek cul-
ture over the East is expressed as a choral gesture (ἐγχορεῦσαι). He reverses
the traditional mythological narrative, whereby Dionysiac choreia came to
Greece from the East, to express the chorus as the ultimate performance of
Greek civilization in Asia.
Under the Roman Empire, the chorus continued to be perceived as an
‘essentially Hellenic’ cultural form, even as the idea of being Greek was in
the process of being negotiated by different communities.15 It also inter-
sected with Roman power. The performance of Greek traditional choral
forms in honour of new Roman rulers can be seen very early in Greece’s
encounter with Rome: for instance, the establishment of a paean to be
performed by young girls in perpetuity for the Roman general Q. Titus
Flamininus attests to the new uses to which the cultural authority of Greek

14
Plut. Alex. 29.1–2. The imitation of Athenian practice is precise: the kings of Cyprus are made to
take the place of Athenian aristocrats, each sponsoring a chorus.
15
Bowie 2006: 61.
 Greek Chorus, Roman Chorus 7
choreia was put.16 Greek chorality in the service of empire continued down
into the imperial period; in the second century ce, the founding of new
choral cults by elites in Asia Minor demonstrates the new societal role of
Greek choral traditions.17
In the city of Rome, encounters with choruses were part of the city’s
cosmopolitan culture. The performance of Greek tragedy and its Roman
adaptations brought the chorus onstage.18 Pantomime, which is said to
have been invented during Augustus’ reign due to the princeps’ own encour-
agement, was an even more popular spectacle. Indeed, it has been argued
that pantomime was the primary means by which the mythological plots
and musical aesthetics of Greek tragedy were kept alive under the Roman
Empire.19 According to Jerome, when the star dancer Pylades brought pan-
tomime to Rome in the 20s bce his great innovation was to separate music
and dance, the previously indivisible components of the choral mousike
of Greek tragedy: ‘Pylades of Cilicia the pantomime, though earlier [per-
formers] sang and danced themselves, at Rome first made a chorus and
pipes accompany him’ (Pylades Cilex pantomimus, cum veteres ipsi caner-
ent atque saltarent, primus Romae chorum et fistulam sibi praecinere fecit).20
The virtuosic solo body of the star dancer now mutely enacted mythical
narratives, accompanied by musicians and large groups of singers. This
may not have been choreia as Plato imagined it, but it must have been an
extraordinary spectacle.21

16
The hymn is recorded at Plut. Flam. 16 = CA 173. On its Hellenistic context see Fantuzzi 2010: 182.
Cf. Melinno’s hymn to Rome (whose date is uncertain; see Bowra 1957), and the closing reference
to Roman prosperity at the end of Limenius’ inscribed paean and prosodion to Apollo at Delphi,
128 bce (Furley and Bremer 2001: no. 2.6.2).
17
See Goldhill 2001: 8–10. Whitmarsh 2013: 154–75 argues for a choral context for some of Mesomedes’
hymns, which he argues were composed as part of Hadrian’s imperial cult and invoked a ‘rhetoric
of community’ through their choral language and setting.
18
Following Hellenistic precedents, Roman comedy usually eliminated choral intermezzi and gave the
full purview of lyric song and dance to its protagonists (on the structuring role of dance in Roman
comedy, see Moore 2012: 121–34). Roman tragedy, on the other hand, appears to have retained the
chorus as an integrated feature of the drama (on the role of the chorus in Roman tragedy, see Hose
1998, Beacham 1992: 125, and Manuwald 2011: 74).
19
Hall 2008: 8. The study of ancient pantomime is growing rapidly. In addition to the contributions
in Hall and Wyles 2008, see the many articles by Jory (esp. 1981 and 2004 on the pantomime’s arrival
at Rome), Garelli-François 2007, Lada-Richards 2007, and Webb 2008. On Augustus’ relationship
with pantomime, see Querzoli 2006 and Hunt 2008.
20
Jer. Chron. 2.143 (Helm). Macrobius says that Pylades made a similar claim (Sat. 2.7.18). When
asked by Augustus what he had brought to the genre, he replied by quoting Iliad 10.13: αὐλῶν
συρίγγων τ’ ἐνοπὴν, ὅμαδόν τ’ ἀνθρώπων (The sound of the aulos and the syrinx, and the voice
of men). Like Jerome, Pylades in this anecdote puts emphasis on the great number of singing voices
(ὅμαδόν τ’ ἀνθρώπων) that accompanied his dance.
21
The Graeca scaena at Rome also displayed female choral stars such as Eucharis, whose funerary
inscription (CIL 1.1214 = CIL 6.10096) commemorates her as having ‘recently adorned the games
8 Introduction
It is no simple matter to determine the extent to which all this was
considered ‘Greek’ in a culture that was always already Hellenized. The
Latin words chorus and chorea translate Greek χορός and χορεία in an
apparently seamless transliteration. Yet it would be naïve to assume that
the meaning is stable across time, space, and language systems, let alone
that a Latin speaker would always be aware of the words’ Greek ori-
gins.22 Still, there is evidence that in the late Republic, the period just
prior to the poetic works on which this book will focus, there was – at
least for elite writers and audiences – something suspicious yet tanta-
lizing about the chorus, an attitude that was connected to an underly-
ing ambivalence about Greek musical and performance culture in the
Roman Republic.
We might start with Cornelius Nepos’ claim at the beginning of his Life
of Epaminondas (1.2 Marshall):
scimus enim musicen nostris moribus abesse a principis persona, saltare
vero etiam in vitiis poni: quae omnia apud Graecos et grata et laude digna
ducuntur.
We know that musical talent is, according to our customs, far removed from
the character of any major figure, and that dancing is indeed to be counted
among the vices. But all of these are considered among the Greeks both
pleasing and praiseworthy.
Music (musicen) and dance (saltare) were noble pursuits for the fourth-
century Greek general Epaminondas – a fact of which Nepos feels the
need to remind his Roman audience. In drawing attention to the different
cultural valences of music and dance in Greece and Rome, and remind-
ing his audience that they could be positive attributes, Nepos responds
to a strongly moralizing strain that runs through much late Republican

(ludi) of the nobles with choral dancing (choro), and appeared first for the public on the Greek stage
(graeca in scaena)’. Frascati 1997: 68–71 provides a text, commentary, bibliography, and image of
the inscription (plate 6, fig. 18). While the date of the inscription is controversial, its literary style
suggests that it is Augustan (Courtney 1995: 239). As for the nature of Eucharis’ performance, it is
sometimes said to be a mime (Leppin 1992: 236, Wiseman 1985: 34), but Starks 2008: 129 (following
Courtney 1995: 239) argues that she is better considered an early pantomime artist performing a
‘highly gesticulative, interpretative dance’. On female mime artists, see further Ch. 2.
22
A case in point is the shift in meaning between the words χορηγός and choragus. Greek χορηγός
refers to the leader of a chorus, while the Latin word that derives from it, first attested in Plautus
(Trin. 858; Persa 159), refers not to a choral performer, but rather designates a professional role
within the theatre business at Rome – the person who supplied a theatrical troupe with their stage
equipment. On the meaning of choragus and its associated noun choragium in Plautus, see Gilula
1996. This sense seems to have grown out of the specialized classical Athenian use of the term
χορηγός to refer to the persons who, thanks to their financial role, were instrumental in getting the
show on the road in practical terms.
 Greek Chorus, Roman Chorus 9
discourse about Greek mousike as a foreign and corrupting influence.23
Such a negative attitude towards dance is found in the speeches of Cicero.24
For instance, in his speech defending the consul-elect Murena, Cicero is
forced to confront allegations of his client’s disreputable behaviour in the
East, which the prosecution has framed as an accusation of being a ‘dancer’
(saltator). ‘No one dances sober, unless he is mad’, declares Cicero, calling
the accusation an ‘insult’ (maledictum, 13).
One might think that choral dancing, with its associations in Greek
culture of public, civic celebration rather than private, lascivious enter-
tainment, might escape such smears. However, later in the same speech
of Cicero, the chorus is used as a metaphor against Catiline: he is dis-
reputably ‘surrounded by a chorus of youths’ (stipatum choro iuventutis,
Mur. 49).25 In contrast to the sharp distinction that held between choral
and solo dance in Greek culture, Cicero’s insults, emanating from an elite
Roman perspective, suppress cultural nuance in the pursuit of negative
sterotyping.
In the fifth Philippic, Cicero uses similar but stronger language to cas-
tigate Antony. In a section that blames Antony for passing a judiciary law
that brings onto juries gamblers, exiles, rogues, and Graeculi (13–14) −
including people who did not know Latin! − he sums up the kind of people
Antony is selecting: ‘know that dancers, lyre-players, and indeed the whole
chorus of Antony’s debauchery have been thrown into the third panel of
jurors’ (saltatores, citharistas, totum denique comissationis Antonianae cho-
rum in tertiam decuriam iudicum scitote esse coniectum, 15). In addition to
tarring Antony with a general smear of Hellenism, through the language
of Greek performance culture, Cicero’s words evoke more specifically
Antony’s suspiciously flamboyant incorporation of Greek spectacle into
his public persona.26
These examples suggest that, if and when a speaker chooses, the chorus
in Latin can recall its Greek origins and associations, often for negative,

23
On elite Roman discourse surrounding dance, see Garelli-François 1995. On the connection made
during the Roman Republic between dancing and social crisis, see Corbeill 1996: 135–9. In this
vein, cf. Sallust’s comment that Sempronia played the lyre and danced (saltare) more elegantly than
a decent woman should (Cat. 25.2) and Scipio Africanus’ anxiety, reported by Macrobius, that the
dancing schools were attracting too many young Roman nobles (Sat. 3.14.6–8).
24
In addition to the passages cited here, ‘dance’ is used as a derogatory term at Cic. Cat. 2.23 (saltare),
Dom. 60 (saltator), Planc. 87 (saltator), Red. sen. 13 (calamistrati saltatoris), Pis. 22 (nudus … saltare;
saltatorium … orbem), Verr. 2.3.23 (saltare … nudus).
25
Ronconi 1953: 173 notes the deliberately foreign valence of the term chorus here.
26
Cf. Plut. Ant. 24 (Antony’s entry into Ephesus staged as a Dionysiac procession) and 56 (his carous-
ing on Samos with musicians, theatrical productions, and competitive χοροί).
10 Introduction
culturally stereotyped effect. That is, while it is not always a culturally
marked term, it carries such potential within it. Let us now approach this
markedness of the chorus from a different perspective, that of its relation-
ship with ‘native’ Roman performance culture. Despite the disavowals of
Nepos and Cicero, Rome itself possessed longstanding traditions of group
song and dance, analogous in many ways to Greek choreia, which were
considered indigenous to Italian culture. Indeed, such traditions under-
went a nativist revival under Augustus even as Hellenized performance
forms like pantomime were also being popularized.27
In Roman cult, group song and dance was associated most often with
male performance.28 The priestly college of the Salii, named for their
leaping dance (salire), danced through the streets of Rome clanging their
shields in military formation and singing the carmen saliare. So strongly
did the Salii’s performance represent Roman tradition that, as part of his
revival of ancient Roman practices, Augustus had his name inserted into
their hymn.29 Another priestly collegium, the Arval brethren, performed a
hymn that was accompanied by a three-step dance (tripudium) like that of
the Salii.30 A fascinating exception to this male-dominated Roman ritual
performance landscape is a series of episodes beginning in 207 bce, when
maiden song and dance was used to expiate a number of prodigies, and
for which Livius Andronicus was said to compose a hymn. As Livy records
it, the maidens (virgines) sang a hymn in procession to the temple of Juno
and also performed a rope dance: ‘passing a rope through their hands, the
maidens marched along, accompanying the sound of their voice with the
beating of their feet’ (per manus reste data virgines sonum vocis pulsu pedum
modulantes incesserunt, 27.37.14).31
27
Zorzetti 1991 draws attention to the shared ‘cultural morphology’ between early Roman song and
dance culture and archaic and classical Greek choral culture. Feeney 2016, which returns to the long-
standing question of early Roman literature’s Greek origins, unfortunately appeared too late for me
to take into account. Wille 1967: 187–202 is valuable on dance in Roman life, as is ThesCRA, which
devotes a short but helpful final section of its entry on ‘dance’ to the Roman world. Naerebout 2009
and Alonso Fernández 2011 emphasize the sheer range of evidence still to be taken into account.
28
On Roman ritual dance and the performance of masculinity, see Alonso Fernández 2016.
29
Res Gestae 10.1, Dio Cass. 51.20.1. Although viewed by many Roman writers as part of their indig-
enous dance culture, the dance of the Salii and other Roman military dances also had much in
common with the pyrrhiche, a Greek war dance. On Greek and Roman military dances, see further
pp. 175–84.
30
carmen descindentes tripodaverunt in verba haec (dividing up the song, they danced to these words,
CIL 6.02104 = Scheid 100a, line 32, 218 ce). Unlike the Salii, their performance took place in a
sacred grove rather than in public space. On the Arvals, see Scheid 1990.
31
As scholars have noticed (Wissowa 1912: 191, Gruen 1990: 86), the expiatory rite incorporates many
different elements including Greek ones, stemming from the Greek Sibylline books that provided
the rites’ instructions. The events of 207 bce set off a series of prodigies during the following cen-
tury, which were expiated in a similar way (MacBain 1982: 127–35 collects the evidence). In 200 bce,
 Greek Chorus, Roman Chorus 11
Were any of these traditions characterized by Romans as ‘choral’? The
answer seems to have been no. As we have seen and will continue to see
throughout this book, Latin certainly possessed a vocabulary for describ-
ing dance in the terms of Greek choreia, but this vocabulary does not tend
to be used by the surviving Latin authors of performances considered to
be part of a longstanding tradition of Roman religion. This suggests that
they were, crucially, imagined to be fundamentally different, even if they
may have actually been not dissimilar in practice. Verbs such as salire and
saltare, and phrases such as carmen canere − and not phrases involving the
words chorus and chorea − tended to be used of aspects of Roman perfor-
mance culture that a Greek observer might be forgiven for thinking had
something in common with Greek choreia.
It is instructive to briefly compare how authors writing in Greek and
Latin describe one of the most archetypal ‘Roman’ rites, the dance of the
Salii. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, whose antiquarian project involved
attributing Greek origins to Roman culture wherever possible, devotes a
lengthy section to the establishment of the Salii by Numa (Ant. Rom. 2.70).
His description of them is framed throughout in Greek terms, comparing
them explicitly to the Greek Curetes and even suggesting that their war
dance first originated with the Curetes’ dance. He describes their dance
in detail, and characterizes it repeatedly with choral language: the Salii are
χορευταί, and their dance is called variously χοροί, χορεία, and χορεῖαι.
To Dionysius, the dance of the Salii looks like the typically Greek prac-
tice of choreia, offering further proof of Rome’s deep affinity with Greek
culture.32
Dionysius’ Augustan contemporary, Livy, shares his antiquarian inter-
ests but has a completely different way of talking about the Salii (1.20).
Upon founding the collegium, Livy’s Numa orders the Salii to ‘go through
the city singing hymns with a three-step dance and solemn dancing’ (per
urbem ire canentes carmina cum tripudiis sollemnique saltatu iussit, 1.20.4–5).
Clearly Livy is bound to the language system of Latin rather than Greek,
but the Latin he chooses is archaizing and traditional, hinting through

P. Licinius Tegula composed the hymn, once again performed by twenty-seven maidens who pro-
ceeded through the streets of Rome to the temple of Juno (Livy 31.9–10). Maiden song and dance
may have existed also in Etruria, as shown by a tantalizing remark by Dionysius of Halicarnassus
about Falerii that sounds similar to what Livy describes: χοροί τε παρθένων ὑμνουσῶν τὴν θεὸν
ᾠδαῖς πατρίοις, (choruses of maidens hymn the goddess with ancestral hymns, 1.21.2 Jacoby).
32
On Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ writing of Roman history through a Greek lens, see Delcourt 2005.
Wiater 2011 discusses Dionysius’ historiographical strategy as a ‘testimony of his cultural identity’
(61). On Dionyius’ vocabulary, cf. Delcourt 2005: 227–39 who discusses how his Greek semantics of
power and kingship maps onto the Roman state he describes.
12 Introduction
his use of the terms tripudium and saltatus at the ancient etymology of
the Salii’s name from their ‘leaping’ dance (salire). Livy’s use of language
here is typical of other Roman writers on the Salii and on other dances
that were considered part of ancient Roman ritual: for instance, Varro also
derives the name of the Salii ‘from their dancing’ (ab salitando, Ling. 5.85).
Together, Dionysius and Livy show that the vocabulary of performance is
not an unmarked or purely descriptive set of terms, but can be used to cre-
ate a particular interpretation of cultural practice and origins.

Dancing with the Pen: Towards a Roman Choral Poetics

While Cicero was alert to the derogatory potential of Greek-style dance,
and Livy was eager to avoid it, Latin poets were deeply interested in the
poetic possibilities that arose from incorporating the chorus into their
work. In appropriating the language and imagery of the chorus, Roman
poets, particularly those of the Augustan age, made it part of their thor-
oughgoing exploration of Latin poetry’s place in relation to other poetic
traditions, especially those from the Greek world.
One of this book’s aims is to trace how a specially marked choral vocab-
ulary is created in Latin poetry, where it is used to make and remake a
Roman version of Greek choreia within its imagined worlds. It is to Latin
poetry’s reception and transfiguration of Greek choral language that I now
turn, sketching out a short history of what I call ‘Roman choral poetics’ as
a background to the book’s more detailed case studies of individual genres
and authors from the Augustan period.
The term is intended to sound incongruous. ‘Greek choral poetics’ is a
term widely used in the scholarship that has grown around Greek chorality
in the last half-century, spurred on in large part by the publication in 1977
of Claude Calame’s Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque. It refers
to a nexus of poetic language and imagery that is used in and about Greek
choral performance.33 More often than not, these are one and the same,
since much Greek choral poetry − whether dramatic lyric or non-dramatic
hymns − is intensely self-referential about its own performativity.34
To document and explore such a poetics in Greek is far from the pur-
pose of this book. A brief example, though, illustrates how central was

33
See e.g. Power 2011: 80–2 on the ‘choral poetics’ of Daedalus’ craftsmanship on the shield of Achilles
which, he argues, find reflexes in Pindar’s simultaneously choral and architectural keledones.
34
On the phenomenon of choral self-reference in drama, see Henrichs 1994–5, Bierl 2013. Weiss
(forthcoming 2018) is a full-length study of how the musical and especially choral imagery of trag-
edy interacts with plot and shapes audience response.
 Dancing with the Pen 13
self-referentiality to Greek choral poetics, and how differently this oper-
ates once performance exists, rather, in the reader’s imagination. In the
oldest surviving Greek choral poem, the seventh-century composition of
Alcman known as the ‘Louvre partheneion’, a chorus of young Spartan
women sing about two members who stand out from their group (Alcman
1.39–57 PMG):
ἐγὼν δ’ ἀείδω
Ἀγιδῶς τὸ φῶς· ὁρῶ
ϝ’ ὥτ’ ἄλιον, ὅνπερ ἇμιν
Ἀγιδὼ μαρτύρεται
φαίνην· ἐμὲ δ’ οὔτ’ ἐπαινῆν
οὔτε μωμήσθαι νιν ἁ κλεννὰ χοραγὸς
οὐδ’ ἁμῶς ἐῆι· δοκεῖ γὰρ ἤμεν αὔτα
ἐκπρεπὴς τὼς ὥπερ αἴτις
ἐν βοτοῖς στάσειεν ἵππον
παγὸν ἀεθλοφόρον καναχάποδα
τῶν ὑποπετριδίων ὀνείρων·
ἦ οὐχ ὁρῆις; ὁ μὲν κέλης
Ἐνετικός· ἁ δὲ χαίτα
τᾶς ἐμᾶς ἀνεψιᾶς
Ἁγησιχόρας ἐπανθεῖ
χρυσὸς [ὡ]ς ἀκήρατος·
τό τ’ ἀργύριον πρόσωπον,
διαφάδαν τί τοι λέγω;
Ἁγησιχόρα μὲν αὕτα·
I sing the light of Agido. I see her as the sun, which Agido witnesses to
shine upon us. The famous chorus leader does not allow us either to praise
or blame her. For she seems to us outstanding, as if someone set a prize-
winning horse with sounding hooves among the herds, a horse of dreams
under rocks. Don’t you see? That one is an Enetic horse; the hair of my
cousin Hagesichora blooms like pure gold. What should I say openly of her
silver face? This one is Hagesichora.

The chorus of maidens self-reflexively refer to their act of singing (ἐγὼν δ’

ἀείδω, 39) and to the dynamic of their choral group, which follows a leader
(ἁ κλεννὰ χοραγός, 44). This section of their lyric song is highly theatrical
and focused around a triangulation of viewing. They gaze upon their chorus
leader, explicitly describing their act of viewing (ὁρῶ, 40) and characterizing
the beauty of face, hair, and graceful movement in a series of arresting images
from the cosmic to the animalistic, floral, and metallurgic. Their language,
with its strongly deictic tone, constantly points out the central members of
their group (αὔτα, 45; αὕτα, 57; ὁ μέν … ἁ δέ, 50–1). They connect their
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the name
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572.12 by the celebrat[r/e]d Replaced.
Mayer
574.36 a distance fr[e/o]m each Replaced.
other
588.38 pour trois si[e/è]cles Replaced.
593.28 præsentes literæ Replaced.
pervener[I/]nt
597.8 in the laudable business Removed.
of[ of] writing
614.11 at dif[f]erent periods Inserted.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF
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