Dithyramb

By the time of Pindar and Bacchylides at the latest, the content of dithyramb was what it remained in Aristotle’s day, the whole body of Greek heroic myth. Although Aristotle neglects lyric poetry in the Poetics, he regards dithyramb as a mode of representation (mimesis) similar to epic, tragedy, and comedy (1447a14), and treats examples drawn from Timotheus’ dithyramb Scylla as equivalent to examples drawn from tragedy (1454a30-31 with Gudeman 1934, 276; 1461b30-32). This sort of conception and classification of dithyramb may go back to the fifth century and earlier.

Various sources, most but not all of them late, suggest that dithyramb and tragedy were seen as very close congeners. Some of this evidence has to do with the seventh-century citharode Arion of Methymna, described by Herodotus (1.23) as ‘‘the first man we know of to compose and name dithyramb and produce it at Corinth.’’ According to the Suda (a 3886 Adler) Arion ‘‘is said also to have been the inventor of the tragic mode (tragikou tropou) and the first to make the chorus stationary and to sing dithyramb and to give a name to what was sung by the chorus, and to introduce satyrs speaking in verse.’’ Proclus ( Chrestomathy 12) attributes to Aristotle the view that Arion was the founder of dithyramb and ‘‘first led the circular chorus [kuklios choros],’’ the latter a well-established alternative name for dithyramb. In the commentary of John the Deacon on Hermogenes (Rabe 1908, 150) we are told that ‘‘Arion of Methymna introduced the first performance of tragedy [tes de tragoidias proton drama], as Solon noted in his work entitled Elegies’

Other evidence has to do with choruses in honor of the Argive hero Adrastus. Herodotus (5.67) describes how Cleisthenes, tyrant of early sixth-century Sicyon, deprived Adrastus of honor: ‘‘besides worshipping Adrastus in other ways, the Sicyonians honored his sufferings with tragic choruses [tragikoisi choroisi], worshipping not Dionysus but Adrastus. Cleisthenes gave the choruses over to Dionysus and the balance of the rites to [the hero] Melanippus.'' It has been suggested that the tragikoi choroi of this passage are dithyrambs. As we have seen, dithyramb went by at least one other name, kuklios choros, which in the course of the fifth century became the more common term. If ‘‘tragic chorus’’ were an earlier equivalent of ‘‘circular chorus’’ as an alternative name for dithyramb, the evidence above would fall into place (cf. Burkert 1966, 96 n. 19). The ‘‘tragic mode’’ whose invention is attributed to Arion by the Suda is the tragic style in music under its technical name. Musical theory distinguished the tragic and dithyrambic modes, but confusion may have been caused bythe difference between the dithyramb ofArion and the ‘‘new dithyramb’’ that arose later, by Aristotle’s theory of the dithyrambic origin of tragedy, or by an equivalence of ‘‘tragic’’ and ‘‘dithyrambic’’ such as we are suggesting for Herodotus. John the Deacon’s statement may then be a simple misinterpretation of some such statement by (or attributed to) Solon as that Arion introduced ‘‘tragic choruses.’’ Herodotus’ phrase is unlikely to be his own coinage, and ‘‘tragic’’ may already have been in use as a description of content, ‘‘treating heroic myth,’’ as well as of form. The association of dithyramb with tragedy in the Athenian festivals would tend to reinforce such a use, as would the fact that dithyrambs like tragedies were given titles.1

The conception of dithyramb as ‘‘tragic’’ will have been the result of their common subject matter, heroic myth. Aristotle may then have had a terminological and conceptual prompt for his derivation of tragic drama from dithyramb that went beyond their association at the City Dionysia. He will also have been familiar with dithyrambs of the mimetic type represented for us by Bacchylides’ Theseus (18), which consisted of lyric dialogue between a soloist or leader singing as a figure from myth and the chorus singing as some group; the parallel with the actor and chorus of tragedy is evident. From every point of view, then - content, choral nature, institutional setting, mimetic element, and terminology - Aristotle’s association of dithyramb with tragedy was natural. Dithyramb was attested earlier than tragedy and, on his model of organic development, was its likeliest source.

A seventh-century testimony of dithyramb Aristotle must have known is a fragment of Archilochus (120 West): ‘‘I know how to lead off the fair song of lord Dionysus, the dithyramb, blitzed in my head with wine.’’ This passage will have interested Aristotle for a number of reasons. First, it associates dithyramb with a festival of Dionysus and so provides historical precedent for its connection with the City Dionysia at which it was performed alongside tragedy. Secondly, the verb ‘‘lead off’’ (exarxai) is the one Aristotle uses when he speaks of the origin of tragedy ‘‘from those leading [exarch-onton] the dithyramb’’; here is confirmation - or the source? - of Aristotle’s explanation of the emergence of the actor. Thirdly, the leader’s drunkenness implies an antic disposition, and finally the verse is trochaic tetrameter, the meter Aristotle says was characteristic of tragedy in its undignified, ‘‘satyric’’ phase. Is the passage itself a source - or the source - of his theory of ‘‘satyric’’ tragedy? We are speculating, but so it appears was Aristotle, and whether or not Archilochus’ verses prompted his line of speculation about tragedy’s ultimate origins, they will at least have seemed encouragingly congruent with it.