Literature and Ritual: Dithyramb, Paean, Lament, Humenaios

Who sings in everyday life, and why? And who sings and why in a play? Choruses generally have a reason for coming on stage: for instance, they respond to a plague that affects the city (Oedipus the King), or to the cries of a distraught woman (Medea). They often choose speech genres that could involve song in real life, such as songs for the gods, laments, or marriage songs.

Ritual songs generally involved choral singing, and Aristotle explained the presence of the chorus in tragedy by stating that the genre started ‘‘from the leaders of the dithyramb’’ {Poetics 1449a10-11). ‘‘Dithyramb,’’ an epithet of Dionysus, of uncertain meaning, designated a genre of choral lyric in honor of that god. In Athens, dithyrambs were performed as part of Dionysiac festivals, along with plays. Whether tragedy started from the leaders of the dithyramb is incapable of proof. Some scholars argue for a strong Dionysiac influence on the origins of tragedy, whereas others are skeptical {Pickard-Cambridge 1962, 89-97; Scullion 2002a, 102-10, with references). The genre of dithyramb underwent great changes in the fifth century {Pickard-Cambridge 1962, 1-59; Harvey 1955, 173; Zimmermann 1992; leranct 1997).

Paean, ‘‘Healer,’’ is an epithet of Apollo, and refers to a song performed by ‘‘men, often young men of military age,’’ and is associated with ‘‘the safety of the polis, with healing, and with controlled celebration’’ {Rutherford 2001, 6-7), as can be demonstrated in the extensive remains of Pindar’s paeans. Real-life performances of the paean took place on the battlefield and in the symposium. {For paeans in tragedy see the section on Seven against Thebes. )

The lament for the dead is often presented as a spontaneous reaction of the mourners {for example, at Euripides’ Hecuba 685, with references to Dionysiac loss of control). The lament was a formalized literary genre in archaic and classical Greece, practiced by Pindar and Simonides among others, and was at times performed as a civic ritual {Euripides, Suppliants 1114-64). The spontaneous lament is often called goos, in opposition to the formalized threnos, but the distinction is not absolute. The oscillation between spontaneity and formalized lament is already evident in the Iliad {see 19.301-2 and 24.720-76; on lament see Alexiou 1974; Battezzato 1995, 13781; Foley 2001, 19-55 and 145-71).

Another ritual genre that is taken up in tragedy is the wedding-song, or humenaios. There are few occasions for real, joyous celebration in tragedy, and the humenaios often makes a paradoxical appearance, either because the bride or bridegroom dies or because they are denied a proper wedding. In particular, the motif of ‘‘marriage to death’’ emerges as a frequent tragic theme {see Rehm 1994 and Panoussi, chapter 26 in this volume).