The village-drama tradition, at bottom pure invention, brings us closer to the question in what sense tragedy was a religious phenomenon, and we have finally to take account of a set of ancient scholarly notices that bring us face to face with that question. These are a variety of exegeses of the phrase ‘‘nothing to do with Dionysus,’’ which by the Hellenistic period had become a well-known proverbial saying. Similar accounts (with interesting variations) are given by Plutarch (Sympotic Matters 1.1.5, 615a), the Suda (o 806 Adler), and Zenobius, whom I quote:
‘‘Nothing to do with Dionysus’’: The adage is applied to those not saying the things appropriate to the subject. Because, the choruses from the beginning having been accustomed to sing dithyramb for Dionysus, the poets later abandoned this custom and set to work to write ‘‘Ajaxes’’ and ‘‘Centaurs’’; hence the spectators jeering said ‘‘nothing to do with Dionysus.’’ For this reason it later seemed to them best to introduce satyr-plays, that they might not seem to forget the god. (Zenobius 5.40, Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum I.137)
The explanation given is of course a guess at the origin of a preexisting phrase, which is far likelier to have been a straightforward observation about tragedy than a spontaneous and collective cry of protest (or an ironic question eliciting confident denial, as in the title of a collection of scholarly essays). We are unable to determine the source or original context of the observation, but since incomprehensible or idiosyncratic opinions do not become proverbial we can confidently conclude that the general view was that developed tragic drama had nothing to do with Dionysus. Everyone knew that tragedy was most commonly performed under the patronage of Dionysus, but that association must have been perceived as contingent, as it was clearly no obstacle to the view that there was nothing (essentially) Dionysiac about tragedy. The only recourse open to defenders of the Dionysiac essence of tragedy is the suggestion that the observation does not go back to Greeks of the classical period but to their Hellenistic descendants, who had lost a proper sense of the relationship between tragedy and Dionysus. There is the obvious possibility here that what Hellenistic Greeks lacked was not the classical understanding of tragedy but a modern understanding that owes far more to Romanticism and to Nietzsche (see Henrichs, chapter 28 in this volume) than to Aristotle or any other Greek.
It is the contingent link between Dionysus and tragedy that is important in Aristotle and the rest of the ancient tradition. The proverbial saying might be taken to imply that though tragedy had nothing to do with Dionysus it ought to have done, but that is not a necessary implication. The contingent association with Dionysus was manifest, and the proverb draws attention to the absence of any (concomitant but not necessary) essential association. Those generating stories of how the proverb originated posited a time when dithyramb or tragedy was all about Dionysus, but the observation that became proverbial has no such implication. The primeval Dionysiac tragedy in the ancient sources belongs to the neverland of aetiological conjecture, just as in modern scholarship the tragedy that undoubtedly has everything to do with Dionysus belongs to the neverland of reconstructed prehistory.
None of the ancient evidence we have quoted or cited attests a connection that goes beyond contingency between developed tragedy and Dionysus. Even Aristotle’s conjectural proto-tragedy is not essentially Dionysiac, though modern scholars persist in reading their own assumptions into the Poetics. In his account of the prehistory of tragedy Aristotle says nothing of ritual, cult, or cultic myth, nor does he so much as mention the god Dionysus. He manifestly regards developed tragedy as a genre of poetry comparable to epic, and there is nothing to suggest that in this respect he saw its pre - and proto-forms any differently. His almost total lack of interest in the chorus, which for modern scholars is the cultic core of tragedy, has often been noted (for example, by Halliwell 1986, 250). At least as early as the first half of the fifth century, dithyramb itself had ceased to be distinctively Dionysiac; its subject matter was myth in general, and it was performed in Athens at festivals of Apollo, Athena, Prometheus, and Hephaestus as well as Dionysus (Scullion 2002a, 127-28). Aristotle was specifically interested in its role at the Dionysiac dramatic festivals, but there is no reason to believe that he conceived the dithyramb performed there as non-contingently Dionysiac or as distinguishable in principle from Apolline or Promethean dithyramb. So too in the case of tragedy, which was also performed as early as the fifth century in theaters and at festivals of gods other than Dionysus (Scullion 2002a, 112-14).
What do we mean by a purely contingent association between tragedy and Dionysus? This issue is related to a more general question. Even if tragedy was sometimes performed in connection with gods other than Dionysus, it does after all seem always to have been performed under ‘‘religious’’ auspices. Even if it was not or not always specifically Dionysiac, then, was not tragedy at any rate a religious phenomenon? The easy answer is yes, but much - indeed everything - depends on what we mean by ‘‘religious.’’ We cannot go into this matter in anything like the detail it deserves, but it may be helpful to sketch a model of religious festivity that perhaps suits the dramatic festivals at Athens and other Greek festivals rather better than the model in general use today.
Tragoidia is sometimes figured on vases as a female follower of Dionysus - female not because tragedy is (say) inherently maenadic, but because tragoidia is a feminine noun. Greek tragedy was more often than not under the patronage of Dionysus, but in Delphi or Dion, for example, Tragoidia would just as naturally have been personified as a female follower of Apollo or Zeus. As an event common to the festivals of various gods, tragedy is comparable with other musical and athletic events. The prize-amphorae given to victors in contests at the Panathenaia festival in Athens depict Athena on one side and the particular event on the other. That does not mean that foot-racing or rhapsodic performance of Homer had a special or essential connection with the goddess Athena. Nor need it mean that they were experienced as ‘‘religious’’ phenomena in any strong or interesting sense.
A bit of amateur anthropology may not be out of place here. The paneguri ‘‘festival’’ in Greece today retains one of the names and perhaps also something of the spirit of ancient festivals. Paneguria routinely take place on ‘‘religious holidays’’ (as we must with etymological pleonasm put it) and sometimes in the vicinity of holy places, but the feasting, musical performance, and dancing that are their primary activities are practically and conceptually indistinguishable from the same activities on such other occasions as the giorte staphidas, ‘‘festival of the raisin-harvest,’’ or giorte krasiou, ‘‘festival of wine,’’ which are not religious holidays. The activities of the paneguri are traditional and are central to Hellenic identity, and so too is the orthodoxy that often provides the holiday occasion, but it is apparent that most people most of the time are wholly unaware of any distinction between feasting, music, and dance on orthodox holidays and on other occasions. If we were to speak of the whole complex as ‘‘religious’’ on the grounds that orthodoxy is a central component of the tradition and so cognate with the activities of the paneeguri, we would need to acknowledge that ‘‘religious’’ in that sense covers much that has nothing to do with orthodoxy as such, and that a term such as ‘‘national’’ or ‘‘ethnic’’ would be more appropriate. It may well be that when Greek tragedy was performed on the occasion of religious holidays, in Athens as often elsewhere at festivals of Dionysus, it was no more Dionysiac or religious than the musical performances of the paneguri at the festival of the Dormition of the Virgin are religious or Marian - or than athletic events at the Olympian or Pythian festival were religious, whether Jovian or Apollonian. Under the aspect of Greek ethnic identity orthodoxy and the paneguri are cognate, but the association of the paneguri on 15 August with the dormition of the virgin is thoroughly contingent.
These observations raise issues that go beyond the religious aspect of the origins of tragedy, which is our topic here, but it is important for our purposes not to misjudge or judge arbitrarily the role of festivals of Dionysus in the speculations about the origins of tragedy of Aristotle and his successors. The occasion of a festival event need not have any particular significance for its nature. The role of the Dionysia festival in Aristotle's history of tragedy does not make tragedy Dionysiac in the modern sense any more than the role of Gorgias in Aristotle's history of rhetoric means that he regarded rhetoric as an essentially Sicilian art. So too the advocates of primeval Attic tragedy were inventing a history that culminated comprehensibly in the City Dionysia, not presenting tragedy as unthinkable apart from Dionysus. No ancient writer speaks of tragedy as Dionysiac in the strong sense employed by modern scholars.
Aristotle knew very little about the origins of tragedy, and his successors, though bold in invention, knew no more. We can analyze their methods and contextualize or deconstruct their claims, but cannot know any more than they did. There is every reason to accept as sound Aristotle's view that epic was the key influence on the development of tragedy. We ought not to father on him the view that tragedy is a manifestation of the Dionysiac spirit and inconceivable without it; that view is nowhere expressed or entailed in the ancient discussion of the origin of tragedy. Modern scholars offer various other grounds for regarding tragedy as Dionysiac, but these lose much of their force if one concludes that the standard modern view is not in, but has been read into, Aristotle. Tragedies were performed at festivals on holidays, which were by origin holy days and certainly retained cultic components but, to judge from some of the plays, were certainly not occasions for the suppression of religious controversy and doubt. The question in what sense, if in any, tragedy is a religious phenomenon ought to prompt examination and debate rather than assumption and assertion.
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