Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (6.1890-1897 (1897))

THE CHORUS IN THE LATER GREEK DRAMA.

399

familiar with the masterpieces of the classical period of the
drama, and who had the opportunity every year of comparing
the new with the old, seemed to have loved the new no less by
reason of the comparison. The xaival TpaymStai. were the chief
attraction of the Great Dionysia. Aristotle, also, who insisted so
strongly on the maintenance of the high standard of the fifth
century, by no means disapproved of the new tragedy. He draws
his illustrations from Theodectes, Polyeidus, Dicaeogenes and
Astydamus almost as often as from the classical trio, with whom
he clearly believes them worth}7 to be classed.13 Chaeremon and
Carcinus are censured, but so is Euripides, by all odds the most
popular poet of the time, almost as often as he is praised. Hence,
though the extant fragments are too scanty to warrant an inde-
pendent judgment, yet we have a good right to suppose that
tragedy did not at once decline through the inferiority of the new
generation of poets.

A probable indication of the general characteristics of the chor-
uses of the later poets may be obtained from an examination of
the plays of Euripides. The most natural expedient of a poet who
is conscious of the dramatic weakness of his chorus is to intro-
duce some external connection with the action, or to offer some
form of entertainment that will draw attention from the defect.
Sophocles seems to have resorted to this device in the Trachiniae,
whose chorus, though weak in comparison with that of the
Oedipus, still " ergotzt das Publicum durch Mannifaltigkeit und Wech-
sel in Vortrag und Stellung" (Muff., I. c. p. 226). A lesser poet,but
perhaps a better though less conscientious playwright, Euripides,
uses the first device. Take, for example, the two plays in which
are found the clearest examples of i/x/36Xifj,a fieXy—the Helen
(third stasimon) and Andromache (fourth stasimon). Admitting
for the moment that the chorus in these odes fulfils only the func-
tions of a band, is the chorus in general of so little consequence to
the action as a band ? The Helen furnishes one of the few in-
stances that have never been disputed of the passage of the chorue.-
over the " stage " (v. v. 315, 327), and of its attack on actors (724,
846). In the Andromache (817 ff.), the chorus is on the point of

I3MahafFy again needs correction when he says (I, 390), that Aristotle "hardly
mentions any of them, and then almost always by way of censure."