THE ORIGINS OF THEATER IN ANCIENT GREECE AND BEYOND

The Origins of Theatre in Ancient Greece and Beyond examines the evidence for the prehistory and origin of drama. The belief that drama developed from religious ritual has been commonplace since the time of Aristotle. There is little agreement, however, on just how this happened. Recently, scholars have even challenged the historical connection between drama and ritual. Discussion of the problem is hampered by the fact that the basic collections of evidence are more than fifty years out of date and have been drawn from fields too numerous for any single scholar to master. This volume is the most thorough examination of the origins of Greek drama to date. It brings together seventeen essays by leading scholars in a variety of fields, including classical archaeology, iconography, cultural history, theatre history, philosophy, and religion. Although primarily focused on ancient Greece, the volume includes comparative studies of ritual drama from ancient Egypt, Japan, and medieval Europe. The relationship of drama to ritual is one of the most controversial, complex, and multifaceted questions of modern times.

Eric Csapo is Professor of Classics at the University of Sydney. He is an expert on the history of the ancient theatre and coauthor of The Context of Ancient Drama. His most recent book is Theories of Mythology.

Margaret C. Miller is Arthur and Renee George Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Sydney. She specializes in Greek iconography and cultural history. Her book, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity, won the Prix Ghirshman of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 2001.

Frontispiece. Four komasts on a Late Corinthian kotyle, c. 550 BC, unattributed. Auckland War Memorial Museum and Art Gallery 47266.

THE ORIGINS OF THEATER IN ANCIENT GREECE AND BEYOND

FROM RITUAL TO DRAMA

EDITED BY

ERIC CSAPO
University of Sydney

MARGARET C. MILLER
University of Sydney

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521836821

© Cambridge University Press 2007

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 2007

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

The origins of theater in ancient Greece and beyond : from ritual to drama / edited by Eric Csapo,
Margaret C. Miller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-83682-1 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 0-521-83682-4 (hardback)
1. Classical drama – History and criticism – Theory, etc. 2. Theater – History – To 500.
3. Theater – Greece. 4. Rites and ceremonies – Greece. 5. Civilization, Ancient.
I. Csapo, Eric. II. Miller, Margaret Christina. III. Title.
PA3203.O57    2007
882.009 – dc22    2006022401

ISBN 978-0-521-83682-1 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such
Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

FOR JOE AND MARIA SHAW

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Thomas H. Carpenter is the Charles J. Ping Professor of Humanities and Professor of Classics at Ohio University. His most recent book is Dionysian Imagery in Fifth Century Athens (1996).

Eric Csapo is Professor of Classics at the University of Sydney. He is author of Theories of Mythology (2005).

David Depew is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He is coauthor, with Marjorie Grene, of Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History (2004).

J. Richard Green is Emeritus Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Sydney. His publications include Theatre in Ancient Greek Society (1994).

Guy Hedreen, Professor of Art, Williams College, is the author of Capturing Troy: The Narrative Functions of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art (2001).

Cornelia Isler-Ker\'enyi, researcher at the Archäologisches Institut of the University of Zürich, is the author of Civilizing Violence: Satyrs on 6th Century Greek Vases (2004).

Barbara Kowalzig is currently at the Centre Louis Gernet (CNRS/EHESS), Paris. She is author of Singing for the Gods: Aetiological Myth, Ritual and Locality in Late Archaic Greece (forthcoming Oxford University Press).

Ronald J. Leprohon is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Toronto. He has published two volumes of the Corpus Antiquitatum Aegyptiacarum for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1985, 1991).

Margaret C. Miller, Arthur and Renee George Professor of Classical Archaeology, University of Sydney, published Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (1997).

Gregory Nagy is the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He is the author of The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (1979, 1999).

Kimberley C. Patton is Professor in the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion at Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Reflexivity, and Paradox (2006).

Nils Holger Petersen is Associate Professor of Church History at the University of Copenhagen. He has published numerous articles on medieval liturgy and drama and coedited Signs of Change: Transformations of Christian Traditions and Their Representation in the Arts, 1000–2000 (2004).

Richard Seaford is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Exeter. His most recent book is Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy (2004).

Tyler Jo Smith is Assistant Professor of Art, University of Virginia. Among her articles is “Dancing Spaces and Dining Places: Archaic Komasts at the Symposion,” Periplous: Papers on Classical Art and Archaeology Presented to Sir John Boardman (2000).

Matthias Steinhart, Privatdozent at the Archäologisches Institut at Freiburg, is the author of Die Kunst der Nachahmung: Darstellungen mimetischer Vorführungen in der griechischen Bildkunst archaischer und klassischer Zeit (2004).

Günter Zobel, Professor of German Language and Literature at Waseda University, Tōkyō, is the author of Nō Theater: Szene und Dramaturgie, volks- und völkerkundliche Hintergrunde (1989).

ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS

ABBREVIATIONS

Journals and basic reference works are abbreviated according to the lists found in the American Journal of Archaeology 104 (2000): 10–24. Ancient authors and works and modern collections of literary fragments are abbreviated according to the lists found in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., by S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (Oxford 1996) ⅹⅹⅸ–ⅼⅳ. The exceptions are as follows:

We have regularized the referencing to papyrus collection, by using P + abbreviation for the collection name, without spaces or periods, thus POxy, PMich, etc. Apart from the regularized use of spacing and punctuation, the abbreviations are as they would appear in the Oxford Classical Dictionary. References to Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae are by author and date. Plays by Aristophanes (Ar.) and the one work of Plato (Pl.), that is, Laws, capable of being rendered with a monosyllabic English title are cited by the English title. Plato’s Republic is abbreviated Pl. Rep. References to scholiasts are indicated by Σ. The acronyms “BF” and “RF” refer respectively to black-figured and red-figured ceramics.

DATES

We have refrained from pedantic inclusion of “BC” and “AD” in contexts in which the choice is blatantly obvious. As a general rule, all dates will be BC (bibliographic references, of course, excluded) unless otherwise specified in all but two chapters of Part III (Chapters 14 and 15 by Zobel and Petersen), the last part of the editors’ Introduction and the first part of Isler-Kerényi’s contribution (Chapter 4), which deal mainly with postantiquity.

INTERNAL REFERENCES

Contributions in the volume are cited by the name of the author in capital letters.

TRANSLITERATION

We are inconsistent in our rendering of Greek words, but methodically so. Greek proper names well enough known to have a separate entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary appear as they do in that work (usually in a Latinate form). Other Greek words and proper names follow the currently dominant standard convention for transliteration. We employ “ch” for χ (but κχ is rendered kkh); “x” for ξ; “ph” for φ; “y” for υ not in diphthong; “ai” for αι; “oi” for οι. In general we have attempted to avoid misleading equations by preferring transliterated forms (without italics) to close English derivatives for common Greek institutions. Thus: “choros” (not “chorus”), “symposion” (not “symposium”), “gymnasion” (not “gymnasium”). A compromise was reached on singular “phallus” and plural “phalloi” as consistent with an odd but increasingly standard inconsistency among Hellenists.

EDITORS’ PREFACE

The Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS) Colloquia provide a unique opportunity for extended and undisturbed scholarly dialogue. In the past, the Colloquia have provided a venue for scholars to trade ideas on big topics for which the requisite expertise is housed in a number of subdisciplines of classical studies and dialogue is most needed (to say nothing for the moment of those other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences which are relevant to our question). The continuing process of specialization has particularly discouraged the study of the origins of drama in Greece. At a minimum, it requires a range of competence that bridges ancient history, classical philology, and the ever-more-estranged field of classical archaeology. It is fair to say that such competence is now beyond the reach of all but the best and broadest of contemporary scholars. One has to search back over fifty years to find a general book-length treatment in English on the origins of Greek drama, T. B. L. Webster’s second edition of Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy. But despite Webster’s invasive additions, the scope, attitudes, and intentions of that book remain those of Pickard-Cambridge’s first edition of eighty years ago. Needless to say, the book is sadly dated, and scholarship has come a long way since.

   We did our best to take advantage of the center’s unique opportunity for dialogue. The core of the present volume is an extended six-day discussion that took place at the CHS in August 2000 and brought together twenty experts from such diverse disciplines as not only classical archaeology, iconography, cultural history, and philosophy, but also Egyptology, Japanology, mediaeval studies, and comparative religion. In the years since then, we have recruited a number of new participants, for that meeting was only the beginning of our dialogue. The plan was to produce second drafts of papers in light of the discussion at the CHS, and final drafts after circulation and a further set of criticisms and suggestion by discussants, editors, and other participants. We are most grateful to our contributors who endured this long and laborious exercise in dialogicity without complaint. We are still more grateful to our discussants who continued the dialogue by producing introductions and commentaries for papers they had already read and commented on many times over. We are most particularly grateful to Richard Seaford who, despite our many missed deadlines, was able to compose with insight and expedition the concluding statement that so skilfully brings together the various strands of our collective investigation.

   Most of all we are grateful to our participants for the learning, intelligence, insight, wit, vivacity, good humour, and open-mindedness that allowed us to prolong our appetite for dialogue beyond the usual measure and provided us with the inspiration and energy to convert a set of conference papers into an unusually coherent collaborative work. The science, charm, and effort our participants put into mutual education and persuasion paid off – our files contain proof of a broad, general convergence of opinion, in many instances from the widely scattered positions initially marked out at the conference. But the reader should not expect to find unanimity and consistency throughout this volume. This was, as we say, a dialogue, not a conspiracy. Nor should the reader be surprised that we have made no attempt to conceal disagreement, as if to keep up appearances in public. The dialogue continues. The reader is not only invited but will eventually be forced to participate and take sides.

   This was an ambitious project that we would never have undertaken without the aid of the Center for Hellenic Studies, and we thank the Senior Fellows and the past and present directors, Deborah Boedeker, Kurt Raaflaub, and Greg Nagy. We are particularly grateful to Greg for financial assistance, for continuous encouragement, and for active involvement in our colloquium, even from the first day, which was also the first morning of his residence in Washington and might have yielded more immediate gratification had it been spent unpacking boxes. Generous financial aid was also offered by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and from Richard Waterhouse, Head of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry of the University of Sydney.

   In addition to the participants whose papers appear in this volume, we thank Mary Depew, Uta Kron, François Lissarrague, Dunbar Ogden, and Stuart Picken for their lively and brilliant contribution to a most memorable and pleasurable event. Oliver Taplin, Pat Easterling, and Jeff Rusten aided in the preparation of the conference but were, for various reasons, unable to attend. William Slater not only contributed his habitual wisdom, wit, and good cheer but acted as co-organizer of the conference. We might have regretted not following his warning about the hazards and burdens of editing multiauthored academic books were it not for the extraordinary spirit of cooperation we enjoyed from our fellow participants and the additional support and generous labours of many colleagues and students. We would like to give special thanks to Richard Green, Nils Holger Petersen, and Günter Zobel for stepping in at a late stage to fill gaps in our coverage of the question. Alexandra Johnston, Dennis Kennedy, and J. T. Rimer all gave us advice on tracking experts in nonclassical fields. We are especially grateful to David Waterhouse for a great many hours answering our questions about Japanese culture and drama. Beatrice Rehl of Cambridge University Press has won our undying gratitude for wise advice, invaluable assistance, and extraordinary patience. Thanks to Mary Markou for her expert help with illustrations and Ben Zaporozan for FIGURES 4 and 42. Last and most of all we are indebted to our former and current students for editorial assistance during the final stages of the manuscript; they were always reliable and ready despite illness, inclement weather, holidays, early mornings, late nights, and the teaming chaos of our final departure from the Northern and Western Hemispheres. Our utmost thanks to Catherine Johnson, Kathryn Mattison, Fiona McMurran, Martina Meyer, Sebastiana Nervegna, Ben Zaporozan, and (on the other side of the world) Annika Korsgaard.

A. Four komasts on a Late Corinthian kotyle, c. 550 BC, unattributed. Auckland War Memorial Museum and Art Gallery 47266.