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Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres
Edited by Emmanuela Bakola, Lucia Prauscello, Mario Telò
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Hardback ISBN: 9781107033313
Chapter
2 - Comedy and the Pompe pp. 40-80
Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139519601.005
Cambridge University Press
ch a p ter 2
Comedy and the Pompe
Dionysian genre-crossing
Eric Csapo
This chapter presents some new and some neglected evidence for the
phallic processions of the Dionysian Pompe (Parade). The phallic choruses
performed on the first official day of the Dionysia at Athens, only one or, at
most, two days before the comic contests. If for no other reason, their place
in this volume is justified by Aristotle’s notorious claim that: ‘comedy arose
from those who led off the phallic rites’ (Poet. a–). But it is not
just the diachronic relationship between these genres that interests me here.
The new evidence I present is iconographic and, unlike the iconographic
material normally adduced to support or contest the theory that comedy
evolved from phallic choruses, this iconographic material is contemporary
with comedy. My series of vase-paintings extends from the time of the
formal introduction of comedy at the Athenian Dionysia to a date well
within Aristotle’s lifetime. This permits me at least to pose the question of
a synchronic relationship between phallic choruses and comedy.
Aristotle may of course have been guessing and he may have been
wrong. Neither of these possibilities really supports the claim of PickardCambridge and others that this ‘unhappily robs his statements of all historical value’. I should at once confess that I have trouble in understanding
what ‘arose from’ and the like might mean, since comedy as we know it
I thank E. Bakola, L. Prauscello and M. Telò for inviting me to contribute this chapter. For assistance
and advice I would like to thank J. R. Green, A. Hartwig, I. McPhee, M. C. Miller, S. Nervegna,
E. G. D. Robinson, J. Rusten, P. Wilson and The Centre for Classical and Near Eastern Studies
of Australia. For the provision of photographs and permissions I owe special thanks to E. Bakola,
A. Christopoulou and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, E. Kalinovskaya, V. Matveyev
and the Hermitage Museum, A. Koronakis and C Ephoria, F. Lissarrague, S. Paspalas and the
Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens and K. Schauenburg. This paper was prepared with
the generous assistance of an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. Further thanks to J. R.
Green, who recently brought Masseria to my attention, but unfortunately too late for me to
include it here in my discussion of the Pistoxenos Painter’s cup in Orvieto.
On Aristotle’s claim and its historical and cultural value, see also Rosen in this volume.
Pickard-Cambridge : –; cf. Scullion : .
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
shows affinities with many genres (iambos, dithyramb, hymn, tragedy and
satyr-play, to name just a few) and has manifestly absorbed the influence of
all of them by the time we catch sight of it. Genres are not like biological
forms, with only two parents, let alone like single-cell protozoa with only
one, and they are rarely ‘born’ at any discrete or determinable moment.
The historical value of Aristotle’s testimony lies elsewhere. It lies in the
fact that a perceptive and intelligent eyewitness readily believed that comic
and phallic choruses had something important in common and that this
something probably included elements of spectacle as Aristotle’s statement
is notably based on autopsy (that is why to his statement that ‘comedy
arose from those who led off the phallic rites’ he adds ‘that even now they
continue as a custom in many of our cities’). One can still doubt, of
course, whether Aristotle’s belief was a good one, but one should not doubt
that it was at least based on close knowledge of the genres and rational
reflection. Cultural history, unlike biology, needs to account for beliefs,
true or false. So Aristotle’s statement does have historical value even if we
reject the literal truth of the statement.
The material I present has implications for both diachronic and synchronic history of comedy’s relationship with a sub-literary and (despite
Aristotle) generally overlooked performance genre. Considerations of
space, however, dictate that the focus must be on the presentation and
interpretation of a group of nine vase-paintings. I need to establish the
claim that they do in fact relate to the phallic entertainments of the
Dionysian Pompe: the few people who know these vase-paintings attribute
them directly to comedy or to non-Greek cults. The first three sections of
this chapter examine the iconographic evidence for phallic performers in
the fifth century; the fourth clears away some misconceptions about the
Pompe; it is only in the fifth that I can begin very briefly to sketch out how
the phallic performances influenced the comic genre and in the sixth to ask
how the comic genre impacted on the form of phallic performances. The
treatment will be very far from exhaustive. It aims to open new territory:
in it one will find underdeveloped and empty spaces.
For the influence of biology on Aristotle’s evolutionary theories, see in the first instance Depew .
There is no question therefore of a ‘contradiction’ with Aristotle’s later statement that the early
history of comedy is unknown (Poet. b). Despite Aristotle’s assurances, even as careful a scholar
as Rusten (b: , ) writes that phallic processions ‘ceased with the introduction of comedies
to the Dionysia’ and that comedy simply ‘replaced’ them.
The possibility that Aristotle had historical evidence should not, however, be dismissed, and especially
not in the case of dithyramb: see Csapo and Miller b: ; Depew : .
See also Storey : –.
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Figure . Attic red-figure fragments by the Berlin Painter, c. bc
phallic choruses in fifth-century attic vase-painting
Two small fragments of a water jar or wine jug were unearthed in the
nineteenth-century excavations of the Athenian acropolis (Figure .).
Attic red-figure (hereafter rf ) fragments, Berlin Painter, c. bc, Athens, NM Acropolis Collection
G , .; Beazley, ARV 2 .. The fragments were found in September and October of .
The upper fragment measures . m., the lower . m. in height.
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
The jar was manufactured close to the traditional date of the introduction
of a competition for comedy at the Athenian Dionysia, bc. The
fragments are by the Berlin Painter -– the Michelangelo of red figure. Yet,
despite the artistry, and despite preserving tantalizing bits of one of the
most extraordinary scenes in all Greek art, these particular fragments have
never received more than a few rare and passing glances – and glances from
scholars in various subdisciplines (iconography, religion, theatre history)
that have lost contact over the years. The subject is not an easy one. Even
the great John Beazley threw up his hands in genuine perplexity asking:
‘Who can this be?’
Beazley rarely missed a detail, but he did here. He should have asked
‘Who can these be?’ There are certainly two figures, not the single figure
implied by Beazley’s question or the manner in which the fragments are
joined and displayed in the National Museum in Athens. The upper fragment from the shoulder of the vase preserves the head of a man described
as ‘ugly’ and ‘middle-aged’ in the literature. It is the unusual costume
that is mainly responsible for the impression of deformity or dereliction.
Most particularly, it is the large phallos that emerges from his forehead. The
effect is reinforced by another phallos attached to his nose (only the stump
is preserved – but what else could it have been?). A third phallos sits atop a
lost stick, which he once carried in his lost right hand. Phallos-sticks of this
sort characterize the entertainers who are the subject of this essay. Their
hand-held phallos-sticks regularly descend to ground level. Since no trace
of the stick appears on the lower fragment we can be sure that the surviving
fragments were not originally in vertical alignment and that the restoration
is wrong. Graef and Langlotz correctly assigned the lower fragment to a
second man.
The Berlin Painter, therefore, showed at least two men in shin-length
tunics of an identical ivy-leaf pattern, a costume so unusual – to say nothing
of the phalloi – that it permits no doubt that the artist intended to show
part of a costumed chorus. We can guess that the second man wore a crown
of ivy leaves like the first, perhaps also phalloi. He may even have carried
a phallos-stick, but if so, he held it in a different position. The costume
Suda s.v. Chionides. The date receives some rough confirmation from restorations of the Dionysian
Victors’ Lists (IG ii ) but it is certainly not beyond dispute. See most recently Olson :
–.
Beazley : no. , pl. ..
Cf. the drawing in Hoffmann : fig. , or Frontisi-Ducroux : .
Graef and Langlotz : ; Beazley : .
Graef and Langlotz : no. and pl. . Cf. Herter : ; Herter a: –.
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is completed by the boots we find on the lower fragment. These boots
are a recurrent feature among the phallos-stick bearers: they are laceless
and unadorned except for a vertical seam that appears on the side. Some
examples show that the upper boot can be turned down to form a cuff.
Most scholars identify this boot with a type that writers of the fifth century
bc called kothornoi: notoriously loose and formless (the same boot could be
worn on either foot). Interestingly kothornoi later became the hallmark of
tragic actors, but these later kothornoi look very different. In the first half of
the fifth century we find boots of this type on contemporary symposiasts
and on tragic choreuts. Kothornoi appear already to have developed strong
Dionysian associations, even if not exclusively so.
Possibly earlier in date than the Berlin Painter’s phallos-bearers is a solitary
and generally obliterated figure from a cup attributed to the Antiphon
Group (Figure .). No phallic protrusions emerge from the head. We
see only a ribbon. The figure also carries a phallos-stick. The phallos-stick
is covered with dots. Many of these dots when viewed closely have a heart
shape or at least a triangular shape. We are evidently to think of the stick as
entwined in ivy. Like the Berlin Painter’s phallos-bearers, this phallos-bearer
also wears a long shin-length garment, but this one is fringed. One can
make out a few dots above the fringe. On his feet the phallos-bearer wears
the boots we have identified as kothornoi. They have the same vertical seam
running up from the ankle as the Berlin Painter’s pair, but apparently with
an added piece to reinforce the heel. A horizontal line just under the fringe
of his garment shows that his boot is folded over into a cuff.
A cup by the Pistoxenos Painter in Orvieto shows phallos-stick bearers
of a similar stamp (Figure .). It is a decade or so later than the Berlin
Painter’s chorus. Two men in the tondo (a) and four men on the side
(b) sport kothornoi and shin-to-ankle-length garments with fringes. Long
garments of this sort are mostly worn by women. The garments are belted.
Belts too are almost exclusively used by women: these are particularly
Pickard-Cambridge : –; E. Simon : –.
Genre scenes with tragic choreuts have the same simple undecorated form, unlaced, either cuffless
or cuffed, and usually showing a vertical seam and narrow pointed toes, sometimes markedly curved
up at the ends (see our Figures .–.): 1. Attic rf oinochoe fragments, Near Hermonax, c. bc,
Agora P , MTS2 AV , Moore : no. ; Froning : fig. . 2. Attic rf bell krater,
– bc, Ferrara T C, MTS2 AV and pl. a; Pickard-Cambridge : fig. . 3. Attic rf
pelike, Phiale Painter, c. bc, Boston MFA .–, MTS2 AV , Pickard-Cambridge :
fig. . Dionysus himself prefers the Thracian style embades: Carpenter : –, .
Attic rf cup fragments, Antiphon Group, – bc, Louvre C; ARV 2 , . The fragments
have never been published. F. Lissarrague very generously photographed the fragments at my request.
Attic rf cup, Pistoxenos Painter, c. bc, Orvieto, Faina ; ARV 2 ., ; Addend.2 . The
cup was excavated in the s from a cemetery just North of Orvieto: see G. Körte .
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
Figure . Attic red-figure cup fragments, Antiphon Group, – bc
emphasized by overfolds with fringes at the waist. Two of the men are
pipers and they wear a type of hat elsewhere associated with rustics. The
pipers also have sleeves. The other four men are evidently members of the
chorus. Their heads are bald and tied with ribbons. All sport scruffy beards.
Their garments are spotted. Even in the drawing, which was executed with
a very different interpretation in mind, the spots frequently reveal the
distinctive heart shape of ivy leaves. A crown of ivy leaves is very clear on
the hat of the piper in the tondo (a). The phallos-sticks held by four of
See Pipili : –.
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A
B
Figure .a and b Attic red-figure cup, Pistoxenos Painter, c. bc
the men are also very clearly meant to be seen as wrapped in ivy. The ivy
theme is picked up by the decoration under the handles. Sadly none of
these chorusmen has phalloi emerging from his head, but the phallic theme
is nonetheless very prominent: the phallic tip of the sticks is emphasized
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
A
B
Figure .a and b Attic red-figure cup, Sabouroff Painter, c. bc.
with added red and the artist has been very careful to outline the distinctive
eye-spots that often characterize Greek phalloi.
A cup by the Sabouroff Painter shows a chorus in much the same
costume as the Pistoxenos Painter’s chorus (Figure .). It is accompanied
by the phallos-stick on the less well-preserved side (far right of b, before
Attic rf cup, Sabouroff Painter, c. bc, Malibu .AE.; ARV 2 , ; Kavvadias : –,
no. , pls. –.
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handle). The stick has the characteristic eye and is decorated not with
ivy but with a ribbon. The chorus have nearly bald heads bound with red
ribbons and shaggy beards like those of the Pistoxenos Painter (Figure .).
The choreuts also have long tresses dangling from the sides and back of
their heads. In this case, the details of the relative size of the heads, the
wide staring eyes, stiff gaping mouths and a general similarity of features
suggest the possibility of a uniform mask. The chorus wear ankle-length
garments with effeminate overfolds, like the Pistoxenos Painter’s chorus,
but this time the garments are still more effeminate, with overfolds under
the breasts and with the addition of elaborate pleats. The choreuts wear
kothornoi, like the Pistoxenos Painter’s chorus, but this time with the more
stylishly upturned toes, which may underscore their effeminacy. They are
more obviously dancing than any of their colleagues. Only the absence of
ivy in the costume makes this chorus unlike other phallos-stick bearers, but
ivy at least is present on the pot: ivy-leaf decoration appears prominently
above the handles.
Probably related to our phallos-stick bearers is a figure on a lekythos
in Athens who marches with a vigorous step (Figure .). His garment
is sleeved like those of the Pistoxenos Painter’s chorus and covered with
tadpole-like blobs with descending tails: a few of them attain the heart
shapes of ivy leaves that were evidently intended, even if quickly and
carelessly applied. One can make out the horizontal lines above the figure’s
hip to show that his garment has a belt or possibly a hem. This is female
fashion if not quite the feminine overfolds of the Pistoxenos and Sabouroff
Painters’ choruses. He wears boots. This is clear from the folded cuff
visible on the right below his knee. His head suggests a mask (or at least the
elaborate disguise) of a wild man. The nose is pointy and his ears are satyrlike. He also has a very large extra eye on his forehead. If he is supposed to
be a Cyclops, his eye is far off centre. Nothing impels us to determine his
species: he is a creature of fantasy, not nature. The stringy hair reinforces
the general impression that whatever he is meant to be, it is of a low order
of civilization. In his right hand he holds a large knife in a very aggressive
This less well-preserved side, generally ‘B’, was probably intended as the principal decoration: see
Kavvadias : .
See Simon : . There is a suggestion of curvature of this sort on the boots of Figures . and
. but nothing explicit as here and on the choral genre scenes.
Attic rf lekythos, c. bc, found in Athens in and currently in the storerooms of Gamma
Ephoria (inv. no. A). The vase was found in ‘Grave VIII’ excavated near Veikou and Aglaurou
Streets in Koukaki (south of Philopappos Hill). See Alexandri : and pl. . J. R. Green first
brought this vase to my attention.
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
Figure . Attic red-figure lekythos, c. bc
posture. The shape of the knife and the way he holds it is unparalleled.
The painter clearly wished to emphasize the superfluous extension of the
Two curving lines rise up from the back and appear to extend beyond the neckline. They do not
appear to be part of the knife.
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handle beyond the grip, because he interrupts the otherwise fairly tidy
upper frieze in order to show it. The handle curves abruptly upwards.
It appears likely that a phallos is intended. In his left hand he holds the
remnant of a torch (one can see a vertical line separating two bits of wood
and horizontal lines binding them together). It curves slightly to the right
above the point where he grasps it (not visible in the photograph). The top
is lost. One should perhaps infer that the painter means to incorporate the
torch in the wildman’s gesture of menace towards his imaginary victim.
phallic choruses and the dionysia
So who are these men? The Pistoxenos Painter’s cup is the only one that
has received much comment. The Beazley Archive calls this group ‘bearded
barbarians’, ‘Northerners’ and ‘Agathyrsoi’. The line of interpretation goes
back to nineteenth-century German scholarship and its conviction that
Greeks do not dress or behave in this way. Gustav Körte thought them
Asiatic and probably Lydian. Friedrich Hauser seized upon Herodotus’
description of the Argippaioi, a tribe of Scythian mountain dwellers, who,
he says, ‘from birth are all bald, snub-nosed and long-bearded, both males
and females’. From this promising beginning Hauser gleaned passages
from Herodotus’ description of completely different tribes and races of
people, concluding that our dancers wore beaver-pelts fringed with human
scalps, and deciding with curious precision that the Pistoxenos Painter had
drawn Agathyrsoi, a people about whom the only relevant information
we have is Herodotus’ claim that they ‘live in luxury and wear lots of
gold’. Some of these ornaments are visible, he thought, on the pot and
highlighted in added red. They were obviously difficult to interpret: the
man right of centre on Figure .b is said to wear a phiale around his neck.
Hauser thought the phiale an obscure allusion to Heracles’ visit to Scythia.
Near the beginning of his account of Scythia, Herodotus records that the
Pontic Greeks claimed that Heracles came to Scythia, had intercourse with
the mistress of the country, who was half-woman and half-snake, and left
her pregnant with triplets, giving instructions that any son of his who
proved able to string his bow and put on his belt remain in Scythia and
that any who could not should be banished. Only the youngest, named
The prevailing assumption at the time was that Dionysus himself was foreign and Asiatic: see
Isler-Kerényi : –.
Hauser in Hartwig : – quoting Hdt. ..
G. Körte : .
On the Scythian snake-goddess, see Ustinova .
Hdt. ..
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
Scythes, succeeded. He and his line became the kings of Scythia, ‘and to
this day Scythians carry bowls (phialai) hanging from their belts’.
Even in the matter of the gold ornaments Hauser manhandles his only
witness. The myth does not explain why the Agathyrsoi wear phialai but
clearly indicates that they do not. The banished sons of Heracles are
called Agathyrsos and Gelonos. It is a misrepresentation to call Scythes,
Agathyrsos and Gelonos ‘die drei Stammväter der Skythen’, as does Hauser,
let alone ‘die drei Stammesväter der Agathyrsen’ as Bulle calls them. The
tale clearly marks Scythes alone as the ancestor of the Scythians. It functions
to establish the Scythians’ exclusive right to their territory. For the purpose
of the tale Agathyrsos and Gelonos serve as the ancestors of non-Scythians:
they are as Corcella describes them ‘eponyms of other peoples of the
region’; indeed most modern scholars are inclined to regard the Agathyrsoi
as Thracians (Herodotus himself says that ‘their ways most resemble the
Thracians’).
But it would be a mistake to give the impression that the value of
the analysis depends on the precise designation of the tribe to which our
chorus of ‘Scythians’ belong. Although archaeology offers no confirmation
that Scythians decorated their persons with bowls, the testimony may well
be true. But Hauser’s evidence is irrelevant no matter which Scythians
you choose. Herodotus reports that Scythians wear phialai ‘hanging from
their belts’ (zosteres is used of girdles that go around the waist), not strung
around their necks as we see them on Figure .b. Far more disturbing is
the fact that not a single item of clothing in any way resembles anything
that archaeology or iconography can show was ever worn by an ancient
Scythian or Thracian.
Despite the fact that it had very little going for it, Hauser’s theory was
accepted as ‘schlagend’ and ‘geistvoll’ by Bulle and as ‘very probable’ by
Beazley, who extended the barbarian label to our other dancers by the Berlin
Painter, the Sabouroff Painter and the painter belonging to the Antiphon
Group; current iconographers still treat the connection with Agathyrsoi as
Hauser in Hartwig : ; Bulle : .
Hdt. .–.
See Corcella : on Hdt. ...
Hdt. .. Corcella : , .
The standard modern treatments are Tsiafakis and Raeck . Hauser’s methodology required
no real knowledge of Scythian material culture. He was happy to draw upon a generic stereotype of
the savage, in what would now seem a parody of the more outrageous trends in nineteenth-century
comparative anthropology: the fringes on the garments of the chorus from Orvieto, Hauser admits,
are too string-like for furs or beaver pelts, so he did not hesitate to argue from the customs of North
American Indians that they must be human scalps: ‘die Angabe, dass die Kahlköpfe ihren besiegten
Feinden das Fell vom Kopfe ziehen, [hat] eine innere Warscheinlichkeit für sich’ (Hauser in Hartwig
: ).
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established fact. For Hauser and Bulle the only real question was how the
painter came to acquire ‘such a detailed knowledge of Scythian costume
and customs’: Hauser thought he must have been a Scythian slave trained
as an artist in Athens; Bulle thought that the requisite knowledge for a
portrait of ‘such ethnographic precision’ could ‘scarcely be credited to an
artisan of the Athenian potters’ quarter’ and must therefore have been
copied from a drama based on the antics of the Agathyrsoi (as if we might
not just as easily ask how a poet came to portray a distant central Asian
tribe with ‘such ethnographic precision’). Hauser’s far-fetched theory may
not deserve a formal refutation. In light of its reception, unfortunately, a
refutation is required.
If not to advertise their barbarism, why would choruses prance about
in unusual costumes, carrying phallos-sticks and wearing masks or otherwise distorting their facial features through the application of extraneous
penises? Had it not been for Hauser, the answer would have been obvious.
They do this to advertise their connection with Dionysus.
Ironically, the Dionysian context is most urged by the very features that
led Hauser to conclude that the Pistoxenos painter drew Scythians. Hauser
took the spots on the garments of the dancers in Orvieto as indications
of shagginess and – with the help of Herodotus on Scythians – decided
that they wore beaver fur. On closer inspection the spots indicate varying
degrees of care in attempts to render the shape of ivy leaves. Ivy is in fact very
much on the menu. Some of our performers wear ivy wreaths (Figures .,
.), others red ribbons. Ivy is entwined around most of the phallos-sticks
(Figures .–.). And ivy leaves appear in the marginal decoration of the
scenes (Figures .–.). All of this should have indicated that the images
have nothing to do with Scythia and everything to do with Dionysian
art and cult. Ivy is of course ubiquitous almost anywhere where Dionysus
is present. It is especially worn at the Dionysia. Sacred law required all
inhabitants of Attica to garland their heads during the Dionysia. This
was true even outside Athens: a Euboean decree of / bc, for example,
requires everyone to wear ivy garlands during the Pompe of the Dionysia,
with a free distribution to all residents and a mandatory rental fee for
visitors.
The pendants around the necks of the Orvieto entertainers are very
unlikely to be phialai. On Hartwig’s line drawing, Figure .b, the ghostly
half-circle around the neck of the second dancer from the right, with its
Bulle : – (quotation ); Beazley at ARV 2 p. (‘Addenda I’); Kavvadias : –.
Blech : –; Bierl : .
Hauser in Hartwig : ; Bulle : .
IG xii , .
Sacred laws in Dem. Meid. –; Philoch. FGrH F .
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
phiale-like central knob and the suggestion of metalware lobes, is a pretty
clear instance in which Hauser’s interpretation guided Hartwig’s hand
in rendering what was obviously a faint and much-damaged image (no
photograph of the side of the cup has ever been published). Originally,
the neck ornament probably resembled that of the man at the lower left
of Figure .b, which does not at all resemble the shape of a phiale. Both
ornaments are coloured with added red, not because they represent the
gold frippery of the decadent Agathyrsoi, but because the colour and shape
of the ornaments echo the phalloi on the tips of the choruses’ phallos-sticks
(which are also marked with added red). The phalloi emerging from the
head and nose of the Berlin Painter’s entertainer may be iconographically
unique, but ancient sources, albeit late, consistently mention the neck, in
addition to the loins, as a common place to tie on a phallos to celebrate
the Dionysia. Dionysian processions were rife with phallic imagery: some
even came to be known by the term periphallia meaning something like
‘phalloi all over the place’.
Finally, the bald heads and long beards have a simpler explanation than
the putative effects of inbreeding in the remote mountain communities
of Central Asia. Baldness and long beards not only are a familiar feature
of comic ugliness but follow a pattern well known from the depiction of
phallic and Dionysian creatures. Baldness and shaggy beards are above all
characteristic of satyrs. The many minor phallic deities who came to be
connected with Dionysus are also, according to Herter, characterized by
baldness and wedge beards. The reasons require no explanation. Ancient
physiognomists, who habitually deduce human character on the analogy
of natural forms (in this case assimilating heads and genitals), consistently identify baldness and shaggy beards as signs of lewdness and erotic
hyperactivity.
The proof that our choruses are connected to Dionysus, however, is
their use of phallos-sticks. In Greek art such phallos-sticks otherwise appear
only in the hands of the mythical counterparts of our Dionysiac dancers:
Suda s.v. - (- ), cf. Suda s.v. .!2- ( ); Etym. magn. p. Kallierges; [Nonnus],
Or. . and .; Apostol. .. See further Herter : and nn. – below on the martyrdom
of Saint Timotheus. I am not convinced that the Attic black-figure (hereafter bf ) fragment, found at
Segesta and attributed to Sophilos, shows a man wearing a hat with phalloi (Fuchs and Tusa :
fig. ; cf. Blech : n. ; Bierl : n. ).
Hesych. s.v. - ( ); Herter a: ; Herter : .
Herter : , cf. .
Arist. Hist. an. a–b, Gen. an. b; Comm. in Arist. Graeca .. (Johannes Philoponus); Della
Corte : . Baldness and wedge-beards become the distinguishing characteristics of pimps
in New Comedy (who also have phallic names and display phallic behaviour): Poll. .; MNC 3
vol. i.–.
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komasts, satyrs and at least once Dionysus himself. Some of the satyrs
sporting phallos-sticks have already been closely associated with Dionysian
processions, in particular a red-figured amphora by the Flying Angel
Painter: on one side we see a satyr holding a phallos-stick and on the
other a satyr father holds his son up on his shoulder as if to watch the
parade (whence the name ‘Flying Angel’). Otherwise satyrs consistently
use phallos-sticks as a weapon, either in the hunt or in battle. Though
essentially mythical fantasy, we will see (below) that the visual simile that
turns the phallos-stick into an aggressive weapon is also very much rooted
in ritual. The link between phallos-sticks of this sort and Dionysus and his
retinue is in Greek iconography virtually exclusive. It was the presence of
the phallos-stick that urged Bulle to suppose that we must have a Dionysian
scene, but he contented himself with the observation that the Agathyrsoi
must also have worshipped Dionysus and that the image was in any case
mediated by drama.
Since Bulle’s time, more judicious scholars have interpreted the
Dionysian quality of our phallic choruses in one of two ways: as performers
in comedy and as choral entertainers belonging to Dionysian processions.
Lissarrague : : ‘It should be noted that the phallos as weapon is the specific attribute of satyrs.
The maenads of course do not have such weapons, nor does Dionysus.’ Dionysus: he does appear
once with the phallos-stick on a now largely forgotten fragment of a late bf hydria, once Rhusopoulos
Collection, Athens. The fragment known only from a murky drawing in Vorberg : may be a
processional scene (there are curving lines that hint at the Dionysian ship-cart). Komast: Corinthian
fragment of unknown vessel shape, early sixth century bc?, Corinth (KP ); Seeberg :
no. bis; Stillwell and Benson : no. , pl. . For the interpretation of the fragment, cf.
the Middle Corinthian phiale, Athens NM , illustrated in Smith : fig. , at twelve o’clock.
Satyrs: Attic rf cup from Vulci, Painter of Berlin , once Rome market, ARV 2 , ; Attic rf
volute krater, Nikosthenes Painter, c. bc, Munich , ARV 2 , ; Attic rf amphora, Flying
Angel Painter, Boston MFA ., ARV 2 , , Addenda2 ; Attic rf skyphos, Brygos Painter,
c. bc, Thebes Museum, ARV 2 , ; fragmentary rf cup, Foundry Painter, ARV 2 , ; Attic
rf cup-skyphos from Capua, Near the Painter of Bologna , – bc, Brussels, Bibliothèque
Royale , ARV 2 . The phallos-sticks used by satyrs resemble those used by phallic dancers except
in so far as the bottom end of the stick is consistently shaped like testicles. A rf pelike fragment
(Louvre G , Pan Painter, ARV 2 , ) shows a phallos-stick beside a man catching a boar or pig.
The man is bald on top with shaggy sides and beard and, though the ears are not obviously those of
a satyr, his appearance and primitive hunting techniques make it likely that assimilation to a satyr
is intended (the other side shows a young man catching a deer with his bare hands): see Peirce :
. Another possible exception is the phallos-stick held by Pothos in the sculpture in Samothrace
by Scopas, if the reconstruction by Bulle is correct. But the trefoil-shaped appendages on either
end of the ‘phallos-stick’ on the gem in Berlin, upon which the reconstruction ultimately depends,
make it unlike any other. The trefoil shape brings it much closer to sceptre iconography, though it
would still be unusual for a sceptre to have trefoil-like tips on both ends.
See Herter a: and esp. Hedreen : . The amphora by the Flying Angel Painter (see
previous note) was produced c. bc.
This is true of the Corinthian komast as well: for the link with Dionysus, see esp. Csapo and Miller
b: –.
Bulle : .
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
Erika Simon first ascribed the Sabouroff Painter’s chorus (Figure .a–b) to
a comedy with a chorus of old men dressed up as women, citing for example Cratinus’ Effeminates (Malthakoi). Of all the phallos-stick bearers we
have examined, the Sabouroff Painter’s chorus have the best credentials for
illustrating a comic chorus: they may indeed wear masks (as may our wildman in Figure .), and if the old men are disguised as women, there may
be a reason for de-emphasizing the typical comic somation with its padded
bellies and buttocks, and its bodytights. Transvestism could also excuse the
shin-length garments and boots that would otherwise be unexpected and
unparalleled for comic choreuts (and rare for comic actors). Three problems remain, however, for any identification of the Sabouroff Painter’s vase
as a comic chorus. In the iconography comic choruses otherwise dance with
a uniform step and this must have been standard practice in the theatre
as well. Moreover, a comic chorus of transvestites has no obvious reason
to dance with a phallos-stick unless they are cultic transvestites (but if they
are, then what is left to support the notion that they are also comic?). Most
importantly the closest parallels in time, style, costume and movement are
the choruses of the Berlin Painter, Antiphon Group and Pistoxenos Painter
(Figures .–.). None of these appears to wear a mask. Two (Figures .–
.) are certainly not transvestites and so have no excuse for not wearing
or de-emphasizing normal comic padding. Most importantly, even though
the jury is still out on whether comic choreuts normally wear the phallos,
these choruses do, and do so in a way that no comic actor or choreut
ever does: they wear them only in unnatural places and they wear them
erect, quite unlike the standard limp and unimaginatively located phalloi
of comedy.
The unique costumes and above all the phallos-sticks (and other phallic paraphernalia) were rightly perceived by a tiny minority of scholars to
be key to the identity of two of the vase-paintings of our group. Herter
first recognized that the Berlin Painter’s chorus (Figure .) are entertainers at a Dionysiac procession: he specifically identified them as a kind of
entertainer called ‘ithyphalloi’. Green first recognized that the effeminate
E. Simon : . Kavvadias’ suggestion that the chorus might belong to satyr-play arises from the
mistaken belief that satyr-play could have other than a satyr chorus (: ). For other examples
of effeminate choruses in comedy, see Bakola : –.
Which is why Green excluded this vase from his list of early comic choruses (: n. ).
Herter a: –; Herter : ; cf. Blech : n. , who compares their headgear with
Semos’ description of phallophoroi; and Hoffmann : , who refers them to the Anthesteria.
Although Herter cited the Pistoxenos Painter’s vase in this context, he nonetheless accepted their
identification as ‘Agathyrsoi’ (a: ).
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chorus of the Sabouroff Painter had much in common with the description of the costume of the ithyphalloi described by Semos of Delos (c.
bc). Semos evidently contextualized his work On Paeans with a
general discussion of processional choruses, among them choruses from
Dionysian parades. The description of the ithyphalloi is the fullest example. The ithyphalloi ‘wear the masks of drunken men, are garlanded and
have flowery [or “ornate”] sleeves. They wear whitish chitons and gird
them with a tarantinon that reaches down to their ankles.’ The effect of
effeminacy is in this case evidently desired: the Suda adds that the ithyphalloi ‘are guardians of Dionysus and accompany the phallos, wearing
women’s clothing’; from Synesius we learn that the ithyphalloi also wore
their hair in tresses. The descriptions of the figures on our vase-paintings
are by no means precise, but they come interestingly close in the case of
the Pistoxenos and Sabouroff Painters’ choruses. Both choruses seem to
wear girded effeminate ankle-length robes and one of them (the Sabouroff
Painter’s) certainly gives a strong suggestion of masks. More problematic is
the fact that both choruses wear ribbons rather than garlands, that only the
Sabouroff Painter’s choreuts have tresses, that only the Pistoxenos Painter’s
auletes wears sleeves, and that these sleeves are not exactly ‘flowery’, but
have ivy patterns. Semos’ description of the costume of the ithyphalloi
actually coincides with only half the details we see in the Pistoxenos and
Sabouroff Painters’ choreuts. Against these inaccuracies we must reckon
that Semos lived some two hundred and fifty years after the production of
our vases and in an age when literary science displayed a compulsion for
over-nice and often arbitrary genre-distinctions. More important is the fact
that, from Semos’ description of the ithyphalloi’s song, it is clear that the
chorus carried a phallos or phalloi of some sort. In the archaic and classical
periods genres were still embedded in specific performance occasions and
practices and it is to these that we must look if we are to understand the
identity and function of the phallic dancers depicted in late archaic and
early classical vase-paintings.
Green : n. .
Semos FGrH F (Athen. a); Suda s.vv. - - ( ), .!2- ( ), 8 (
); Phot. Lexicon s.v. .!2- ( .); Hesych. s.v. .!2- ( ); Syn. Calvitii encomium
. (= Suda s.v. /2# (/ )). Thorough discussion of Semos’ fragment in Bierl :
–.
We do not know what a tarantinon is. It is also worn by the Spartan dancers called Gypones (Poll.
.), where the material is described as ‘diaphanous’. See Bierl : n. , with further
literature.
Semos FGrH F : ‘Make way, open wide for the god. He wishes to march through your midst
upright and bursting.’
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
ithyphalloi , phallophoroi and others
In Attica phallic choruses are only attested, whether in literary or epigraphic
sources, for the Pompe of the Dionysia in the city or in the demes. We
hear from our Hellenistic sources, principally Semos of Delos, of various
kinds of phallic performers (autokabdaloi, phallophoroi, ithyphalloi and
phalloidoi), but classical sources only certainly attest the ithyphalloi as a
distinct genre or subgenre of phallic performers. It is, however, likely
that classical Athenians would have recognized at least two types of phallic
chorus, even if they did not have distinct labels. I infer this not from
different elements of costume (I doubt very much that costumes were ever
as regular as Semos implies), but from the two very different types of phalloi
that were processed at the Dionysia and the very different kinds of choral
performance they presuppose.
The Pompe of the Dionysia included very large phallic ‘floats’ that had
to be carried by choruses of men or carried on wagons. Inscriptions and
iconography make it clear that Athenian colonies (and subject states) were
obliged to contribute gigantic phalloi of this sort, doubtless along with
Herter a: –; Pickard-Cambridge : , –, , ; R. Parker : –. The one
apparent exception is ithyphalloi singing a hymn for Demetrius the Besieger in or bc on
the occasion of his ‘epiphany’ in Athens at the time of the procession to Eleusis (Democh. FGrH
F ; Duris FGrH F ). But this is probably only an apparent exception. The ithyphalloi
were incorporated into the Eleusinian procession for this particular occasion in order to honour
Demetrius (who identified himself with Dionysus and because he identified himself with Dionysus).
See Csapo : – citing earlier literature.
Knowledge of performers known as ‘ithyphalloi’ is indicated by Cratin. fr. from his Archilochuses
produced sometime between and bc (Luppe ). Youth gangs named after the phallic
performers are attested by Dem. In Conon. , , , which cannot be precisely dated but was
most likely delivered in the s (Carey : ). Ithyphalloi are certainly described by Hyp.
fr. Jensen. ‘Phallophoroi’ may, however, also be pre-Hellenistic: see below, n. . Rotstein denies
that the autokabdaloi are phallic on the grounds that both Semos and Sosibius list various forms of
entertainers in order to draw strict distinctions and infers that, because phallophoroi and ithyphalloi
did, autokabdaloi and iamboi ‘wore no mask, mocked no one in the audience, carried no phalloi ’
(: ). The lists of Semos and Sosibios represent varieties of Dionysian entertainers, often only
regional variants, and invite one to see them as overlapping, not mutually exclusive categories.
The principal evidence is the cup in Florence, below with n. . Note also the intriguing [D5
]2 at line of the lamentably fragmentary inscription IG ii which deals with
the Pompe of the Dionysia including the phallic procession ( -[ ] at line is an
inevitable supplement). See Cole : and Wilson : . There are a few non-Attic parallels
or near parallels to the phallic float: a rf calyx krater argued to be from Boeotia (Brommer ;
Auffarth : , figs. –); the bf ‘Clazomenian’ amphora fragments in the Ashmolean museum,
Oxford . (Boardman ; Csapo : –, details pl. ). As reconstructed by Boardman
it is a Dionysiac ship with phallic attributes rather than a phallos. It would, however, be easy to
reconstruct the image as a phallos with naval attributes. It is carried in the same manner as the
contemporary phallic ‘floats’ on the Florence cup. The giant phallus in Ptolemy’s parade was carried
on a wagon (Kallixeinos in Athen. e). Other evidence for phallos-wagons from Hellenistic Delos
and Edessa in Csapo : .
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choruses of men to carry them, to the Pompe of the Athenian Dionysia.
Images of this kind of gigantic phallos survive on an Athenian black-figured
cup of about bc, now in Florence. On the cup we see two choruses of
six and seven men (probably meant to represent pairs, one man on either
side of a phallos, so twelve to fourteen men), visibly bending under the
weight of enormous phallos-poles (in fact they are complex double poles
ridden by sculpted satyrs and komasts). Carrying floats of this size is heavy
work and allows little freedom of movement – certainly no independent
movement – and little breath for more than a periodic refrain. Indeed the
choreuts need close co-ordination if the phallos-pole is to remain upright.
It is for this reason that they are furnished with a leader, or exarchos, who
directs their movements and takes up the principal burden of the song.
In the miniature phallic procession staged in Aristophanes’ Acharnians, a
pair of slaves carry the phallos-pole (presumably a simplified and much
smaller version of the sort of thing we see on the cup in Florence). Their
exarchos, Dicaeopolis, does most of the singing: the slaves’ task is limited
to singing refrains of ‘O Phales, Phales’ and to holding the phallos upright.
On the Florence cup the phallos-bearers appear to be unmasked and, except
for erect phalloi tied to their loins, naked, as we might expect of Greek
men involved in very demanding physical exertion. It is these performers
whom Aristotle thinks of when inferring an origin for comedy: it is the
separation of, and interactivity between, exarchos and chorus that strikes
him as the minimally necessary combination of fission, and fusion, to
trigger the evolutionary process that led to Old Comedy with its entirely
separate but integrally linked components of chorus and actors. Aristotle
refers to these ritual choruses only with vague descriptive periphrasis ‘those
who led off the phallika’ (Poet. a). If we are justified in giving a
name to these performers we should probably think of the men on the
Florence cup as phallophoroi. ‘Phallophoroi’ may not have been a technical
term for this genre of performance until much later.
IG i .–; SEG p. ; IG ii ; Accame : –; Krentz : –; Dreher : ,
–; Rhodes and R. Osborne : – no. ; Dio Chrys. .; Cole ; Csapo .
Attic bf cup, Florence ; see most recently Iozzo , with further literature.
Csapo –: –.
Ar. Ach. indicates that two slaves carry the phallos (not one as suggested by R. Parker : )
so it is apparently something larger than a phallos-stick that they carry.
Philomnestos, a historian of unknown date (FGrH F ), refers to an Antheas of Lindos who
composed ‘comedies’ which he ‘led off for his phallophoroi’ (? 5# !’ ( - 9
- ( ). Sourvinou-Inwood : would place Antheas in the sixth century bc (contra
Pickard-Cambridge : n. ‘a poet of late but unknown date’): that Philomnestos thinks
of Antheas as early should surely be inferred from Philomnestos’ report that ‘he first invented the
use of compound nouns in poetry which technique was later used by the Phliasian Asopodoros
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
Phallos-sticks are very different from these huge phalloi. Our ancient texts
also connect them exclusively with Dionysian processions, and most often
with Dionysian processions in Athens. The scholiast to Aristophanes’
Acharnians a describes them as: ‘a long piece of wood fitted with a
leather penis at the end’. ‘Long’ of course is relative, but the detail ‘fitted
with a leather penis at the end’ shows that the scholion does not refer to
the gigantic phallic floats such as we see on the Florence cup, which are
evidently entirely of wood, each phallos-pole carved from a single timber,
and which would more accurately have been described as ‘representing
large penises’ rather than ‘fitted’ with them. In the case of phallos-sticks,
the division between wooden stick and leather phallos is emphasized by the
use of added red for the phallic tip of the sticks by the Pistoxenos Painter
(Figure .). Moreover, the scholiast informs us that Athenians furnished
themselves with both ‘public and private’ phalloi. The large floats provided
by City or deme and colonies and subjects are clearly beyond the means of
most private citizens.
Unlike the phallos-bearers we see on the Florentine cup, our phallosstick-bearing choruses are highly mobile and active. Although there is
some evidence to suggest that phallos-stick bearers could also make use
of an exarchos (see on Figure ., below, pp. –), the exarchos is in this
case a far less necessary role. Certainly the vase-paintings we have studied
show groups of men without obvious leaders and with little co-ordination
in their movements. Far from appearing regimented and measured, their
movements in Figures .–. are lively and wild, with all the choreuts
equally engaged in song and dance. The phallos-stick itself, like a baton,
appears to serve both the spectacle and the music. In the Sabouroff Painter’s
cup (Figure .b) it appears to move (autonomously?) with the movement
of the dance. In the other cases it seems to be held more or less vertically
[also undatable] in chanted iambics’. Crusius (: –) suspected that later antiquity acquired
this information through the peripatetic literary historian Lobon of Argos (late fourth or early third
century bc, see Garulli : –): Crusius and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars
characterize Lobon as a forger or hoaxer, but this has been discredited as a philological conspiracy
theory: Farinelli . The term ‘phallophoroi’ is otherwise first attested by Sosibius c. bc
(FGrH F ). A late lexicographer perhaps guesses (from the name) that men who tie phalloi to
their loins are ‘ithyphalloi’: [Nonnus], Or. .., ...
The phallos-stick (as opposed to other forms of phalloi) is described by 8 Ar. Ach. ; 8 Clem. Al.
Protr. . p. , – St.; Suda s.v. - (E ); Atil. Fort. p. , – K.; Terent. Maur. (Keil,
Gramm. Lat., vol. vi) –.
8 Ar. Ach. .
The images listed in n. and n. indicate a single timber for the large ‘floats’ or ‘phallos-poles’
and this is explicitly attested for the phallos at Delos: Vallois : .
Possibly we are to think of it as fixed in the ground: see Suda and Phot. s.v. ithyphalloi ( ,
.).
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like a walking stick, but even so it surely served as more than just an idle
prop: Terentianus Maurus implies that the ithyphalloi beat the ground with
them in rhythmic accompaniment to their song. Indeed, two out of the
three sources that connect phallos-sticks with any particular genre, connect
them with ithyphalloi. Lively dance, song and aggressive behaviour are
certainly more consistent with what we know of this genre of performer.
the character of the pompe or why do phalloi
have sticks?
In a recent book Kenneth Rothwell describes the Pompe of the Athenian
Dionysia as a ‘formal and dignified’ ritual, stressing its religious and sacrificial function and contrasting it with the free, wild and creative aristocratic
komos in which he seeks the origin of comedy. Was the Pompe really
‘formal and dignified’?
Surely the costume and processional accoutrements of the choruses that
participated in the Dionysian Pompe are not easily reconcilable with formal
dignity. Apologists have for centuries excused the phalloi as religious and
fertility symbols, tolerated, we are encouraged to believe, by the piety of an
otherwise mortified populace. Piety certainly licenses the phalloi. But our
archaic and early classical images of drunken men on the march bristling
with erect phalloi tied to heads and necks, or with them fixed like spearpoints on wooden sticks, are at best indifferent symbols of piety, and poorer
still, if they are meant to represent love and fertility. Surely the images, like
the sticks themselves, express the Pompe’s carnival mood of playful transgression and aggression. This is why phallos-sticks consistently appear as
weapons in the hand of satyrs in Athenian vase-imagery. And surely the
phallic knife poised in the hands of the Dionysian clown on the redfigured lekythos signifies ritually licensed aggression (Figure .), as does
the rhinoceros-like placement of phalloi on forehead and nose on the face of
the entertainers captured (or imagined) by the Berlin Painter (Figure .).
Even the large phallic floats are not just passive dolmens. The phallophoroi,
according to Semos, frequently rushed forward thrusting the phallos into
Terent. Maur. (Keil, Gramm. Lat., vol. vi) –: ithyphallica porro citarunt musici poetae, | qui
ludicra carmina Baccho versibus petulcis | Graio cum cortice phello tres dabant trochaeos, | ut
nomine fit sonus ipso, Bacche Bacche Bacche.
Mar. Plot. p. , ff. K.; Terent. Maur., previous note. The exception, Atil. Fort. p. , ff. K.,
connects them with phallophoroi and phalloidoi.
Song and dance: Hyp. fr. Jensen; Democh. FGrH F . Aggression: see below.
Rothwell : . Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood : , who claims that the Pompe of the Dionysia
‘involved a certain solemnity’.
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
the watching crowd and then paused (or ‘performed a stationary dance’)
while mocking the spectators. Semos’ ithyphalloi advertised the invasive
quality of their eponymous props: ‘make way, open up wide for the god,
because, upright and bursting, he wants to march through your midst’.
The name ‘ithyphalloi’ became popular among disaffected, vandalistically
minded aristocratic Athenian youth gangs, not because the ritual performers were famously ‘formal and dignified’, but surely because they came to
symbolize the physically aggressive and transgressive behaviour to which
these alienated and arrogant youths aspired. You do not put on a mask
and phallos in order to look like a satyr, but to act like one!
Verbal aggression is well attested for the Pompe (as it is for other
Dionysian processions in Athens) – this is why the word pompeia came to
denote aggressive abuse. On Semos’ testimony, verbal abuse formed part
of the performance of the phallophoroi and it should probably be inferred
from his report that the autokabdaloi were also later called iamboi. But
a certain amount of physical aggression was also tolerated and expected.
Demosthenes tells us of one Ctesicles who thought it fitting to participate
in the Athenian Pompe carrying a leather strap. Unfortunately he happened upon a personal enemy and thrashed him with it. The revealing
thing is that Ctesicles pleaded not guilty to violent assault due to ‘the
influence of the Pompe and drunkenness’ and would have been excused the
assault had it not been for the history of enmity between Ctesicles and his
victim, which made the violence look more like premeditation than the
Semos FGrH F (On Paians): ‘then charging forward [the phallophoroi] would mock whomever
they chose’. ‘Clearly an aggressive gesture’, notes C. G. Brown : . For the connection between
phallic entertainers and ritual abuse: see Brown : –; Bierl : – ( for the interpretation of ); Hedreen : . In addition to the passages on pompeia, below n. , see
also 8 Dem. De falsa legatione a (Dilts).
Semos FGrH F . For the sexual innuendo, see Csapo : .
Dem. .–, , , . For the other youth gangs with phallic names, see Herter : –;
Bierl : .
On masks at the Pompe: Dem. De fals. leg. with scholion; 8 Dem. Meid. (Dilts); FrontisiDucroux . Cf. the expressions > and 2 - (Pl. Phdr. b; Platon.
Diff. Char. . Kost.; Ioh. Chrys. MPG .., .., .., .., .., etc.).
Sourvinou-Inwood : is wrong to suppose that the words komos and komazein are technically
limited to the night procession of the Eisagoge: Halliwell : –.
Men. Perinthia fr. Arnott; 8 Dem. De cor. b (Dilts); Harp. s.v.
> ; Phot.
Lex. s.v.
> ( .); Phot. Lex. s.v. ( ,); Suda s.v.
> ( ). The term ‘from the wagons’, usually referred by modern scholars to the
Anthesteria and Lenaia because of Phot. Lex. s.v. @ 75@ ( .) and Suda s.v.
@ 75@ $ ( ), is likely to be common to all the main Dionysian processions at
Athens. See Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. ..; 8 Lucian, Iupp. trag. .a–b (Rabe); 8 Lucian, Eun.
. (Rabe); Halliwell : – with further literature.
See above, n. ; cf. Sosib. FGrH F . See C. G. Brown : . Rotstein : disagrees.
Dem. Meid. .
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eric csapo
sort of random outburst one might expect on this occasion. A scholiast to
Demosthenes says that in the Pompe, men wore felt caps underneath masks
to muffle the impact of blows to the head acquired when they abused one
another. Unruliness was not only licensed but expected. For this reason
Aeschines could demonstrate the habitually good behaviour of Epicrates
by claiming he showed perfect control even at the Pompe of the Dionysia.
Decrees honouring ephebes make specific reference to their orderly conduct at the Dionysia. Decorum and good order from any semi-organized
group of young men was so far from being expected that the Athenians
created boards of ‘Wardens (epimeletai) of the Pompe’, who appear also to
have been called ‘Wardens of Good Conduct in the Theatres’ and ‘Wardens
of the Choruses’. Their task was ‘to make sure that choruses did not lose
control’ – not likely to refer to the circular, tragic or comic choruses, which
could hardly be expected to riot in the middle of their performance, but to
the many choruses of men at the Pompe, who paraded about armed with
phallos-sticks and very drunk.
The Christian polemicists clearly recognized the primarily aggressive
and transgressive character of phallos-sticks and phallic processions. The
ancient martyrology, Deeds of Saint Timothy, gives the most sensational
account. At the Katagogia for Dionysus at Ephesus on January, ad
, the participants are said to have ‘tied on indecent adornments, and
even hidden their faces with masks so as not to be recognized, and carried
sticks and images of idols’. Here the ‘indecent adornments’ can only be
phalloi and ‘sticks and images of idols’ seems to refer to phallos-sticks, or
phallos-sticks and thyrsoi (only the phallos-sticks could be called ‘images of
idols’). Timothy, outraged and disgusted by ‘the indecent ornaments they
had put about themselves’, blocked the processional route and demanded
that the Ephesians give up their idolatry. Instead they advanced upon
him with the weapons at hand and we are told that he achieved a grizzly,
8 Dem. . (Dilts). Felt bands or caps are also seen on the heads of tragic and comic actors. This
suggests that the caps are worn for comfort rather than protection. It is the cultural assumptions
behind the scholiast’s claim that are of interest. Felt bands or caps: Attic rf pelike, Phiale Painter,
c. bc, Boston MFA .–, ARV 2 , ; Attic rf chous, c. bc, Hermitage .
(Figure .). Cf. second figure from right on the first-century ad mosaic from the Casa del Poeta
Tragico in Pompei, Naples NM .
Aeschin. De falsa leg. .
The inscriptions are all second–first century bc: IG ii , ll. –; IG ii , ll. , ; IG ii
, ll. –; IG ii , ll. –; IG ii , l. ; IG ii , l. .
See the discussion in Csapo and Wilson : .
Usener . The event may well be historical: see Keil ; Herter b: .
On the ‘indecent ornaments’, see Herter a: ; Herter b: ; and Herter : and
n. .
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
if poetic martyrdom, beaten to death by the phallos-sticks of the pagan
faithful, a martyrdom so delightfully Dionysian, that one would sooner
be tempted to shelve Timothy with Orpheus and Pentheus than with
Lawrence and Anthony. A second episode of phallic transgression is
known from Antioch in ad : a heathen ran into church brandishing
phalloi and shouting abuse at the Christian faithful before (as Bishop
Athanasius reassures us) the wrath of God struck him blind. These are
the last two recorded uses of the Dionysian phallos.
It is easy to dismiss any diachronic or even synchronic connection
between drama and Dionysian ritual if we think of the Dionysian Pompe
as a formal and dignified procession of civic officials, priests and sacrificiants. Our sources suggest that for most Athenians the Pompe, not the
dramatic competition, was the climax of the festival. It was a playful, creative and transgressive ritual that involved costume, role-playing, dance,
music, obscenity, abuse, mock aggression, laughter and direct, universal
participation.
Rothwell’s interpretation of the Pompe conforms to a broader trend in
scholarship since the s that identifies the aristocratic symposium as the
mainspring of (especially archaic) Greek cultural achievement. It is true
that much of our ‘lyric’ poetry seems to assume a sympotic setting and also
true that imagery related to music and dance is found mainly on vessels
designed for the symposium. Many poetic and musical genres grew up in
the elite symposium. But most such genres were also only seconded to the
elite symposium from popular festival entertainments and others were never
absorbed into elite culture, even if they are found on sympotic vessels. Elites
were not as isolated from the public religious and festival activities of the
The phallos-sticks used at the Katagogia are uncomprehendingly referred to as rhopala in the Greek
version and pali in the Latin.
Athanasius, Hist. Arianorum . (Opitz) with Herter : .
It is very tempting to connect the Berlin Painter’s phallic nose (Figure .) with the false noses
or long-nosed masks used in medieval and modern carnival, as does Hoffmann (: ). The
Berlin Painter’s phallic costume is, however, creative costuming beyond the Dionysian norm. Far
more tempting is to derive from phallos-sticks the plastic clubs that gangs of young celebrants use
to beat each other over the head at carnival processions in Athens today (also , see above,
n. ). Despite its transformation, the carnival hardware would show a gratifying continuity in both
spirit and function.
Symposium and lyric poetry: Rösler : ; Pellizer : ; Stehle : –. Symposium
and komast vases: Fehr ; Isler-Kerényi ; Seeberg ; Smith ; Steinhart : –
(although Steinhart does not distinguish regularly between public banquet and private symposium);
Smith , passim. Symposium and komos vases: Steinhart (above); Rothwell . Without
denying the importance of the elite symposium, much of the more recent literature takes a softer
stand on its exclusivity or even its primacy in the development of music/poetry: see Budelmann
b: –; Carey : –; and on iambos, especially Rotstein : –. See for komast
and komos vases, Csapo and Miller b: –, –.
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eric csapo
polis as the lingering adherents of the polarized ‘alterity’ theories spawned
during the Cold War would have us believe. This is particularly true of the
Dionysian entertainments that developed in Athens and elsewhere: they
were certainly colourful, creative and transgressive enough to appeal to the
aristocrat in his cups, even if they did derive from the common culture of
the masses.
what comedy owes to the phallika
‘Discourse of genres’ implies a primarily synchronic relationship. If so,
it is nonetheless necessary to outline a theory of the diachronic relationship between Athenian comedy and the choruses that participated in the
Dionysian Pompe: first because received wisdom is that Attic comedy began
much earlier than reliable evidence allows; secondly because a belief in comedy’s lineal or collateral descent from choruses of the Pompe appears to have
influenced the character and performance of many comic choruses in the
fifth century bc. In what follows I traverse some heavily trodden ground
but aspire to more concision and more strictly evidence-based conclusions
than is usual in discussions of comedy’s origins.
Attic vase-painting gives a clear indication of the impact that the creation (or revival) of the Athenian Dionysia had upon popular consciousness. Dionysian imagery first appears in Attic black figure from about
bc onwards, at first derived from and imitating Corinthian themes.
But Dionysian imagery becomes rampant only around bc, when Attic
art also introduces many new subjects, and in particular subjects related
to Dionysian processions. Hedreen has shown that the treatment of
Dionysian myth, especially in depictions of the Return of Hephaestus,
is directly informed by the spirit and spectacle of the Dionysian Pompe.
Even satyrs after bc begin to show a previously unknown and uncharacteristic discipline in their dance, moving in procession or with orchestrated
movements. It is from about bc that we can date the beginning of
a series of over twenty Attic vases that show elaborately costumed choruses, depicting animal riders, beasts or transvestites. These are indeed
komoi, but hardly the spontaneous aristocratic entertainments hypothesized by Rothwell. They perform a processional dance that is more lavishly
Carpenter ; Shapiro : –; Hedreen ; Csapo and Miller b: –; Smith :
.
Hedreen .
Hedreen .
Green : –; Rothwell : –; Csapo and Miller b: –.
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
equipped, better choreographed and more practised than any known performance before them.
This new interest in Dionysian processional imagery begins early in
the time of Peisistratus’ tyranny and its sudden efflorescence at this date
is hard to explain except in relation to Peisistratus’ creation of the Great
Dionysia (or its reorganization on a grand scale). Iconography confirms
the general view that Peisistratus attempted to eclipse the many local
festivals of Dionysus by creating a far more elaborate festival, centred in
Athens, and centred ultimately on the person of the tyrant himself.
The iconographic evidence (we have little else) thus suggests the following scenario for the early history of the City Dionysia. It was created
(or greatly expanded) about bc. The primary event was a parade that
included choruses of various types. That some of these choruses were perceived as dithyrambic, or actually performed hymns called dithyrambs,
seems probable: the komos (‘animal rider’) vases and some satyr choruses
are likely candidates. Other choruses were, from the very beginning,
phallic. Both phallic and ‘dithyrambic’ types have several Dionysian features in common: they might have leaders (exarchoi), they wear costumes,
and the costumes are by nature bestial or grotesque – indeed the phallic
and bestial imagery freely crosses the boundary, if such it can be called
(I doubt that the archaic Pompe recognized the boundaries or genres distinguished by later Greeks). Despite the fact that the name ‘dithyramb’
was certainly in use and meaningful at this time, our evidence suggests
that both species of Dionysian processional choruses were still thought of,
generically, as komoi: that is why the men’s choruses (popularly also called
‘circular chorus’ or ‘dithyramb’) that were later held in the theatre might
be referred to by this archaizing term and why also comedy literally means
‘song of the komos’. We should probably think of a generic Dionysian
Csapo and Miller b: . The control and development of Dionysian cult was a conscious policy
of archaic tyrants, notably Periander of Corinth, Cleisthenes of Sicyon and Pheidon of Argos: the
subject is profoundly treated in the recent work of Seaford, especially: Seaford b; Seaford ;
and Seaford .
The Peisistratan creation of the City Dionysia was challenged by Connor but reconfirmed by
Sourvinou-Inwood ; cf. R. Parker : –.
For the ‘dithyrambic’ imagery of the komos vases, see Csapo , esp. –; Rusten b: –;
Hedreen : –, –; Seaford : .
See above, nn. –.
For the iconographic representation of the exarchos, see Csapo – (to which add Athens NM
: see Smith : pl. a).
Pickard-Cambridge : –; Csapo and Miller b: (citing other literature). The interpretation of komos is disputed both in the Fasti and in the Law of Euegoros. I hope to address the
problem elsewhere. Note that Kourebion/Epikrates is said to 1 in the Pompe of the Dionysia
(Dem. De fals. leg. ; Aeschin. De fals. leg. ).
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eric csapo
choral form, ‘komos’, of two main varieties, dithyrambic choruses and phallika, each with subvarieties: animal-rider (or beast) choruses and satyrs for
the former; phallophoroi and ithyphalloi for the latter.
The vase-paintings of animal-rider (or beast) choruses from the Pompe
show both processional and circular song and dance. Even in the classical
period the Pompe moved slowly, probably from the Dipylon gate, stopping
to perform sacrifice and hymns at altars, and especially at the Altar of the
Twelve Gods in the Athenian agora. The existence of important stations
along the processional route of course explains why our komos vases depict
dancing both in a linear (processional) and in a circular formation (circling
altars). The part of the agora adjacent to the Altar of the Twelve Gods was
known as the ‘orchestra’ or dancing place and later became a book market
outside the festival season. But during the festival season (both Dionysia
and Panathenaea), wooden stands (ikria) were set up for those who wished
to sit and watch the succession of choral performances around the altar.
We appear still to have the text of at least one dithyramb performed at the
Altar of the Twelve Gods, written by Pindar (fr. M).
Things changed when a theatre was built north of the Sanctuary of
Dionysus: the archaeological remains suggest a date for the building of
the theatre at the very end of the sixth century bc. With the building
of the theatre, a much larger audience could gather at the end-point of
the procession and this probably encouraged a far greater elaboration of
choral set pieces than did the smaller ‘stations’ along the processional route.
Possibly prizes previously existed for komoi; we have no way of telling. But
with the building of the theatre there was an unprecedented opportunity for
Csapo : –.
Xen. Eq. Mag. .. The altar, which dates back to the time of the Pisistratids, was doubtless
a station on the processional route even before the classical agora was built. The archaic route
probably moved on from the Altar of the Twelve Gods, along the Street of the Tripods, through the
archaic agora, to stop again at the large plateia in front of the Old Prytaneon, before finally moving
on to the Sanctuary of Dionysus: Schmalz . It is possible, but I think unlikely, that Xenophon
is referring to performances connected to the procession of the Eisagoge (or a connected ‘komos’)
which took place the night before the Pompe, as Sourvinou-Inwood argued (: –; cf.
R. Parker : ): in this case it would have nothing to do with the phallic choruses (which are
uniquely attached to the Pompe), but would have something to do with dithyrambs.
Wycherley : – nos. , –.
Wycherley : nos. –, ; Camp : – fig. ; Camp : and pl. .
Zimmermann : –; Wilson : .
It is interesting that tradition placed the transfer of entertainment from the agora to the newly
built theatre in / bc after the wooden stands (ikria) collapsed: Suda s.v. Pratinas ( )
cf. Phot. Lex. s.v. ikria ( .) (the collection of evidence by Hammond : – conflates two
traditions: one that there were performances in the agora before the theatron, meaning ‘theatre’,
was built; second that there was a poplar or poplars above the ikria of the Theatre of Dionysus
before the theatron, meaning ‘[‘Lycurgan’] auditorium’, was built; see Roselli : –. The logic
is presumably that benchwork built onto the natural slope of the acropolis above the theatre would
not need to be so elaborate and so a collapse of ikria there would be less catastrophic).
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
establishing a contest that a large audience might witness, and it is probably
no coincidence that Athenian civic records of the competition stretched
back no earlier than the last decade of the sixth century. It is from c. bc
that the Fasti (as usually reconstructed) record winners of tragic and men’s
and boys’ choruses. That men’s and boys’ choruses soon came to be known
as ‘circular’ suggests that an effective separation was soon made between the
processional and the theatrical entertainments. Some such development is
indicated by the ancient testimony that Lasos of Hermione ‘introduced
the contest for dithyrambs’ as well as Pindar’s testimony that Lasos first
converted the dithyramb from a linear to a circular form. In official
speech, however, men’s and boys’ choruses are never called dithyrambs,
presumably because true dithyrambs were perceived to be processional and
cultic.
The building of the theatre may have prompted another set of changes
in the iconographic record. The most important shows a shift in focus
from the procession to the theatre. Within a decade or two of the building,
the komos vases with beast choruses, animal riders and transvestites come
to an end. At the same time two new subjects, based on the theatrical
competitions, appear: we have the first appearance in Attic vase-painting
of choregic tripods (and other imagery related to the men’s and boys’
lyric choruses) and the first depictions of tragic choruses. Paradoxically,
perhaps, the Pompe continues to be a topic of interest, but with a new
subject. It is in about bc that we get the first depictions of the choruses
of ithyphalloi that are the subject of this chapter. The ithyphalloi doubtless
emerge as a subject because of new interest stimulated by the expansion
of the City Dionysia; but unlike the new genres they are not theatrical.
(By this date ‘theatrical genres’ could have included comedy, added to the
Dionysia around bc.) Depictions of comedy in vase-painting appear
only much later, and they focused for the most part on actors. Might it
be that early comedy was so close in form and spirit to the phallic choruses
that the former sparked the vase-painters’ interest in the latter? (This is a
genuine question, not a disguised proposition.)
The building of the theatre doubtless had some impact on the performance of the phallic choruses. In late classical and Hellenistic times the
theatre could be the site of a prolonged and climactic performance by phallic choruses: Hyperides mentions the ithyphalloi dancing in the orchestra
Suda s.v. Lasos ( ); Pind. fr. b M (with D’Angour ; D’Angour’s theory is criticized and
modified, unsuccessfully in my view, by Porter ).
Csapo and Miller b: –.
Choregic imagery: Csapo b. Tragic choruses and choreuts: Csapo a: –.
Csapo a: –.
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and Semos’ account of both ithyphalloi and phallophoroi focuses on the
moment that the choruses enter the theatre. But ithyphalloi remained
primarily processional and non-theatrical, as is clear from Demochares’
account of the ithyphallic procession to greet Demetrius the Besieger.
Not much later we have evidence that the actors’ union, the Artists of
Dionysus, who in Hellenistic times assumed much of the responsibility for
organizing the Dionysian Pompe, also provided the choruses of ithyphalloi,
at least at the Soteria in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
It is impossible to say in what sense comedy existed in Athens as a
separate genre before around bc, when it was officially adopted as a
competitive genre at the City Dionysia. Before this date there is no trace
of Attic comedy apart from the rather desperate efforts of later scholars
(ancient and modern) to invent a tradition older than the Doric. But
comedy did already exist certainly in Sicily and possibly in Megara and
elsewhere in the Peloponnese. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that after
the building of the theatre the phallic choruses expanded their normal
processional repertoire to include a finale in the theatre with more plot
and narrative structure and that this gradually grew into a fully theatrical
event. Even if this was the case, we would still have to believe that the
main models for the creation of Attic comedy were the already evolved
narrative and theatrical genres of tragedy, satyr-play, circular chorus and
Dorian comedy, not to mention evolved literary genres such as iambic
poetry (despite the cultic obscenity and abuse already practised in phallic
processions). By the time we can measure its pulse, Attic comedy is
sui generis and multigeneric. The one most striking feature that comedy
inherits from its carnival matrix is an unrestricted freedom in appropriating
the form and contents of other genres, and for this reason it has fairly been
called a ‘carnival of genres’.
Hyp. fr. Jensen; Semos FGrH F (PMG a; Bierl : –); cf. the prominence of the
theatre in a third-century ad phallic performance in Euboea (SEG no. , no. ; Csapo
: ).
Democh. FGrH F ; Duris FGrH F .
Ath. c (Powell : ); Lightfoot : ; Bierl : n. . See also n. below.
The efforts of later scholars to defend the theory of the genre’s Attic origins have left us only the
(dubiously formed) name Sousarion, a fragment that is clearly a later forgery, and biographical
details of the poet which indicate that, if he existed, he may have been Megarian and composed
iambic poetry (rather than real comedy). Rusten b is surely right to cast doubt on both the
name and the tradition.
For a possible original coalescence of iambos, dithyramb and phallic procession, see Csapo and
Miller b: .
I refer to the Bakhtinian reading of Aristophanes by Platter . Bakhtin took a particular
interest in Greek Old Comedy, ‘a polyglot genre’ (: ), in developing his carnival theory and
his approach has had broad resonance in recent work on Old Comedy: see esp. Carrière ,
Möllendorff .
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
What ancient Athenians thought, even if questionable or untrue, is,
nonetheless, important for understanding later developments in comedy.
We cannot be sure if phallic choruses were supposed to be the origin of
comedy by anyone earlier than Aristotle, but the connection is an easy
one: in addition to sharing a mixture of choral and individual delivery, both
genres were scurrilous, obscene, potentially aggressive and abusive; both
employed costume which emphasized the phallos, physical distortion of
the body and potentially masks. Aristotle does, however, mention a debate,
possibly much older than his day, in which pro-Dorians supported their
claim to have invented comedy by disputing the derivation of ‘komoidia’
from ‘komos’. There can be no doubt that ‘komoidia’ really did mean
the ‘song of the komos’ and it is very likely that all the various genres
of processional chorus (including but not limited to the phallic varieties)
that appeared in Dionysian parades were closely associated in the popular
mind with comedy. A large percentage of the earliest known titles of
comedy, not only from Athens, but even from Sicily, appeal to choral
types that are either known from the archaic Pompe or part of a broader
Dionysian matrix of processional choral forms: titles such as Epicharmus’
Komastai (alternatively called Hephaestus and reportedly about the Return
of Hephaestus), Dionysoi, Bacchae and Harpagai (apparently about Kotyto,
whose choral forms were assimilated to Dionysian komoi) – this is all the
more surprising if, as many believe, Sicilian comedy had no chorus. From
the first fifty years of comedy in Athens we have a very high density of
beast choruses: Magnes’ Birds, Gall-Flies, Frogs, Crates’ Beasts, Ecphantides’
Satyrs, Callias’ Satyrs (relevant too no doubt are the plays entitled Dionysus
by Magnes, Crates and Ecphantides). And, as we will see in a moment,
such choruses continue to be popular.
The synchronic influence of the komos is most palpable in the second
and third generation of Attic comedy. Recent studies of Cratinus make
it very clear that he cultivated a public image of himself as a poetic reactionary: Emmanuela Bakola in particular has convincingly shown that
Cratinus presented himself as a champion of traditional ‘Dionysiac poetics’ in opposition to the comic poets of his day, who, he felt, had strayed too
far from their roots, particularly, it seems, in their emulation of tragedy.
It is not just for his revival of the spirit of Archilochus that Aristophanes
spoke of ‘the initiates in the Bacchic rites of the bull-eating tongue of
Philomnestos, who seems to presuppose such a connection, is undatable (see above, n. ).
Arist. Poet. a–b.
Kerkhof : , –; Jameson, Jordan and Kotansky : –.
Bakola : – and passim. Bakola picks up from the important studies of Cratinus and iambos
of Rosen and Biles , who however speak more narrowly of an ‘Archilochean poetics’.
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Cratinus’ (Ran. ). Cratinus claimed to draw his creative inspiration
directly from Dionysus, writing only when drunk and reviving the ‘traditional’ Dionysian spirit of comedy. Cratinus’ choruses frequently have
a Dionysian or closely paradionysian persona: he wrote a Boukoloi (not
‘Cowherds’ but a term referring to worshippers who process with Dionysus in the form of a bull), a Euneidae (named after the clan of musicians and
priests of Dionysus Melpomene who also organized Dionysian parades),
Thracians (probably Thracian women processing for the cult of Bendis, an
orgiastic cult with dance and music broadly assimilated to that of Dionysus), one or two choruses of transvestite men (Malthakoi and Drapetides),
and at least two satyr choruses (Dionysalexandros and Satyroi), and a beast
chorus (Cheirones), not to mention a play called Dionysoi, whose chorus
was presumably composed of the god’s worshippers. About some of these
plays we know enough to be sure that Cratinus imitated cultic choruses:
in Boukoloi (as in Euripides’ Bacchae) the parodos imitates a processional
dithyramb; in Dionysalexandros both the parodos and the exodos seem
to have imitated cultic processions. Even in Archilochoi the fragments
suggest that iambic poetry was conceived to be a performative rather than
a literary genre and possibly in a komos setting: the fragments refer to an
annual festival and notably to ithyphalloi (frr. and ). In presenting
himself as an authentic Dionysian poet, Cratinus draws liberally upon all
the choral types associated with either Dionysus’ mythic retinue (satyrs,
bacchants) or his festival retinue composed of the typical choral groups that
perform in the Pompe: satyrs, beasts, transvestites, iambists and ithyphalloi.
But he does this without privileging any single choral type: like the Pompe,
Cratinus’ comedy is both generically inclusive and transgressive.
Cratinus probably marks the high point of the Pompe’s influence upon
comedy, but the influence continues to be felt until well into the fourth
century and the era associated with ‘Middle Comedy’. Beast choruses continue to appear in comedy until – bc. Satyr choruses in comedy
have their main burst of popularity in the s and s bc and are afterwards only revived by the archaizing Timocles as late as the s bc. At
least one classical comedy had a chorus whose persona was drawn directly
from the Pompe, Ephippus’ Obeliaphoroi, although we may suspect the
respective Komastai of Ameipsias (or Phrynichus) and Timocles’ Dionysiazousai. Other choruses definitely had a mystic or Dionysian character
and are likely to have incorporated motifs common to the choruses of
Bakola : –, –. The exodos in which the satyrs escort Dionysus to the Greek ships
alludes to a Dionysian Pompe even without the scapegoat overtones argued by Bakola.
Storey .
See the thorough study by Rothwell : –.
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
the Pompe: Eupolis’ Baptai (with a chorus of transvestite worshippers of
the orgiastic goddess Kotyto), Autocrates’ Tympanistai (see fr. ), Phrynichus’ Mystai, Antiphanes’ Carians (a transvestite or effeminate chorus of
orgiastic worshippers of Cybele) and of course the respective Bacchae of
Antiphanes, Diocles and Lysippus. The beast choruses of Aristophanes
are well known; Babylonians may have had a chorus of Asiatics introducing
Dionysus; Seasons appears to have been about the rites of Sabazius; the
chorus of Lemnian Women introduced the cult of Bendis. It should be
remembered that Acharnians (–) directly incorporated a representation of the Pompe.
what the phallika owe to comedy: phallic choruses in
fourth-century vase-painting
Whatever comedy owed to phallic choruses, it is clear from vase-painting
that from about bc at the latest comedy dominated the intergeneric
exchange. Four Attic vase-paintings from the first half of the fourth century
show that the costume and character of phallic dancers underwent some
assimilation to those of comic choreuts and actors.
The latest surviving wielder of a phallos-stick is indeed embedded in a
scene that is otherwise entirely concerned with comedy. Hitherto unnoticed, the phallos-stick appears on a well-known chous in St Petersburg
dated to about bc (Figure .). The chous shows five children playing the roles of Dionysian entertainers (a recurrent motif in choes). Each
of the children is in costume and each is associated with a comic actor’s
mask. All of the figures wear the protective band used by actors to shield
the sides and (in some cases) top of the head against the hard edges of the
mask (and doubtless also to secure the fit). And yet the figures on the far
Storey a: –.
This list of choruses that draw upon komos types familiar from the Pompe would be much longer
if it could be shown that choruses of ‘foreigners’ appeared on the series of Attic komos vases, as is
frequently claimed (e.g. Seeberg : –; Rothwell : –), but this seems to me the same
kind of misreading of general Dionysian costume and imagery as led to the initial identification of
our phallic performers as Lydians and Scythians. Play titles such as the Lydians of Magnes or the
Cretans of Nicochares are likely to be relevant as choruses of worshippers introducing an orgiastic
cult (either that of Dionysus or the various deities that are regularly conflated with Dionysian cult
in ancient drama), but not qua foreigners.
Norwood : –, –.
Attic rf chous, c. bc, Hermitage . . Rusten (forthcoming) demonstrates the importance of this vase to the history of comedy. If Bulle is right that Scopas’ Pothos carried a phallos-stick,
then the gem, mentioned in n. above, is later. But see the doubts expressed in the same note.
See Csapo a: –.
Rusten (forthcoming) shows that the masks are accurate representations of known types.
See above, n. .
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Figure . Attic red-figure chous, c. bc
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
Figure . Attic red-figure bell krater, Hare-Hunt Painter, c. – bc
right and left of the scene are certainly not dressed as actors: one wears the
costume of a choregos and the other appears to be dressed as a piper. There
is therefore a certain blurring of comic actor imagery with other personnel
involved in Dionysian entertainment.
The three boys in the centre of the visual field all wear the actor’s
bodytights and the comic somation (padded body with enlarged stomach,
buttocks, breasts and phallos). It is the ‘actor’ on the left who is of particular
interest to our investigation. He carries the mask of a comic king (it has
a little crown and is the usual mask for Zeus in western Greek comic
vase-paintings). Unlike the other two ‘actors’ he also wears a himation,
though possibly only as a mark of his superior social status. In place of a
sceptre, however, the figure carries a phallos-stick. We do not actually have
an image of a phallic entertainer, but rather an image in which the cultic
symbol of one Dionysian entertainer is confused with, or appropriated to
the use of, another. The readiness with which the attribute of a phallic
dancer is transferred to a comic actor is of particular interest as the first
sign of a process of assimilation, at least in vase imagery, of the performers
in the Pompe to the performers in the theatre.
Although phallos-sticks are missing from three fourth-century vasepaintings of choral entertainers, the entertainers have enough points in
common with their fifth-century counterparts to make it likely that they
too are to be thought of as choruses at the Pompe. One is known only from
a drawing made in (Figure .): the Attic red-figured bell krater upon
Rusten (forthcoming).
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which it is based has never been photographed and I infer that it is in poor
shape. Nonetheless, we can see ivy-wreathed men wearing spotty bodysuits moving in procession; one appears to carry a cake. These costumes
look something more like comic actors’ costumes, since they include the
usual form of actor’s phallos and a suggestion of padding. But the figures are
not likely to be comic actors or a comic chorus. The padding is slight and
the bodysuit worn in comic costume, since it represents stage-nakedness, is
never decorated and never belted as this is. Moreover the facial features are
differentiated and not distorted: even if the faces are meant to be seen as
masked, the masks are not uniform and the beardlessness of the figure on
the left shows that the chorus is of mixed age. Comic choruses never show
this diversity. One should note too that the toes of the piper are articulated
but none of the toes of the choreuts, suggesting that they are wearing boots.
Possibly Gerhard could not make out (or did not recognize) the ivy spots
that are here rendered as Xs and Os. He also could make nothing of the
stick in the hand of the rightmost dancer. It is too long and crooked to
be a torch. It may be a walking stick, but a walking stick is an odd prop for
a chorus especially of men in their prime. It is likely that Gerhard would
have misrecognized a phallos-stick if he saw it.
The vase indicates a processional movement: the feet of the four leftmost
figures are all directed to the right and their bodies appear to describe a
stylized march rather than what we would call a dance. The rightmost figure
faces the group and has one arm raised in what might appear to be a speaking
gesture (Gerhard apparently took him to be holding something small in his
right hand, but this is unlikely). His configuration conforms to a standard
schema for showing a lead singer, or exarchos. Even without the detail of
a phallos-stick, we would have to conclude from the processional nature of
the image, the details of costume (including the ‘comic’ phalloi), the ivy
crowns as well as the ‘ivy spots’ on the costume, and of course the presence
of the cake, that the vase is meant to depict a chorus from a Dionysiac
procession. The phalloi indicate a connection with the Dionysian Pompai,
the only processions at Athens for which phallic choruses are attested.
An image on a recently published Athenian bell krater of – bc
shows a chorus which is certainly meant to be interpreted as a group
Attic rf bell krater, Hare-Hunt Painter, c. – bc, S. Agata de’ Goti, formerly collection
Mustilli, ARV 2 , MMC 3 , AV . Gerhard a: pl. and Gerhard b: . Gerhard’s
drawing is reproduced in Wieseler : pl. ix, ; Bieber : fig. .
Gerhard b: .
Even the chorus of old men on the bf skyphos, Thebes BE ., carry torches not sticks: see
Green : fig. a.
Csapo –.
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
Figure . Attic red-figure bell krater, – bc
of performers from the Pompe of the Dionysia (Figure .). The bell
krater shows a group of four men in procession against a background of
decorative ivy leaves. The first man on the right is bald, front and top,
like the Sabouroff Painter’s group, and prances in what appears to be a
mincing effeminate manner (krotalos-players sometimes adopt this stance).
The second and third men have several days’ growth of beard on the
side of their faces like the Berlin Painter’s choreuts. All the men wear ivy
garlands (the berries are emphasized with added white), spotty bodytights
and large ‘looped’ phalloi. The phalloi are certainly of the type worn by
comic actors (and possibly comic choreuts). So are the bodytights, but only
in form: comic tights are never decorated but are designed to represent
naked flesh. And there is no suggestion of comic padding. Three of the
men wear the familiar kothornoi highlighted in added white paint. There
is enough similarity in costume with the early classical phallic choruses of
Figures .–. to suggest that the spots on the costume are intended to
suggest ivy. We are probably to recognize the men as masked: Ian McPhee
tells me that the line of the chin continues up to the ear, contrary to
Attic rf bell krater, Telos Group (Schauenburg) or Telos Painter (McPhee), – bc, Naples,
private collection. Schauenburg : pl. .–; Green : . I thank Dick Green for bringing
this vase to my attention.
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the normal practice of the Telos Painter and other painters of the fourth
century. In any case the faces are different and suggest men of different
ages: they are certainly no comic chorus. Threatening, probably, is the way
the figure on the left holds his stick or torch. The middle figures are engaged
in transporting important contributions to the feast that will follow the
sacrifice at the end of the procession.
I do not know the identity of the prominent object emphasized by
added white paint in the hand of the man second in the procession: Green
very plausibly suggests a Mediterranean white radish. Unmistakable,
however, is the large object, also emphasized by added white that the man
with the radish(?) carries on a pole together with the man behind him. It
is not a cake, but something equally suited to the sacrificial procession of
an Athenian festival, indeed one uniquely attested for the Pompe of the
Dionysia. It is a kind of bread baked on a stick called ‘obel bread’.
The exclusively Dionysian quality of obel bread seems to have elicited
an aetiological myth that Dionysus invented the bread while on military
campaign: no doubt so that it could be carried by his creatures while ‘on
the march’. That obel-bread carriers, obeliaphoroi, were no less colourful
I. McPhee per litteras; Schauenburg : ; Green : : Green sees ‘jutting chins’, but adds
that ‘it is hard to say if the painter omitted to fill in their beards, or if the intention was simply to
make them grotesque’.
Green : , but it is not primarily, I suspect, ‘festive food’, as Green suggests (the most
common use of the radish in Greek literature, if not in Greek culture, is to provide an emetic). The
associations of the radish in this context are at least as likely to be symbolic as alimentary, and to
allude to the phallic nature and function of the vegetable: Ar. Nub. (with scholia ad loc. and
a, d, a); 8 Ar. Plut. ; Lucian, De mort. Peregr. . (with scholia ad loc.); Hesych. s.v.
=- ! ; Suda s.vv. ( ) and =- ( ); Carey .
The obel bread said to be found on choes (van Hoorn : figs. –, ; Crosby : ) is
in fact streptos cakes: see Hamilton : . Choes are not in any case restricted to themes related
to the Anthesteria; they have a broad (and not exclusive) preference for Dionysian themes.
Ath. b; Poll. .; Paus. Attic. %ttikän ½nomtwn sunagwg 1; Phot. Lex. s.v. obelias artos
( .). See also Kassel and Austin on Ar. fr. . Schauenburg : – considers but ultimately
rejects the notion that the object is meant to represent meat. A Boeotian bf lekanis lid, c. bc
(Adolphseck Schloß Fasanerie ; van Straten , V, fig. ; cf. Schauenburg : ) shows
meat being stacked over most of the length of a long spit (the one possible Attic equivalent, a cup
by Makron, ARV 2 /, Para. , Addend. , is described by van Straten : as ‘man
taking dough (?) from lebes on tripod stand’). Schauenburg, however, notes the difference in shape
(the object here is in fact ‘stomach shaped’, exactly as Photius describes obel bread). But one should
also note that the Boeotian lekanis is careful to articulate the divisions between slices of meat.
Moreover, the Telos Painter and the painter of the agora polychrome oinochoe (see below) paint
the bread white (it is uncooked or semi-cooked dough which is meant to be baked at the sacrifice
in the sanctuary), even though the agora polychrome has seven different colours, including pink,
at his disposal. Moreover, one never sees men carrying meat in this way, nor is one likely to (Attic
scenes of men carrying meat are very different: see van Straten : ): the meat is butchered
and cooked at the place of sacrifice. Only live animals appear in sacrificial processions. If food is
carried it is almost invariably cakes or bread (for the radish, see above, n. ).
Ath. b drawing on the Epikleseis of Socrates.
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
characters than phallic entertainers, if they were indeed distinguishable,
is suggested by the attested use of ‘obeliaphoroi’ as a derogatory term for
workers and rustics. Obeliaphoroi were interesting enough to Ephippus
for him to give their name to one of his comedies (and evidently therefore
to the chorus). Depictions of obel bread appear twice elsewhere: once
on an Attic polychrome oinochoe, and once on an Apulian bell krater.
Only in the case of the Apulian krater do the obeliaphoroi clearly wear full
comic costume. Indeed the comification of the subject is so complete that
the figures are drawn on top of a stage. The Attic oinochoe, though it is
frequently referred to comedy, is far more likely to belong to our small
(but growing) repertoire of images of entertainers from the Dionysian
Pompe. Although the details of costume have not survived in any clear
form, enough remains to show that both figures share features with our
phallic choruses: they have long beards and one is depicted in kothornoi
and the same kind of rustic hat we find drawn by the Pistoxenos Painter
(Figure .).
Yet another chorus of Dionysian performers appear on an Attic redfigured bell krater excavated from an ancient cemetery in Cástulo, near
Linares in Southern Spain (Figure .). This is a far more doubtful
case. The costumes look comic: lines at the four visible ankles and the
three visible wrists indicate the use of the bodytights worn by actors and
choreuts. The use of the comic bodysuit (somation) is indicated by the
large bellies, buttocks and phalloi. Even the piper (second from left) wears
a comic body: the lines on his upper thigh make this especially clear. There
are, however, good reasons to think this is not comedy. The one Attic vasepainting and the two Attic reliefs that do certainly show comic choruses
show uniform masks, costumes and movements, only the piper excepted
(the pipers wear the same formal costume that we find in scenes of tragedy).
Here, however, the costumes are distinguished, even if all appear comic
Ephipp. frr. –.
Phot. Lex. s.v. obelias artos ( .).
Attic polychrome oinochoe, c. bc, Agora P , MMC 3 AV ; Apulian bell krater, Near to
the Painter of Copenhagen , – bc, St Petersburg (W. ), PhV 2 .
The claim that all of the polychrome oinochoai in the group published by Crosby are somehow
related to comedy cannot be sustained. In fact Agora P , identified by Webster in PickardCambridge : fig. as an ‘effeminate reveller’ is very likely to be another phallic entertainer
from the Pompe: he wears the cuffed kothornoi and carries a staff that, judging from the photograph
of the pot, is intended to be a phallos-stick. Unfortunately the poor quality of the painting and the
even more lamentable state of its preservation allow no firm ground for argument.
Attic rf bell krater, – bc, Cástulo ; Blázquez : – fig. , pls. –; McPhee
: ; Domı́nguez and Sánchez : no. , fig. ; Green : .
The published photograph makes clear, as the drawing does not, that there are lines at the wrists
of the rightmost figure.
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Figure . Fragments of an Attic red-figure bell krater, – bc
(including the costume of the piper). Only the figure on the right looks
masked, or at least has a grotesque face, but not those on either side of the
piper. It is possible that the figures that flank the piper are wearing roughly
the same costume (the one on the right does not have the himation worn
by the one on the left). If this is a scene from comedy it must show an
image of two choreuts, a piper and a comic actor. But if this is so, the vase
is truly unique: there is virtually no representation in Greek art that shows
choreuts and actors together in performance. But the choreuts are not
shown making uniform movements or even movements that might strike
the viewer as belonging to the same pattern. It is very hard to see how the
painter could have expected anyone to recognize that these two figures are
meant to represent a comic chorus. Their incoherent, vaguely processional
movements (a procession seems indicated by the presence of torches) seem
rather to suggest the iconography of entertainers at the Pompe. But if so,
they share nothing more with the genre than this vaguely processional and
non-uniform movement and the ivy garlands whose traces are visible on
the heads of the rightmost figures. The fragment from Cástulo remains
problematic no matter what genre we refer it to.
The small figure adjacent a tragic chorus on an Attic rf krater in Basel (BS ) is a notable
exception, if this is an actor.
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Comedy and the Pompe: Dionysian genre-crossing
conclusion
From about bc Athenian art takes a minor interest in the choral
groups that performed in the Dionysian Pompe. From about to bc
we have several vase-paintings of choral groups who wear costumes typified
by sleeved, belted and ankle length (sometimes fringed) garments, ivy
spots, kothornoi, ivy garlands and sometimes masks. They move and dance
in procession to pipe music and are associated with such Pompe-specific
props as phallos-sticks, phallic adornments and obel bread. They are not
comic but they have a lot in common with comedy. They may not be
precisely the subgenre of phallic chorus that Aristotle was visualizing when
he derived comedy from ‘those who led off the phallika’, but they were
surely included within his general purview when he linked comedy and
phallika. Even if the diachronic relationship between phallika and comedy
is wrong (at the very least it is simplistic), the remains of Old Comedy
attest to a general belief that a special relationship existed between them.
Athenian comic poets frequently model their choruses after choral varieties
(including phallic choruses) known from the Pompe, and this is especially
true of self-styled Dionysian traditionalists and archaizers, such as Cratinus
and (much later) Timocles. By about bc, however, we have strong
evidence that the main influence flowed from comedy to phallika: the
costume of phallic performers remains clearly distinct from comedy but
undergoes a high degree of assimilation nonetheless: one wonders if the
‘voluntary’ performers were already being replaced by professional actors
in the fourth century Pompe: this appears to have been standard practice
in Hellenistic times.
The vase-paintings also show that our phallic performers belong to a
broad community of Dionysian choral performers with whom they share
many motifs, and with whom they share the same occasion (the Pompe)
and purpose (carnival, sacrifice). The patterns that differentiate our phallic
performers from other phallic performers and other komoi are variable,
relatively vague and easily transgressed. This is a characteristic of Dionysian
choruses and of Dionysus himself, who transgresses all norms and barriers.
But this transient and permeable quality is something that comedy also
See n. above. For the artists organizing and/or participating in processions generally: Aneziri
: , –, –, ; Lightfoot : . Already in the Euboean decree of c. bc (IG
xii , , – supplements) it appears that pipers and perhaps other artists who were hired
for the theatrical competitions were also required to participate in the Pompe (in IG xii , ,
ll. –, – all contest performers are required to take part in the procession for the Artemisia).
Cf. Aneziri : .
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inherits to a far greater degree than tragedy or even satyr-play. For this
reason comedy can fairly be called a ‘genre of genres’ and in this respect
too it resembles its cultic Dionysian matrix. Old Comedy draws freely
upon all musical and speech genres, but Old Comedy mostly draws its
form and contents from the cognate Dionysian genres of tragedy, satyrplay, dithyramb, iambos and the sub-literary choral komoi of the Pompe. In
this sense, Aristotle is both deeply insightful and surely wrong, or at least
overstating the case, when he derives comedy specifically from the phallika.
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