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The Chorus of Aeschylus' Choephori UC Berkeley Cabinet of the Muses: Rosenmeyer Festschrift Title The Chorus of Aeschylus' Choephori Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8zv1j39h Author McCall, Marsh Publication Date 1990-04-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California THE CHORUS OF AESCHYLUS’ CHOEPHORI* Marsh McCall Stanford University I wish to ask two questions about the chorus of Choephori. First, who exactly are they? Second, what dramatic personality and functions does Aeschylus give to them, and are these congruent with what we might, or do, expect? Even with the appearance of Garvie’s fine and thorough commentary on Choephori,1 there is nothing approaching consensus on either of these questions. I think it possible to settle the first and more concrete one and to advance understanding of the second, though in an unsettling way. At the end of the paper, I shall offer an opinion on how the particular investigation of the Choephori chorus may relate to the further and even more basic question: in what sense, if at all, is there a unified choral voice throughout the Oresteia or throughout Aeschylus? * * * * * First, then, identity. The chorus of Choephori consist either of unspecified foreign slave women or of specifically Trojan slave women, but which? Commentators and critics are split. As a sample, Verrall, Tucker, Wilamowitz, Lattimore are for unspecified generic foreign slave women; Conington, Sidgwick, Rose, Lloyd-Jones for specifically Trojan slave women.2 And many scholars, no matter how detailed their discussion of the play and its chorus—Lebeck, Taplin, and Garvie3 may serve as examples—, make no real attempt at a firm identification at all. In fact, the issue remains entirely open. But this is the sort of situation in Greek tragedy which has to have been clear for the audience. The audience must be able to identify who the actors and the chorus are, and it will make a difference to an audience’s response to Choephori as a whole whether the choral force is a group of women brought back—with Cassandra—from Troy by Agamemnon or a group of women who have been part of the palace household since before Agamemnon ever went to Troy. It can be presumed that when the audience first see the chorus, at or toward the end of the prologue, they know them from their costumes and masks to be slave women. The question thus becomes: how much, if any, more specific an identification emerges from the text?4 Three conceivably relevant passages, along with interesting but obscure scholia to the first of them, have been adduced as evidence of a specifically Trojan identity: 75ff., 423ff., and 935f. Although I shall treat briefly all three of these, a general dramatic consideration makes it fairly certain that only the Cabinet of the Muses, ed. M. Griffith and D. J. Mastronarde, pp. 17-30 © 1990 Scholars Press, ©2005 Dept. of Classics, Univ. of California, Berkeley 18 Marsh McCall first one, from the epode of the parodos, can contribute to the identification of the chorus: namely, it is improbable that a choral group, or a character, will be [18]identified firmly to the audience only long after their first appearance in the play. Whatever identifying words are supposed to be picked up by the audience will surely be uttered early. Thus, if our chorus are to be identified any more specifically than as slave women it is inherently unlikely that such further identification will come either almost halfway through the play (the second passage, toward the end of the kommos) or, even more unlikely, from near the end of the play (the third passage, from the stasimon after Orestes has driven Clytemnestra into the palace). The epode of the parodos, therefore, is critical. I give Page’s text: … (75-81) The passa§gmeo ‹s tda't,e és nwãghkata nth geå ra uédmiefn¤cpet owloinu ld know already from the chorus’ yeo‹ prosÆnegkan, §k går o‡kvn costumes and masks, that they are slaves, and it establishes that at some point patr≈ivn doÊliÒn <m'> §sçgon a‰san, they haved ¤ckoamiae ~fkrao‹m m Øan do¤tkhaeira ~la nd. Does it tell us anything more about the chorus? Lplro°ypdo-nJotn' eésp t'r aénrsxlaçtwe sb t¤hoeu first three verses: “But as for me—since a constraintb t¤haait fbreesne«t nm ayfi nc°istya ih, aps ikbreÚen slatiÊdg own me by the gods; for from the 5 house of mkrya ftaotÊhsera ith: ey led me to a fate of servitude—….” The next lines are badly corrupt, and Page’s text departs considerably from that of M, the codex unicus for Choephori: . Without attempting to come to terms with the whole passage,6 I focus on M’s . This is, as Garvie notes, “an odd expression,” but together with the surrounding phrases it seems to mean something like (with my italics) “it is fitting to put up with the rulers of my life in matters just and unjust” (Garvie) or “and mine it is to … consent to their command¤sk, ariiag hkt ao‹r mwØr odn¤gk”a i(aL, atptirm°poroen)t. ' Iénr xthåiws rbe¤aodui,n gb, ¤naoi fadedriotmio°nnavl nb aacfikng°sroaui npdi kinrf«onrm farteionn« nab sotuÊt gthoew kchraotruosÊ sish bieing given. 7 With Page’s reading, however, the chorus are spéercxifåywin bg¤ othuat they have been slaves from the beginning of their life, in which case they are quite definitely not describing themselves as having been brought by Agamemnon from Troy (i.e., as girls or young women). Page derives his reading from the scholia to the epode, as his apparatus criticus makes clear: interpretatur M . He has in mind particularly a scholium which reads, without a lemma: (corrected by Abresch to ) …. And he may also have in mind a scholium in which the lemma is followed by the comment: S 8 ,…. Certainly the first scholium (if we accept Abresch’s aélmp'o sét rsxuçrew emendation) is taking the text to mean , though, as Garvie tÚ •j∞w: §mo‹ d¢ pr°ponta ka‹ ÙfeilÒmenã §stin éparxåw ép' érx∞w b¤ou pr°pont' érxåw b¤ou pr°pontã mo¤ §sti ka‹ ÙfeilÒmena, §jÒte toËton §panÆirhmai tÚn b¤on ép' érxçw b¤ou The Chorus of Aeschylus’ Choephori 19 points out, this does not necessarily indicate that the scholiast saw in the text being commented on.9 But the following considerations make Page’s confident reliance on the scholia dubious. First, the earlier clause in the text, [19]… , suggests strongly, if not irresistibly, that this chorus has not been enslaved . Second, Page’s apparatus implies a consistency in the scholia which is not the case. The second scholium above is méupc'h é mrxoçrew blik¤oeuly to mean “since I have taken up this (kind of) life” than “since I was born.” And there is a third scholium, with the lemma , which reads: §k går o‡kvn patr≈ivn 10 a‰san . Now the érepg'u léarrx mçwe abn¤ionug given to … in the text is “the constraint of a city besieged” (Garvie) or “constraining doom about my city” (Smyth),11 but the scholiast takes the phrase as “constraint coming from various cities,” and he explains, “since the Greeks came from varioéumsf c¤iptiteosl,”i nciting as an analtoØgny §ka dEiaufripÒridvena np Òplhervasne é(nAãngdkrh.n 4[˜6 6§)s, ti pÒlemon], …w émfim, ãwtohrearew kÒrouw fhs‹ ıh aEs Èthrei pse¤dnhswe:, “ f§rko md ivaafrÒioruvsn m goåthr eprsÒ (lbeuvt nth ∑e ssamn eo flf aÜthEelr)l.”h n Tewhis scholium, then, does take the chorués ntãog bkea nTrojaénm. f S¤pcatrocleilny anyone, however, except the scholiast has been persuaded that and are, in these contexts, analogous or that can here mean “coming from various cities.”12 Thus even a proponent of Trojan identification of the chorus such as Lloyd-Jones still translates …é mfimãtoraw kÒsirmoupwly as “a écomnfsitmraãitnot rthaawt beset my city.” The fact is that the scholiastic testimony on the epode is inconsistent and indeed mutually exclusive. One scholiumé masfs¤upmteosl ian geneérmicf ifmorãetiogrna wslave chorus who have been part of the paélmafce¤ phtooulsienhold for their whole lives; one scholium assumes a generic chorus who have come into slavery at some point during their lives; and one scholium asésunmãgeksa an Trojaénm sfla¤vpet oclhoinrus. On the one hand, from this inconsistency not much can be drawn in support of adopting the reading , which would clinch the argument for a generic slave chorus. On the other, neither nor the troubled manuscript reading tells against a generic slave chorus and for a Trojan chorus. The epode of the parodos, therefore, which is crucial for identifying the chorus, adds nothing specific to the visual identification of them as generic slave women which the audience have already made upon the chorus’ entrance. Thée ps'e céornxdç wp obs¤soiubly relevant passage for a specific choral identification comes in the latter part of the véamsft k¤pomtomloins, at the beginning of the second main 13 ésercxtåiown b, w¤ohua t Lloyd-Jones terms “the conjuration proper.” Page’s text reads: … (423-25) I beat an Arian dirge upon my breast, after the fashion of a Cissian wailing woman, and with clenched fists and much spattering of blood 14 ¶ckoouclda y kooum hmaÚvne ÖsAeerni…on ¶n te Kiss¤aw (tr. Lloyd-Jones) nÒmoiw fihlemistr¤aw: épriktÒplhkta polupãlakta d' ∑n fide›n 20 Marsh McCall Even if we allow that at this point in the play the chorus might be announcing for the first time their identity, do these lines specify them as Trojan?15 Nothing leads in so concrete a direction.
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