The Dithyramb

Beginnings.

Among the scraps of poetry that have survived by the seventh-century b.c.e. lyric poet Archilochus of Paros, one describes the poet's ability to start the dithyramb ("graceful round of song") of the lord Dionysus, when wine has loosened his mind. This is the first time that the word dithyramb appears in surviving Greek literature, though scholars are certain that Archilochus was not the first Greek to use it. The dithyramb was a song and dance in honor of Dionysus at festivals where much wine was drunk. The Greeks themselves did not know how the dithyramb developed. Several Greek states claimed it as their invention, yet it most likely developed among the Dorians who lived in the Peloponnesos south of the Isthmus of Corinth.

Contribution of Arion.

In Herodotus's Histories (c. 425 b.c.e.) there is an account of the creation of the dithyramb. During the years 627–587 b.c.e., the city of Corinth was ruled by a tyrant called Periander, and at his court was Arion, the most distinguished musician of his day. It was he who Herodotus credits with the creation of the dithyramb. He also wrote that Arion coined the term dithyramb and instructed choirs in Corinth how to perform it. There were choruses of song and dance in honor of gods and heroes before Arion created dithyrambs; in Corinth's neighbor to the west, Sicyon, there were "tragic choruses" performed every year in honor of Sicyon's legendary king, Adrastus, and they were very ancient. Modern scholars suspect that the word dithyramb itself was not Greek, and an ancient form of the dithyramb may have predated the immigration of Greek-speaking people into Greece. Under Arion's direction, however, the dithyramb was probably given form and structure—henceforth it would be sung by a regular choir, and it would tell a story. The dithyrambs performed before Arion were most likely an undisciplined performance of song and dance where the dancers improvised folksongs about the heroes of old. Arion added music that he composed, and choreography, and probably it was he who established the traditional size of the dithyrambic chorus at fifty dancers. Hence, Arion is most often credited by modern scholars as the inventor of the classical Greek dithyramb.

New Direction.

Thespis was the leader of a dithyrambic chorus in the Athenian village of Icaria, and during the early 530s b.c.e., he made an innovation in the production of the dithyramb which had far-reaching consequences. When his choir performed at the local festival in Dionysus' honor, he took a solo part. Before Thespis, the choir sang a story from the Heroic Age of Greek mythology, and danced to the accompaniment of a piper. Thespis, however, stepped forward and assumed the role of the hero, singing antiphonally with his choir in a kind of musical dialogue, all the while gesturing with his hands to add to the drama of the tale. Then, in 534 b.c.e., the tyrant of Athens, Pisistratus, established the great festival of the City Dionysia. The villages outside the city of Athens had celebrated festivals honoring Dionysus long before this time, but now the city of Athens itself had a festival that overshadowed them. During the festival a contest was held in which dithyrambs were performed, usually with a dancing chorus responding to a soloist who also sang and danced. Thespis's innovation made dithyrambs very popular during these festivals, but it also created an offshoot, tragic plays, which in the generation after Thespis threatened to overtake the dithyramb's popularity.

Continued Development.

The evolution of the dithyramb continued in the late sixth century b.c.e. Around 525 b.c.e., after the death of the tyrant Pisistratus, a lyricist named Lasus came to Athens to enjoy the patronage of Pisistratus' younger son, Hipparchus. Following Arion's example, he standardized the number of choristers in the dithyrambic chorus in Athens at fifty, and they sang to the accompaniment of several pipers playing the aulos, not just one. It was thanks to Lasus that a separate contest for dithyrambs was established in Athens at the festival of the City Dionysia in 508 b.c.e. The first winner of the contest was Hypodicus of Chalcis, and while his works have been lost, his background has become important to scholars. Hypodicus was not a native of Athens but the neighboring state of Chalcis on the island of Euboea, proving that dithyrambic poets were not merely a phenomenon of mainland Greece and that these poets traveled from state to state, practicing their profession.

Athenian Producers.

The date of the first dithyrambic contest at the festival of the City Dionysia is significant. Athens had driven out the tyrant Hippias and adopted a democratic constitution which established ten new "tribes," political groups into which all citizens were divided according to a complicated formula that made certain that every tribe contained citizens from the three regions of Attica: the city of Athens itself, the interior of Attica where people lived in country villages, and the coastal region. At the City Dionysia festival, every tribe was expected to present two dithyrambs: one performed by boys and the other by men. The citizen who produced these dithyrambs in each tribe was a well-to-do man who was chosen as choregus (leader of the chorus), and his duty was to pay the poet who wrote the dithyramb and the music for it, the choreographer who taught the chorus their dance steps, and the musician who played the double-reed instrument called the aulos, as well as outfitting the fifty singers and dancers who performed the dithyramb. It was no light expense, but the choregus whose choir won received as a prize a tripod, which was a kettle on three legs, the equivalent of a cup given nowadays to a winning football or hockey team, and he would build a monument to display it. There was a street in Athens called the "Street of the Tripods" which once was lined with choregic monuments that displayed tripods won for dithyrambs, tragedies, or comedies, each set up by the proud choregus whose production had won the prize. The name of the street survives to the present day, but all the choregic monuments are lost, save one built by a choregus named Lysicrates in 334 b.c.e. when his chorus won the prize for the best dithyramb.

The Dithyrambic Dance.

Dithyrambs were popular in Athens and soon they were staged in other festivals as well as the City Dionysia. The performance of the dithyrambs, however, seemed to be similar regardless of the location. The dithyrambic choir entered the theater with a solemn march, and then sang as they moved around the orchestra, now dancing in a circle counterclockwise and then reversing and dancing clockwise. The music and the poetry were most likely more important than the dance. The performers accompanied their song with gestures that must have been something like the stylized gestures of the dances of India. Having finished their song, the dithyrambic choir moved out of the theater to a dance step, possibly a march. As the fifth century b.c.e. wore on, the dithyramb evolved towards a less austere and more emotional performance. A fragment of a dithyramb by the poet Pindar, better known for his "Victory Odes," describes a frenzied dance, accompanied by tambourines and castanets, which belonged to the rites of the god Dionysus. The dancers toss their heads and shout, and a dancer representing Zeus shakes his thunderbolt. The type of music also changed; the dignified, simple Phrygian mode was replaced by elaborate flourishes and trills. A dithyrambist named Cinesias who lived in the later fifth century and early fourth century b.c.e. was responsible for some of these changes. What is known of him comes mostly from his critics who did not like his innovations, but scholars see that the dance of the dithyrambs under his direction became a great deal more lively. The comic poet Aristophanes, who was no admirer of Cinesias' innovations, poked fun at Cinesias' pyrrhic dances. In his comedy, The Clouds, Aristophanes jibes that clouds have a particular fondness for writers of dithyrambs, such as Cinesias, because their feet never touch the ground and they are always prating about clouds. Aristophanes was apparently referring to a dithyrambic dance that had a great deal of leaping and vaulting, and, on the basis of Aristophanes' remarks, some scholars have speculated that Cinesias must have actually introduced pyrrhic dances or something similar into his dithyrambs.

Later History.

The majority of information that survives on dithyrambs comes from Athens, but it is clear from fragments of evidence that dithyrambs spread to many parts of mainland Greece. They took place at Delphi, where the theater overlooking the temple of Apollo is largely intact except for the stage building, and at the festival of Apollo at Delos. At Epidaurus, the cult center of the medicine god Asclepius, dithyrambs were performed in the athletic and dramatic festival that was held there every four years. By the second century b.c.e. however, the dithyrambs had given way to more tragic and comedic performances, and few records of their performances exist.

sources

Christopher G. Brown, "Dithryamb," in Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition. Ed. Graham Speake (London, England: Fitzroy Dearborn): 499–501.

Lillian B. Lawler, The Dance of the Ancient Greek Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1964): 1–21.

A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy. 2nd ed. Rev. by T. B. L. Webster (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1962).

G. A. Privitera, "Archiloco e il ditirambo letterario presimonideo," Maia 9 (1957): 95–100.

—, "Il ditirambo fino al V secolo" in Storia e civilità dei Greco. Ed. Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli (Milan: Bompiani, 1977–1979): 311–325.