Introduction

There has been no focused study of the chorus in fourth-century drama. This may be, in part, explained by the difficult and diffuse evidence for its presence and activity. Two phenomena may also have discouraged scholars from attempting any such focused study: Aristotle’s castigation of later dramatic odes as embolima, and the replacement of choral odes in papyri with the mark χοροῦ‎, or χοροῦ μέλος‎—‘song of the chorus’. The notion that the chorus of drama in the fourth century was a pale shadow of its fifth-century self has flourished for well over a century. In order to do so, however, much positive evidence for the quantity and quality of the dramatic chorus has had to be explained away. An examination of the chorus itself, and the way contemporary thinkers used the idea of the chorus, will allow the re-writing of the history of Attic drama and its development.