Accademia Editorale

Alcman's "Partheneion" Author(s): Diskin Clay Reviewed work(s): Source: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, New Series, Vol. 39, No. 3 (1991), pp. 47-67 Published by: Fabrizio Serra editore Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20547104 . Accessed: 14/10/2012 17:29
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Alcman's

Partheneion

Diskin Clay

Spercheusque Taygeta.

et

O ubi campi
virginibus bacchata Lacaenis

Virgil, Georgics II 486-488

1. The tradition of the choruses of young Spartan women who had arrived at the age of marriage was recalled as Roman poets, and first among them Virgil, evoked a remote and literary past in their own urban and urbane setting. Propertius could imagine as part of his own literary Elysium choruses of young women moving harmo niously to the music of the Lydian lyre (TV 7, 61-62):
fides, quaque aera rotunda qua numerosa sonant mitratis Lydia plectra choris. Cybeles

These young women with their mitra and the Lydian lyre that accompanied their dance are now familiar not from Lydia but from Alcman's Louvre Partheneion-, but, until the publication of the "Ma riette" papyrus the graceful Roman allusions to the poetry of archaic
Sparta were no more than faint echoes from a vanished past. But

since Emile Egger's presentation of Alcman's Louvre Partheneion in * 1863 and Edgar Lobel's publication of fragments from still another
M?moires d'histoire ancienne et de 'Un fragment in?dit du po?te Alem?n', in notes to In this Paris the 1865,159-175. essay I use the following abbre philologie, viations: Alem?n C. Ca?ame, Alem?n, Rome 1983. A.O. R.M. Dawkins and others, The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, London 1929. (Journ.Hell. Stud. Suppl. 5). Bowra CM. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry from Alonan to Simonides, Oxford 19612. 1

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D. Clay

partheneion from Egypt in 1957 we can return to Alem?n directly2. A steep and imposing Taygetos of criticism has grown up around these two poems and many of the questions that surround
them seem to have no certain answers; their

justifies for modern criticism Aelius Aristides' quip about the tor ment Alem?n caused the frustrated critics (aO?ioi ypa\i[iaxixoi) of case of the Louvre Partheneion is particularly diffi antiquity3. The cult, perhaps because we have more of it than theOxyrhynchus pa pyrus. Its occasion is still amatter of dispute, as is the identity of the at a festival of goddess honored on that occasion. Was it performed Artemis Orthia at her precinct in Sparta or at the Platanistas as a part of the Spartan cult of Helen? Did it honor the Leucippid Phoebe or the goddess Eileithuia4? Or was itdirected at a bride and groom and a
Ca?ame C. Ca?ame, Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Gr?ce archa?que I-II, Rome 1977. LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Zurich and Munich 1981. 1951. D.L. Page, Alem?n: The Partheneion, Oxford Page 1962. D.L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, Oxford PMG S. Wide, Lakonische Kulte, Leipzig 1893. Wide I cite Alem?n from Calame's Alem?n, but occasionally refer to the likely supple ments in Page, PMG. 2 'Alem?n, Ilap??via', The Oxyrhynchus Papyri XXIV', London 1957, 8-17 Ca?ame = 3 PMG). (fr. 26 3 Whose justice was appreciated already by Egger in his initial presentation of the problems of the papyrus {supra n. 1) 170 n. 1 {Oration XLIX, II 508 Dindorf). Bergk's characterization of the difficulties the Louvre papyrus posed for Alcman's critics in antiquity {difficillima haec carmina, si quae alia, interpretum industriam exercuerunt), Poetae Lyrici Graeci, Leipzig 18663, 824, proved prophetic for the in dustry modern criticism would lavish on these poems. "No writer wrote less xau? ?ou, more for his own city", asD.A. Campbell has put it, Greek Lyric Poetry, Lon don 1967, 194. 4 The epithets 'Op?pia and Ac5xic are unknown outside Alcman's Louvre Partheneion. It is clear that the problem of 'OpOpiai in line 61 was simplified by one critic in antiquity (Sosiphanes) who identified this unnamed goddess of the dawn with Artemis Orthia; his lemma is 'Op?iai (papo?; Schol. A 13 {Alem?n p. 43). Ca?ame 122-23 and II121 n. 146 gives a brief and useful survey of the divinities that have been urged as candidates for the cult of this poem. The most sustained ar guments for Artemis Orthia as the object of the cult of this Partheneion are those of 'Alcman's Partheneion', Hermes 73, 1938, 440-458, (reprinted and J.A. Davison, here cited inFrom Archilochus toPindar, New York 1968,154-169) and Page 69-82. The entire question of the cult of Orthia in archaic Sparta is broadened significantly by Jane Burr Carter, The Masks of Ortheia', Am.Journ. Archaeol. 91,1987, 355 383. Ca?ame does not look to the east for illumination, but locates our Partheneion

frustrating

fascination

Alcman's

Partheneion

49

oiepyexixov performed by a chorus of young women at dawn to awake Agido who was separated the night before forever from her age-mates5? And to recall the problems that first confront the reader of this poem with its first preserved column: what is the precise form of the legend of the sons of Hippokoon that the chorus rehearse with are to be associated with this and the Dioscuri how tantalizing brevity legend6? What is the relation between the leader of the chorus, Hagesi chora (? x?evv? xopayo?, 44, xojp?oxcm?, 84) and another young woman with a speaking name, Agido (40,58,80)7? And there are the Pleiades of line 60: are these the stars, the name forHagesichora and Agido, or the name for a rival chorus8? What is the relation of our chorus, however we define it, to Ainesimbrota and the four girls from her house who are named in lines 73-76? Why do the girls of our chorus refer to themselves as a group of ten instead of a group of

in the cult of Helen at Platanistas in Sparta, II122-128; cf. 1333-350. The problem of this hypothesis is the association of Helen with the dawn. Bowra 54 had already asked "Inwhat sense can Helen deserve the title Aam??". My own reading of the evidence is that itweighs in favor of a cult to Artemis, as I suggest in n. 23 below. 5 On the often cited but seldom approved theory of Alan Griffith, 'Alcman's Partheneion: The Morning after the Night before', Quad. Urb. 14, 1972, 7-30. 6 Here itwould seem that Page 30-33 must be right in following the lead of Bergk ('Alcman's hymnus auf die Dioskuren', Philologus 22,1865, 3) and arguing that Alcman's version of the death of the sons of Hippokoon must be significantly different from the later versions of the legend that pit Herakles against the Hippo koontidai; Alcman's version seems to pit rather the Dioscuri against the sons of Hippokoon, who were (according to the scholiast to Clement of Alexandria, Pro trepticus 36, I p. 308 St?hlin) their rivals (?vxi|ivr|OTfipe<;). As such, the myth is more suited to parthenoi and a partheneion, as Ca?ame, Alem?n p. 429, observes for Alcman's fragmentary poem on the Apharetides and Leukippides: "Ce r?cit serait naturellement tout ? fait ? sa place au d?but d'un parth?n?e". mythologique 7 I have no firm answer to this question and can only observe that ifAgido is carrying a torch, as I shall argue, she must be more remote from Alcman's chorus than their acknowledged leader, Hagesichora. Agido is compared by the members of the chorus to a single racing horse, or x??ri? (as contrasted with a team of horses; is compared to a trace-horse (or or\pa(po cf. Herodotus VII 86); but Hagesichora a team. inAlcman's Oxyrhynchus role of and of the The po?, 92) part Astymeloisa Partheneion seems similar; she carries a garland (rcuAeov) and makes no reply to the compliments of the chorus, fr. 26, 61-70 Ca?ame {=PMG 3, 61-70). The interpretation of the Pleiades as a rival chorus goes back to Ahrens, 'Das alkmanische Partheneion des papyrus', Philologus 27, 1868, 61 Iff.

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eleven (99) ? And finally, to return to our first questions and the occasion of this fundamentally occasional poem, who is the goddess honored by this performance and calledOrthria (61) and Aotis (87)? What are the a it her? call is (papo? (61), but this the familiar They girls offering offering of an embroidered cloak or a plow, as an ancient gloss would have it9? Many of these questions were asked by a succession of ancient critics who evidently found this poem as perplexing as we do and whose comments flank our text of it; but there are two questions asked in the poem itself that bear repeating, because they do not seem to have been asked since the last performance of this poem in antiquity. Both questions are asked by the chorus and are addressed to their au dience; both are rhetorical, because their answer was obvious to the members of this audience; both are introduced by similes that are seen to be unnecessary as the attention of the audience is directed to thewomen whose beauty the simile ismeant to convey; and one in
volves the gesture of the simple demonstrative pronoun ama.

The first question involves Agido, the second Hagesichora, whom their leaderwill allow them neither to praise nor to blame, to a compact race-horse who carries off the prize with his ? thundering "one of the hooves (45-49). But after the mysterious description dreams that come from sleep under the shade of a rock" (49), the cho rus simply invite their audience to judge the spectacle that is evolving be fore their eyes: "But, can5 you see?" (f\ ovx ?p^i?; 50). The second question asked by the chorus involvesHagesichora and follows direcdy
on

hair, they say, is like the petal of pure gold, "and as for her silver face, why should I speak to make my meaning plain to you?" (55-56):
to u'?pyopiov Tup?oamov, t? toi Xeym; ?iacpa?av 9

the comparison

between

Agido

and

their

"cousin".

Hagesichora's

Schol. A 13 {Alem?n p. 43): Sosiphanes says plough, because they compare Agizo [sic] and Hagesichora to doves" (2(ooi(p?vr|c apoxpov. on if)v [Ayi]Cw xai Ayrjoixopav nepioxepa?? eixcc?ouoi). Literary critics have excavated the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia for ploughs but have only discovered sickles: cf. Davison {supra n. 4) 160.Writing in 1935 Bowra 55 could note with justice that there is no close pa rallel to the offering of a plough, but since then an iron plough has been discovered at the sanctuary toHera inGravisca and still another inGela; cf.M. Torelli, Parola d. passato 36, 1971, 51-52 and P. Orlandi, Kokalos 12, 1966, 28. Unfortunately, neither discovery solves our problem or the enigma of Sosiphanes' comment.

Alcman's

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The answer to their question isHagesichora herself: "Here you see |i?v ama, 57)10. That is, Hagesichora (Aynoixopa Hagesichora" stood before the audience towhom the chorus address their question and made any simile unnecessary. On the most fundamental level, the language of Alcman's chorus is deictic; to describe the beauty of Agido and Hagesichora the chorus only need to point to them. As readers of these lyricswe cannot seewhat the audience who enjoyed the performance of this Partheneion once saw before them at a festival in archaic Sparta. Agido andHagesichora are only names to
us now, as are the names of the others; only words point to then

purple robes, serpentine gold bracelets, and the Lydian mitra they wore for this festival, and almost every word of this poem has engen ? so dered a dispute over itsmeaning much so thatwe tend to forget that thismysterious poem did not originally have ameaning. It had rather a religious function and this function is plainly stated by the chorus: "Butmy desire is to give special pleasure toAotis" (87-88)n : A?ti ?y<?)[v]?? toi \x?v
Fav?avnv ?pco.

|ia?ioTa

Our histories of Greek literature,which begin with disquisitions on writing, papyri and their readers inGreek antiquity, do not pre pare us for a poem like this. This poem isperhaps our best illustration of how modern literary criticism is frustrated in its encounter with
the "texts" of archaic Greek "literature"12.

10 Which Page 22 translates "So much forHagesichora". And somuch for the deictic language of the poem, which offers a demonstration of Karl B?hler's lin guistic category of demonstratio ad oculos (in his Sprachtheorie of 1934). For the ap see W. Rosier, plication of B?hler's discriminations to both oral and written poetry, '?ber Deixis und einige Aspekte m?ndlichen und schriftlichen Stils in antiker Ly rik', W?rtzb. Jahrb. Altertumwiss. 9, 1983, 7-28. 11 on Comparable is the language of fr. 125, 1-2 Ca?ame (= PMG 56) quoted xai ? 54 113 a?oi PMG / fr. and below toi, Ai?? ?o|icoi xopo? ?p,?? page 45): (= the god invoked seems to be Apollo). F?val; 12 (where Perhaps the recent extreme of thismode of criticism isOdysseus Tsagarakis' comment on the social context of the Louvre Partheneion: "This is, above all, Lite rature", Self-Expression in Early Greek Lyric, Elegiac, and Iambic Poetry, Wiesbaden 1977, 59 n. 32. These words were published in the same year as Claude Calame's Les choeurs de jeunes filles.

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2. Contexts

Before returning to the Taygetos of criticism that has grown up around the text of Alcman's Louvre Partheneion it should be refresh ing to pause for amoment on the laconic plain of common sense and ask if an appreciation of the occasion, setting, and performance of this lyric can possibly contribute anything to our understanding of it. It could weU be that the situation of Alcman's Sparta is not so different from that of Ptolemaic Alexandria or Cyrene and the context of a poem like Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo*, that is, the context of a reader seated before a papyrus roll and reading (aloud) what purports to be a festival hymn to a god but which is in fact nothing more than a text addressing neither a god nor a festival audience. In the case of makes no differ Callimachus' Hymn toApollo, Iwould argue that it ence to our interpretation of it whether itwas performed at the center or even at "the intellectual fringe" of the Apollonian Carneia at Cy rene 13. For this hymn the plain words ofMair must be right: "It is dif ficult to see how Tennyson's Ode on theDeath of theDuke of Wel lington would gain either in poetic merit or in historical value ifwe knew it to have been actually performed in theAbbey; and itwould be amatter rather of personal curiosity than of literary interest to dis cover thatMr. Bridges' Elegy on a Lady was sung by a choir of maid
ens at a funeral" H.

The poetic merit of Alcman's Partheneion is impossible to assess without an understanding of its language, and we cannot begin to un derstand its language without first understanding its context. Our Partheneion has two contexts and they are inseparably related. The first is its occasion, which is a festival to a goddess associated with the dawn, with its offering of a (papo?, prayers to the gods (83), a feast (81), with its song, dance, and competition. The second is its setting

13 As Frederick Williams has described the old hypothesis of an original festival context for Callimachus' hymn, Callimachus: Hymn toApollo, Oxford 1978,3. N. offers a fine appreciation of the disconcerting disassociation of the voice Hopkinson of the poet from the occasion of Callimachus' "mimetic" hymns in Callimachus: Hymn toDemeter, Cambridge 1984, 3-4, 35-39 and concludes for this hymn "We are left with a poem in vacuo", 3. 14 A.W. Mair, Callimachus: Hymns and Epigrams, Cambridge Mass.-London 1955, 18-19.

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Partheneion

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di justbefore dawn. The language of this poem reflects both contexts ? a term contexts and the that describes these is rectly pannychis night festival that concludes with dawn. There seems to be no reflection of the poem's context in the first column of the poem where the chorus sing the third person narrative of the fate of the sons ofHippokoon. Or perhaps itwould be fairer to say that the only reflection of the context of this poem is the praise and blame implicit in the recitation by a chorus often Spartan parthe noi of the history of theHippokoontidai, for praise and blame are the features of the conspicuous public poetry of ancient Sparta15. The censure not in fact the sons of Hippokoon, who were chorus do Spartan heroes16; rather they commemorate their deaths and refer to one of them as "outstanding among heroes" (e?o%ovt)|?io?g)v, 7) and others they call x?? ?pioxo)? (11). But they condemn a certain Lykai thos to neglect and the dispraise of neglect: "I take no account of Ly kaithos among the dead" (oiw ?y jv A?xaioov ?v xa|iouoiv ?X?yio, 2)17, and the verb Ttapf|oo|i6? (12),with or without a negative, carries the same implication of praise or blame. But as the chorus cross over the gnomic bridge that joins their
15 Cf. particularly, Plutarch, Lycurgus 14 and 21. Praise and blame are of course instruction to the chorus to speak neither in praise nor in explicit inHagesichora's blame of Agido, 43-45. In his Constitution of the Lacedaemonians IX 5 Xenophon observed that the coward was assigned to the most reprehensible position in the chorus (etc T?? ?Ttovei?iOTOU?x?pac); that is, he was not excluded from the cho rus, but put on public display during the festivals inwhich his chorus performed. The most comprehensive and successful study of the indoctrination of the Spartan ephebe into this system of rivalry and social cohesion isJean-Pierre Vernant's 'Entre la honte et la gloire: l'identit? du jeune Spartiate', in L'individu, lamort, l'amour: Soi-m?me et l'autre en Gr?ce ancienne, Paris 1989, 173-209. 16 Pausanias III14, 6-7 mentions the grave of Eumedes and the heroon of Al at III 15,1 he notices the heroa of Alkimos, Enarsphoros, Dorkeus, and and, kon, Inwhat survives of column I Sebros "whom they say are the sons of Hippokoon".
of our papyrus, Alcman's chorus name two of these sons, Enarsphoros and Sebros,

3; in line 4 Egger restored A?xiuoJv; in line 7 Ahrens restored Aopx?a and Christ "A?x|iov]a. 17 Or, as it is sometimes understood, "I do not count Lykaithos among the dead"; cf. Schol. A 1 {Alonan p. 40): t?v A?xcciov [sic] o? oi)YxaTapi?|i[?>]. Pin dar, Ol. 2,78 (Hn?eu? te xai Ka?|io? ?v to?oiv ?A,?yovTai) is sometimes adduced as a parallel, but at Ol 11,15 the scholiast glosses ?k?yc?v by ufxvcov, and cites Ale man (cf. the apparatus inAlem?n p. 31). In any case, the result is the same: neglect.

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commemoration of the heroic past of their city to the festival in which they perform, they fix the attention of their audience on them selves (39-43): Ayi?[c5]? x? qxo? ?p?5
?vmp iiapTupeiai ?yi?c? (paivrjv. F' arc'a?iov ap.iv ?yc?v ?'?ci?o)

I have not translated these lines, because theirmeaning has long been amatter of dispute. Page gives what I take to be the common understanding of this sentence: "And so I sing the radiance of Agido. I see her like the sun, which Agido summons to shine, as our wit ness" 18.In English, radiance is a fine poetic word, but the word the chorus use is cpo?, light, or, Iwould suggest, the light of the torch Agido is carrying to illuminate their dance in the dark of night just be fore daybreak19.When Cassandra takes up a torch inEuripides' Tro jan Women and swings it as if itwere a torch to iUuminate her wed ding and its procession, her word for the torch is (pt?c (308-310):
CCV8X8 Trapeze qxi?? (pepeo* oe?a) ? ? i?ot3, i?ou Xa^m?oi T?oHep?v ?> T|i?vai'avai;. (pA-?yco

In another poem of Alem?n, which seems to reflect the Spartan cult of Dionysos on Mt. Taygetos20, the leader of Alcman's chorus speaks of a festival on the peaks of thatmountain and itsmany tor ches (fr. 125, 1-2 Ca?ame = 56, 1-2 PMG):
TtoA?ctxi ?'?v xopucpa?? ?p?cov, ?xa ... oio?oi Fa?rji Tio?oipavo? ?opxa, 18 21-22. 19Page There does seem to be a parallel, but no connection, between the torch car ried by Agido and the torches carried in the procession which was themost drama tic part of aGreek wedding. But the parallel is not sufficient to justify Griffith {supra n. 5) 18 in his emendation of (papo? in line 61 by (paFo?. If I am right, the only torch in this Partheneion is already present in line 40. mentioned 20 Cf. Ca?ame in Alem?n pp. 520-521.

Alcman's

Partheneion

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Here, inAlcman's poetry, we have evidence for a night festival iUuminated by torches. His unique compound describing the festival derives from the words for a torch, (pavf|/(pav?c; in Euripides' Ion such torches are a feature of apannychis forDionysos, as is clear from the exchange between Ion and Xouthos (550): lo). Ilu?iav ?'f)??e<;
Ti?xpav Tip?v; Ho. ?? (pava? y8 Baxx?ou21.

In Alcman's Partheneion from Oxyrhynchus, there is another clear reference to the night-time setting inwhich itwas performed. The chorus sing of the song (?) thatwill scatter sweet sleep from their eyelids: "it takesme to the place of the contest, (where) I can letmy = 3, 7-9 golden hair flow as I shake my head" (fr. 26, 7-9 Ca?ame

PMG):
?twov axi ykvKVv aJTi? yXz(p?p(x>v oxe?[oc]oe? i|iev ]? ?? p-'ayei m?'?yG>yf Tiva?ar |ia]?ioxa x?|i[av ?Jav??v

And the night is present in the simile by which they compare the preeminence of the leader of their chorus, Astymeloisa, to a star that streaks through the brilliance of heaven (66-67): [go] tic a?YA.?[e]yi;oc?orf|p ...
?iauierfi?

?paveo

And to return to the Louvre Partheneion: itmight be telling for singing from the roofbeam (86-87). But a question of propriety re mains: what sense does itmake in this context to sing of the light of the torch of Agido rather than her radiance? Iwould answer by saying that to sing of the light and torch of Agido is to celebrate the com
21 There is additional literary evidence for the nocturnal festivals of Dionysos as they were illuminated by torches inAristophanes, Frogs 340-353, where Diony sos/Iacchos is first invoked as vuxT?pou teaet^?; (po)0(popo? ?oxf\p (342) and then o? ?? Xa\m??i (p??ycov (350, Voss's emendation for themss. (peyy^v); nearly con temporary and comparable is the language of Euripides, Bacchae 145-147,594-595, ismore and 862 (for Dionysos' Ttavv?xioi %opoi). The iconography of Dionysos eloquent; he is often represented as either carrying a torch or being accompanied by votaries bearing torches; cf. C. Gasparri's 'Dionysos', LIMC III nos. 345, 350 354, 356-357, 378. the setting of this poem that the chorus speak of themselves as an owl

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ing of the dawn and the first light of the rising sun. It is also the light that allows her to stand out from the chorus as awhole (?oxe? yap ..., 45-46) and it illuminates the silvery face of f||iev ama I ?xTTpeTrfj? context Iwould appeal to a text often in In this (55). Hagesichora voked in the study of Alcman's Louvre Partheneion, Theocritus XVm, and the description of the chorus there of dawn which reveals the beauty of Helen as it eclipses that of her agemates (26-27):
xod?v Aib? ?vr???oioa IIoTv?a N?? Tip?OCOTTOV, ?i?ipave ....

And it is dawn and Agido's torch that reveals the beauty of the leader of Alcman's chorus (t? T'?pyupiov Tip?owTiov / ?iacpa?av t? toi ??y(o; 55-56). Agido's light, as it is associated with the rising of the sunwhich Agido proclaims to the chorus, also carries the sense of which the safety and relief that comes with the end of the pannychis in
Alcman's chorus have been competing22.

Finally there is the epithet for Artemis, the carrier of torches, (p(oo(popo?. IfArtemis is the goddess Alcman's chorus is honoring and if the epithets Orthria and Aotis belong to her and not toHelen or Eileithuia or Phoebe, then Agido imitates the goddess she iswor shipping by carrying a torch herself23.
22

For the documentation of these associations of the word, cf. M. Puelma, 'Die Selbstbeschreibung des Chors in Alkmans grossem Partheneion fragment', Mus. Helv. 34, 1977, 13-15. 23 We have a single and late example (earlier than 250 B.C.) of Artemis pho sphoros in a terra cotta fragment from her sanctuary in Sparta; cf. Dawkins inA.O. 161 no. 3. It is abundantly clear from the literary evidence that her epithet phospho rosmeans torch-bearing and not light-bearing (as the moon); cf. Sophocles, O.T 21 (cpcoocpopo?); 206-208, Track. 214-215 (Apteuiv... auxpircupov),Euripides;IT Antiphanes, Boiotis?r. 58,6 Koch; Callimachus, Hymn toArtemis 206 and 11. Then there isArtemis oe?aoqr?po?, Pausanias 131,4, and Pausanias' description of Arte mis 'HyeiiovT] carrying torches in her temple near the sanctuary of Despoine in Arcadia, VIII37,1. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States TU,London 1895 (reprint 1977), 458-459, offers an inconclusive discussion of the torch as a part of her cult; et iconogra for more iUumination, see L. Kahil, cLad?esse Artemis: Mythologie phie', in Greece and Italy in the Classical World, Acta of the XI International Con London 1987, 84. Artemis is first represented as gress of Classical Archaeology, or in dadouchos her phosphoros iconography only in the early fifth century B.C. and there are fine examples of her holding torches as a part of her cult from Brauron and

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57

IfAlcman's Partheneion was composed for a pannychis and per Wilamowitz and a few formed at dawn and not in broad daylight as others have thought24, a proper translation of the lines I have left un traslated would be: "But I sing the (torch) light of Agido, as I see her as the sun,whose dawning Agido witnesses for us". As Agido carries a torch she points to the first Hght of dawn on the Eastern horizon of the Eurotas valley. There are other philological problems that begin to grow dimmer with the Hght that proclaims an end to the dancing, song, and ritual in honor of a goddess unmistakably associated with the dawn. In line 77, for instance, it no longer makes sense tomake the poem erotic and to translate aAA'Ayrioix?pa |ie Teipei "It isHa Hagesichora, the leader gesichora for whom we pine"25. Rather, it is of Alcman's chorus, who is exhausting the young women she is lead ing by having them continue their performance until daybreak. And the reason the goddess of the dawn can be said to have been the "heal er" of the pains of the chorus (ttovqv ... oc|iiv iaTG)p hftvxo, 88-89) is an dawn marks end to the trial very simply because the epiphany of of the competition of dancing choruses26. And thus in the next Unes the chorus can claim, with perfect justification, "it isbecause ofHage sichora that the young women have set their feet on the path of peace they all long for" (90-91). Hagesichora has led them to the end of their dance during a night festival with its song, offerings, prayers,

Attica. Artemis dadouchos iswell documented by L. Kahil in her entry 'Artemis', LIMCII nos. 408 (a lekythos of the Bowdoin Painter, AR V2678, 3-5), 454 (a leky 111 [sometimes identified asHekate]), 455 (an thos of the Pan Painter, ARV2556, Attic crater from Brauron of 460-450) and 470 (a pinax from Brauron of 500-490). Finally, an association of Artemis and the dawn has sometimes been sought inArte mis Ilpoon?oc of Cape Artemision (Plutarch, Themistocles 8 and LGXII9,1189,5); but her title derives, evidently, from the orientation and location of her temple. 24 "Das Lied bei Sonnenschein gesungen wird" : 'Der Chor der Hagesichora', Hermes 32, 1897, 255; similar isM.L. West, 'Alem?nica', Class. Quart. 15, 1965, 195. 25 at night, com Page 22. For the association of te?poawith the toil of humans ... Tia?aovuai 176-178: ou?? / Works and xa|idcTOi) 7toT,f]|iap pare Hesiod, Days o??? u vOxtcap / (pueip?^ievoi. 26 Iwould compare the sequence of Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1 and 22, for the as the signal for the release from the night's epiphany of light (here the beacon fire) labors. The difference is that the beacon fire of the Agamemnon is the signal for the start of choral dancing in Argos (22-23), but in Sparta the appearance of dawn means the end of choral dancing.

58

D. Clay

and competitions before an audience that had gathered to celebrate the rites of Orthria.

3. The Chorus and Competition The word peace brings us away from the night setting so clearly disclosed by the language of the poem to the question of the character of the chorus of young, unmarried women who performed this lyric to honor the goddess Orthria. Why should Alcman's chorus speak of peace? And why should they speak of battle (|i?xovTai, 63)? The answer must be, I think, thatwe have in this Partheneion the libretto
Alem?n

danced in competition with another chorus or choruses. We no lon ger possess the lyrics of Alcman's rival or rivals, but the agonistic cha racter of the language of Alcman's chorus would be impossible to mistake had itnot been mistaken. Ahrens, as early as 1868, saw arival chorus in the Pleiades of line 60, and the chorus itself has been broken down into half choruses27. But another solution ispossible and that is that Alcman's chorus competed with another chorus (or other cho ruses) of parthenoi and all traces of this competition have vanished ex cept for its reflection in the lyrics of Alcman's chorus. The festivals of it is difficult to think of aGreek chorus that was not competitive, if one discounts the choruses that sang epithalamia and epinikia. In the held at the shrine of Artemis Orthia. Not
most spectacular was the trial of case of Sparta, we know a fair amount concerning Sparta and the other Greek city states were intensely competitive and

composed

for

a chorus

of young

women

who

sang

and

allwere poetic. One of the

at the altar of Artemis

the competitions

endurance

known as the "contest of endurance" (xapTepia? ay?v) inwhich the victor ( ? ?o)|iovixac) was the ephebe who could endure flogging longer than his fellows; and there were the battles that pitted one group of ephebes against another on a small island near the Platanis

27 most
T.G.

'Das alkmanische Partheneion des Papyrus', Philologus 27,1868, 61 Iff; the recent proponent of the division of Alcman's chorus into half-choruses is
'Alcman's Partheneion I Reconsidered', Gr. Rom. Byz. Stud. 7,

Rosenmeyer,

1966 321-359. He
change.

divides the chorus into two groups singing in "amoebean" ex

Alcman's

Partheneion

59

And we have tas28.

tests at the shrine of Orthia29.

inscriptional

evidence for poetic andmusical con

closer to our poem, we know from

But

the evidence of a papyrus on the origins of Alem?n that he came to Sparta from Lydia to train parthenoi to take part in choral competi tions (?y vioao?ai)30. We have seen in the language of Alcman's Oxyrhynchus Parthe neion evidence for an agon (cf. above) and in other of his fragments
there are

petition31. IfAlcman's poetry was agonistic, so was the entire life of archaic Sparta. And so far as I can determine all and performed public was even Hero in and archaic classical Greece and poetry agonistic, dotus' prose, as delivered before a festival audience inAthens, could be described as an ayuvio\ia.Thucydides5 addition ?? to Tiocpaxpfj meant as pejorative, but it is ?xoiieiv is this author |ia prose (122,4) by because he pits his own medium against the norm of public, performed, occasional, and competitive poetry. And much earlier,when Heraclitus declared thatHomer and Archilochus were reprehensible poets, he did - as not did Plato that theirworks should be censored, but that say be driven "from the contests" (?x t?v ?yavwv)32. should they The antagonism between Alcman's chorus and the chorus (or choruses) whose lyrics have been lost to us is implicit in the language
28 For the trial of endurance, see first Plutarch, Lycurgus 18; then Moralia 239D; Pausanias III 16,10; Wide 99-100; and Rose inA.O. 404. For the battle on the island of the Eurotas, Pausanias III 11,2; 19, 8, and especially 14,8-10; from the phrase ?xax?pav t?^iv in 14, 10 itwould seem that the battle pitted one group of
ephebes 29 against For these another. there is the report of H.J.W. Tillyard, excavations at Sparta,

strong

suggestions

that he

composed

other

poems

for com

1906', Ann. Brit. School Athens 12, 1905-1906, 353-391, who publishes the ins cribed dedications of the victors of musical and hunting contests. For other dedica tions,30 J. Burr Carter (supra n. 4) 380. P. Oxy. 2506, fr. 1 (c) II 29-35 {Alem?n, Test. 5 p. 5). It seems that the au thor of these comments was impressed by the fact that the xenophobic Spartans en trusted the training of their sons and daughters in their traditional dances to Ale in line 35 is man, although he was a foreigner from Lydia. The verb ?jYWV?GOCouai clear,31 although its application is not. The ?yov of fr. 26, 73 Ca?ame is probably both the place of the festival and the contest held there.We know of a ?po|io? in Sparta, Pausanias III 14,6; Theocri tus, XVIII 39 and near the agora there was a place called xopo?, presumibly the dancing grounds, Pausanias lu 11, 8. In fr. 26, 73 the phrase xonr? OTpax?v should also imply both the gathering and the contest. In fr. 82,3 Ca?ame {=PMG 10,8-12), is called upon to lead a chorus of Dysmainai (orDymainai) ?v aix|icci, Agesidamos which suggests the metaphor of choruses in "combat". 32 D.K. 22 B 42 (D.L. IX 1). In an age of readers and papyri, the Platonic alter native is to cancel, oiaypctipeiv, Republic III 387 B.

60

D. Clay

of the Louvre Partheneion. It could be that the poem's emphasis on ? ? or the age of thewomen girls performing it (in lines 86 and 90) is an indication that they were competing with older women, since for males at least itwas the practice of some Spartan festivals to pit three ible explanation is that Alcman's parthenoi are calling attention to themselves and their age for some other reason and that is to capture the attention of their audience, both human and divine. The word peace inevitably reflects the earlier moment in the poem when the young women compare the contest between the beauties Agido and we know that in both Sparta and a Hagesichora to horse race; and Elis footraces were a part of the competitions inwhich young women ment that the Pleiades are engaged in battle with them as they bring their offering of a robe (?) to the goddess of the dawn through the "ambrosian night" (60-63). M?xovxai (63) is a strong fighting word, but beneath the surface of this poem all their words are "fighting words"35. Are the Pleiades a rival chorus? The only other chorus we can gain any knowledge of within the poem itself is the chorus trained by awoman with still another speaking name, Ainesimbrota, she who praises mortals (73)36. But neither the girls trained by Aine
33 in Cf. Plutarch, Lycurgus 21, 2 and Sosibios' description of the Hyakinthia character the Athenaeus IV 139D. Xenophon fundamentally agonistic recognizes of Spartan society and the Spartan agoge when he says of Lycurgus that he instilled in his citizens the spirit of contention and rivalry ((pi?oveixia and ?pi?) and sees a symptom of this spirit in choral performances that were most worth hearing and athletic contests that were most worth seeing, Republic of the Lacedaemonians IV 1. 34 ? texts thatwill be addressed Cf. particularly Pausanias III 13, 7 and V 16, 6 s.v. XVIII also Theocritus 22; ?v?pioova?: ?po|io? Tiap??vcov Hesychius shortly; ?v Aaxe?ai|iovi; Wide 344 and Ca?ame 1338. As for the comparisons of Agido and to race horses, it isworth recalling, with Bowra 53, that two groups of Hagesichora women in Sparta were known as ttc5?oi, the priestesses of the Leukippides young s.v. ttco??cc. and the priestesses of Demeter and Kore; cf. Hesychius 35 As G. Dunkel has shown in his revealing comparative study of the meta 'Fighting Words: Ale phors for poetic competition inAlem?n and the Rig-Veda, man 63 |i?xovxai', Journ. Indo-Europ. Stud. 7, 1979, 249-272. Here he offers a much needed corrective to the eirenic interpretation Ca?ame offers of his frs. 3 and 269-270. 26; especially 36 In Alem?n, we seem to have other significant and speaking names inAsty meloisa (AJatuu-eAoioa ... |i??r||ia ?a|i<oi, fr. 26, 73-74); Agesid.rnos (apxe = PMG 10 ( r 57, 9 = PMG oioqn??? x?[pa]Y?> fr. 82,1-4 (b) 8-11); Klesimbrota competed34. This agonistic language carries over to the chorus' state groups determinated by age against one another33. But amore plaus

Alcman's

Partheneion

61

simbrota nor those trained by Alem?n can compete with these divini
ties, no more than they can compete with the Sirens, who are god

desses (96-99)37. The Pleiades are not a rival chorus made up of human dancers, but they are very much a part of the night setting of this poem. And they return us to the cautions of the heroic narrative at its beginning: "Let no mortal fly up to heaven or attempt tomarry Aphrodite" (16 17). The Pleiades in this poem are the seven stars of the star cluster. But they aremore than that. According to one tradition they were "the first to establish choral dancing and an all-night festival as they went through the rites of their adolescence" (jipoxov ?'airrai %o peiav xai Ttavvuxi?a o\)veoxf\oavxo 7iap?eve<3oi)oai)38. Their dance overhead is a form of competition, for the stars above offer a divine paradigm for the human dancers below. In a sense the Pleiades are a rival chorus, but they are divine and a chorus no human chorus can rival. At the close of the poem, the chorus proclaim that they are a group of ten and not eleven (98-99). Why should they make this claim? Once again, only a sense of context can help us make sense of Alcman's text. And this context isnot far to seek. It can be discovered in Pausanias where we would first think to look for it.Only six of the areAgido (if girls of Alcman's chorus are named in this poem: they she counts), Hagesichora, Nanno, Areta, Thylakis, and Kleesithera. But we should take theirword that they are a chorus of ten (jrai? v mean to say that they are ten ?ex[?? a?'?ei?jei, 99). But what does it instead of eleven? Pausanias helps us here. In giving his description of the cult of Dionysos Kolonatas (Dionysos of theHill) in Sparta, he notices that there is the precinct of a local hero nearby: "To this hero and the sacrifices are offered before they are offered to Dionysos
daughters of Leukippos. For the other eleven women who are also

named the daughters of Dionysos

there is held a footrace"39.We dg

PMG 59 (b) 3). 37

4 fr. 1,9);Timasimbrota

(fr. 80,21=

7WG 5 fr.2 i 16); andMegalostrata

(fr.149,2

Cf. fr. 86 (= PMG 30): ? M?oa x?x?,aY'? ?iYna Enprjv. 38 Scholia ad Theocritum XIII 25 Wendel (p. 262). 39 III13, 7: tu) ?? r^pan toutg) Ttp?vt] t?o ?e?) ?uouaiv ai Aiovuoia?e? xa? ai AeuxutTii?e?. T?? ?? aAAa? ?v?exa a? xai a?k?? Aiovuoia?a? ?vona?ouoi, Ta? tai? ?po|ioi) TrpoTi??ao?v ?YCova.This last sentence is a puzzle, but a solution to its

62

D. Clay

not know for certain how many Spartan girls competed

race or whether is significant40. they were eleven in number. But

in this foot
eleven

the number

From Elis Pausanias attests to another group of women known as the "sixteen"41. Strictly, allwe know from this text is that thewo men who originally conducted theDionysiac festival of the Physcoa and theHippodameia were sixteen in number, but these two pieces of evidence for cult assure us that the number of women involved in ? either as objects of cult (the eleven daughters of Dionysos) or cult as founders of cult (the sixteen) ? was both fixed and recognized. And the self-description of the chorus inAlcman's Louvre Parthe neion makes it likely that the number of women in a chorus followed the paradigm of cult. In aHellenistic imitation of archaic partheneia a chorus describes itself as a chorus of nine, very much in themanner
of Alcman's chorus of ten42:

?? iieyaAa? Aoc|iaxepo? "Hv?o|iev ?vv?'?aooa[i Ttcciooci T?ap?evixai, na?oax xaX? ?|i|iax'?xoioa[i], xaX? ?? xai ?p|i[a)? |i?v ?iiiiccx'?xoioai, ?puipeTi?a? Tupi?lo ?? ???cpavxo?, i?fjv Ttoxeoixoxa? aix[

We do not know for certain that the eleven mentioned

by Alc

a group of was man's chorus of Parthenoi the daught girls honoring ers of seems was it in chorus that Alcman's Dionysos; ?unlikely with this group for its reputation and except, perhaps, competition

the priestesses who puzzle is possibly this: they were two groups of Dionysiades: to Sparta and the young wo offered sacrifice to the hero who introduced Dionysos festival. We know men, also eleven in number, who raced during this Dionysiac that the priestesses of the Leukippides, Hilaira and Phoebe, were also called Leukip pides (xaAo?|i8vai xa? a?Tai AeuxucTU?e?, Pausanias III 16, 1); and as for the the group of parthenoi who danced together were known as daughters of Dionysos, s.v. At3?|iaivai; Ca?ame atAlonan p. the A?o|iaivai (or Aujiaivai), cf.Hesychius, and Pratinas 711 PMG. 388; 40 The evidence for choruses identified by number is thoroughly reviewed by Ca?ame I 54-62; cf. II 132. 41 V 16, 5-7. Calame's comment on this passage isworth keeping inmind for the group of ten parthenoi who performed Alcman's Partheneion: "Le rituel ac compli par les seize femmes ?l?ennes est pr?cis?ment un de ces cas pr?cieux o? nous avons ? la fois les ?l?ments de la l?gende de fondation et ceux du rite", I 61 n. 3. 42 1925, 186-187. J.U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina, Oxford

Alcman's

Partheneion

63

the age of thewomen who danced in it.But themeaningful contrast inAlcman's Partheneion must be between two traditional choruses of fixed number and recognized identity in cult. To return for amoment to the hollow plain of Lacedaemon and the fundamental question of how important the recovery of context is to the interpretation of an archaic text: Alcman's lyrics for a group of ten young women who once competed in a pannychis to honor a in "poetic me goddess associated with the dawn has gained nothing ? as uncertain as this rit" for its being returned to its original context must remain. But, if I am right in the cartoon of my reconstruction of this context, Alcman's poem has lostmuch of itspoetry. Agido's "ra diance" has become the light of her torch. She summons no sun to shine for the chorus as thewitness of her beauty; she points to it as it illuminates the eastern horizon. And there is no pining in the heart of the chorus for their winsome leader, Hagesichora. As their leader through the pannychis, she wears them out. And in the competition inwhich they are engaged "the path of peace, their heart's desire" (Page's translation) is the path that will take Alcman's chorus from the dancing ground and agon inwhich they have competed to the feast that is to follow. And the once mysterious Pleiades are no longer an invisible and satellite chorus of Spartan girls; they are the star clus ter visible in the night sky over Lacedaemon and in theGreek poetry of the night they were the first to institute the pannychis and its danc ing.And finally theGoddess of theDawn: "She ever heals our pains" iswrong for the occasion and the language of Alcman's chorus. Aotis
has been the healer of the pains of the chorus as dawn Tiovoi of their dance, have come song, and rivalry appears and the to an end.

4. Deixis

and Self-Dramatization

There is another feature of this our earliest example of the choral lyric that compels our attention. The language of Alcman's chorus is deictic and in its reflection of its song, dance, costume, age, and num ber Alcman's chorus is intensely dramatic. As we have seen, the cho rus fixes the attention of its audience on what is obviously and vividly ... "Or can't you see?" (39-40 present to it: "I sing the light of Agido" and 50); "on the hair of my cousin there is the petal of pure gold. And as for her silver face, why should I speak tomake my meaning plain

64

D. Clay

to you? Here you see Hagesichora" (51-57). They call attention to their dress and serpentine bracelets of gold and their pointed Lydian caps (64-70). They speak of the tiovoi of their dance (88)43.The cho rus speaks of themselves and in the third person as young women (90) and then as this group of ten noc??e? (99, if the supplements are correct). All of this was once obvious to its original audience and to still other audiences as this song was re-enacted in the tradition of the What is not obvious to us is themotive for the self cults of Sparta44. dramatization of the chorus. Their motive is not, Iwould suggest again, a literarymotive. In the context of the festival for which Alem?n composed this Parthe neion and trained his chorus, two motives appear as possible; they are very much in keeping with the religious intention of other aspects of Greek cult. Alcman's chorus participated in a ritual honoring a goddess whose cult epithets areOrthria and Aotis; they also prayed to the gods (82-83) and they speak of a feast (81). And this Parthe neion is our first example of amousikos agon inGreek poetry and it resembles later choral performances in its calling attention to itself as
a performance. The motive for the self-reflecting and its cognates. and self-dramatiz at least to

ing language of Alcman's

language for prayer

chorus is in fact themotive behin theGreek

In Homer

-euxojiai situation

pray is to lay a claim on a god's attention, and Arthur Adkins has

stated the Homeric to make their mark, acknowledgement . forgotten" "Homeric heroes endeavor admirably: on to establish to their claim win their gods, the to ensure of their fellow men, that they are not

43 The word ttovo? might seem strange in a Spartan festival with its %opo? M ?iai and e?G)%iai (in the language of Plutarch, Lycurgus 24, 4). Antonio Garzya's comment on itwas: "la parola ? destinata forse a rimanere inspiegabile", Alcmane, I Frammenti, Naples 1954, 67. But it is not that strange. Comparable is the language in of the chorus in Euripides, Bacchae 66 (rcovov fj?uv), echoed by the messenger 1053 (?v x?pTTVoi?ttovoi?). Bowra 62 spoke without elaboration of "their efforts in
present". 44 Athenaeus XV 678B (= Sosibius, FGrHist 595 F 5) provides our only piece of explicit evidence for the continued performance of Alcman's poetry. John He rington must be correct, though, in his argument that in order to survive into our papyri lyrics like the Louvre Partheneion must have been reperformed, Poetry into Drama: Early Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition, Berkeley-London 1985, 25 207-208. 26; cf. 45 ?E?xo|iai, E?)XG)A/f|,and Euxo? inHomer', Class. Quart, n.s. 19, 1969, 32. contests such as the

Alcman's

Partheneion

65

Alcman's chorus is laying its strong claim on both men then on a are audience and the goddess they goddess honoring. His in order to of and dramatize themselves themselves parthenoi speak as from Homeric themselves rivals the hero who used just distinguish theword euxojiai was intent on distinguishing himself from themass of other mortals competing for divine attention. Perhaps our best example of a poem that both advertizes its own performance and contrasts thiswith that of a competing chorus is the satyr play (?) of Pratinas which opens: "What is all this commotion? What kind of dances are these?What outrage has come to the altar of Dionysos, as it approaches? Mine, mine is the god of Bacchic inspira clattering tion. It is forme to sing out". They then call attention to theirmusical accompaniment (a reed instrument) and their dance steps: "Here, look. This ishow I throw my right foot up. There, Thriambe, Dithy rambe, Lord whose hair is crowned with ivy, listen, listen to my Doric dance"46. Quite obviously, Pratinas' chorus is dramatizing its own performance to contrast itwith that of another rival chorus in the same orchestra. Their demonstrative and deictic language isme ant to fix the attention of their audience to their dance. meant But it does more, as the invocations to the god reveal; it is to attract the attention of the god honored by the dramatic festivals of Athens, Dionysos. The language of the chorus inAlcman's Parthe neion has a similar function. The chorus of this poem actually call upon the gods to receive their prayers (e?^?c 82, ifBlass is correct in his restoration). Less explicitly, but just as effectively, they attract the attention of both their festival audience and the goddess to them selves. They call the Lydian mitra they arewearing for this festival an ? theGreek word formany things associated with the cult of ayak\ia the gods including statues, the god inwhich a chorus exults, a sacrifi cial victim, a lyric poem or "whatever one exults and delights in"47. Here we approach what is often viewed dimly as the fringe of
46 PMG 708, 1-3 and 14-15 (Athenaeus XIV 617 B-F). 47 s.v. ayodiia. For the god inwhom the Ilav e(p'(?)ti? ?yaMeTai, Hesychius, chorus exults, cf. PMG 936,3 (the Epidaurian hymn to Pan, IG. IV l2,130,3); for a sacrificial victim gilded to please a god, Odyssey III 438; of a poem, Pindar, Nemean 3, 13; cf. 8, 16; for a survey of the range of the word in Greek, H.J. Bloesch, AyaAjxa alsKleinod, Weihgeschenk, und G?tterbild, Bern 1943. It is remarkable that the ayodiia of song in Pindar, Nemean 8, 16 is associated with the Lydian mitra.

66

D. Clay

those Greek rituals that involve not only processions, prayer, and sa ? be thismusical, as in the case of crifice, but competition (?yove?) Alcman's Partheneion, or athletic, as in the footraces held to delight the eleven heroized Dionysiades. There survives a hymn from this ? culture of performed and dramatic poetry what John Herington has called a "song culture", which reveals better than any other the psychology that binds the poetry performed atGreek festivals indis solubly with the rest of the "ritual" and which expands our concep tion of ritual. This is the conclusion of the invocation toDelian Apol lo in theHomeric Hymn toApollo (145-155). I give it in the transla tion of John Herington48: But it is inDelos, Apollo, that your heartmost delights; that is the you inmind, they delight you with boxing and dancing and song,
each time they set up their gathering [?]. A man who came upon the Ionians at that time, when they were all say to him together, would see self that they were immortal and forever ageless; for he would the men, and at the beautifullygirt women, at the many and of them all. ships, possessions and at the swift the Ionians assemble for your glory, wearing their long place where robes, together with their children and their honored wives. Having

then the charm of them all, and his spirit would delight as he looked

upon

is arresting about the language of this hymn is not only its description of the Ionian festival toApollo on Delos; it shows that the god honored by this festival and those who came to participate in it as theoroi are joined in a single aesthetic community. Their common feeling is one of terpsis49.Both men and the god are pleased by the same things: the fine sight of the Ionians assembled in their festival robes, their athletic competitions, and dancing and song. The Hymn to Apollo goes on to describe another source of wonder and glory {thauma and kleos) and this is the choral song of thewomen of Delos as they celebrate Apollo and bring back tomind themen and women of ancient days (\ivr\oa\ievai ?v?pov xz Tiodai?v f|?? yvvaixCdv, What 160).
Supra n. 44, p. 64. Given the phrase ?Tav arfjoiovTai ay?va in line 150,1 translate "gathering [?]" by contest. 49 Cf. the description of the emotions of Apollo (?mT?pTceai fJTop, 146), the Ionians (T?pTiouoiv, 150), and their audience (T?p\|/aiTO ... uuji?v, 153). 48

would

Alcman's

Partheneion

67

Such is the psychology of the chorus once trained to honor the goddess Orthria as they added to their offerings o?d.pharos and pray ers the offering of their song and dance and the fine sight of their purple robes, serpentine bracelets of gold, the Lydian mitra, and their the chorus of the Deliades, they too remem youthful beauty. Like ? the tragic history of the sons of Hippokoon. bered a heroic past And after the first performance of this song sung by young women with names likeAgido, Hagesichora, Thylakis, and Kleesithera, these women were honored by still other young women of later genera tions who took their parts and bore their names asAlcman's Parthe
neion was re-enacted.

The Graduate School and University The City University of New York

Center