Clay - Alcman's Partheneion

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

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Alcman's Partheneion

Diskin Clay

O ubi campi Spercheusque et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis

Taygeta. 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):

qua numerosa fides, quaque aera rotunda Cybeles mitratis sonant Lydia plectra choris.

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

1 'Un fragment in?dit du po?te Alem?n', in M?moires d'histoire ancienne et de

philologie, Paris 1865,159-175. In the notes to this essay I use the following abbre 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.

48 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 frustrating fascination

justifies for modern criticism Aelius Aristides' quip about the tor ment Alem?n caused the frustrated critics (aO?ioi ypa\i[iaxixoi) of

antiquity3. The case of the Louvre Partheneion is particularly diffi

cult, perhaps because we have more of it than the Oxyrhynchus pa pyrus. Its occasion is still a matter of dispute, as is the identity of the

goddess honored on that occasion. Was it performed at a festival of 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 it directed 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.

Page D.L. Page, Alem?n: The Partheneion, Oxford 1951. PMG D.L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, Oxford 1962.

Wide S. Wide, Lakonische Kulte, Leipzig 1893. 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

(fr. 26 Ca?ame = 3 PMG). 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", as D.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

J.A. Davison, 'Alcman's Partheneion', Hermes 73, 1938, 440-458, (reprinted and here cited in From Archilochus to Pindar, 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

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

tantalizing brevity and how are the Dioscuri to be associated with this

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 for Hagesichora 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 "In what sense can Helen deserve the title Aam??". My own reading of the evidence is that it weighs 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 it would 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

mythologique serait naturellement tout ? fait ? sa place au d?but d'un parth?n?e". 7 I have no firm answer to this question and can only observe that if Agido 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; cf. Herodotus VII 86); but Hagesichora is compared to a trace-horse (or or\pa(po po?, 92) and a part of the team. The role of Astymeloisa in Alcman's Oxyrhynchus

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.

50 D. Clay

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 called Orthria (61) and Aotis (87)? What are the

girls offering her? They call it a (papo? (61), but is this the familiar 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 the women whose beauty the simile is meant to convey; and one in volves the gesture of the simple demonstrative pronoun ama.

The first question involves Agido, the second Hagesichora, whom their leader will allow them neither to praise nor to blame, to a

compact race-horse who carries off the prize with his thundering hooves (45-49). But after the mysterious description

? "one of the 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 involves Hagesichora and follows direcdy on the comparison between Agido and their "cousin". Hagesichora's 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, ?iacpa?av t? toi Xeym;

9 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 to Hera in Gravisca and still another in Gela; 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 Partheneion 51

The answer to their question is Hagesichora herself: "Here you see

Hagesichora" (Aynoixopa |i?v ama, 57)10. That is, Hagesichora stood before the audience to whom 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 lyrics we cannot see what the audience who

enjoyed the performance of this Partheneion once saw before them at a festival in archaic Sparta. Agido and Hagesichora 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 dered a dispute over its meaning

? so much so that we tend to forget that this mysterious poem did not originally have a meaning. It had rather a religious function and this function is plainly stated by the chorus: "But my desire is to give special pleasure to Aotis" (87-88)n :

?y<?)[v] ?? toi \x?v A?ti |ia?ioTa Fav?avnv ?pco.

Our histories of Greek literature, which begin with disquisitions on writing, papyri and their readers in Greek antiquity, do not pre pare us for a poem like this. This poem is perhaps 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 for Hagesichora". And so much 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

plication of B?hler's discriminations to both oral and written poetry, see W. Rosier, '?ber Deixis und einige Aspekte m?ndlichen und schriftlichen Stils in antiker Ly rik', W?rtzb. Jahrb. Altertumwiss. 9, 1983, 7-28.

11 Comparable is the language of fr. 125, 1-2 Ca?ame (= PMG 56) quoted on

page 54 below and fr. 113 (= PMG 45): a?oi Ai?? ?o|icoi / ? xopo? ?p,?? xai toi,

F?val; (where the god invoked seems to be Apollo). 12 Perhaps the recent extreme of this mode of criticism is Odysseus 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.

52 D. Clay

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 a moment 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

Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo, I would argue that it makes no differ ence to our interpretation of it whether it was performed at the center or even at "the intellectual fringe" of the Apollonian Carneia at Cy rene 13. For this hymn the plain words of Mair must be right: "It is dif ficult to see how Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wel

lington would gain either in poetic merit or in historical value if we knew it to have been actually performed in the Abbey; and it would be a matter rather of personal curiosity than of literary interest to dis cover that Mr. 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 to Apollo, Oxford 1978,3. N.

Hopkinson offers a fine appreciation of the disconcerting disassociation of the voice of the poet from the occasion of Callimachus' "mimetic" hymns in Callimachus:

Hymn to Demeter, 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.

Alcman's Partheneion 53

just before dawn. The language of this poem reflects both contexts di

rectly and the term that describes these contexts is pannychis ? a 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 of Hippokoon. Or perhaps it would 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 the Hippokoontidai, for praise and blame are the

conspicuous features of the public poetry of ancient Sparta15. The chorus do not in fact censure the sons of Hippokoon, who were

Spartan heroes16; rather they commemorate their deaths and refer to one of them as "outstanding among heroes" (e?o%ov t)|?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

explicit in Hagesichora's instruction to the chorus to speak neither in praise nor in 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 in which his chorus performed. The most comprehensive and successful study of the indoctrination of the Spartan ephebe into this system of rivalry and social cohesion is Jean-Pierre Vernant's 'Entre la honte et la gloire: l'identit? du jeune Spartiate', in L'individu, la mort, 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

kon, and, at III 15,1 he notices the heroa of Alkimos, Enarsphoros, Dorkeus, and Sebros "whom they say are the sons of Hippokoon". In what survives of column I 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 in Alem?n p. 31). In any case, the result is the same: neglect.

54 D. Clay

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):

?yc?v ?'?ci?o)

Ayi?[c5]? x? qxo? ?p?5 F' arc'a?iov ?vmp ap.iv

?yi?c? iiapTupeiai (paivrjv.

I have not translated these lines, because their meaning has long been a matter 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, I would 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 in Euripides' Tro

jan Women and swings it as if it were 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) (pA-?yco ? i?ot3, i?ou

?

Xa^m?oi T?oHep?v ?> T|i?vai'avai;.

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 that mountain and its many 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 Page 21-22.

19 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 the most drama tic part of a Greek 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

mentioned in this Partheneion is already present in line 40. 20

Cf. Ca?ame in Alem?n pp. 520-521.

Alcman's Partheneion 55

Here, in Alcman'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 a pannychis for Dionysos, 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 in which it was performed.

The chorus sing of the song (?) that will scatter sweet sleep from their

eyelids: "it takes me to the place of the contest, (where) I can let my golden hair flow as I shake my head" (fr. 26, 7-9 Ca?ame =

3, 7-9

PMG):

?twov aJTi? yXz(p?p(x>v oxe?[oc]oe? ykvKVv ]? ?? p-'ayei m?'?yG>yf i|iev

axi |ia]?ioxa x?|i[av ?Jav??v Tiva?ar

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 ?paveo ?iauierfi? ...

And to return to the Louvre Partheneion: it might be telling for the setting of this poem that the chorus speak of themselves as an owl

singing from the roofbeam (86-87). But a question of propriety re mains: what sense does it make in this context to sing of the light of the torch of Agido rather than her radiance? I would 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 in Aristophanes, 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 the mss. (peyy^v); nearly con

temporary and comparable is the language of Euripides, Bacchae 145-147,594-595, and 862 (for Dionysos' Ttavv?xioi %opoi). The iconography of Dionysos is more

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.

56 D. Clay

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 a whole (?oxe? yap f||iev ama I ?xTTpeTrfj? ..., 45-46) and it illuminates the silvery face of

Hagesichora (55). In this context I would appeal to a text often in 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):

Aib? ?vr???oioa xod?v ?i?ipave Tip?OCOTTOV, IIoTv?a N?? ....

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 sun which Agido proclaims to the chorus, also carries the sense of the safety and relief that comes with the end of the pannychis in which

Alcman's chorus have been competing22.

Finally there is the epithet for Artemis, the carrier of torches, (p(oo(popo?. If Artemis is the goddess Alcman's chorus is honoring and if the epithets Orthria and Aotis belong to her and not to Helen or Eileithuia or Phoebe, then Agido imitates the goddess she is wor

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 in A.O. 161 no. 3. It is abundantly clear from the literary evidence that her epithet phospho ros means torch-bearing and not light-bearing (as the moon); cf. Sophocles, O.T

206-208, Track. 214-215 (Apteuiv... auxpircupov),Euripides;IT 21 (cpcoocpopo?); Antiphanes, Boiotis?r. 58,6 Koch; Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis 206 and 11. Then there is Artemis 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; for more iUumination, see L. Kahil, cLa d?esse Artemis: Mythologie et iconogra phie', in Greece and Italy in the Classical World, Acta of the XI International Con

gress of Classical Archaeology, London 1987, 84. Artemis is first represented as

phosphoros or dadouchos in her 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

Alcman's Partheneion 57

If Alcman's Partheneion was composed for a pannychis and per formed at dawn and not in broad daylight as Wilamowitz and a few 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 to make the poem erotic and to translate aAA'Ayrioix?pa |ie Teipei "It is Ha

gesichora for whom we pine"25. Rather, it is Hagesichora, the leader 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

very simply because the epiphany of dawn marks an end to the trial of the competition of dancing choruses26. And thus in the next Unes the chorus can claim, with perfect justification, "it is because of Hage 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 is well documented by L. Kahil in her entry 'Artemis', LIMCII nos. 408 (a lekythos of the Bowdoin Painter, AR V2678, 3-5), 454 (a leky thos of the Pan Painter, ARV2556, 111 [sometimes identified as Hekate]), 455 (an

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 in Arte mis Ilpoon?oc of Cape Artemision (Plutarch, Themistocles 8 and LG XII9,1189,5); 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 is M.L. West, 'Alem?nica', Class. Quart. 15, 1965,

195. 25

Page 22. For the association of te?poa with the toil of humans at night, com

pare Hesiod, Works and Days 176-178: ou?? 7toT,f]|iap / Tia?aovuai xa|idcTOi) ...

o??? u vOxtcap / (pueip?^ievoi. 26 I would compare the sequence of Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1 and 22, for the

epiphany of light (here the beacon fire) as the signal for the release from the night's 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, that we have in this Partheneion the libretto

Alem?n composed for a chorus of young women who sang and

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 it not been mistaken. Ahrens, as early as 1868, saw a rival chorus in the Pleiades of line 60, and the chorus itself has been broken down into half choruses27. But another solution is possible 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

Sparta and the other Greek city states were intensely competitive and

it is difficult to think of a Greek chorus that was not competitive, if one discounts the choruses that sang epithalamia and epinikia. In the case of Sparta, we know a fair amount concerning the competitions held at the shrine of Artemis Orthia. Not all were poetic. One of the

most spectacular was the trial of endurance at the altar of Artemis

known as the "contest of endurance" (xapTepia? ay?v) in which 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 'Das alkmanische Partheneion des Papyrus', Philologus 27,1868, 61 Iff; the

most recent proponent of the division of Alcman's chorus into half-choruses is T.G. Rosenmeyer, 'Alcman's Partheneion I Reconsidered', Gr. Rom. Byz. Stud. 7, 1966 321-359. He divides the chorus into two groups singing in "amoebean" ex

change.

Alcman's Partheneion 59

tas28. And we have inscriptional evidence for poetic and musical con tests at the shrine of Orthia29. But closer to our poem, we know from 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

strong suggestions that he composed

other poems for com

petition31. If Alcman's poetry was agonistic, so was the entire life of archaic Sparta. And so far as I can determine all public and performed poetry in archaic and classical Greece was agonistic, and even Hero dotus' prose, as delivered before a festival audience in Athens, could be described as an ayuvio\ia.Thucydides5 addition ?? to Tiocpaxpfj |ia ?xoiieiv (122,4) is meant by this prose author as pejorative, but it is

because he pits his own medium against the norm of public, performed, occasional, and competitive poetry. And much earlier, when Heraclitus declared that Homer and Archilochus were reprehensible poets, he did not

say - as did Plato - that their works should be censored, but that

they should be driven "from the contests" (?x t?v ?yavwv)32. 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 in A.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 it would seem that the battle pitted one group of

ephebes against another. 29

For these there is the report of H.J.W. Tillyard, excavations at Sparta,

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, J. Burr Carter (supra n. 4) 380.

30 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

man, although he was a foreigner from Lydia. The verb ?jYWV?GOCouai in line 35 is

clear, although its application is not. 31

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),

Agesidamos is called upon to lead a chorus of Dysmainai (or Dymainai) ?v aix|icci, 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

the age of the women ? or girls ?

performing it (in lines 86 and 90) is an indication that they were competing with older women, since for

males at least it was the practice of some Spartan festivals to pit three

groups determinated by age against one another33. But a more

plaus 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

Hagesichora to a horse race; and we know that in both Sparta and Elis footraces were a part of the competitions in which young women

competed34. This agonistic language carries over to the chorus' state

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 a woman with still another speaking name, Ainesimbrota, she who praises mortals (73)36. But neither the girls trained by Aine

33 Cf. Plutarch, Lycurgus 21, 2 and Sosibios' description of the Hyakinthia in

Athenaeus IV 139D. Xenophon recognizes the fundamentally agonistic character 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 Cf. particularly Pausanias III 13, 7 and V 16, 6 ? texts that will be addressed

shortly; also Theocritus XVIII 22; Hesychius s.v. ?v?pioova?: ?po|io? Tiap??vcov ?v Aaxe?ai|iovi; Wide 344 and Ca?ame 1338. As for the comparisons of Agido and

Hagesichora to race horses, it is worth recalling, with Bowra 53, that two groups of

young women in Sparta were known as ttc5?oi, the priestesses of the Leukippides and the priestesses of Demeter and Kore; cf. Hesychius s.v. ttco??cc.

35 As G. Dunkel has shown in his revealing comparative study of the meta

phors for poetic competition in Alem?n and the Rig-Veda, 'Fighting Words: Ale 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

26; especially 269-270. 36

In Alem?n, we seem to have other significant and speaking names in Asty meloisa (AJatuu-eAoioa

... |i??r||ia ?a|i<oi, fr. 26, 73-74); Agesid.rnos (apxe oioqn??? x?[pa]Y?> fr. 82,1-4

= PMG 10 (b) 8-11); Klesimbrota ( r 57, 9 = PMG

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 to marry Aphrodite" (16 17). The Pleiades in this poem are the seven stars of the star cluster.

But they are more 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 is not far to seek. It can be discovered in Pausanias where we would first think to look for it. Only six of the

girls of Alcman's chorus are named in this poem: they are Agido (if she counts), Hagesichora, Nanno, Areta, Thylakis, and Kleesithera.

But we should take their word that they are a chorus of ten (jrai? v

?ex[?? a?'?ei?jei, 99). But what does it mean to say that they are ten instead of eleven? Pausanias helps us here. In giving his description of the cult of Dionysos Kolonatas (Dionysos of the Hill) in Sparta, he notices that there is the precinct of a local hero nearby: "To this hero sacrifices are offered before they are offered to Dionysos and the

daughters of Leukippos. For the other eleven women who are also

named the daughters of Dionysos there is held a footrace"39. We dg

4 fr. 1,9);Timasimbrota (fr. 80,21= 7WG 5 fr.2 i 16); and Megalostrata (fr.149,2 =

PMG 59 (b) 3). 37 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?v t] 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 in this foot race or whether they

were eleven in number. But the number eleven

is significant40. From Elis Pausanias attests to another group of women known

as the "sixteen"41. Strictly, all we know from this text is that the wo men who originally conducted the Dionysiac festival of the Physcoa and the Hippodameia were sixteen in number, but these two pieces of evidence for cult assure us that the number of women involved in cult ? either as objects of cult (the eleven daughters of Dionysos) or as founders of cult (the sixteen)

? was both fixed and recognized. And the self-description of the chorus in Alcman's Louvre Parthe neion makes it likely that the number of women in a chorus followed the paradigm of cult. In a Hellenistic imitation of archaic partheneia a chorus describes itself as a chorus of nine, very much in the manner of Alcman's chorus of ten42:

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

We do not know for certain that the eleven mentioned by Alc man's chorus of Parthenoi was a group of girls honoring the daught ers of Dionysos; it seems

unlikely that Alcman's chorus was in

competition with this group ?

except, perhaps, for its reputation and

puzzle is possibly this: they were two groups of Dionysiades: the priestesses who offered sacrifice to the hero who introduced Dionysos to Sparta and the young wo

men, also eleven in number, who raced during this Dionysiac festival. We know 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

daughters of Dionysos, the group of parthenoi who danced together were known as the A?o|iaivai (or Aujiaivai), cf. Hesychius, s.v. At3?|iaivai; Ca?ame at Alonan p. 388; and Pratinas 711 PMG.

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 is worth keeping in mind 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 J.U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina, Oxford 1925, 186-187.

Alcman's Partheneion 63

the age of the women who danced in it. But the meaningful contrast in Alcman's Partheneion must be between two traditional choruses of fixed number and recognized identity in cult.

To return for a moment 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

goddess associated with the dawn has gained nothing in "poetic me rit" for its being returned to its original context ? as uncertain as this must remain. But, if I am right in the cartoon of my reconstruction of this context, Alcman's poem has lost much of its poetry. Agido's "ra diance" has become the light of her torch. She summons no sun to shine for the chorus as the witness 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 in which 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 in which 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 the Greek poetry of the night they were the first to institute the pannychis and its danc

ing. And finally the Goddess of the Dawn: "She ever heals our pains" is wrong for the occasion and the language of Alcman's chorus. Aotis

has been the healer of the pains of the chorus as dawn appears and the

Tiovoi of their dance, song, and rivalry have come 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 present to it: "I sing the light of Agido"

... "Or can't you see?" (39-40 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 to make 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 cults of Sparta44. What is not obvious to us is the motive for the self dramatization of the chorus.

Their motive is not, I would suggest again, a literary motive. 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 are Orthria 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 a mousikos agon in Greek poetry and it resembles later choral performances in its calling attention to itself as a

performance. The motive for the self-reflecting and self-dramatiz

ing language of Alcman's chorus is in fact the motive behin the Greek

language for prayer -euxojiai and its cognates. In Homer at least to

pray is to lay a claim on a god's attention, and Arthur Adkins has stated the Homeric situation admirably: "Homeric heroes endeavor

to make their mark, to establish their claim on their gods, to win the

acknowledgement of their fellow men, to ensure that they are not

forgotten" .

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 it was: "la parola ? destinata forse a rimanere inspiegabile", Alcmane, I

Frammenti, Naples 1954, 67. But it is not that strange. Comparable is the language of the chorus in Euripides, Bacchae 66 (rcovov fj?uv), echoed by the messenger in 1053 (?v x?pTTVoi? ttovoi?). Bowra 62 spoke without elaboration of "their efforts in contests such as the 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

26; cf. 207-208. 45

?E?xo|iai, E?)XG)A/f|, and Euxo? in Homer', Class. Quart, n.s. 19, 1969, 32.

Alcman's Partheneion 65

Alcman's chorus is laying its strong claim on both men - then audience - and on a goddess

- the goddess they are honoring. His

parthenoi speak of themselves and dramatize themselves in order to

distinguish themselves from rivals just as the Homeric hero who used the word euxojiai was intent on distinguishing himself from the mass of other mortals competing for divine attention. Perhaps our best

example of a poem that both advertizes its own performance and contrasts this with 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, clattering as it approaches? Mine, mine is the god of Bacchic inspira tion. It is for me to sing out". They then call attention to their musical

accompaniment (a reed instrument) and their dance steps: "Here, look. This is how 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 it with that of another rival chorus in the same orchestra. Their demonstrative and deictic language is me ant to fix the attention of their audience to their dance.

But it does more, as the invocations to the god reveal; it is meant to attract the attention of the god honored by the dramatic festivals of

Athens, Dionysos. The language of the chorus in Alcman's Parthe neion has a similar function. The chorus of this poem actually call

upon the gods to receive their prayers (e?^?c 82, if Blass 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 are wearing for this festival an

ayak\ia ? the Greek word for many things associated with the cult of

the gods including statues, the god in which 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 Ilav e(p'(?) ti? ?yaMeTai, Hesychius, s.v. ayodiia. For the god in whom the

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 als Kleinod, 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

crifice, but competition (?yove?) ? be this musical, as in the case of

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 at Greek festivals indis

solubly with the rest of the "ritual" and which expands our concep tion of ritual. This is the conclusion of the invocation to Delian Apol lo in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (145-155). I give it in the transla tion of John Herington48:

But it is in Delos, Apollo, that your heart most delights; that is the place where the Ionians assemble for your glory, wearing their long robes, together with their children and their honored wives. Having you in mind, 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 together, would say to him self that they were immortal and forever ageless; for he would see

then the charm of them all, and his spirit would delight as he looked upon the men, and at the beautifullygirt women, and at the swift

ships, and at the many possessions of them all.

What is arresting about the language of this hymn is not only its

description of the Ionian festival to Apollo 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 the women of Delos as they celebrate Apollo and bring back to mind the men and women of ancient days (\ivr\oa\ievai ?v?pov xz Tiodai?v f|?? yvvaixCdv, 160).

48 Supra n. 44, p. 64. Given the phrase ?Tav arfjoiovTai ay?va in line 150,1

would 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).

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

youthful beauty. Like the chorus of the Deliades, they too remem bered a heroic past

? the tragic history of the sons of Hippokoon. And after the first performance of this song sung by young women with names like Agido, 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 as Alcman's Parthe neion was re-enacted.

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