FROM this [bird] begins the enumeration of the twenty-four members that con- stitute the chorus, those previouislyr listed having been taken in excess; on the

other hand, the tragic chorus has fifteen members. Counting from this point, you will find the twenty-four members of which the comic chorus is formed."

Scholium on Aristophanes, Birds, ^297.

This statement as to the size of the comic chorus is in harmony with all the evi- dence presented by ancient writers,' whose testimony presumably is based upon some scholarly treatise dealing with scenic antiquities, rather than upon the roster con- tained in Birds, 297-304, for the text of lines 263-304 does not of itself afford unmistakable evidence on which to discriminate between the four " previously listed"

and the twenty-four whose names are given later.

Modern scholars in general have accepted without question the accuracy of th'is ancient testimony. The number twenty-four commends itself as admirably adapted to the evolutions of the comic chorus, and it has been suggested with some plausibility that this number is the outgrowth of the early tragic chorus of twelve, the comic chorus characteristically splitting into halves, which frequently engage in lively con- flict one with the other.

The ancient tradition 'Was first challenged by A. Willems,2 who regarded the four birds who are introduced singly in Birds, 268-293 as being the coryphaeus and his three parastatae, the chorus of this play at least containing twenty-eight members.

This interpretation appears to have received scant attention for nearly half a century.

Van Leeuwen in his edition of the Birds (1902), in commenting on line 267, does refer to Willems, but with disapproval. No one else, it would seem, deigned to mention Willems in this connection until Professor Warren E. Blake revived the problem at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association in 1941 in a paper en- titled " The Aristophanic Bird-Chorus, A Riddle."'

Blake believes that he has found additional evidence to support Willems' thesis, which he accordingly adopts. He disposes of the seemingly explicit testimony of the scholium with which we began by dubbing it"' qualified and hesitant " and has recourse to a scholium on Knights, 589, a portion of which runs as follows. " The comic chorus consisted of men and of women, and also of children as well, twenty-four, precisely as he (Aristophanes) counted in the Birds, male birds twelve and as many f emale.

On the other hand the tragic chorus numbered fifteen, as Aeschylus (has it) in the

'Scholia on Arist., Ach., 211 and Eq., 589; Vita Aeschyli; Pollux, IV, 109; Bekker, Awec., p. 746, 28.

2"i Notes sur les Qiseaux d'Aristophane," Bull. de l'Acad. Ray. de Belgique, 3 Ser., XXXII, 1896, pp. 607 if.

8A.J.P., LXIV, 1943, pp. 87-91.

This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.82.211 on Tue, 4 Dec 2012 15:44:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

© American School of Classical Studies at Athens For personal use only. License: CC-BY-NC-ND.

H. LAMAR CROSBY

Agamemnon. Sometimes there were semi-choruses of men and of women. In such choruses, if the chorus consisted of men and women, the men's section came to thir- teen, while the women were eleven." This scholium contains statements regarding the mixed chorus which are manifestly contradictory, and a chorus consisting of thirteen males and eleven females would be at least surprising. Merry in his edition of the Birds stated that it is impossible to divide the chorus of that play into equal halves on the basis of sex. Blake believes that the scholiast has left us a "garbled record of an inaccurate count " of the twenty-four birds listed in lines 297-304 of the Birds. Making his own tabulation of them and equating grammatical gender with sex, he lists ten males and fourteen females. It should be noted that the figures would be eleven and thirteen respectively, were it not that he assumes that because Kopv8oq,

which normally is masculine, is feminine in 472-476-where the poet claims to be borrowing from Aesop-it must be feminine also in 302.

This division into ten males and fourteen females is of vital importance to Blake's theory, for, observing that the four birds who precede the twenty-four all have masculine names and adding the two groups together, he obtains an augmented chorus of twenty-eight, of whom precisely half are male (masculine) and half female. In a footnote he admits that " normally the grammatical gender of the name of a bird has no correlation with the sex of the individual bird. The point is that in this play for purposes of his own Aristophanes, as will be shown, has chosen to assume this correlation."

The demonstration promised in the foregoing sentence is not clearly visible in Blake's further argument. Possibly he feels that he has supplied it in his analysis of the grouping of the twenty-four birds of lines 297-304. Taken in the order in which they are announced, they fall into four groups of six, the four groups held to represent the four ranks that make up a comic chorus and the order in which each bird is named held to indicate the position which each bird occupied in its rank.

Employing that principle and noting the gender of each name, Blake represents the four ranks schematically as follows.

F M F M M M rankI F F M F F F rank II F M M F MM rank III M F F F F F rank IV

At first glance there seems to be no purpose in such an ordering of the sexes, but Blake discovered that by bisecting the chorus thus arranged there would result semi-choruses consisting of five males and seven females, no matter whether the division were made horizontally or vertically. So striking a phenomenon, he argued, could not be the result of blind chance. And yet what purpose of the poet's could such an arrangement have served ? Elsewhere among his extant comedies we find a mixed

76

© American School of Classical Studies at Athens For personal use only. License: CC-BY-NC-ND.

THE BIRD RIDDLE REEXAMINED

chorus only in the Lysistrata, and in that instance the semi-choruses are exclusively either male or female, the two groups, and for obvious reasons, engaging in most lively conflict until near the end of the play. In the Birds, on the contrary, the chorus is united in both sentiment and purpose throughout. Nowhere in the play is there any recognition of a male or a female interest to be served or of any sex difference in the composition of the chorus. Can it be that the poet was striving for spectacular effect in thus intermingling male and female? In the absence of clear and precise information as to choric evolutions in ancient comedy, it may be venturesome to pass judgment on that point, but at least it is difficult to imagine why, for example, such an arrangement of two male birds and four female as Blake prescribes for rank I would be preferable to any other. Incidentally, it might be worth noting that 'pv- Op&rovg, which Blake stations in the second place from the left in rank III and regards as masculine, might just as well be feminine so far as our information goes. On the whole, one may possibly be pardoned for wondering whether the diagram achieved by him, striking as its nature seems to be, may not after all be the result of chance, and whether in lines 302-304 both the choice of names, of which some are not found elsewhere and some may be fictitious, and also the order in which each is listed may not have been dictated by the exigencies of the verse.

But assuming for the sake of argument that the four birds who enter first were members of the chorus and should be added to the twenty-four which came later, what would result? If these four were, as both Willems and Blake assume, the coryphaeus and his three parastatae, it would seem logical to assign each to a separate rank. That would be most favorable for Blake's hypothesis, for it would now be possible to split the chorus horizontally into equal halves, each with seven males and seven females.

But no matter what station within the rank be assigned to each of the four, one can no longer split the chorus perpendicularly without destroying the integrity of the individual rank. The precise sequence of the sexes, to which Blake attaches so much importance, has thus lost all significance. Our suspicion that, beyond the requirements of his verse, the poet was not greatly concerned as to his choice of bird names is thereby strengthened, and the principal argument in favor of regarding the four birds of mystery as members of the chorus falls to the ground.

If not choreutae, what were they? The propriety of accounting for their presence in the play has appealed to many scholars. Genellius suggested that they were the hoplites who were dismissed in lines 448-450. Silvern, Kock, van Leeuwen, and Rogers look upon them as mutes that provided occasion for the poet's witticisms and, having served that purpose, silently withdrew. Blaydes calls them " an advanced guard of the chorus." Zielinski admits himself perplexed, but he salves his conscience with the remark that the problem is " of the least consequence in the world." To Wieseler, Merry, Croiset, and Haigh they seem to have been musicians. Most recently Dr.

Lillian B. Lawler has interpreted them as dancers.4 This doubtless is not a complete

4 cs Four Dancers in the Birds of Aristophanes," T.A.P.A., LXXIII, 1942, pp. 58-63.

77

This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.82.211 on Tue, 4 Dec 2012 15:44:01 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

© American School of Classical Studies at Athens For personal use only. License: CC-BY-NC-ND.