Review

Reviewed Work(s): ΔΡΑΜΑ: Vom Werden der griechischen Tragödie aus dem Tanz by Heinz
Schreckenberg
Review by: Anne Pippin Burnett
Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Oct., 1962), pp. 259-261
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/267517
Accessed: 17-08-2017 03:39 UTC

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 BOOK
produced a handsomely designed and
printed book; the small grubby black
lettering which runs along the spine seems
to be an unfortunate and incongruous
effort to save money.
FREDERICK M. COMBELLACK
University of Oregon
APAMA: Vom Werden der griechischen
Tragqdie aus dem Tanz. By HEINZ
SCHRECKENBERG. Wiirzburg: Konrad
Triltsch, 1960. Pp. 144.
B. Snell, in his Aischylos und das Han-
dein im Drama (Philol., Supp. XX. 1
[1929], 32), found the culmination of
Aeschylean drama in the -L gp&aw of a
hunted mortal conscious of free choice.
That all Attic tragedy drew its essence
from this question he concluded from its
being called "drama"; the focus of tragic
action was on a moment of decision, and
thus the form took its name from the
verb which meant to commence an action
by deciding upon it. This understanding
of gp&v, along with much else that Snell
proposed, was rejected by E. Wolff
(Gnomon, V [1929], 386ff.), but Snell re-
mained unshaken; the meaning was "sich
zu einen Tun hinwenden" (Philol.,
LXXXV [1930], 155), and he challenged
any future critic to bring forth passages
from tragedy in which the word would
not bear this reading.
Schreckenberg's study offers in its
course a considerable number of such pas-
sages, but its purpose is not simply the
refutation of a predecessor's theory. Snell
had turned to the word apiv, seeking sup-
port for his own sense that only with
Aeschylus did a real consciousness of hu-
man responsibility find expression in
Greek literature. Schreckenberg, by con-
trast, begins with the word in the hope of
isolating the essential substance in the
original composition of drama. He uses
with effect a technique of analyzing pas-
sages to establish meaning by equation,
and the results of his first section, in
which the basic meaning of the verb is
fixed, will probably be accepted by al-
most everyone.
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REVIEWS 259
Starting from a passage in Antiphon
(87B44 Col. 2f. D.-K. which Fraenkel had
noticed when commenting on Ag. 1357),
S. adds a dozen or more further citations
which make an immediate association
between 8p&v and x4p. He then tests
every type of usage of the word and dis.
covers that action by the hand or body
is always explicit or implicit. Thus in the
Od., chopping wood, laying fires, cooking
and pouring wine characterize the ga-rpp;
in the Hippocratic Corpus the surgeon is
indifferently termed 6o gpv and o x?p4(p'v.
The connotation of force and evil which
makes 8piv the action to be feared from a
tyrant is derived from other usages by
which the murderer is named 6o gpaka and
is said to have committed his crime with
his hand. Here a contrast between plot-
ting or willing the murder and actually
performing it-between Sou?,l6w and
apiv-emerges to confront Snell's sense
that the word describes inward psycholog-
ical action (note, e.g., Ag. 1359 and
1634-35). The legal phrase &PXeLV troi ap
likewise excludes his complementary no-
tion of initiating an action. Among the
usages which describe ritual actions a
necessarily pure hand can be shown to be
at work, and in this category PV 659 pre-
sents a hurdle which the Snell reading
cannot take. An extension from the hand
to the body is made in erotic terminology
and in the examples where 8piv is used
for deeds of strength in war. In many
further passages of generalized intention
S. succeeds in showing that the word is
used of specific action involving bodily
movement. The tragic -'t 8p&cw is not often
answered, but when it is, the action pro.
posed is physical; the situation usually
shows the questioner in search of conor6te
suggestions like those which are introa
duced at other times bv o1W' oiv 8 8p&tv ?
The most difficult category for S.'s mean-
ing is that of general, positively valued
achievement, but even h6re he is able to
relate the deed to the idea of actioh ift
battle or to the concept of physical pet.
formanoe of a ponos. He is happy in shaw.
ing, at Ag. 1353, that an apparently non.
 260 BOOK REVIEWS
physical 8piv is equivalent to not allowing
one's hand to sleep (pp. 22-23).
With action of hand or body fixed as
the key to its meaning, S. offers his final
description of the verb: "8piv gehort in
den Bereich des konkreten ergon, ist zu-
nachst Ausdruck fur Handarbeit und
(medizinisch- )handwerkliches Tun, ein
kraftiges, dinghaft-konkretes Wort" (p.
70). In concluding this first section, S.
proposes a provenience for the word; on
the basis of the frequency of its appear-
ances in the Hippocratic Corpus and of
certain proper names, he would assign it
to a dialect of the Thracian coast.
In his second section, on the origins of
tragedy, S. begins with the assertion that
the name drama can no longer be taken to
reflect action in the sense of plot or inner
decision; it is gesture, bodily movement,
that is indicated. Drama is a performance
that is danced, and S. sets himself to
prove that it was a particular type of
dance which conferred this name: a pan-
tomime dance from Thrace. Here his
thesis will surely meet opposition.
Since xe'p is the proper agent for 8pav,
S. attempts to show that the choice of the
word drama meant that the bodily move-
ment of orchesis was being distinguished
from its vocal aspect. He makes good use
of Plato Leg. 664E-65A, 672E-73A, and
802C3 to show that body and voice were
thought of as separately contributing
dance and song to choreia. A number of
miscellaneous passages are added in
which hand and voice, arm and voice,
xLvsZaOoL and y06yyeaOou, are set up as
contrasting members of pairs. Next, by
associating 8pav with orchesis (best seen
in Plato Com. ap. Athen. 14 628D-E),
S. would limit it to the part played by the
hand, to movement without song. Then
to define the function of the bodily part
of orchesis in drama he collects a series of
passages which exhibit, so he believes,
the word drama used to mean "role." The
controlling idea in role, he argues, is
characteristic movement, not the speeches
assigned to the actor. Here (pp. 94ff.) one
has the sense that meanings are being
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forced, especially in the treatment of the
Agathon scene from the Thesmophoria-
zusae, where drama seems to be used to
mean the whole play and not simply role,
and where it is immediately associated
with the process of writing. This identi-
fication of 8pav with the visual part of the
creation of a role is, however, an impor-
tant step in S.'s backward reconstruction:
fifth-century drama was a complex of
roles; behind it lay the danced mimetic
role of an earlier drama, and behind that
lay a pantomime performance which
originated in the orgiastic Dionysiac
dance.
Since the word drama has, by his ear-
lier demonstration, a Thracian origin, S.
looks for its characteristic dance form in
the Thracian cult of Dionysus. Panto-
mime, he believes, is indicated by the
Edonoi fragments because of the lack of
any mention of song (a dangerous argu-
ment even if these celebrants were not
said to move among bellowings and roar-
ings). He adds the ambiguous proverb oL
BolxzL aLywaLv and the description of the
Thracian cult dances in Lucian's essay on
pantomime (where they are called satyric,
but where nothing indicates a lack of
song), and concludes that in Thrace Dio-
nysus was celebrated by a form of panto-
mime dance. This is what was introduced
at Athens by Pisistratus on his return
from his second exile, which he had spent
in Thrace. The new dance drama was
satyr-like in spirit but performed by the
whole Bacchic thiasos, wearing goatskins
as well as fawnskins. Once in Athens the
spectacle is presumed to have undergone
rapid change as two foreign elements
were added, transforming Thracian pan-
tomime into Attic tragedy. First, the im-
presario of the dance troupe decided to
offer a spoken explanatory introduction;
S. here follows Lesky's definition of the
hypokrites as an "Erklarer" (Studi in
onore di Ugo Enrico Paoli [Florence,
1955], pp. 469-76), adding without dem-
onstration that the thing explained
must be visual. This precurtain speech
was soon split and absorbed into the per-
 BOOK
formance proper, becoming prologue and
messenger speech as a costumed actor
brought news which the chorus then in-
terpreted in its silent dance. Some time
later the Doric choral ode was mingled in
this Thracian production (why? by
whom? shades of Strauss and Hofmanns-
thal ?), providing the chorus only now
with song and an exarch. Tragedy
then, according to S., equals Thracian
pantomime plus Attic exegete plus Doric
song.
In a final section, S. explains that
Aristotle emphasized the dithyrambic
choruses and their leaders without men-
tion of the, Thracian dance because of his
prejudice against the scenic and his tend-
ency to think of tragedy exclusively as
the part of the work apprehended by the
ear. S. shows that the three external ele-
ments that Aristotle does describe, xiLq,
,us?eo7rou', and O65L, reflect the XeL5,
opXza65' of Plato (Leg. 653D-E; 664E-
665A; 672-673; 816A), and are represent-
ed in his own scheme by 1rnOXpL-F, 4q,
and 8pa,uo.
S. has succeeded in showing that the
word drama points to mimetic dance;
however, its Thracian origin may still be
doubted, and its roots in pantomime have
not been proved. Though Weinreich may
have found evidence of Greek pantomime
performances at the end of the fifth cen-
tury B.C. (Sitz. Heidelb. Akad. Wiss.,
ph.-h. Kl. [1944/48], I), this in no way
suggests that pantomime was primitive.
It is hard to believe that the Dionysiac
katharsis was ever sought through a form
so sophisticated and unnatural as voice-
less mimetic dance. Only pantomime, S.
argues, would have called the hypokrites
into being, and on this point he is critical
of Lesky (p. 114). On the contrary, since
the special charm of pantomime is its
silence, the special pleasure it produces
that of recognition, the introduction of a
speaker would seem a violation of the
form itself. Whereas the dithyramb would
not have been thus distorted by an ex-
planatory figure, a popular Athenian au-
dience listening to the tangential allusions
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REVIEWS 261
of a Doric choral ode might have found
him most welcome.
ANNE PIPPIN BURNETT
University of Chicago
Studi Luciliani. By ITALO MARIOTTI.
("Studi di lettere, storia, e filosofia
pubblicati dalla Scuola Normale Su-
periore di Pisa," XXV.) Florence: "La
Nuova Italia," 1960. Pp. vi + 132.
L. 1500 (paper).
Mariotti has set out to re-examine cer-
tain phases of Lucilius' grammar, vocab-
ulary, and diction, in accordance with
the theories and techniques of Meillet and
his followers. That this is necessary, few
scholars would deny; and M. has succeed-
ed, in a small area, in defining more exact-
ly some of Lucilius' practices.
In his first chapter, M. reaffirms the
'8, views of ancient critics (other than Hor-
ace), who regarded Lucilius as a doctus
poeta. Arguing from the much-quoted
virtus fragment and the orthographical
doctrines of Book 9, as well as from Lu-
cilius' probably intimate contact with
Athens, M. describes the poet as one who
was thoroughly imbued with Hellenistic
theories of poetry and rhetoric. This
might seem to parallel the bold ideas of
Piwonka's Lucilius und Kallimachos.
However, M. places Lucilius clearly in
the context of his times and so recognizes
that Lucilius was not the first to be inspired
by the Alexandrians, but one of many,
indeed one of the later ones.
It is in the next two chapters that M.
makes his most concrete contributions.
In chapter ii he analyzes a problem that
has long disturbed scholars, namely, how
Lucilius' own poetic practices are to be
reconciled with his openly proclaimed
rhetorical theories and with his sharp
criticisms of other writers. By exhaustive-
ly studying all compounds, Grecisms
(this portion is republished from Studi
Urbinati), and the cases of alliteration in
the Satires, M. produces a coherent pic-
ture of Lucilius as a colloquial poet whose
audience was aristocrats, not the masses.