Excerpt from A Study of Piety in the Greek Tragic Chorus

An interesting comparison is afforded by two plays in this list bearing curiously enough the same name, but dealing with different subjects, viz., the Supplices of Aeschylus and the Suppliants of Euripides, usually so translated to avoid con fusion, but both entitled 'ixénbeg in the Greek. How much more effective does Aeschylus render his play by entitling it the Suppliants rather than the Danaides!7 This, the earliest extant specimen of Greek tragedy,8 is so replete with the spirit of piety, that it may almost be described as one long continuous prayer. The title Danaides would doubtless have failed to suggest to the spectators any religious association; in fact, they would instinctively recall the well-known story of the daughters of Danaus who murdered their cousin-husbands and thereby suffered dire punishment in Hades; and this popular conception, which doubtless fostered an unsympathetic atti tude toward the Danaids, was just what Aeschylus sought to counteract at the outset, for the Supplices forms the first play of a trilogy of which the two ensuing parts are lost. In this play we see most clearly the dithyrambic origin of tragedy. The chorus constitute an indispensable element, a sine qua non, while the actors' réle is decidedly subordinate. In no other tragedy do we find such prominence assigned to the chorus. With the development of tragedy, however, as seen in the works of Sophocles and Euripides, the function of the chorus, as is well known, gradually dwindled in importance, while that of the actors correspondingly increased. The dramatic element, stimulated in proportion to the possibilities of the plot, became the chief object of interest; so that we find in certain plays of Euripides that the chorus had little or nothing to do with the vital action.

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