GREEK AND

ROMAN ACTORS
Aspects of an Ancient Profession

EDITED BY

PAT EASTERLING
Regius Professor of Greek Emeritus, University of Cambridge
AND

EDITH HALL
Leverhulme Professor of Greek Cultural History, University of Durham

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB RU, UK

West th Street, New York, NY -, USA
Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC , Australia
Ruiz de Alarcon , Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town , South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org


C Cambridge University Press

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
Typeface Baskerville Monotype /. pt.

System LATEX [TB]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN

hardback

Contents

List of illustrations
List of contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Maps
PART ONE

page vii
xii
xvii
xxiii
xxiv
xxviii

THE ART OF THE ACTOR

The singing actors of antiquity

Edith Hall

The musicians among the actors

Peter Wilson

The use of the body by actors in tragedy and satyr-play

Kostas Valakas

Towards a reconstruction of performance style

Richard Green

Kallippides on the floor-sweepings: the limits of realism

in classical acting and performance styles

Eric Csapo

Looking for the actors art in Aristotle

G. M. Sifakis

Acting, action and words in New Comedy

Eric Handley

Acting down: the ideology of Hellenistic performance

Richard Hunter
v

Contents

vi
PART TWO

THE PROFESSIONAL WORLD

Nothing to do with the techntai of Dionysus?

Jane L. Lightfoot

Actors and actormanagers at Rome in the time

of Plautus and Terence

Peter G. McC. Brown

The masks on the propylon of the Sebasteion

at Aphrodisias

John Jory

Images of performance: new evidence from Ephesus

Charlotte Roueche

Female entertainers in late antiquity

Ruth Webb

Acting in the Byzantine theatre: evidence and problems

Walter Puchner
PART THREE

THE IDEA OF THE ACTOR

Actor as icon

Pat Easterling

Scholars versus actors: text and performance in the

Greek tragic scholia

Thomas Falkner

Orator and/et actor

Elaine Fantham

Acting and self-actualisation in imperial Rome:

some death scenes

Catharine Edwards

The subjectivity of Greek performance

Ismene Lada-Richards

The ancient actors presence since the Renaissance

Edith Hall

Glossary
List of works cited
Index of major ancient passages cited
General Index

Illustrations

Cover Bell krater with Dionysiac scene. Apulia, early fourth

century BC, c. BC. Earthenware with slip decoration,
c The Cleveland Museum of Art, John
. . cm.

L. Severance Fund, ..
Thamyras and his mother Argiope: played by Sophocles(?)
and Aeschylus son Euaion. Attic hydria, c. BC. Vatican,
Museo Etrusco Gregoriano. Photo: J. R. Green.
The blinded Polymestor in Euripides Hecuba. Apulian vase
(Loutrophoros) from the workshop of the Darius Painter, third
c The British
quarter of the fourth century BC.

Museum, inv. ...
The Oslo papyrus showing words and melodies for a recital
of songs about Neoptolemus. P. Oslo . Universitetsbibliotek
in Oslo. Photo: Adam Bulow-Jacobsen/AIP Archive.
Mask of singing actor of tragedy. Ivory miniature, Caerleon.
By permission of the National Museum of Wales.
Mask of singing actor of tragedy. Glass oinochoe found near
the Stazione di S. Rossore, Pisa. Soprintendenza Archeologica
per la Toscana Firenze, neg. /.
The famous piper Pronomos of Thebes, seated with his satyr
chorusmen. Attic red-figure volute-krater, late fifth century BC
(ARV , ). Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv.
(H ). Drawing reproduced from FR, III. .
Piper with double pipes. Attic red-figure krater, c. BC
(ARV , ). Paris, Louvre, inv. CA . Photo: M. and
P. Chuzeville.
Potamon of Thebes with his father Olympichos. Relief carving
from near Phaleron: funerary stele with epigram. Athens,
c DAI Athens,
National Archaeological Museum, inv. .

neg. no. NM .
vii

page

viii

List of illustrations

Auletes in performance. Attic red-figure volute-krater

attributed to the Pronomos Painter, late fifth century BC
(ARV , ). Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale,
inv. (H ). Reproduced from Stephanis
(), fig. .
Chorus performing as satyrs with piper and a standing figure.
Attic red-figure hydria attributed to the Leningrad Painter,
c Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All rights
c. BC.

reserved.)
Chorus performing as satyrs with piper and standing figure
(far right) who may be a choregos. Attic volute-krater, c. BC
(ARV , ). Ferrara, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di
Spina, inv. . Photo: Hirmer Verlag.
Contrasts in physical attitudes: actors of the Comedie
Francaise in the s and the Greek vase paintings they used
as models. Reproduced from Barba and Saverese (), .
Detail from the Pronomos Vase depicting Heracles and
other members of the cast of a satyr-play. Attic red-figure
volute-krater, late fifth century BC (ARV , ). Naples,
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. (H ). Photo:
J. R.Green after FR.
The Choregos Vase, showing a tragic actor with three comic
actors. Tarentine red-figure bell krater, early fourth century
BC. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. .AE. (ex coll.
Fleischman, F ). Photo: Museum.
Two tragic chorusmen preparing for performance. Attic
red-figure pelike attributed to the Phiale Painter, c. BC.
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. .. Photo: Museum.
Tragic actor holding his mask. Tarentine Gnathia bell-krater
fragment attributed to the Konnakis Painter, c. BC.
Wurzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum der Universitat, inv.
H (L). Photo: Museum.
Tragic messenger witnessing the death of Hippolytus.
Tarentine red-figure volute-krater attributed to the Darius
Painter, third quarter of the fourth century BC. London, British
Museum, inv. .. (F ). Photo: Museum.
Tragic actor in the role of a young man. (Athenian?) terracotta
figurine, perhaps c. BC. Nicosia, Cyprus Museum, inv. CS
/. Photo: Museum.
A messenger bringing news. Scene of a tragedy in

List of illustrations

performance: Oedipus Tyrannus? Sicilian (Syracusan?)

red-figure calyx-krater, third quarter of the fourth
century BC. Syracuse, Museo Archeologico, inv. .
Photo: E. W. Handley.
Three women responding to a messengers news. Scene of a
tragedy in performance. Sicilian (Syracusan?) red-figure
calyx-krater, third quarter of the fourth century BC.
Caltanissetta, Museo Civico. Reproduced from IGD,
III. , .
Comic performance: naked male pursued by pretend
Heracles. Tarentine red-figure bell-krater attributed to the
Lecce Painter, towards the middle of the fourth century BC.
Nicholson Museum, Sydney University, inv. .. Photo:
Museum.
Comic performance: hetaira, old man, slave carrying chest.
Tarentine red-figure bell-krater attributed to the Jason
Painter, towards the middle of the fourth century BC.
Copenhagen, National Museet, inv. . Photo: Museum.
Comic performance: woman, youth, slave in disguise as young
woman, old man with stick. Sicilian (Syracusan?) red-figure
calyx-krater attributed to the Manfria Painter, third quarter
of the fourth century BC. Museo Regionale, Messina. Photo
courtesy Professor Umberto Spigo.
Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracotta
figurine, early fourth century BC. The State Hermitage
Museum, St Petersburg, inv. BB . Photo: Museum.
Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracotta
figurine, perhaps second quarter of the fourth century BC.
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. .. Photo:
Museum.
Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracotta
figurine, beginning of the fourth century BC. New York,
Metropolitan Museum, inv. ... Photo: J. R. Green
after Bieber.
Comic actor playing young woman. Terracotta figurine,
Corinthian copy of an Athenian original, near the middle
of the fourth century BC. London, British Museum, inv.
... Photo: J. R. Green.
Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracotta
figurine, near the middle of the fourth century BC. Athens,

ix

List of illustrations
National Archaeological Museum, inv. . Photo:
J. R. Green.
Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracotta
figurine, third quarter of the fourth century BC. London,
British Museum, inv. .. (C ). Photo: J. R. Green.
Three mime actors performing Mother-in-Law. Athenian
terracotta group, probably end of the third century BC. Athens,
National Archaeological Museum, inv. . Photo:
B. Kohlen, M. Gladbach.
Two tragic masks and one pantomime mask. Dedication on
cinerary urn, Rome, early second century AD. Paris, Louvre,
neg. Ma . Photo: M. and P. Chuzeville.
Four masks for performances in tragedy, pantomime and
comedy. Fragment of lid of sarcophagus (?), Rome, second
half of third century AD. Vatican Museum, inv. . Photo:
J. R. Green.
View of Sebasteion at Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory.
Part of Sebasteion frieze. Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory.
Part of Sebasteion frieze. Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory.
Part of Sebasteion frieze. Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory.
Part of Sebasteion frieze. Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory.
Mask of young female, perhaps a maenad. Aphrodisias. Photo:
J. Jory.
Mask of young female and two young males. Aphrodisias.
Photo: J. Jory.
Ephesus, Theatre graffito , iiii. Photo: Charlotte Roueche.
Ephesus, Theatre graffito , ivv. Photo: Charlotte Roueche.
Ephesus, Theatre graffito .i. Photo: Stefan Karwiese.
Ephesus, Theatre graffito .ii. Photo: Stefan Karwiese.
Ephesus: Theatre graffito .iii. Photo: Charlotte Roueche.

Ephesus, Theatre graffito a. Photo: Osterreichisches

Archaologisches Institut.
Ephesus, Theatre graffito b. Photo: Denis Feissel.

Ephesus, Theatre graffito c. Photo: Osterreichisches

Archaologisches Institut.
Ephesus, Theatre graffito d. Drawing courtesy of the

Osterreichisches
Archaologisches Institut.
Ephesus, Theatre graffito . Drawing courtesy of the

Osterreichisches
Archaologisches Institut.

List of illustrations
Ephesus, Theatre graffito . Drawing courtesy of the

Osterreichisches
Archaologisches Institut.
Ephesus, Theatre graffito . Drawing courtesy of the

Osterreichisches
Archaologisches Institut.
Aphrodisias, Odeion graffito. Photo: Mehmet Ali
Dogenci, Aphrodisias Excavations, New York University.
Aphrodisias, Odeion graffito. Photo: Mehmet Ali
Dogenci, Aphrodisias Excavations, New York University.
Aphrodisias, Odeion graffito. Photo: Mehmet Ali
Dogenci, Aphrodisias Excavations, New York University.
Memorial stele of the mime actress Bassilla. Third
century AD. Trieste, Museo Archeologico di Aquileia,
inv. . Reproduced from Scrinari (), fig. .
Diptych relief of Anastasios, consul in AD , showing scenes
with actors (Delbrueck N ). The State Hermitage Museum,
St Petersburg.
Actor in the role of paidagogos. Gnathia calyx-krater,
mid-fourth century BC. New York, private collection.
Photo courtesy W. Puhze.
Prize-winning actor in tragic costume dedicating his mask.
Wall-painting from Herculaneum. Copy of Greek model,
c. BC. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Photo
(Anderson no. ) courtesy of the Mansell Collection.
Tragic actors in the roles of Orestes and Electra in
Euripides Orestes. Wall-painting, Ephesus, Hanghaus ,
later second century AD. Reproduced from Strocka (),

, no. (ill.), by permission of the Osterreichisches

Archaologisches Institut.
Acting and rhetoric: Andronikos and Demosthenes balanced
by Roscius and Cicero. Frontispiece of John Bulwers
Chironomia, . By permission of the British Library.
First performance of Thespis. Illustrated London News. Drawing
courtesy of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman
Drama, University of Oxford.

xi

CHAPTER ONE

The singing actors of antiquity

Edith Hall

INTRODUCTION

At the turn of the fifth century AD Augustine confesses to having sometimes neglected the spiritual content of the psalms of David because he
has been distracted even moved to tears by the beauty of the voices he
has heard singing them. Augustine therefore approves of the Alexandrian
bishop Athanasius, who attempted to protect his congregations spiritual
purity by instructing the reader of the psalm to sound it forth with such
slight vocal modulation ( flexu vocis) that it was nearer to speaking than
to singing (Conf. .).
Augustines supposedly shameful passion for vocal music had been
fed by his successful participation, as a young pagan, in theatrical
singing competitions (Conf. .). He recalls a solo he used to sing entitled
The Flying Medea (Medea volans, .). The tragic theme implies that
Augustine performed in costume and with gestures as a tragoedus or tragicus
cantor (a tragic singer). We do not know whether this aria was composed in the first person, requiring the singer to impersonate Medea
as she flew, but it was certainly much performed (.). Augustines testimony opens a fascinating window on the late Roman theatre, where
famous songs on mythical themes were still being sung by expert singers,
more than eight centuries since the first actor to impersonate Euripides
Medea had flown off to Athens in the chariot borrowed from the Sun.
In antiquity, when our modern genres of musical theatre, opera and the
musical, had not yet been invented, but which relished expert singing
to a degree unsurpassed by music lovers today, the relationship of the
art of acting to the art of singing was often inextricable. This chapter leads into the books reappraisal of the profession of the ancient
player via an unorthodox but illuminating route, which traces the history

If he could play the cithara Medea volans just might have been a citharoedic performance (Kelly
() ).

Edith Hall

of the singing actor from democratic Athens to beyond Augustines

day.
This story is co-extensive with ancient theatrical activity, which can
still be documented at Epidauros and Athens in the late fourth century

AD, and at Aphrodisias as late as the seventh. Theatrical singers are

attested from tragedies of Thespis in the sixth century BC to the Byzantine
theatres in which Theodora performed in the sixth century AD, when
the word tragedy gave rise to what is still the word for song in the
Greek language (tragoudi, see Puchner, this volume). Vocal performances
thrilled audiences not only across many centuries but also across a huge
geographical area, for the Roman empire saw theatres built from Britain
and western Portugal to North Africa and the far east of modern Turkey.
Even some small cities had an Odeion in addition to one or more theatres
(on the fascinating graffiti depicting performers drawn on the Odeion
at Aphrodisias see further Roueche, this volume). It is revealing that in
the second century AD Pausanias says that one reason Panopeus scarcely
deserves to be called a city is because it had no theatre at all (..);
two centuries later, when Eunapius wants to illustrate the primitivism of
some Spanish barbarians, he portrays their astonishment at the singing
of a travelling tragic actor (see below, Conclusion).
Although it is fashionable to stress that the ancient Greek and Latin
words for a theatrical audience (theatai, spectatores) prioritised the act of
watching, many ancient authors acknowledge the importance of the
aural impact of drama on the spectator. The discussion of tragedy
in Aristophanes Frogs focuses extensively on music and rhythm, Plato
disapprovingly refers to spectators sympathy with heroes delivering long
speeches or singing (aidontas) and beating themselves (Rep. .ce),
Aristotle regards songwriting (melopoiia) as a more significant source of
tragic pleasure than the visual dimension (Poet. b, see Sifakis,
this volume), and Plutarch describes the experience of watching tragedy
as a wonderful aural and visual experience.
The solo singing voice was particularly associated with Greek
tragedy. Early tragic actors roles may have consisted almost entirely
of singing; by Hellenistic times the Athenian guild of actors worshipped
Dionysus under the title Melpomenos (see Lightfoot, this volume), and

See Green (a) .

qaumastn krama ka qama (On the Renown of the Athenians = Mor. C). By the end of the
fourth century AD, when tragic songs had become dissociated from staged production, it is natural
to Jerome to refer in his commentary on Ezechiel to the pleasure of people who listen to either tragic
or comic actors (vel tragoedos audiunt vel comoedos, . , , Migne, PL vol. () col. ).
In the earliest extant tragedy, Aeschylus Persians, King Xerxes entire role is in song or recitative
(Hall (a) ), and it is just possible that some truth lies behind the statement in Philostratus

The singing actors of antiquity

Melpomene, the muse who represented tragedy, derived her name from
the same basic verb meaning sing. But the singing voice was heard
in all the other types of ancient drama and their adaptations satyr
play, Old Comedy, Greek and Roman New Comedy, Atellan farce,
Roman tragedy, virtuoso recitals of excerpts from old dramas, pantomime, mime, and such curiosities as Philoxenus Cyclops, a lighthearted work on a mythical theme for two solo singers and an aulete,
which has been compared with a chamber opera. There were also innumerable sub-theatrical entertainers whose acts involved singing, including jugglers (Theophr. Char. .), the hilarodes and Simodes who sang
risque parodies of highbrow musical compositions, and the magodes
who banged cymbals and drums while impersonating such figures as
a drunk singing a serenade. Nor did theatrical singers confine their
art to theatres: tragoidoi, for example, are found performing on board
Alcibiades trireme when he returned from exile in BC (Duris, FGrH
F ), at the five-day wedding celebrations of Alexander the Great at
Susa (Chares, FGrH F ), and at symposia throughout antiquity from
Macedonia to Mauretania.
TRAGEDY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS

Tragedy developed in what Herington stressed was a song culture.

Many fifth-century spectators of drama will themselves have sung at one
of the several Athenian festivals where fifty-strong choruses of men and

that it was Aeschylus who invented spoken dialogue (antilexeis) for the actors, discarding the long
monodies of the earlier time (Life of Apollonius .).
It probably has implications for the way tragedy was being performed by late antiquity that on
artefacts Melpomene represents tragedy in contrast to Pol(h)ymnia, the new muse of pantomime
(see further below). On a third-century Roman mosaic at Elis there are images symbolising all nine
muses, including Melpomene, Thalia and Polymnia, who are represented by theatrical masks:
see Yalouris (). On a fourth-century silver casket found on the Esquiline these theatrical
muses are depicted holding their masks ( Jory () and figs. and ).
In Petronius, Sat. Trimalchio says he had bought a troupe of professional (Greek) comic actors
but compelled them to perform Atellan farces and his choraules (see below n. ) to sing in Latin:
malui illos Atellaniam facere, et choraulen meum iussi Latine cantare.
See e.g. the canticum from the mime The Silphium Gatherer (Laserpiciarius Mimus), sung in a foul
voice (taeterrima voce) by Trimalchio at his dinner party (Petronius Sat. , Bonaria () ).
Although it has been argued that Greek mime did not involve much use of music (Cunningham
() ), it is difficult to see what other genre the so-called Charition mime might belong to,
and it is preserved on a papyrus (P Oxy. , edited in Grenfell and Hunt ()) which may
well have been a musicians copy: it contains signs at several points which are almost certainly
instructions to play percussion instruments and probably auloi (see GLP ).
PMG frr. . See Arist. Poet. a, West (a) .
See Maas () and Hunter, this volume.
See Easterling (d) and Easterling, this volume.
Herington () .

Edith Hall

boys competed. The Athenians knew many songs by heart hymns,

songs to congratulate athletes and military victors, processional songs,
drinking songs, work songs, lullabies, medical and magical incantations,
and songs to mark courtship, marriage, birth, and death. They sang them
more often than modern individuals whose personal repertoire scarcely
extends beyond Happy Birthday and Auld Lang Syne can possibly imagine.
Many songs in tragedy (and comedy, see below) are derived from one of
these pre-existing genres of ritual or activity song and are in the lyric
metres appropriate to them. But tragedys material was mostly drawn
from the world of myth, inherited, rather, from epics and from choral
lyrics, especially those of Stesichorus.
Tragic poetry is adorned with various rhythms and includes a wealth
of metres, observed the Byzantine scholar Psellus. Tragedys innovation was to integrate genres into a complicated artistic pattern: spoken
verse alternated with various types of sung poetry, performed to the accompaniment of auloi by both a chorus and individual actors. The tragic
actor made use of a metre long associated with marching armies, the
recitative anapaest, whose basic unit is repeated pairs of . Anapaests
predominate at times of physical movement, especially entrances and exits such as the airborne departure of Euripides Medea. The anapaestic
metre there indicates that Medea and Jason performed their interchange
to aulos accompaniment in a rhythmical, semi-musical type of vocal delivery, in antiquity designated by the verb katalegein, and perhaps comparable with the intermediate form of enunciation later recommended to
Christian psalmodists by Bishop Athanasius. Like rhapsodes and citharodes, the tragic actor also needed mastery over the dactylic hexameter,
at least when impersonating mythical bards such as Thamyras or Amphion (see further Wilson, this volume). But in addition he had to perform
new sung metres, especially the excited dochmiac (based on ).
Dochmiacs make no appearance prior to tragedy and virtually disappear
after it, but often characterise the genres most emotionally lacerating
moments.
The actor of fifth-century tragedy had to sing in a variety of metres
in rapid succession, and to negotiate the delicate transitions between

A thousand citizens will have performed every year at the City Dionysia in dithyrambic choruses
alone, even before the tragic and comic choruses are taken into account (West (a) ).
tragik pohsiv diajroiv te uqmov kosmoumnh ka mtra poikla lambnousa (Dyck
() ).
West (a) .
See e.g. Soph. Philoctetes and the comments of West (a) . This skill would have
been considered remarkable by Aristoxenus day, when the emphasis on rhythmical intricacy
had been superseded by a love of melody ([Plut.] On Music BC).

The singing actors of antiquity

them: the shift between recitative and lyrics was regarded as particularly emotive ([Arist.] Probl. .). Anapaestic and lyric verses repeatedly
alternated with iambic trimeters, and these were spoken. Besides some
important external evidence, tragic poetry offers internal clues to the
way in which the voice was being used; in iambics people constantly use
such verbs as legein and phrazein in reference to their own speech and
that of their interlocutors, whereas the semantic range referring to lyric
utterance, which includes melpein and aidein, is quite different.
Tragedy thus offered the dramatist a palette of vocal techniques with
which to paint his sound pictures, and certain patterns can be discerned
in the way that he handled them. Gods and slaves, for example, rarely
sing lyrics in tragedy, but they do recite anapaests. Sophoclean leads all
sing at moments of great emotion, female characters frequently sing,
but middle-aged men in Aeschylus and Euripides (with the exception of
distressed barbarians) prefer spoken rhetoric to extended lyrics. This
complex metrical and vocal prosopography was unprecedented. Athens
invented tragedy at a time when it was staking claim to be the cultural
leader of the Greek world, and it is possible, from a sociological angle,
to view tragedys appropriation of metres associated with other places
as Athenian cultural imperialism manifested on the level of form. But
it is equally important to stress the aesthetic achievement represented by
tragedys elaborate design.
Expert singers, rhapsodes and citharodes, had been singing Greek
myths long before the emergence of the specialist tragoidos: the Iliad,
after all, opens Muse, sing (aeide) of the wrath of Achilles. But the term
aeidein demonstrates how close an affinity was perceived between the
performances of the epic and the tragic singer, for together with its
cognates aeidein provided many of the basic words for singing both
epic and drama in Greek literature, and formed the second half of the
compounds denoting almost all specialist singers, including kitharoidos,
tragoidos and komoidos. Etymologically related to aeidein are both aude (the
human voice, endowed with speech), and aedon, nightingale, a bird
whose plaintive song brought it into association with lachrymose women
from Penelope of the Odyssey onwards (.). But it was with female

Two important passages in Aristotle associate the iambic metre with speech (Poet. a
, Rhet. .b); in Lucians caricatures of tragoidoi, he complains that the performers
contemporary with him even sing their iambics, implying that this practice is a decadent
modern development (see below).
Although Barner () collects some of the Greek tragic terms designating song, much
work remains to be done on the numerous different words used in tragedy to describe vocal
performance, and on how they might illuminate actors techniques of singing and speaking.
See Hall (a) and Csapo, this volume.
Hall (a) , ; Hall (a) .

Edith Hall

singing in tragedy that the nightingale, formerly Procne, the infanticidal

mother, became most closely connected.
The story of Procnes murder of her son Itys was staged in Sophocles
famous Tereus (the music of which seems to have been memorable, see
below) and by the Roman tragedians Livius Andronicus and Accius.
Elsewhere tragedy alludes to this myth when describing womens singing.
In Aeschylus Agamemnon, for example, Cassandras dochmiac singing is
likened by the chorus (also using dochmiacs) to the song of the nightingale
():
You are crazed, possessed by a god, and singing a tuneless tune about
your own fate, like some shrill nightingale, insatiable in lament alas!
who in the misery of her heart mourns Itys, Itys, whose death was full of
evil for both his parents.
C A S S A N D R A Ah, ah, for the life of the clear-voiced nightingale! The gods clothed
her in winged form, and gave her a sweet life with nothing to cry about,
whereas for me there awaits the blow of a two-edged weapon.
CHORUS

The comparison was presumably reinforced by the lost melody, and certainly by the twittering effect produced by the high proportion of short
syllables in the resolved dochmiacs of this particular interchange; the
chorus description of Cassandras melody as a tuneless tune (nomon
anomon) itself scans as five short syllables consecutively. Cassandra, however, shifts the focus from the birds voice to her winged body, reminding
us that the singing actor playing her is engaged in an emphatically physical activity.
The actor playing Cassandra needed skill in antiphonal singing, which
requires a solo voice with a timbre distinct from that of the choral group
but minutely adjusted to its tonality and pace of delivery. Cassandras
sung dialogue with the chorus consists of serial pairs of metrical units
of similar length, which respond strophically. The structured rhythmical character of Aeschylus music is suggested by Dionysus description
in Frogs of his melodies as appropriate for someone drawing water
from a well (). But tragic music evolved alongside that of citharody and dithyrambic choruses, which had already been composed without strophic responsion by the middle of the fifth century (Arist. Rhet.
.b).
In Euripides dateable plays actors songs increasingly replace
strophic responsion with asymmetric, freeform metrical structures,

Segal () . See Valakas, this volume. See also Aeschylus Danaids, who compare their own
singing with the voice of the nightingale, the wife of Tereus (Supp. ), and the comments
below on Sophocles Electra.

The singing actors of antiquity

characterised by repetition of individual words. Euripides astrophic

monodists are mostly self-absorbed women, who use song to express intimate and passionate emotions. Astrophic song is much harder to learn
than song in a repeated metre, which is one reason why it was associated
with the solo voice rather than with choruses ([Arist.] Probl. .). But it
also increased the ornamentation and mimetic element (see Csapo, this
volume) and affected the vocal timbre. Timotheus, the citharode most
closely associated with the New Music influencing Euripides, differentiated his own relaxed, beguiling sound from that of older, out-of-date
singers, the maulers of songs who strain and yell with the far-ringing
voices of heralds (khrkwn ligumakrojnwn tenontav ugv, Persians
PMG , ).
A plausible tradition held that the earliest tragedians were star actors
and took the principal roles in their own plays. Sophocles is said to
have played the lead in his own Thamyras, in which this mythical bard
performed hexameters and played the cithara (Life ; fr. TrGF, see
also Wilson, this volume). Sophocles Thamyras is probably illustrated on
a hydria from the middle of the century (fig. ). It has the words Euaion
is beautiful inscribed over the figure of an agitated woman, probably
Thamyras mother Argiope, dancing under the influence of his music.
Since we know that Aeschylus son Euaion was a tragic actor, we may be
looking at a picture of characters played in the original production by a
singing, strumming Sophocles and by Aeschylus dancing son.
Sophocles is supposed to have given up performing in his own plays
because of his weak voice (Life ), a tradition which functioned as an
aetiological narrative for the emergence of the specialist tragic singer.
Sophocles is also said to have taken the talents of his actors into account
when composing their roles (Life ), and the vocal skills of the available
lead actors (for example, the Tlepolemos who often acted for Sophocles
(schol. on Ar. Clouds )) must have influenced all the tragedians; any
competent singer, for example, knew the exact range of his own voice and

E.g. IA , Idaov / Idaov lget lget, on which England () comments:

probably it was the music which was mainly responsible for this double repetition. On this kind
of diction and repetition in Euripidean monodies see Barlow (b). But Euripides was not the
only tragedian to experiment with the new, freer form of actors song. Io in the Aeschylean PV
() is an interesting early example of an astrophic monodist.
Damen () . In Electras monody at Orestes , for example, Euripides moves his
actor from strophic to astrophic form at the point where Electras grief moves beyond control to
hysteria (, see Collard () vol. II, ).
Rome, Vatican (IGD , no. III. .). On the vase and on Euaion see further Green, this
volume and Kaimio () .
Owen () , .

Edith Hall

Fig. Thamyras and his mother Argiope: played by Sophocles(?) and Aeschylus son
Euaion (Photo: J. R. Green)

needed to have his singing pitched accordingly. Actors who performed

alongside star protagonists also had to be able to sing. In Euripides Orestes
the deuteragonist who originally played Electra and Helens Phrygian
servant, in support of the protagonist Hegelochos Orestes, must have
possessed a remarkable singing voice with a high tessitura. Aeschines
had to sing an antiphonal lament as Sophocles Creon in Antigone (probably a tritagonists role, see Easterling, this volume), but also a striking
monody as the blinded Polymestor in Euripides Hecuba (Dem. .,
see fig. ).

Callicratidas in Thesleff () ..
See further Falkner, this volume. Information from several sources tells us more than usual about
the music to Euripides Orestes, an exceptionally popular play on the ancient stage. An important
papyrus of the third or second century BC (Vienna G , see Pohlmann () ) preserves
the sung melody and accompaniment to seven lines delivered by the chorus (), and there
is no reason to suppose that this music was not composed by Euripides himself. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, writing in the Augustan era about the relationship of words to music, seems to
have been able to make a detailed consultation of a score of Euripides Orestes (On Composition
of Words .., see Pohlmann () ). And a scholiast happens to have recorded the
information that the actor playing Electra sang at a very high pitch (oxeiai phonei ), appropriate to
a dirge, when asking the entering chorus to be quiet (schol. on Or. ). See also Damen ()
.
Stephanis () no. .a.

c
Fig. The blinded Polymestor in Euripides Hecuba (The
British Museum)

Edith Hall
V I R T U O S O T R A GO
IDOI

Actors were becoming famous for their virtuoso specialisms by the fourth
century Nikostratos for his recital of tetrameters to the auloi and his messenger speeches, and Theodoros for his natural delivery and female
roles, which included several with important lyrics, such as Sophocles
Electra and Antigone. But it is in the third century that inscriptions
recording the constitution of theatrical companies at festivals such as
the Delphic Soteria, combined with the Hellenistic Problems attributed to
Aristotle, begin to present a clear picture of a new kind of travelling
professional actor whose special expertise was in singing. He was to
remain a feature of cultural life in the Mediterranean region for eight
hundred years.
Travelling professional tragoidoi, if successful in competitions, could enjoy huge earnings and fame, and be honoured by statues and civic rights
in the cities where they performed. Their only rivals were rhapsodes,
and, later, star dancers of pantomime (see below). It is not surprising
that a skilled singer might participate in several different types of event
at festivals, for example the Athenian Xenophantos of the first century

BC, a rhapsode, tragic actor, and singer of paeans and choruses. The

Xen. Symp. .; it was proverbial to tell everything like Nikostratos (Paroemiogr. .). See also
Csapo, this volume.
Plut. Sympotic Questions-Moralia B, Dem. . (Stephanis () no. ). Theodoros was
also famous for his performances of female roles in Euripidean tragedy (see Lada-Richards,
this volume). On the enormous importance of the public opinion of an actors vocal skills,
see Easterling (). On actors specialisms see also Green, this volume, Dihle () ,
Ghiron-Bistagne () . Other actors may have specialised in male roles: see, for example,
the enterprising third-century boxer/actor whose documented (all male) winning roles included
heroes renowned for the physical prowess, such as Heracles and Antaeus (Stephanis () no.
). This impressive person may have been an Arcadian named Apollogenes (see Stephanis
() no. ).
Gentili () ; Sifakis () .
By the late Roman period the theatres came to be dominated by pantomimes and mimes, but
a certain diversity of entertainment was maintained, and there are still references to tragic
actors in the fourth century ( John Chrysostom, Homily on the Acts of the Apostles , PG .)
and even as late as the sixth (Choricius Syn. Mim. , where they are listed with conjurors): see
Theocharidis () . At Byzantium, at any rate, excerpts from old tragedies continued to
be sung by actors who wore high shoes and elaborate costumes, and took both female and male
roles (Theocharidis () ).
See e.g. Stephanis () nos. , .
Stephanis () no. , see also nos. , . Outside the context of competitive festivals,
the distinctions between performers of tragedy and performers of epic must in practice often
have been blurred. See, for example, the travelling professional actor in Achilles Tatius Leucippe
and Cleitophon (.), of the second century AD. He gave vocal displays of passages from Homer
(tiv . . . tn t Omrou t stmati deiknntwn n tov qetroiv). But the performances were
theatrical enough to require props (skeu), which the context implies consisted of armour and

The singing actors of antiquity

singing profession was often practised by more than one member of the
same family, for example the third-century brothers Ouliades and Aristippos of Miletus, or the Theban rhapsode Kraton and his son Kleon,
a tragoidos. Such singers may have begun as infant prodigies, perhaps
specialising in sung childrens roles such as that of Alcestis son in her
Euripidean name-play: a boy actor from Cyzicus in the third century AD
(pais tragoidos) was honoured by the citizens of Ephesus.
The performances of tragoidoi, although masked and costumed, must
often have resembled what we call concerts or recitals rather than theatrical productions. The nineteenth Aristotelian Problem implies that the
growing popularity of the tragoidos as entertainer, and the increasing
ascendancy of his solos over choral lyric, resulted from the greater expressive and mimetic possibilities of the solo aria. Hellenistic tragoidoi
concentrated the pleasure their performances offered by excerpting the
most delicious solo lyric highlights from tragedies. Solo recitals were
first to rival and, together with pantomime, eventually to supersede the
performance of whole tragic texts.
A papyrus of the third century BC shows a programme, for example,
which not only consists of excerpted lyrical highlights from Iphigenia in
Aulis, but rearranges their order. Another possibility was to extract
several scenes from different tragedies on the same mythical figure, such
as the excerpts apparently linked by Achilles son Neoptolemus in the
Oslo papyrus, a beautiful document from which some ancient tragoidos
learned the words and melodies for a recital (fig. ). A star Samian aulete
named Satyros, after his victory at a Pythian festival (probably in
BC), demonstrated his versatility by offering his audience one song with a
chorus called Dionysus, and another on a presumably similar theme, from
Euripides Bacchae, which he accompanied on the cithara. A tragoidos,
Kanopos, appears on a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus alongside the aulete
Epagathos, who is named as the accompanist to forty odes from six

weapons. They certainly included, for stage murders (prv tv kibdlouv sjagv), a trick
dagger with a retractable blade, which saves the heroines life.
Stephanis () nos. , (see also nos. ), , .
Stephanis () no. .
A practice for which there is no firm evidence after the early third century AD (Barnes ()
, Easterling and Miles () ).
Leiden papyrus inv. . Thanks to Martin West for helpful advice on the musical papyri.
Gentili () , first edited by Eitrem, Amundsen and Winnington-Ingram (). The text,
which contains more than one version of some phrases, may have been written by the musics
composer (West a) . For further discussion of the possible links between the excerpts in
this papyrus see Pohlmann () .
Stephanis () no. .

Edith Hall

Fig. The Oslo papyrus showing words and melodies for a recital of songs
about Neoptolemus (Photo: Adam Bulow-Jacobsen/AIP Archive)

dramas. These seem to have been excerpts from (mostly Euripidean)

plays, including Hypsipyle, Medea and Antiope.
Tragic singers appear at significant moments in the literature of the
Second Sophistic. Anecdotes concerning tragoidoi (usually singing the
songs of Euripidean heroines) demonstrate the charisma, status and authority these actors could acquire (see further Easterling, this volume).
Plutarchs account of the display of the dead Crassus head at a feast
in Armenia is enlivened by a sung performance of part of Euripides
Bacchae, thus inviting the reader to draw a comparison between the

See Cockle () with plate xv. Cockle notes that one Claudius Epagathus was a member of the
embassy of Dionysiac artists to the emperor Claudius in AD ( p. , with references).

The singing actors of antiquity

slaughter of Crassus and the murder of Pentheus (the actor was Jason of
Tralles, Plut. Life of Crassus .); another tragoidos anecdote functions
to underline the cultural aspirations of Juba II, a Mauretanian client king
of the Roman empire in the early first century AD (Leonteus of Argos
sang from Euripides Hypsipyle, Athenaeus .ef ).
Despite the ancients voracious appetite for tragic singing, the most
detailed description of a tragoidos performance is an unflattering caricature. It is placed by Lucian in the mouth of Lykinos, an advocate of the
danced versions of tragedy offered by pantomime (On Dancing ):
What a repulsive and at the same time frightful spectacle is a man tricked out
to disproportionate stature, mounted upon high clogs, wearing a mask that
reaches above his head, with a mouth that is set in a vast yawn as if he meant to
swallow up the spectators! . . . The man himself bawls out (kekragv), bending
backward and forward, sometimes singing even his iambic lines (note ka
peridwn t ambea) and (what is surely the height of unseemliness) melodising
(melwdn) his calamities, holding himself answerable for nothing but his voice,
as everything else has been attended to by the poets, who lived at some time in
the distant past.

However exaggerated, some of these colourful details are illuminating.

The singing actor provided a striking spectacle, wearing a mask with
a distortedly gaping mouth, a view the dialogue elaborates by saying
that the pantomime dancers masks, with their closed mouths, are much
more beautiful (). This important difference between tragedy and pantomime is indeed supported by the depictions of masks on artefacts (see
figs. and and Jory, this volume). The information that both words
and music have been provided by the poets of long ago also accords with
other evidence from Lucians period, which implies that melodies were
still in circulation which were by (or at least believed to be by) Euripides
and Sophocles.
In the first half of the second century AD the Milesians dedicated
an inscription to their fellow countryman G. Ailios Themison. They
commemorated his victories at the Isthmian and other games, adding
that he was the first and only individual to set Euripides, Sophocles
and Timotheus to music of his own. Ailios might simply have used
themes from these famous poets in original new vocal works, but Latte
was probably correct in arguing that he provided his own music to old,

Translation adapted from Harmon ().

mnon ka prton Eripdhn Sojokla ka Timqeon aut melopoisanta. The inscription
was published by Broneer () = Stephanis () no. . See also Wilson, this volume.

Edith Hall

Fig. Ivory with mask of singing actor of tragedy (By permission

of the National Museum of Wales)

famous words in the classic repertoire. Did Ailios compose new music
for the old lyric sections, for iambic trimeters, or for both? Here a problem
arises. What was (or was at least believed to be) the original music to old
tragedy was still familiar, but as far we know the fifth-century tragedians

Broneer (); Latte (). Some tragoidoi were creative artists of another kind, victorious both
as performers of old tragedies from the classic repertoire and as poets of new tragedy (e.g.
Stephanis () no. ).

The singing actors of antiquity

Fig. Glass jug with mask of singing actor of tragedy (Soprintendenza Archeologica
per la Toscana Firenze)

had not composed the music which by this time was often accompanying
even iambic trimeters.
In an oration on his liking for music Dio Chrysostom says that he
prefers listening to citharodes and actors than to orators. One reason
is that orators often extemporise, whereas citharodes and actors offer
poetry composed by ancient poets (Or. .):

Edith Hall

And the most of what they give us comes from ancient times (rca sti), and
from much wiser men than those of the present. In the case of comedy
everything is kept; in the case of tragedy only the strong parts (t mn scur),
it would seem, remain I mean the iambics and portions of these that they still
give (diexasin) in our theatres but the more delicate parts (t d malaktera)
have fallen away, that is, the lyric parts.

Dios context in this dialogue is Cyzicus, a Milesian colony in which

G. Ailios Themison himself may have performed a few decades later. Dio
states that only selected iambic portions of tragedy were being given.
The context of the dialogue, which is comparing music to oratory and is
inspired by the visit of a citharode to Cyzicus, suggests that these iambic
parts are being sung, and sung, moreover, to music believed to be the
work of the original poets.
So where did singers (other than the innovative Ailios) get the music
for their iambics from? Ancient tunes were repetitive and conformed to
traditional melodic patterns. In the current state of our evidence we
must imagine that singers performing passages from old tragedy used
original (or at least plausibly old-sounding) and recognisable scales and
cadences from the lyrics and recitative, somehow transferring them to
the different rhythm of the iambics; Roman connoisseurs, at any rate,
could tell from the notes produced by the first breath of the accompanying
pipe whether a tragedy was Antiope or Andromache.

T H E A R T O F T H E T R A GO
IDOS

Papyrus discoveries allow us to sketch in outline the technical demands

made on tragic singers. A fragment of a scene from a post-classical
tragedy on the fall of Troy implies that tragoidoi could be competent
at musical improvisation. Cassandra deliriously describes Hectors last
battle against Achilles, but the papyrus includes the word song (d)
on seven occasions before verses probably delivered by her. These seem
almost certain to be musical directions to the actor playing Cassandra
to improvise sung preludes to the words he had to memorise.

Comotti (b) . The papyri of Euripidean music show repeated playing up and down within
the cluster of notes close together in pitch.
Cicero, Acad. . = fr. in Jocelyn (), who believes, however, that Cicero is referring
to theatrical displays at, for example, funerals, rather than fully staged performances of entire
tragedies (pp. ).
TrGF fr. adesp. = P Oxy. , first edited by Coles (). Perhaps the improvised singing
consisted of the type of exclamations Cassandra delivers in Aeschylus seminal Agamemnon

The singing actors of antiquity

However outlandish the lyric snatches improvised by Hellenistic actors

playing Cassandra, most of the original music of fifth-century tragedy
had used the manly enharmonic scale. This means that the tragic
singer will have sung melodies based around the tonic and the fifth, which
repeatedly contrasted tiny steps in pitch with a larger one of approximately a major third. Euripides and Agathon began using the chromatic
scale, which somewhat evened out the gaps between the notes and was
regarded as more effeminate than the enharmonic. Both these scales
gradually gave way to the diatonic, which dominated in the Roman
period, and which, since its notes were at more equal distances apart,
more closely resembled the modern western scale. But the tragedians
old enharmonic remained in use to accompany their works, even though
only the most outstanding musicians could attempt it, since the tiny
intervals it entailed demanded strict precision.
The melodies sung by tragic actors generally rose and then fell again in
pitch, rather than beginning with a descent. While singing the same note
repeatedly was rare, most tunes predominantly moved stepwise in the
scale to an adjacent note, and thus would now seem to be continuously in
motion (which perhaps illuminates the comparison with the nightingale),
sinuous and writhing. In the tragic melodies preserved on papyri the
occasional leaps or dives of up to a ninth, on the other hand, seem
designed to create an emphatic special effect. An important musical
papyrus at Yale contains a dramatic Greek lyric song performed by
a highly skilled baritone of the imperial era, quite possibly a tragoidos;

(e.g. , ; see Gentili () ). Coles () , suggests the possibility that the musical
direction is not contemporary with the composition of the play but a later interpolation which
reflects later methods of production. However, at Cyclops , the Laurentian manuscripts stage
direction to the actor playing Polyphemus to sing from within (d ndoqen) may go back as far
as Euripides (Seaford () ).
It was seen as a paradox that martial peoples like the Aetolians, who used the diatonic scale,
were more manly and courageous than singers in tragedy, who have [always] been accustomed
to singing in the enharmonic (so the classical polemic on music preserved in the third-century
BC Hibeh papyrus . , edited by Grenfell and Hunt (), pt. no. , pp. , col. ii,
translated by Barker () vol. I, ). The enharmonic divided the octave into two tetrachords
(in modern terms, say, e to a and b to e), but within the tetrachords bunched the other available
notes just above the bottom at tiny intervals of only about a quarter-tone, leaving a big gap above
them: getting from e to f took two steps, but from f to a only one.
Aristid. Quint., On Music ., translated in Barker () vol. II, . The difficult melodies
of tragic songs were made easier to perform by the supporting auloi: it was believed that too many
instruments obscured a voice, but auloi or a lyre could define a sung melody ([Arist.] Probl. .,
., see also Euripides Electra ). In the fragment of the musical score from Euripides Orestes
(see above n. ), the instrumental notes suggest that the two pipes for the most part played the
same note, but occasionally diverged to play at an interval of a fourth (West (a) ).
West (a) , .

Edith Hall

the melody involved a sudden leap down no less than an octave and a
third. The editor of the papyrus argues that the sudden descent in pitch
was designed to represent the voice change caused by spirit possession,
and that it marked the beginning of the first-person representation of
a prophet or prophetess utterances. This florid song is most unusual
in requiring its performer to cover two octaves; most melodies seem to
have been composed within the compass of little more than one. Some
recently published papyrus fragments, which may record the vocal music
to a tragedy on Achilles by Sophocles or his homonymous grandson,
reveal a striking tendency for the melody to oscillate between two notes
separated by an interval ranging between a semitone and a fifth. It
is possible that such oscillation suggested the use of the verb elelizesthai
(trill or quiver) used in sung descriptions of the nightingales song in
both Aristophanes Birds (, see further below) and Euripides Helen
().
The songs sung in these scales were in one of the musical modes,
which entailed recognisable ways of selecting notes (probably with distinctive melodic formulae and cadences), and a particular tessitura. The
exciting Phrygian mode, which Sophocles is supposed to have introduced
to tragedy, required high-pitched singing. The dignified Dorian was
often used in tragic laments, the emotive Mixolydian was used for many
choruses, and the soft Ionian, compared in Aeschylus Supplices with the
nightingales song (), is associated by Aristophanes with the seductive
songs of prostitutes (Eccl. ). The active Hypophrygian and the magnificent Hypodorian, introduced by the innovative tragedian Agathon,
were not used by choruses, but only by actors playing heroic roles;
virtuoso tragoidoi thus needed to be able to sing in special (and perhaps
specially difficult) modes which distinguished their solo singing from the
collective choral voice.
Songs seem to have been sung at a speed similar to that at which they
would have been intuitively spoken: when a Greek poet wanted his poetry
to be delivered at a slower or faster pace, he used more long or short
syllables respectively. These two types of syllable provided the two basic
note values of Greek vocal music as they did Greek speech, one twice
as long as another in modern terms, a crotchet and a quaver. Most

Johnson () .
West () . These musical fragments are inscribed on the other side of cartonnage scraps
containing tragic lyrics.
[Arist.] Probl. .. See also the Byzantine treatise on tragedy edited by Browning () par. .
West (a) , .

The singing actors of antiquity

Greek music did not stretch out individual words by spreading their
syllables over more than one note. Euripides, however, experimented
with this kind of ornamentation, a development parodied in Frogs where
the verb heilisso (twirl) becomes heieieieieilisso (, ). This ornament
became popular for proper names, where a syllable is sometimes spread
over several notes. In a papyrus scrap of a dramatic lament for Ajax, his
name is sung Ai-ai-i-an rather than Ai-an.
Although Aeschylean tragedy provides occasional internal musical
directions, the early tragoidos learned his tunes by hearing other men
in theatrical families (see above) a father, brother, or uncle sing them.
But as traditional melodic forms were replaced by more modern music
after the fifth century BC, it became important to record the music to
tragedy. From at least as early as the fourth century Greek singers had a
system of musical notation based on a modification of the Attic alphabet.
Significantly, the papyri containing literary texts with musical notations
are almost all copies of texts of drama, presumably designed for use by
tragoidoi and associated performers instrumentalists, a chorus, or a
theatrical company.
Tragedy sometimes makes bodily demands on its singing actors; the
actor playing Hecuba, for example, had to sing some of her laments
from a prone position on the ground (see Valakas, this volume). Yet in
ancient visual art singers stand erect, with their heads thrown back, as if to
open up the throat and windpipe. Theophrastus says that when people
sing high notes they draw in the ribs and stretch out the windpipe,
narrowing them by force. The mouth was also opened wide: in an
ekphrasis the citharode Amphion shows his teeth a little, just enough
for a singer. The tragic actors mask had a gaping mouth to allow the
sound to emerge, and the actors own mouth to be visible (see Green, this
volume). The convention of the mask may have survived partly because it
concealed the facial distortion necessary to the production of a voice big

West (a) , .
Supplices , for example, suggests the use of the Ionian mode. On the musical modes see also
Wilson, this volume.
Aural lessons in both song and instrumental playing appear on fifth-century vases, such as the
famous kylix by Douris in Berlin (Berlin , see Comotti (b) ). Henderson () n. ,
observes that a singer reads from a scroll on a vase of about BC, but points out that there is
no evidence that the scroll contains any notation other than words.
Comotti (b) (see e.g. this chapter, fig. ).
He adds that when singing low notes they widen the windpipe to shorten the throat (Porphyry,
Commentary on Ptolemys Harmonics , translated in Barker () vol. II, ).
Philostratus, Imagines .. I owe this reference to Peter Wilson.

Edith Hall

enough to fill outdoor theatres, although a good actor could exploit the
mask to intensify the awesome impression he made: Prudentius compares
the mendacious but potent orator with a tragic singer (tragicus cantor)
who conceals his face beneath a hollow wooden mask, but breathes
some great crime through its gaping hole (hiatus), (Contra Symmachum
.).
The sound produced by singers was admired for its loudness, resonance, clarity, precision, and security of hold on notes (Plato, Rep.
.c; Arist. De aud. a). Voices are admired for being sweet
or honey-like; the nightingale in Aristophanes Birds is said to sing a
liquid melody in a clean voice (); the most common epithet of
praise is ligus or liguros, which refers to a clear sound, free from roughness,
and is also used to describe the sound made by cicadas, birds, orators,
auloi, lyres and panpipes. According to Isidore of Seville in the seventh
century, who drew on earlier authors, the perfect voice is male and
high, to be adequate to the sublime; loud, to fill the ear; sweet, to soothe
the minds of the hearers.
Isidore says that women, like children and the sick, have thin voices,
which lack sufficient breath and sound like stringed rather than wind
instruments. Such a perception of female vocal weakness may partly
explain the dearth of women dramatic singers, despite the extensive
evidence for ancient female instrumentalists and dancers. The best
candidate for a female tragoidos is the diva Athenion, celebrated in an
epigram by Dioscorides for her stunning performance of a work entitled
the Horse (AP V.). This just might have been the Greek prototype
of Livius Andronicus tragedy Equus Trojanus, in which case Athenion
might have sung the role of Cassandra. But other evidence implies
that Athenions Horse was more likely a concert aria. The heroine of the
second-century novel Leucippe and Cleitophon is able to perform, in private
at least, both epic and lyric songs. A unique musical papyrus fragment

Hunningher () .
West (a) .
Etymologiarum sive originum libri xx .. Isidore proposes that there are ten categories of singing
voice: the sweet (fine, full, loud and high), penetrating (those which can sustain a note evenly an
unusually long time and continuously fill a place, like trumpets), thin, fat, sharp, hard, harsh,
blind, prettily flexible (vinnola from vinnus, a softly curling lock of hair), and perfect.
See Webb, this volume, and e.g. the elder Senecas report of women dancing on private pantomime stages all over Rome (Q Nat ..). The Kleopatra listed with tragic and comic actors
at Delos in BC was not an actress but a specialist trick dancer (Webster () ).
Rostagni () vols. ., and ., .
.; she sings part of the sixteenth book of the Iliad and a lyric in praise of the rose. See also
Tarsias autobiographical monody in The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre ().