Komos or Chorus?, revellry scene from an Attic kylix (Komast cup style), ca. The Greek chorus ( choros) is believed to have grown out of the Greek Dithyrambs and Tragikon drama in tragic plays of the ancient Attica (Αττική Attikí;) is a periphery (subdivision in Greece, containing Athens, the capital of Greece 575 BC, Louvre (E 742)

Komos scene, Attic black-figure amphora, ca. The Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre located in Paris is the world's most visited art museum a historic monument and a national museum of France An amphora (plural amphorae or amphoras) is a type of Ceramic Vase with two handles and a long neck narrower than the body 560 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. The Staatliche Antikensammlungen (State Collections of Antiques in the Kunstareal of Munich is a museum for the Bavarian state's antique collections for 1432)

The Komos (in Greek κώμος, pl. komoi) was a ritualisitc drunken procession performed by revellers in ancient Greece, whose participants were known as komasts. Its precise nature has been difficult to reconstruct from the diverse literary sources and the evidence of vase painting. Our earliest reference to the komos is in Hesiod's Shield of Herakles which indicates it took place as part of wedding festivities (line 281), and famously Alcibiades gate-crashes the Symposium while carousing in a komos. Hesiod ( Greek: Hesiodos) was an early Greek Poet and Rhapsode, who presumably lived around 700 BCE The Shield of Heracles ( Ancient Greek: Ἀσπὶς Ἡρακλέους Aspis Hêrakleous) is a fragment of Greek epic, of 481 lines of Alcibiades Cleiniou Scambonides (ˌælsɨˈbaɪədiːz (pronunciation Greek:, transliterated Alkibiádēs Kleiníou Skambōnidēs) meaning Alcibiades The Symposium is a philosophical dialogue written by Plato sometime after 385 BC However no one kind of event is associated with the komos, Pindar describes them taking place at the city festivals (Pythian 5. Pindar (ˈpɪndɚ (or Pindarus, Greek:) (probably born 522 BC in Cynoscephalae a village in Boeotia; died 443 BC in Argos) was an Ancient 21, 8. 20, Olympian 4. 9), Demosthenes mentions them taking places after the pompe and choregoi on the first day of the Greater Dionysia (Speeches 21. For the Athenian general see Demosthenes (general. For the ancient physician see Demosthenes Philalethes. The Dionysia was a large religious festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central event of which was the performance of tragedies 10), which may indicate it was a competitive event. The komos must be distinguished from the pompe and the chorus, the latter were scripted events where as the komos lacked a chorus leader, script or rehearsal^[1]. The Greek chorus ( choros) is believed to have grown out of the Greek Dithyrambs and Tragikon drama in tragic plays of the ancient Demosthenes also upbraids the brother-in-law of Aeschines for not wearing a mask during the komos as was the custom (On the Embassy 19. Aeschines (in Greek, 389&ndash314 BC Greek Statesman and one of the ten Attic orators. 287)^[2], suggesting costume or disguise may have been involved. The playing of music during the komos is also mentioned by Aristophanes (Thesmophoriazusae 104, 988) and Pindar (Olympian 4. Aristophanes (Ἀριστοφάνης ˌærɪˈstɒfəniːz in English ca Thesmophoriazusae (Θεσμοφοριάζουσες / Thesmophoriazouses; meaning "Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria Festival" also called 9, Pythian 5. 22). There are also depictions of torch-lit komoi in vase painting, yet it is not always clear from the evidence of vases if they depict symposia, choruses or komoi. Symposium originally referred to a drinking party (the Greek verb sympotein means "to drink together" but has since come to refer to any Academic conference

It is now widely thought that komos and komoedia (comedy) are etymologically related (the derivation being komos + aeido sing). However Aristotle records the tradition in part III of the Poetics that the word komoedia derives from the Megaran mime that took place in the villages of Sicily, hence from komẽ the Dorian word for village^[3]. Aristotle (Greek Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC was a Greek philosopher a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle 's Poetics ( Greek: Ποιητικός, c 335 BCE aims to give an account of what he calls 'poetry' (for him the term includes the Megara ( Greek:, "Big Houses" is an ancient city (pop Sicily ( Italian and Sicilian: Sicilia) is an autonomous region of Italy. Nevertheless it remains unclear exactly how the revel-song evolved into the Greek Old comedy of the Dionysian festival in the 6th century BCE. Comedy was one of two principal dramatic forms in ancient Greece the other being Tragedy.

Notes

1. ^ Rockwell, p8
2. ^ Rockwell maintains there is some ambiguity to this, see note 7 p. 214
3. ^ The SOED cites both etymologies. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, often abbreviated to SOED, is a scaled-down version of the " Oxford English Dictionary "

References

• Kenneth S. Rockwell Jr. ‘’Nature, Culture and the Origins of Greek Comedy: A Study of Animal Choruses’’, CUP, 2006.