The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia: The Chorus, the City and the Stage by Peter Wilson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTESRENDUS PETER WILSON. The Athenian IJlstitution of t1le Khoregia: The Chorus, the City alld the Stage. Calnbridge: Calnbridge Ul1iversity Press, 2000. Pp. XV + 435. ISBN 0-52 I-5507o-X. This is an excellent book, which provides Inany thoughtful and nuanced insights into how festival liturgies were funded and organized in Athens and beyond. Wilson's work will secure a place not only in the study of Greek drama, but also as a Inajor contribution to an understanding of the workings of classical Athens. The khoregia (transliterated thus, with no macron on the long vowel: see 5) was an institution whereby the richer Athenians financed the choral performances, including tragedy and comedy. Wilson assembles the infol mation and presents a new interpretation of the institution in which the successful khoregos hil11self gains substantial non-Inaterial rewards such as til11e for lavish spending . Given the cOlnplexity of the subject, the book is helpfully divided and subdivided: three parts ("The Institution," "The Khoreg'iLl in Action ," and "Beyond Classical Athens") contain six cha ptel"'s. each of which is broken into between four and fifteen smaller sections. The first two chapters (I I-J (3) survey the Inechanics of festival liturgies . revisiting an area Inost of us know principally £I'ol11 the second edition of Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge's DranlLltic Festivals of Athens . While this does not cOlnpletely supersede the first 125 pages of that work, Wilson is surely the first point of reference now. He carefully follows the khoregos through the year froln his initial appointlnent to the announcement of the victor (50-1°3). The sheer nUluber and val iety of festival liturgies required annually (as is lnade clear at 21-46, no cOluplete tally is possible) demonstrate the centrality of the institution to classical Athenian life. COluplicated by factors such as exelnptions (see 57-61), volunteerislu, and military liturgies such as the trierarkhia (47-49,59.1 ]2- 113. ]75-176. about which Wilson l11ight have offered still 1110re for comparison), it reluains difficult to sense what percentage of the adult lnale population is in the khoreg'os club. This is surely l110re significant than the old chestnut of cOlnparative expenditures (87-95), where Wilson does helpfully show the rough equivalence of expenditure per chol al character. if not per khoreutes-though it is not quite as 75 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS equal as is suggested on 94, for surely even if "the satyr costume was much more standardized than those for tragedy" (344 n. 196) it nevertheless remained an expense. Indeed, these calculations do suggest that the bulk of the expenditure was on costumes and masks, though this lies at odds with the picture presented earlier (75-80) concerning the recruitment of khoreutai. Wilson argues that choral training was" a significant part of the education of male children of at least the better-off Athenian families" (75, though on I 28 this constitutes"a substantial percentage of the citizen body")-a part that could continue perhaps up to the age of thirty and could last "for several months every year" (128). Serving in a khoros is not restricted to the elite: this significantly expands the range of usual khoreutai beyond the focus on ephebes suggested by John J. Winkler in Nothing to Do with Dionysos?, and is more plausible demographically. The next two chapters (1°9-197) take the skeleton of the operation and add flesh. Drawing on Paul Veyne's Le pain et ie cirque (6-7), Wilson traces a core contradiction in the dynamic of the khoregia: what is at heart a democratic institution provides a public mechanisln for intense competition in displays of individual wealth, thereby creating a tension between aristocratic and democratic values. Indeed, lnore could be made of the similarities between khoregos and the competitor in chariot races (see 1. 12 and 120). Not merely a "financier" (107), the khoregos is in a real sense a competitor for "symbolic capital" (147), who with significant expenditure and a successful performance can win a prestige clearly worth the price, culminating in "the right to erect, in perhaps the most conspicuous place of the city, a display of his achievement and pre-eminence...

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