| Summary: | Earlier scholarship identified Euripides’ later plays, with the exception of the Bacchae, as examples of the supposed attenuation of tragedy’s choral element, a development considered to be characteristic of the period and linked to the emergence of New Music. However, in the last two decades, by paying special attention to χορεία, scholars have seriously questioned the idea of a decline of lyric at the end of the late fifth century and have argued for a wider tendency of the poets to increase choral activity by re-instilling traditional elements, especially those linked with Dionysos. My aim is to show that Helen’s second stasimon represents Euripides’ conscious project of recovering rituality and disclosing the elements of the purest Dionysiac χορεία.
|
|---|
