Sunday 6 September 2015

Choregos [χορηγός]

Plural: choregia or khoregia

The very richest or citizens [sometimes rich metics] from the very highest classes of the Athenian city state [polis] were required by the Athenian Constitution, when called upon by the Eponymous Archon to do so, to carry out a specific public service and civic duty at their own expense. This was known as a performing a "liturgy". This might be to command and maintain one of the ships in the Athenian navy, or to fund a chorus for one of the several Athenian festivals, or whatever public service the city state or polis required.

A poet who wished to put on a play [typically 4 plays required for a tragic production] went before a magistrate of the Athenian polis, , the Archon Basileus, head of the religious festivals who asked for a chorus. If he was granted his request, a wealthy citizen was assigned by the Eponymous Archon to be choregos, the financial sponsor of the project. The poet became didaskalos or "trainer" of the chorus, with the state paying for the poet [playwright] and the aulos players or auletes (αὐλητής) , and the actors or hypokritēs (ὑποκριτής).

Those nominated were compulsorily required to perform this service. One could escape this duty if could find a richer person than oneself who seemingly hadn't taken up this duty and claim in court that they had been passed over for nomination. This was known as antidosis [exchange of property], a legal form by which a citizen charged to perform a leitourgia might call upon the other citizen, whom he thought richer than himself, either to exchange all the property that each owned with each other, or to submit to the performance of the leitourgia himself.

In Athens for all the great festivals, such as the Greater Dionysia, the Thargelia, and the Panathenaia, each tribe was required to put forward one of its wealthier members to act as its choregos [sponsor of a chorus] as a leitourgia for the tribe. The duties of a choregos were to supply, suitably costume and equip, and organize suitable training grounds for the members of a chorus [choreutai] at his own expense to represent their tribe. The choregos has to find the money to feed, house, and train the chorus during rehearsal time. The choruses from the ten tribes of Athens then competed against each other at these festivals. Very great honour or kudos was bestowed upon the choregos of the winning team.

Some very well known persons in classical Athens acted at one time or other as choregos. For example, Perikles was the choregos for and underwrote the cost of the first production of Aeschylus' Persians in 472 bc. And also Plato acted as a choregos at one time.

References

Definition of the word Liturgy
The word liturgy, derived from the technical term in ancient Greek (Greek: λειτουργία), leitourgia, which literally means "work for the people" is a literal translation of the two words "litos ergos" or "public service".

Choregos - Wikipedia

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Choragus - Wikisource

Chorēgia - Oxford Reference

Chorēgia - Oxford Reference Oxford Classical Dictionary

Eponymous archon - Wikipedia

Coryphaeus - Wikipedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon_basileus?wprov=sfla1

Theorika in Fifth-Century Athens - CORE


Peter Wilson (18 September 2003). The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia: The Chorus, the City and the Stage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-54213-5.
The Athenian institution of the Khoregia: the chorus, the city and the stage

Aristotle. The Athenian Constitution. Part 56: Start Publishing LLC. pp. 48–. ISBN 978-1-62558-335-2.


The Athenian Constitution - Chapter 56

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, χορηγ-ός 


Simon Hornblower; Antony Spawforth; Esther Eidinow (2012). The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Choregos  OUP Oxford. pp. 311–. ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8.

At Athens the chorēgia was a leitourgia (liturgy), or public service performed by a wealthy citizen for the polis. A chorēgos (literally ‘leader of a chorus’) was responsible for the recruitment, training, maintenance, and costuming of choreutai (members of a chorus) for competitive performance at a festival. The same system of individual contribution was used to provide the Athenian navy with its ships (trierarchia: see trierarchy).The chorēgia was central to the organization and funding of the dramatic festivals in Athens and its demes. The actors were appointed and remunerated separately by the polis, but the chorus involved the main part of the expense in these productions. In the Great Dionysia, the main dramatic festival held annually, choruses were required for each of the various genres of performance: five for comedy (with 24 choreutai in each), three for tragedy and satyr-play (see satyric drama) (12 or 15 choreutai) and ten each for the two categories of dithyramb, men's and boys’ (50 choreutai)

Marc G. de Santis (30 April 2017). A Naval History of the Peloponnesian War: Ships, Men and Money in the War at Sea, 431-404 BC. Pen & Sword Books. ISBN 978-1-4738-6160-2.
Eric Csapo; William J. Slater (1995). The Context of Ancient Drama. The Choregic System: University of Michigan Press. pp. 139–. ISBN 0-472-08275-2.

Discoveries in the Attic Deme of Ikaria 1888. III. The Choregia in Athens and at Ikaria

Jill Frank (2005). A Democracy of Distinction: Aristotle and the Work of Politics. University of Chicago Press. pp. 62–. ISBN 978-0-226-26019-8.

Peter Wilson (2003). The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia: The Chorus, the City and the Stage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-54213-5.

Christ, M. R. (1990). Liturgy Avoidance and Antidosis in Classical Athens. Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), 120, 147–169. https://doi.org/10.2307/283983 https://www.jstor.org/stable/283983




A Companion to Greek Studies. § 515 Liturgies: CUP Archive. 1905. pp. 495–.  Liturgies- A Companion to Greek Studies    §§ 515
A Companion to Greek Studies (4th Edition ed.). VI - Financing the Greek City States (incl. Liturgies): CUP Archive. 1931. pp. 491–. §§ 511-21

Simon Hornblower; Antony Spawforth; Esther Eidinow (2012). The Oxford Classical Dictionaryantidosis: OUP Oxford. pp. 101–. ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8.

Liturgy Avoidance and Antidosis in Classical Athens
Matthew R. Christ
Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-)
Vol. 120 (1990), pp. 147-169
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.2307/283983
Demosthenes on Liturgies: A Note
J. K. Davies
The Journal of Hellenic Studies
Vol. 87 (1967), pp. 33-40
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
DOI: 10.2307/627805
https://www.jstor.org/stable/627805

Leitourgia and Related Terms
Napthali Lewis
Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
Leitourgia and Related Terms (I) Abstract PDF
Leitourgia and Related Terms (II) Abstract PDF

Liturgy (ancient Greece) - Wikipedia

Liturgy, Greek - Oxford Classical Dictionary

Trierarch - Wikipedia

Metic - Wikipedia
Claude Calame: Les Choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque. Two vols. I. Morphologie, fonction religieuse et sociale. II. Alcman. pp. 506, 212; 2 plates. Rome: Edizioni dellateneo e Bizzarri, 1977

Archontes

There were three senior archons [out of nine]: The Eponymous Archon, the civilian head of government and effective  head of state, The King [Basileus] the head of religious matters and the Polemarch [Polemarchos], commander of the army.





Simon Hornblower; Antony Spawforth; Esther Eidinow (2012). The Oxford Classical Dictionary. OUP Oxford. pp. 144–. ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8.

Thomas L. Dynneson (2008). City-state Civism in Ancient Athens: Its Real and Ideal Expressions. Peter Lang. pp. 30–. ISBN 978-1-4331-0311-7.

Chronological Institute of London (1852). Transactions of the Chronological Institute of London ... The Archons of Athens. pp. 2–.


Dionysos, Money, and Drama
Richard Seaford
Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics
Third Series, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall, 2003), pp. 1-19
Published by: Trustees of Boston University; Trustees of Boston University through its publication Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163921

Dramatic Festivals of Athens Pickard - Cambridge pp. 86-93
 

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