| This thesis argues that choruses of elders in Greek tragedy can be remarkably central to the tragic action and are not necessarily---as some scholars have generalised---ineffectual, passive, or marginal as a result of their old age. Choruses of elders are actively involved in the dramatic events when they are encouraged to be involved by a sympathetic ruler (as in Sophocles' Oedipus Coloneus, Euripides' Heraclidae, and at the end of Sophocles' Antigone) or driven to act against an antipathetic ruler (as at the start of Euripides' Hercules Furens and at the end of Aeschylus' Agamemnon). When choruses of elders are marginalised, I suggest, it is not on account of their old age per se but on account of the play's specific political problems and pressures. Detailed analysis of the aforementioned, five choruses' speech, song, and action is helpful not only to our understanding of choral identity, but also, more broadly, to our understanding of the ongoing if not increasing importance that the chorus will have maintained in Greek tragedy. |
