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The Chorus as Rhetorical Audience: A Sophoklean Agōn Pattern
- American Journal of Philology
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 130, Number 1 (Whole Number 517), Spring 2009
- pp. 25-46
- 10.1353/ajp.0.0040
- Article
- Additional Information
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The dynamics of some Sophoklean agōn scenes depend on the presence of an atypically non-marginal chorus of free, Greek males. In Aias, Antigone, and Oidipous at Kolonos, characters perform their conflicts with each other toward the chorus as a socio-politically authoritative audience. Their interactions are, in part, negotiations of the chorus' authority, involving varied attempts to ap-propriate or marginalize it. In these agōn scenes, the marked influence of the choral presence expands the thematic scope of the characters' conflicts onto larger communities.