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The "Thracian Pig Dance" Author(s): Lillian B. Lawler and Alice E. Kober Source

The "Thracian Pig Dance" Author(s): Lillian B. Lawler and Alice E. Kober Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Apr., 1945), pp. 98-107 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/266853 Accessed: 31/08/2010 16:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Classical Philology. http://www.jstor.org THE "THRACIAN PIG DANCE" LILLIAN B. LAWLER AND ALICE E. KOBER IN ATHENAEUS xiv. 629 d, appears a list of names of dances which the au- thor says are orao-ticW Epa, 7roQKLXwrEpa (Kaibel emends unnecessarily to rvKvoTEpa), and -rmV OPXr'Th'v a7rXovcTTEpacv EXovTaLi.e., more regular in form, more spectacular, and having simpler choreography than some of the dances previously mentioned. The list, without punctuation, is as fol- lows: cKTVXOA Layc/K27 MOXOO-O-nLKr) EIuLEXcLa Kop6aa OiKLVtLg HIEpJLK7 4fpvytos 0JL3aTw/Ios OpaKLog KQXacpfpLO,4o0 (earlier editions, KaXacfptoYto6) TEXET1YSta. Editors have dif- fered as to the punctuation of the list and as to the number of separate dances which are here mentioned. For the purposes of this paper we shall look particularly at the two words OpaKLoS and KOXacpLtapoS. Some translators and commentators have treated each of these words as refer- ring to a separate dance-e.g., the trans- lator of the Bohn Athenaeus (C. D. Yonge, The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned, of Athenaeus [London: Bohn, 1854], III, 1004) says: ". . . . the Thraci- an, the Calabrismus, the Telesias." Others have taken the two words together-e.g., F. A. Wright (The Arts in Greece [London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1923], p. 29): "...... a Thracian dance called the Cola- brismos." Still others have attempted to translate KoXcq3pix,uo6.1 Since it could be derived from a word KO4Xapog, defined by some as "little pig," Charles B. Gulick (Athenaeus, the Deipnosophists [London: Heinemann; Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1930-37], VI, 395) renders t A later sectionl of tllis article is devoted to this problem. All anicient references to words fioni wiich the name of tile dance miglht have been derived are given there. the two words as "the Thracian pig- dance. " KoXac3pol appears in Athenaeus (iv. 164 e; xv. 697 c), where the context shows it must have the meaning "lascivious verses" or the like. This suggests another interpretation of KoXaptpLao-6, a rather obvious one, which, however, the com- mentators seem not to have noticed. One might easily think of the dance accom- panying such verses as a sort of KW/IOS, a development of primitive ritualistic ob- scenity of a type familiar in Athens and in other parts of Greece proper. Pollux (iv. 100) also refers to the dance. KoXac3pLtupos Opa4KLov 6`px>,ua Kact KapLKov, he says, sustaining the editors, who unite the two words. He continues: -1v OE Ka' ToTro voirXtov. This addition complicates the situation considerably. If the dance was a "pig dance," why and how was it done in armor? In the main, Pollux and Athenaeus, when discussing the dance, stem from the same sources. Accordingly, it is just barely possible that Pollux, in the latter part of his comment, has inadvertently confused, or designedly associated, the KoXc4ptayow with the TCXEo-cig, which follows it in the list as Athenaeus gives it. The TEXEGLta' was certainly an armed dance (cf. Athen. xiv. 630 a). Furthermore, armed dances were characteristic of the Thracians (Athen. i. 15 e; Xenophon Anab. vi. 1. 5-6). Are we, then, dealing with a Thracian dance, a "pig" dance, a dance in armor, a KC/,IO3 performed to obscene verses, or a combination of some, or even all, oL these elements? Some further clai-ilication of [CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY, XL, APRIL, 194..] THE "THRACIAN PIG DANCE" 99 the nature of the dance may be derived from linguistic or archeological evidence. The linguistic evidence is, unfortunate- ly, slight and in several cases open to vari- ous interpretations. The words which en- ter into the discussion occur almost ex- clusively in scholia and glossaries that are fairly late. Then, too, these words were unfamiliar to the ancient scholars, who copy one another or invent their own ety- mologies, with the result that the original form and spelling of the words they cite are difficult to establish, even when, as in the case of Hesychius and Suidas, we have excellent editions of their work. In many cases allowance must also be made for the sad propensity of later scholars to base an emendation of the text of the author they are editing on what they assume is the reading of a similar gloss elsewhere, with- out ascertaining whether the reading ac- tually exists or is itself an emendation. KoXacptpLo-os, the name of the dance, is mentioned only in the passages from Athenaeus and Pollux quoted above. It must be derived from a verb, KoXap3pL?co. This verb exists. It is defined by Hesy- chius, S.V. KoXa/ppLvELv rKtpTa-c.2 Since oKtpraaw is used elsewhere of the jumping or leaping of young horses and goats, and also of Bacchantes, we may suppose that the dance itself was rather active and pos- sibly somewhat orgiastic. KOXaopLSc should be derived from a substantive *KOXa3p-, for which we have evidence in the existing forms KoXac(3pos, KOX a43pov KOX'3pwV, KOXca3povS. It is general- ly assumed that these are all forms of the same word, but, as later discussion will 2 The verb is also used in the passive, meaning "to be mocked, derided" (LXX, Job 5:4). It was defined by Olympiodorus ad loc., and by Hesychius s.V. KaXa- fpLptaOeL?7Lav and KwXaO.pLtaOE1iqav (note the spellings!); Suidas connects it with KoXcafpos, S.V. KoXafL8pa0elit7: XXevaa01Etf, EKtvaaL01ctO, &T/Aaadel1i. KAaXcqpos (variants, K6Xa- flos, KoXaaglos) -&tdp 6 #KpOS Xo?poS. &vTL roD ob3evbs X6yov &tLds VO$ALcaOE I7. show, they occur in various authors and have several different meanings. No etymology has been established for the word or words.3 Since the dance is connected with Thrace and Caria by Pol- lux (iv. 100) and the "verses" are men- tioned by Athenaeus (xv. 697 c) in con- nection with Phoenicia and Asia Minor, we are probably dealing with a non-Greek and perhaps even a non-Indo-European word group. Technical terms connected with music, poetry, or the dance, and animal names as well, are frequently loan words; many Greek words of this type have been borrowed from a Mediter- ranean substratum. Calling a word a loan word does not, however, define it. At least two, and perhaps three, differ- ent translations of KoXacptpoL/Io are pos- sible, depending on how we set up its der- ivation. The evidence of ancient scholars warrants our defining it as (1) a KCW/0os; (2) a "pig dance"; (3) a "sword dance"(?). These meanings are, moreover, not mu- tually exclusive. 1. A KCw/I0.-This possibility has al- ready been suggested. Athenaeus refers, in two different sections of his work,4 to poems whose wanton and uninhibited na- ture is evident from the context. He speaks of them several times, using the forms KOQXa3poVS and KOX'aopwv, both plural; the gender, however, is not indicated. The passages imply that these verses were used to make fun of individuals-a fact that fits in very well with the meaning "to be derided" attested for the passive of KOXacpL?w (see n. 2). This close semantic connection with the verb indicates that verses of this type may have been used in 3It is listed only in the etymological dictionary of Leo Meyer (Handbuch der griechischen Etymologie [Leipzig, 1902], II, 429), and his comment consists of the words "dunkler Herkunft." 4 iV. 164 e, where the text actually reads KoXApOVS; and xv. 697 c, where the forms KOX6povs and KOX&pWV appear. 100 LILLIAN B. LAWLER AND ALICE E. KOBER connection with the dance; but it does not necessarily imply that the dance was named after the verses. We are not deal- ing with a term that has been defined as meaning "lascivious verses" but with one that apparently has this meaning in a cer- tain context. It is likely, especially since only the plural is attested in this sense, that we have here a secondary meaning of the word (perhaps derived from the use of such verses in the dance, perhaps from the same word as the dance name). uploads/Litterature/ the-thracian-pig-dance.pdf