(Gr. “a coming forward”). In Gr. Old Comedy, a choral performance, composed mainly in anapestic tetrameters. During an intermission in the action, the chorus, alone in the orchestra and out of character, came forward without their masks to face the audience and delivered, in song or recitative, views on topics such as politics or religion about which the dramatist felt strongly. The parts of a complete p. were said to be komma-tion (introductory song), parabasis (properly called), makron or pnigos (to be recited in one breath), strophe or ode ( melos ), and epirrhema (“that said afterwards”). This last, a speech (usually in trochaic tetrameters) whose content was satiric, advisory, or exhortative, was delivered by the leader of one half of the chorus after an ode had been sung by that half; the other half then sang a responding antode (set in lyric meters corresponding metrically to the ode) and antepir-rhema. Such an arrangement of lyrics by the chorus and speech or dialogue by a character is found in the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles as well as of Aristophanes.
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