The Chorus as Rhetorical Audience: A Sophoklean Agōn Pattern

Abstract

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.