Prof. Pura Nieto (Brown University): Female choruses in Pindar

Although the original performance of Pindaric poetry is still an open question, there are good reasons to understand the compositions as intended for choral performance. The numerous references to the chorus that the poems themselves include always address it as a group of men. Nevertheless, and in contrast to this, there are also several female choruses that play an important role throughout Pindar’s poetry and that have received much less attention from scholars. This paper surveys the role and function of these female choral groups, and looks especially at the Muses, the Graces, and the Hours.