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Komos or Chorus? Revellry scene from an Attic Komast cup ca. 575 BCE, Louvre

The Komos (in Greek κώμος, pl. komoi) was a ritualisitc drunken procession performed by revellers in ancient Greece, whose participants were known as komasts. Its precise nature has been difficult to reconstruct from the diverse literary sources and the evidence of vase painting. Our earliest reference to the komos is in Hesiod's Shield of Herakles which indicates it took place as part of wedding festivities (line 281), and famously Alcibiades gate-crashes the Symposium while carousing in a komos. However no one kind of event is associated with the komos, Pindar describes them taking place at the city festivals (Pyhtian 5.21, 8.20, Olympian 4.9), Demosthenes mentions them taking places after the pompe and choregoi on the first day of the Greater Dionysia (Speeches 21.10), which may indicate it was a competitive event. The komos must be distinguished from the pompe and the chorus, the latter were scripted events where as the komos lacked a chorus leader, script or rehearsal.^[1] Demosthenes also upbraids the brother-in-law of Aeschines for not wearing a mask during the komos as was the custom (On the Embassy 19.287)^[2], suggesting costume or disguise may have been involved.The playing of music during the komos is also mentioned by Aristophanes (Thesmo. 104, 988) and Pindar (Olympian 4.9, Pythian 5.22). There are also depictions of torch-lit komoi in vase painting, yet it is not always clear from the evidence of vases if they depict symposia, choruses or komoi.

It is now widely thought that komos and komoedia (comedy) are etymologically related (the derivation being komos + aeido sing). However Aristotle records the tradition in part III of the Poetics that the word komoedia derives from the Megaran mime that took place in the villages of Sicily , hence from komẽ the Dorian word for village^[3]. Nevertheless it remains unclear exactly how the revel-song evolved into the Greek Old comedy of the Dionysian festival in the 6th century BCE.

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Komos scenes

1. ^ Rockwell, p8
2. ^ Rockwell maintains there is some ambiguity to this, see note 7 p.214
3. ^ The shorter OED cites both etymologies

• Kenneth S. Rockwell Jr. ‘’Nature, Culture and the Origins of Greek Comedy: A Study of Animal Choruses’’, CUP, 2006.