Dancing chorus of maidens. The maiden chorus is attested from the earliest days of ancient Greek musical culture. Reference is made to a dancing chorus of maidens and young men in the Iliad (xviii.590–606), and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (156–64) refers to a chorus of maidens at Delos, who skilfully sang hymns to Apollo, Leto and Artemis. Scenes of dancing women appear on numerous vases, sometimes playing the crotala and dancing alone, at other times holding hands and dancing as a chorus. Pseudo-Plutarch (On Music, 1136f) referred specifically to partheneia composed by Alcman, Pindar, Simonides and Bacchylides. An extended excerpt from such a composition by Alcman is preserved in PLouvre E3320 (1st century ce), running to more than 100 lines, organized in general in 14-line strophes. The text is rather fragmented until line 35, after which it is fairly well preserved until line 101. Although the text tends towards a style more intimate and personal than that of the other musical types, it does contain a few specific references to its musical nature. The chorus consisted of ten maidens led by an ‘illustrious chorus-leader’ (ha klenna choragos, 44), who is given the epithet Hagēsichora (53). Later, the poet introduced graceful similes to describe Hagēsichora's role. Pseudo-Plutarch remarked that Alcman wrote Dorian partheneia, and although the context of the passage may lead to the assumption that he was referring to the tonos, he carefully distinguished between Dōria partheneia, a purely generic usage, and Dōriou tropou or en tēi Dōristi, which are specific references to musical modes.
A few fragments survive from the two books of partheneia composed by Pindar. Employing some of the same images encountered in the Homeric hymn and the Alcman fragment, the first antistrophe and epode and the second strophe of frag.104d refer additionally to the accompaniment of the aulos and the practice of carrying laurel branches in the dance. It would appear from this passage that the partheneia made use of vivid onomatopoeia. In the lines describing the aulos's sound and the Zephyr wind, for example, the poet stresses the long, open vowel omega (auliskōn hupo lōtinōn) and diphthongs based on alpha (auliskōn, aoidais and aipsēras), as well as the whistling sounds of the sigma and the zeta (Zephurou te sigazei pnoas aipsēras). The presence of the laurel branches indicates that frag.104d must come from the daphnēphorika, a subcategory of the partheneia dedicated to Apollo Ismenios and Chalazios held every ninth year in Boeotia. Proclus's Useful Knowledge provides a detailed description of the participants in the procession who carry a special branch (kōppō) decorated with brass spheres and garlands representing the sun, the moon, and other heavenly bodies, while the maiden chorus follows, holding out branches of olive in supplication and singing a hymn (cf Pollux, Onomasticon, iv.53).
The term was used much later as the title of the collection of keyboard music presented to Princess Elizabeth and Prince Frederick on the occasion of their marriage (1613): Parthenia or the Maydenhead of the First Musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls, a whimsical reference both to the newness of the venture and the wedding; it reappeared in the title of its companion volume, Parthenia In-Violata (c1624), which has a part for bass viol.
J. Sandys, ed. and trans.: The Odes of Pindar, Including the Principal Fragments (London and Cambridge, MA, 1915, 3/1937/R)
D.L. Page: Alcman: The Partheneion (Oxford, 1951/R)
B. Snell ed.: Pindari carmina cum fragmentis, pts i–ii (Leipzig, 1953, rev. 5/1971–5 by H. Maehler)
L. Lawler: Dance in Ancient Greece (Middletown, CT, 1964), 102–4
G. Prudhommeau: La danse grecque antique (Paris, 1965)
J.W. Fitton: ‘Greek Dance’, Classical Quarterly, new ser., xxiii (1973), 254–74
A.J. Neubecker: Altgriechische Musik (Darmstadt, 1977), 50–51
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 83–8
THOMAS J. MATHIESEN