Choragus
/kəˈreɪɡəs/noun
The wealthy Athenian who paid for and trained a dramatic chorus, and later any leader of a chorus.
The Greek roots
Literally: “chorus leader”
The story of the word
In classical Athens the choragus recruited the singers, fed them, trained them and dressed them, as a public duty laid on rich citizens in place of a tax. Winning brought a bronze tripod, which the sponsor mounted on a monument bearing his own name rather than the poet's; one such monument still stands in Athens for a choragus called Lysicrates. The word itself is only chorus plus the verb to lead, the same verb hiding inside demagogue and pedagogue.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
In a sentence
Being choragus was ruinously expensive and impossible to refuse politely.
The programme lists a local businessman as choragus, which is a joke the classicists in the audience enjoyed.