Cordax
（
κόρδαξ). An extremely indecent dance peculiar to the comic
chorus. (See
Chorus;
Comoedia.) The gestures, and, indeed, the costumes, of the choreutae were
such that even the Athenians considered it justifiable only at the festival of Dionysus, when
every one was allowed to be drunk in honour of the god; for if an Athenian citizen danced the
cordax sober and unmasked, he was looked upon as the most shameless of men and forfeited
altogether his character for respectability (Theophr.
Charact. 6). Aristophanes
himself, who did not much scruple at violating common decency, claims some merit for his
omission of the cordax in the
Clouds, and for the more modest attire of his
chorus in that play. According to Athenaeus, the cordax was a sort of
ὑπόρχημα, or imitative dance, in which the choreutae expressed the words of the
song by comic gesticulations. Such a dance was the hyporcheme of the Spartan
δεικελίκται—buffoons, whose peculiar mimic gestures seem to
have formed the basis of the Dorian comedy, which prevailed in Megaris, and which probably was
the parent stock, not only of the Attic, but also of the Sicilian and Italian comedy. The
chief features of the cordax are probably preserved in the Neapolitan
tarantella.
