of Procopius of Gaza, who must be distinguished from Procopius of Caesarea, the historian. A number of his declamations and descriptive treatises have been preserved. The declamations, which are in many cases accompanied by explanatory commentaries, chiefly consist of panegyrics, funeral orations and the stock themes of the rhetorical schools. The Έπιθαλάμιοι or wedding speeches, wishing prosperity to the bride and bridegroom, strike out a new line. Choricius was also the author of so-called Έκφράσεις, descriptions of works of art after the manner of Philostratus. The moral maxims, which were a constant feature of his writings, were largely drawn upon by Macarius Chrysocephalas, metropolitan of Philadelphia (middle of the 14th century), in his Rodonia (rose-garden), a voluminous collection of ethical sayings. The style of Choricius is praised by Photius as pure and elegant, but he is censured for lack of naturalness. A special feature of his style is the persistent avoidance of hiatus, peculiar to what is called the school of Gaza.
Editions by J. F. Boissonade (1846, supplemented by C. Graux in Revue de philologie, 1877) and R. Förster (1882–1894); see also C. Kirsten, “Quaestiones Choricianae” in Breslauer philologische Abhandlungen, vii. (1894), and article by W. Schmid in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, iii. 2 (1899). On the Gaza school see K. Seitz, Die Schule von Gaza (Heidelberg, 1892).
CHORIN, AARON (1766–1844), Hungarian rabbi and pioneer of religious reform. He favoured the use of the organ and of prayers in the vernacular, and was instrumental in founding schools on modern lines. Chorin was thus regarded as a leader of the newer Judaism. He also interested himself in public affairs; and his son Francis was a Hungarian deputy.
See L. Löw, Gesammelte Schriften, ii. 251.
CHORIZONTES (“separators”), the name given to the Alexandrian critics who denied the single authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, and held that the latter poem was the work of a later poet. The most important of them were the grammarians Xeno and Hellanicus; Aristarchus was their chief opponent (see Homer).
CHORLEY, HENRY FOTHERGILL (1808–1872), English musical critic, one of an old Lancashire family, began in a merchant’s office, but soon took to musical journalism. He began to write for the Athenaeum in 1830, and remained its musical critic for more than a generation; and he also became musical critic for The Times. In these positions he had much influence; he had strong views, and was a persistent opponent of innovation. In addition to musical criticism, he wrote voluminously on literature and art, besides novels, dramas and verse, and various librettos; and he published several books, including Modern German Music (1854), Handel Studies (1859), and Thirty Years’ Musical Recollections (1862). He died in London on the 16th of February 1872.
See his Autobiography, Memoir and Letters, edited by H. G. Hewlett (1873).
CHORLEY, a market town and municipal borough in the Chorley parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, on the river Yarrow, 202 m. N.W. by W. from London and 22 m. N.W. from Manchester, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire and London & North-Western railways and the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. Pop. (1891) 23,087; (1901) 26,852. The church of St Lawrence is of Perpendicular and earlier date, largely restored; it contains fine woodwork and some interesting monuments. Cotton spinning and the manufacture of cotton and muslin are extensively carried on, and there are also iron and brass foundries and boiler factories. Railway-wagon building is an important industry. The district contains a number of coal-mines and stone-quarries. Close to the town is the beautiful Elizabethan mansion of Astley Hall, which is said to have sheltered Oliver Cromwell after the battle of Preston (1648). The corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 24 councillors. Area, 3614 acres.
CHORLU, Tchorlau or Schorlau, a town of European Turkey, in the vilayet of Adrianople; on the left bank of the Chorlu, a small left-hand tributary of the Ergene, 20 m. N.E. of Rodosto. Pop. (1905) about 12,000, of whom one-half are Greeks, one-third Turks, and the remainder Armenians and Jews. Chorlu has a station on the Constantinople-Adrianople branch of the Oriental railways. It manufactures woollen cloth (shayak) and native carpets, and exports cereals, oil-cloth, carpets, cattle, poultry, fresh meat, game, fruits, wine, alcohol, hides and bones.
CHOROGRAPHY. (1) (From the Gr. χώρα, a tract of country, and γράφειν, to write), a description or delineation on a map of a district or tract of country; it is to be distinguished from “geography” and “topography,” which treat of the earth as a whole and of particular places respectively. The word is common in old geographical treatises, but is now superseded by the wider use of “topography.” (2) (From the Gr. χορός, dance), the art of dancing, or a system of notation to indicate the steps and movements in dancing.
CHÓRUM, the chief town of a sanjak of the Angora vilayet in Asia Minor, altitude 2300 ft., situated on the edge of a wide plain, almost equidistant from Amasia and Yuzgat. Pop. about 12,500, including a few Christians. Its importance is largely due to its situation on the great trade-route from Kaisaríeh (Caesarea) by Yuzgat and Marzivan to Samsun on the Black Sea. It corresponds to the ancient Euchaïta, which lay 15 m. E. Euchaïti was attacked by the Huns A.D. 508, and became a bishopric at an early period and a centre of religious enthusiasm, as containing the tomb of the revered St Theodore, who slew a dragon in the vicinity and became one of the great warrior saints of the Greek Church. Something of the old enthusiasm seems to have passed to the inhabitants of Chórum, whom most travellers have found bigoted and fanatical Mahommedans (see J. G. C. Anderson, Studia Pontica, pp. 6 ff.).
CHORUS (Gr. χορός) properly a dance, and especially the sacred dance, accompanied by song, of ancient Greece at the festivals of the gods. The word χορός seems originally to have referred to a dance in an enclosure, and is therefore usually connected with the root appearing in Gr. χόρτος, hedge, enclosure, Lat. hortus, garden, and in the Eng. “yard,” “garden” and “garth.” Of choral dances in ancient Greece other than those in honour of Dionysus we know of the Dance of the Crane at Delos, celebrating the escape of Theseus from the labyrinth, one telling of the struggle of Apollo and the Python at Delphi, and one in Crete recounting the saving of the new-born Zeus by the Curetes. In the chorus sung in honour of Dionysus the ancient Greek drama had its birth. From that of the winter festival, consisting of the κῶμος or band of revellers, chanting the “phallic songs,” with ribald dialogue between the leader and his band, sprang “comedy,” while from the dithyrambic chorus of the spring festival came “tragedy.” For the history of the chorus in Greek drama, with the gradual subordination of the lyrical to the dramatic side in tragedy and its total disappearance in the middle and new comedy, see Drama: Greek Drama.
The chorus as a factor in drama survived only in the various imitations or revivals of the ancient Greek theatre in other languages. A chorus is found in Milton’s Samson Agonistes. The Elizabethan dramatists applied the name to a single character employed for the recitation of prologues or epilogues. Apart from the uses of the term in drama, the word “chorus” has been employed chiefly in music. It is used of any organized body of singers, in opera, oratorio, cantata, &c., and, in the form “choir,” of the trained body of singers of the musical portions of a religious service in a cathedral or church. As applied to musical compositions, a “chorus” is a composition written in parts, each to be sung by groups of voices in a large body of singers, and differs from “glee” (q.v.), where each part is for a single voice. The word is also used of that part of a song repeated at the close of each verse, in which the audience or a body of singers may join with the soloist.
In the early middle ages the name chorus was given to a primitive bagpipe without a drone. The instrument is best known by the Latin description contained in the apocryphal letter of St Jerome, ad Dardanum: “Chorus quoque simplex, pellis cum duabus cicutis aereis, et per primam inspiratur per secundam
