Two fragmentary reliefs from the Athenian Agora, first published by Webster, constitute our primary evidence for the appearance of the ancient comic chorus. I will reconstruct the monuments from which these fragments were taken and discuss the relationship of the images to choral practice in the Athenian Theatre of Dionysus. I will also adress the question of the unique nature of these two mid-fourth-century reliefs depicting comic choruses and argue that the reliefs belong to a new form of monument placed, like the tripod monuments for men’s and boys’ lyric choruses, on the Street of the Tripods. The new form is the result of a structural change in the sponsorship of comedy by which the choregoi were no longer appointed by the archon but, as in the lyric competitions, by the tribes.
