n, 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 Kaisarieh (Caesarea) by Yuzgat and Marzivan to Samsun
on the Black Sea. It corresponds to the ancient _Euchaita_, which lay 15
m. E. Euchaiti 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 Chorum, whom most travellers have found bigoted and fanatical
Mahommedans (see J.G.C. Anderson, _Studia Pontica_, pp. 6 ff.).

CHORUS (Gr. [Greek: choros]) properly a dance, and especially the sacred
dance, accompanied by song, of ancient Greece at the festivals of the
gods. The word [Greek: choros] seems originally to have referred to a
dance in an enclosure, and is therefore usually connected with the root
appearing in Gr. [Greek: chortos], 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
[Greek komos] 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 use