Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/236

212 forget that there was always present in Greece an active protest against these performances; that even absolute asceticism was never without its apostles; and, lastly, that where religion gives sanctity to a bad custom it palsies the powers of the saner intellect. Without a doubt many a modest and homely priestess of Dionysus must have believed in the beneficial effects both here and hereafter of these ancient and symbolical processions.

One of the characteristics of the processions was parrhêsia ('free speech'); and it remained the proud privilege of comedy. You mocked and insulted freely on the day of special licence any of those persons to whom fear or good manners kept you silent in ordinary life. In some of the processions this privilege was specially granted to women. As soon as comedy began to be seriously treated, the central point of it lay in a song, written and learned, in which the choir, acting merely as the mouthpiece of the poet, addressed the public on 'topical' subjects. This became the parabasis of the full-grown comedy. For the rest, the germ of comedy is a troop of mummers at the feast of Dionysus or some similar god, who march with flute and pipe, sing a phallic song, and amuse the onlookers with improvised buffoonery. They are unpaid, unauthorised. It was not till about 465 that public recognition was given to the ' kômoi ,' or revel-bands, and komôidia allowed to stand by the side of ' tragôidia .' It came first at the Lenæa, afterwards at other Dionysiac festivals. But it was not till the beginning of the Peloponnesian War that two gifted young writers, Eupolis and Aristophanes, eventually gave the Old Comedy an artistic form, wove the isolated bits of farce into a plot, and more or less