Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/57

Rh spread over Greece, in which hardly any city of importance was without a theatre. Nowhere else did it form so much a part of the life of the people; and though the composition of plays did not last so long as some other forms of literature, the Greeks in this as in other things set an example which has never ceased to exercise decisive influence. In this again Athens took the lead. There was built the first permanent theatre, and there the great masters of tragedy were born. But of the mass of such compositions that once existed, we have only plays of three tragedians and one comedian. Æschylus (B.C. 525–456) represents the religious mind of Greece in the early fifth century, Sophocles (B.C. 495–403) the age of art, and Euripides (B.C. 480–406) the unrest of awakened curiosity and inevitable scepticism. Some thirty-eight names of writers of tragedies are known, but after the first decade of the fourth century (circ. B.C. 390) there seems to have been a cessation of original dramatic writing. The old plays were acted again and again, or were supplanted by music and recitations of poetry. Some few authors of tragedies lived in Alexandria in the time of the Second Ptolemy (B.C. 285–247), but nothing survives except their names.

Along with Tragedy grew Comedy. It bore still stronger traces of its origin from village revels or festivals. Instead of dealing with human passions and crimes, and the mysteries of the divine order, its dialogue introduced every kind of ludicrous incident and personal satire, while the choric songs were either parodies of serious poetry, or wild extrava-