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 of Japan; at Athens its rise and decay curiously illustrate early communal life and the evolution of individual action and thought; and the social development of the city commonwealth is thus reflected in the form as well as in the spirit of its drama.

§ 54. In Athens a group of persons—for such, of course, is the nature of the chorus—is the earliest centre of dramatic interest. The songs and dances of this group make the body of the dramatic spectacle; and though its leaders may now and then come forward separately (like the leaders of a Russian Khorovod), or its members may answer each other assembled round the altar of Dionysus, such responses and glimpses of individual action do not yet bring us to any regular dialogue, much less to any display of personal character. The chorus is the literary link between the sacred festivals of early Attic village communities and the semi-religious theatre of Athenian tragedy; but the æsthetic pleasures of character-drawing are only developed out of this group of worshippers by that profound change in the social character of Athenian men and women which allowed the tragic stage to become the vehicle of Euripidean casuistry, and converted the idealism of the old comedy into the everyday personages of Menander. Let us follow some of the formal and spiritual changes through which the Athenian drama passed in the course of this individualising process.

One of the first steps towards a drama of personal character seems to have been taken about 536, when Thespis is said to have added to the choral group one actor (he was called the , or "answerer," because he "answered" the songs of the chorus) whose dialogue with the chorus offered some scope for the display of individuality. This new departure of the old Athenian