Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/118

 100 ^SCHYLUS. many proofs of his anti-democratical spirit. For though he seems to have first tm*ned his attention to the drama, in consequence of his accidental connexion with the country worship of Bacchus, yet in all his innovations we shall detect a wish to diminish the choral or Bacchic element of the Tragedy, and to aggrandize the other part, by connecting it with the old Homeric Epos, the darling of the aristocracy : indeed he used to say himself, that his dramas were but dry scraps from the great banquets of Homer and it was owing to this that he borrowed so little from the Attic traditions, or from the Heracleia and Theseis, of which Sophocles and Euripides afterwards so freely availed themselves 2. We have another proof of his willingness to abandon all reference to the worship of Bacchus in his way of treating the dithyrambic cliorus, which the state gave him as the basis of his Tragedy. He did not keep all this chorus of fifty men on the stage at once, but broke it up Into subordinate choruses, one or more of which he employed in each play of his Trilogy^. Even his improvement of the costume was a part of the same plan ; for the more appropriate he made the costumes of his actors, the farther he departed from the dresses worn in the Bacchic processions ; which, however, to the last kept their place on the tragic stage '^. And may not the invention of the Trilogy have been also a part of his attempt to make the X6709, or theatrical declamation^, the principal part in liis tragedy [irpwr- a'ycovLcnrjs;)'^ We think w^e could establish this, if our limits admitted a detailed examination of the principles which governed " In philosopliical sentiments, ^schylus is said to have been a Pythagorean. In his extant dramas tlie tenets of this sect may occasionally be traced ; as, deep venera- tion in what concerns the gods, Ar/am. 360 ; high regard for the sanctity of an oath and the nuptial bond, Bumen. 208 ; the immortality of the soul, Choeph. ^lo ; the origin of names from imposition and not from nature, Agani. 683 ; Prom. V. 85, 852 ; the importance of numbers, Prom. Vinct. 457; the science of physiognomy, A gam. 769; and the sacred character of suppliants, Suppl. 342; Bum. 226," Former Editor. Corap. a paper in the Class. Journal, No. xxii. pp. 207 fol. "On the Philosoi)hical sentiments of ^schylus." ^ Athen. Vlll. p. 347 E : ra tqv koXov kol Xafxirpou Alax^^ov 8s rds avrou rpayw- dia^ Tefxdxv eXvai ^Xeye tGjv 'Ofxrjpov //.eydXiou SeiTruoju. ^ See Welcker, Triloc/ie, p. 484. In style and representation, however, Sophocles was much more Homeric than -^schylus, who probably paid attention only to the mythical materials in general, and according to their Epic connexion. TrUogie, p. ^85. •^ See Miiller's Eumeniden, near the beginning of the first essaj''. 4 Ibid. § 32. •^ That this is the meaning of yos, in the passage of Aristotle, is sufficiently clear ; for oye7o:f was the stage on which the actor, as distinguished from the chorus, performed.