Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/26

 8'; THE RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF THE GREEK DRAMA. This is a fact which cannot be too strongly impressed upon the student : if he does not keep this continually in view, he will be likely to confound the Athenian stage with that of his own time and country, and will misunderstand and wonder at many things which under this point of view are neither remarkable nor unin- telligible. How apt we all are to look at the manners of ancient times through the false medium of our every-day associations ! how difficult we find it to strip our thoughts of their modern garb, and to escape from the thick atmosphere of prejudice in which custom and habit have enveloped us ! and yet, unless we take a compre- hensive and extended view of the objects of archaeological specu- lation, unless we can look upon ancient customs with the eyes of the ancients, unless we can transport ourselves in the spirit to other lands and other times, and sun ourselves in the clear light of bygone days, all our conceptions of what was done by the men who have long ceased to be, must be dim, uncertain, and unsatisfactory, and all our reproductions as soulless and uninstructive as the scattered fragments of a broken statue^. These remarks are par- ticularly applicable to the Greek stage. For in proportion to the perfection of the extant specimens of ancient art in any department, are our misconceptions of the difference between their and our use of these excellent works. We feel the beauty of the remaining Greek dramas, and are unwilling to believe that productions as exquisite as the most elaborate compositions of our own playwrights should not have been, as ours were, exhibited for their own sake. But this was far from being the case. The susceptible Athenian, — whose land was the dwelling-place of gods and ancestral heroes 2, — • to whom the clear blue sky, the swift-winged breezes, the river fountains, the jEgean gay with its countless smiles, and the teem- ing earth^ from which he believed his ancestors were immediately created, were alike instinct with an all-pervading spirit of divinity; — the Athenian, who loved the beautiful, but loved it because it was divine, — ^who looked upon all that genius could invent, or art execute, as but the less unworthy offering to his pantheism'* ; and ^ See some good remarks on this subject in Niebuhr's Kleine Sckriften, Vol. I. p. 92, and in his letter to Count Adam Moltke (Lebensn. Vol. ii. p. 91). 2 Hegesias ap. Strab. ix. p. 396. ^ ^gch. Prom. V. 87 — 90. ^ Mr. Grote remarks (Hist, of Greece, viii. p. 444), with special reference to the Athenian drama, that ** there was no manner of employing wealth, which seemed so appropriate to Grecian feeling, or tended so much to procure influence and popularity