Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/27

 THE RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF THE GREEK DRAMA. 9 considered all lils festivals and all liis amusements as only a means of withdi-awing the soul from the world's business, and turning it to the love and worship of Grod how could he keep back from the object of his adoration the fairest and best of his works ? We shall make the permanent religious reference of the Greek drama more clear, by showing with some minuteness how it gradually e^'olved itself from religious rites universally prevalent, and by pointing out by what routes its different elements con- verged, till they became united in one harmonious whole of " state- liest and most regal argument^." The dramatic element in the religion of ancient Greece mani- fested itself most prominently in the connected worship of Apollo, Demeter, and Dionysus. Thus at Delphi, the main seat of the Dorian worship of Apollo, the combat with the serpent, and ther flight and expiation of the victorious son of Latona, were made the subject of a representation almost theatrical^. And Clemens Alex- andrinus tells us that Eleusis represented by torch-light the rape of Proserpine, and the wanderings and grief of her mother Demeter, in a sort of mystic drama •*. Dionysus, who was worshipped both at Eleusis and at Delphi^, was personated by the handsomest young men who could be found, in a mimic ceremony at the Athenian Anthesteria, which represented his betrothal to the wife of the King Archon^; and there were other occasions, quite unconnected with theatrical exhibitions, in which the Bacchic mythology was made the subject of direct imitation But it was not in these forms of worship that the Attic drama immediately originated, however much it may have been connected with them in spirit. The almost antagonistic materials of Dorian and oriental mytho- logy had to seek their common ground, and the lyric chorus of the Dorians had to combine itself with the epos of the Ionian rhapsode, to its possessors, as that of contributing to enhance the magnificence of the national and religious festivals." 1 Strabo, X. p. 467: -q re yap dveais tov vodv dirdyec dirb tQv dvdpcoirlvuv daxo^'n* fidrtav, TOV bk ovtcjs vovv rp^irei irpos to delov. 2 Milton's Prose Works, p. lor. 3 Plutarch, Qwjest. Gr. ii. p. 202, Wyttenb, ; Be Defect. Orac. Ii. pp. "tio, 723, Wyttenb. •* Cohort, ad Gentes, p. 12, Potter. 5 Plut. de EI Delpkico, p, 591, Wyttenb. : tov ^ibwaov, y tCov e<pCiv ovZh t)Ttov Tj ry 'XiroWoiVL fx^eaTiv. ^ Demosth. in iVecpr. pp. 1369, 70; Plutarch, Nlc. c. 3. ' Plutarch, Qucest. Gr. ii. p. 228, Wyttenb.