Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/46

28 discipline and the establishment of a principle of subordination, not merely the encouragement of a taste for the fine arts, were the objects which these rude legislators had in view; and though there is no doubt that religious feelings entered largely into all their thoughts and actions, yet the god whom they worshipped was a god of war, of music , and of civil government , in other words, a Dorian political deity; and with these attributes his worship and the maintenance of their system were one and the same thing. This intimate connexion of religion and war among the Dorians is shown by a corresponding identity between the chorus which sang the praises of the national deity, and the army which marched to fight the national enemies. These two bodies were composed, in the former case inclusively, of the same persons ; they were drawn up in the same order, and the different parts in each were distin- guished by the same names. Good dancers and good fighters were alike termed, i.e. , or "men of the vanguard ;" those whose station was in the rear of the battle array, or of the chorus, were in either case called, or "unequipped ;" and the evolutions of the one body were known by the same name as the figures of the other. It was likewise owing to this conviction of the importance of musical harmony, that the Dorians teraied the constitution of a state — an order or regulative principle.