Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/48

30 ball is said ; whence it will be seen that the words and, when used in speaking of the old Chorus, imply the regular, graceful movements of the dancers, and the Eumolpids were not singers of hymns, but dancers in the Chorus of Demeter and Dionysus.

It would appear, then, that music and dancing were the basis of the religious, political, and military organisation of the Dorian states ; and this alone might induce us to believe that the introduction of choral poetry into Greece, and the first cultivation of instrumental music, is due to them. However, particular proofs are not wanting. The strongest of these may be derived from the fact, that the Doric dialect is preserved in the lyric poetry of the other Grecian tribes. We may notice this in the choral portions of any Attic tragedy. Now it has been sufficiently shown that the lyric poetry of the Greeks was an offspring not of the epos, but of the chorus songs ; and if the lyric poetry of the Æolians and Ionians was always (with the exception perhaps of Corinna's Boeotian choruses) written in the Doric dialect, the choral poetry, of which it was a modification, must have been Dorian also. Nor can any argument against this supposition be derived from the fact that the most celebrated of the early lyric poets were not Dorians; for choral dances existed among the Cretans long before the time of the earliest of these poets ; and it is no argument against the assumed origin of an art in one country, to say that it attained to