Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/56

 38 THE TRAGIC CHORUS.— ARION. and returned in form to the primitive Comus, in the same proportion as it reverted to its original mimicry^. Above all, while the Di- thyramb of Arion, influenced by the sedateness of the Doric muse, shook oiF by degrees all remembrances of the drunken frolics in which it took its rise, the other Dithyramb retained to the end many of its original characteristics. Epicharmus, who was a con- temporary of Lasos, alludes to it in precisely the same manner as Archilochus, who flourished two hundred years earlier. That ancient poet says, that " he knows how to lead ofl* the Dithyramb, the beautiful song of Dionysus, when his mind is dizzy with the thunder of wine^." Epicharmus tells us that "there is no Dithy- ramb, if you drink water^" And Simonides, the rival of Lasos, describes the Dithyramb as sung by noisy Bacchanalians crowned with fillets and chaplets of roses, and bearing the ivy-wreathed thyrsus^. Although Arion was a Lesbian, it was in the great Dorian city of Corinth that he introduced his great choral improvements. In enumerating the various inventions which were traced to that city, Pindar asks: ''Where else did the graces of Bacchus first make their appearance with the ox-driving Dithyramb?" alluding to the ox which was sacrificed as a type of the god, who was also worshipped under this form^. The account which is given of the specific improvements imported into the Dithyramb by Arion, though brief, is very distinct; and it is quite possible, from the 1 Aristotle, Probl. XIX. 15, p. 918, Bekker: fiaWov yap rep fiiXet avdyKti fxifieiffdai rj Toh prjfxaatv' 816 Kal ol Sid^pafi^ot, irreidr] fiifiyjTiKol eyivovTO, ovk^ti ^x^i'C"' olvtl- crTp6(povs, TTpdrepov dk eXxov. 2 Above, p, 29, note 5. 3 Apud Athen. p. 628 b: ovK 'i(TTL dtdijpafi^os, oKx v8o}p tt/tjs. noXXd/fi Stj (f)vrj% 'AKafxavTidos iu %opoio'tJ' "^Qpai ' Ai>(vv^au Kia(70(p6poi.s iirl dLdvpdfxjSois Ai AiouvaLddes, ixlrpaLcn 5e Kol pjdojp diJoTots XocpQv doidQv iaKLaaav rapdv Weipav, Ot TOuSe rpivoda (xcfiiai /xdprvpa Ba/cx^w didXwv QrjKap' ^LKvvveis 5' 'AvTLyeurjS ididacKev dvdpas. The student, however, must take care to remember that the Dithyramb never actually became a Comus after it had once been raised to the dignity of a Chorus. Even Pindar's processional songs, though nominally performed by a Comus, were invested with the dignity of choral poetry, and Comedy itself became at last choral. See note on Pindar, Fragm. 45, p. 344. 5 Olymp. XII. 1 8 : Toi Aiojvvo'ov TTodev i^etpapeu "Zvp j3or]dTq, xaptres bi.dvpdiJ.^(^', See above, p. 17, note 2.
 * Simonides, Frag. 150, Bergk, Anthol. Pal. 11. p. 542: