Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/67

 ORCHOMEXIAX INSCRIPTIONS. 49 the sixteenth from the lyric Tragedian, Epigenes (Suidas in Qeawis and ovdku Trpos Aiovvaov). Aristocles, in his book about the choruses, said very well (Athen. xiv. 630 c): 'LvveaT-qKei bk Kal aarvpiKT] irdaa 7roir]cn.s roTraXaibv e/c x^P^^, ws Kal 17 rdre Tpayu}dia- didirep ov5e viroKpLTas elxov. Just so Diogenes (III, 56) relates, certainly not out of his own learning, that before Thespis the chorus alone played in Tragedy (Siedpa/JidTt^e). This Tragedy, consisting of chorus only, was brought to perfection in very early times, and before the people of Attica, to whom alone the dramatic Tragedy belongs, had appropriated the Drama to themselves : of course only romancers, like the author of the Minos, or dialogue of law, have placed the latter far above Thespis ; a position against which I have expressed my opinion on a former occasion {Gi'. Trag. Princip. p. 254). All that I have said is equally applicable to Comedy: in our Inscriptions we find a lyrical Comedy before the dramatical at Orchomenus; and lower down, the dramatical Comedy is introduced, as from Attica, along with which an actor is mentioned: the former was the old peculiarity of the Dorians and -.^olians, among whom lyric poetry for the most part obtained its completion. Even if we pass over Epicharmus, and the traces of a lyric Comedy in the religious usages of Epidaurus and ^gina (Herod. V. 83), the Dorians, and especially the Megarians, might still have had well-founded claims to the invention of Comedy, which, according to Ari- stotle, they made good. Besides, the view which we have taken of the lyrical Comedy sufficiently proves that the name is derived, not from Koifjirj, but from the merry kCjixos : such a one took place at the celebration of the victory, and consequently we find in our Inscriptions rd einviKia KUfxaVvhos, and rd ewivlKLa KtopiCfdiQv iroirjTTjS, who is certainly in this place a dramatic Comedian, Alexander of Athens. We cannot, how- ever, call Pindar's songs of victory old Comedies : and the greater is the distinction between the lyric and the dramatic Comedy, the less entitled are we to draw, from this view, any conclusions in favour of the opinion that the Pindaric poems were represented with corresponding mimicry." Bockh has reprinted these Inscriptions in his Corpus Inscnpttionum, Tom. I. PP- 7^3 — 1> with some additional remarks in defence of his view from the objections of Lobeck and Hermann. D T. G.