Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/76

 58 THE TRAGIC DIALOGUE. — THESPIS. men, and was bringing back from exile to her own Acropolis. Now we must recollect who were the parties to this proceeding. In the first place, we have Megacles, an Alcmgeonid, and therefore con- nected with the worship of Bacchus^ ; moreover, he was the father of the Alcmseon, whose son Megacles married Agariste, the daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon, and had bj her Cleisthenes, the Athenian demagogue, who is said to liave imitated his maternal grandfather in some of the reforms which he introduced into the Athenian constitution^ One of the points, which Herodotus mentions in immediate connexion with Cleisthenes' imitation of his grand- father, is the abolition of the Homei^tc rhapsodes at Sicyon, and his • restitution of the Tragic Choruses to Bacchus. May we not also conclude that Megacles the elder was not indifferent to the policy of a ruler who was so nearly connected with him by marriage? The other party was Pisistratus, who was, as we have said, born near Brauron, where rhapsodic recitations were connected with the worship of Bacchus; the strong-hold of his party was the Tetrapolis, which contained the town of (Enoe^, to which, and not to the Boeotian town of the same name, we refer the traditions with regard to the introduction of the worship of Bacchus into Attica^; his party doubtless included the ^gicores (who have indeed been considered as identical with the Diacrians^), and these we have seen were the original possessors of the worship of Bacchus ; finally, there Avas a mask of Bacchus at Athens, which was said to be a portrait of Pisistratus®; so that upon the whole there can be little doubt of the interest which he took in the establishment of the rites of the -^gicores as a part of the state religion. With regard to the actress, Phya, we need only remark that she was a garland-seller', and therefore, as this trade was a very public one, could not easily have passed herself off upon the Athenians for a ^ See Welcker's Nachtrag, p. 2 50. ^ Herod, v. 67: raOra 5e, doKeeLv e^xol, i/xi/jJero 6 KX. ovros top ewvrov fx-qrpoird- TOpa, KX. TOP "ZiKUiJovos rvpavvov. J^XeLcrO^vrjs 'yap...pap(^bovs ewavae iu HlkvcHvl dycovi- '^eadat rQv '0[xr)peiwv iirewv eiVe/ca. Mr. Grote has shown good reasons for believing that the poems recited at Sicyon as Homeric productions were the Thebais and the Epigoni. Hist. Gr. Vol. ii. p. 173, note. 3 See the passages quoted by Elmsley on the Heracl. 8 r. ^ The Deme of Semachus was also in that part of Attica, ^ See Wachsmuth, I. i, p. 229; Arnold's Thucydkles, pp. 659 — 60. ^ 6'7roii /cat to 'Kdyjurjai. tov Alovuctov irpbcwirov eKeivov rtves (pamv eiKova. Athenteus, XII. p. 533 c. 7 (TT€(f)av6iru)Ls H rjv. Athen. Xiii. p. 609 c.