Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/78

 60 THE TRAGIC DIALOGUE. — THESPIS. his figures were known in the days of Aristophanes ^ These are almost all the facts which we know respecting this celebrated man. It remains for us to examine them. It appears, then, that he was a contemporary of Pisistratus and Solon. He was a Diacrian, and consequently a partizan of the former ; we are told too that the latter was violently opposed to him^. He was an Icarian, and therefore by his birth a worshipper of Bacchus. He was an viToKpirr}^ ; and from the subjects of his recitations it would appear that he was also a rhapsode^. Here we have again the union of Dionysian rites with rhapsodical recitations which we have discovered in the Brauronian festival. But he went a step farther: his rhapsode, or actor, whether himself or another person, did not confine his speech to mere narration ; he addressed it to the chorus, which carried on with him, by means of its coryphaei, a sort of dialogue. The chorus stood upon the steps of the thymele, or altar of Bacchus; and in order that he might address them from an equal elevation, he was placed upon a table {iXeo^) ^ which was the predecessor of the stage, between which and the thymele in later times there was always an intervening space. The waggon of Thespis, of which Horace writes, must have arisen from some confusion between this standing-place for the actor and the waggon of Susarion^. Themis- tius tells us that Thespis invented a prologue and a rhesis^. The former must have been the prooemium which he spoke as exarchus of the improved Dithyramb; the latter the dialogue between him- self and the chorus, by means of which he developed a myth 1 Aristoph. Ves^. 1479. 2 Plutarch, Sol. xxix. xxx. and p. 59, note i. ^ The names of some of his plays have come down to us : they are the Tlevdev^, "AOXa UeXiou, 7} ^opjSds, 'lepeh, 'Hi'^eot (Jul. Poll, VII. 45; Suid. s. v. QeawLs). Gruppe must have founded his supposition that Ulysses was the subject of a play of Thespis {^Ariadne, p. 129) on a misunderstanding of Plut. Sol. xxx. in which he was preceded by Schneider {De Orir/inihus Trag. Gr. p. 56). ^ See Welcker, Nachtrag, p. 248. We think that the joke of Dica^opolis (Arist. Acharn. 355 sqq.) is an allusion to this practice. Solon mounted the heralds bema, when he recited his verses to the people. ^V. Plut. c. 8). ^ See Welcker, Nachtrag, p. 247. Gruppe saj's quaintly, but, we think, justly {Ariadne, p. 122), "It is clear enough that the waggon of Thespis cannot well con- sist with the festal choir of the Dionysia ; and, in fact, this old coach, which has been fetched from Horace only, must be shoved back again into the lumber-room." The words of Horace are {A. P. 275 — 277) : Ignotum tragicse genus invenisse Camoenae Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis, Quae canerent agerentque peruncti faecibus ora.
 * » p. 316, Hard. : Qia-rcLi 5^ vpoXoyov re kuI prjcnv e^eOpeu.