Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/79

 THE TRAGIC DIALOGUE. — THESPIS. 61 relating to Bacchus or some other deity or hero Lastly, there is every reason to believe, that Thespis did not confine his represen- tation to his native deme, but exhibited at Athens^ From a comparison of these particulars respecting Thespis with the facts which we have stated in connexion with the first return of Pisistratus to Athens, we shall now be able to deduce some further inferences. It appears, then, that a near approximation to the perfect form of the Greek Drama took place in the time of Pisistra- tus : all those who were concerned in bringing it about were Diacrians, or connected with the worship of Bacchus ; the innova- tions were either the results or the concomitants of an assumption of political power by a caste of tlie inhabitants of Attica, whose tutelary god was Bacchus, and were in substance nothing but an union of the old choral worship of Bacchus, with an offshoot of the rhapsodical recitations of the Ionic epopoeists ^. We can understand without any difficulty why Pisistratus should encourage the religion of his own people, the Diacrians or ^gicores ; and why Solon, who thought he had given the lower orders power enough'*, should oppose the adoption of their worship as a part of the religion of the state ; for in those days the religion and privileges of a caste rose and fell together. It might, however, ^ This is the sense which the word pija-i? bears in Horn. Odyss. xxi. 290, -291 ; aiTap cLKOveLS Tj/xerepuu [xvOoiv Kal pT](Tto'i. .^Eschyl. Suppl. 610: TOidvS' iweide pijaiv dp.(p' i]/j.u>v ^yo}v. See Welcker, Nachtr. p. 269. The invention of the p-^crts seems also to be referred to by Aristotle, when he says {^Poei. c. 4): Xe'^ews 5e y€yop.ev7]s. 2 Nachtrag, p, 254. 3 The conclusions of Gruppe are so nearly, in effect, the same as ours, and so well expressed, that we think it right to lay them before our readers {Ariadne, p, [2 7>. "Thespis developed from these detached speeches of the Choreutre, especially when they were longer than usual, a recitation by an actor in the form of a narrative ; a recitation, and not a song. Thespis, however, was an inhabitant of Attica, an Athe- nian, and as such stood in the middle, between the proper lonians and the Dorians. The formation of the epos was the peculiar property of the former, of lyric poetry that of the latter. So long as tragedy or the tragic chorus existed in the Peloponnese, they were of a lyrical nature. In this form, with the Doric dialect and a IjTical accompaniment, they were transplanted into Attica ; and here it was that Thespis first joined to them the Ionic element of narration, which, if not quite Ionic, had and maintained a relationship with the Ionic, even in the language." We may here remark, that all the old iambic poets wrote strictly in the Ionic dialect. Welcker has clearly shown this by examples in the case of Sinionides of Amorgus, (See Rheinisch. Museum for 1835, p. 369.) "* Solon, ed. Bach, p. 94 : Atj/xo; iJ.ev yap ^8uKa roaov Kparo^ oacov iwapKe?. Is not Niebuhr's translation of this line wrong ? (Hist. Rom. Vol. II, note 700.) Comp. /Esch. Agamemn. 370: ^OTw dirrniavTov wcrre KairapKelv eO Trpatridojv Xaxovra.