Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/83

 THE TRAGIC DIALOGUE. — THESPIS. 65 buted to Thespis by Clemens Alexandriims ^ contain internal evi- dence of their spuriousness, but there is no presumption against the authenticity of the quotations in Plutarch ^ and Julius Pollux^, be- yond the ill-founded hypothesis, that Thespis composed only ludi- crous dramas. This hypothesis, as we have seen above, rests on the old confusion between Thespis and Susarion. The forgeries of Heraclides Ponticus are themselves no slight proof of the originally serious character of the Thespian drama; for if his contemporaries had really believed that Thespis wrote nothing but ludicrous dramas, a scholar of Aristotle Avould hardly have attempted to im- pose upon the public with a set of plays, altogether different in style and title from those of the author on whom he wished to pass them off. The fact is, that the choral plays from which the Thes- pian drama was formed were satyrical, for the Dithyramb in the improved form which it received from Arion was performed by a chorus of satyrs "^ ; and there is little doubt that Thespis may have been a satyric poet before he was a tragedian, in the more modern sense of the word : but Chamseleon seems to have expressly men- tioned the fact, that Thespis passed from Bacchic to Epic subjects^. With regard to the titles of his plays preserved by Suidas and Julius Pollux, they are not really open to cavil. For even sup- posing that they refer rather to the apocryphal compositions of Heraclides than to the lost tragedies of the old Icarian, there is no reason for concluding that the titles were not borrowed by the fabricator from obsolete but genuine dramas. Unless we are pre- pared to maintain, against the prevalent tendency of all the autho- rities, that Thespis never wrote or acted a play of grave or pathetic character, we cannot assert that he was unlikely to have brought and popular ditties from the Phoenissse of Phrynichus/' with a passage in a, subse- quent part of the same play (1479) : opxovfjievos T7]$ vvKTos cvbev Traijerai TapxcLi' eKelv oh QicFins rjycovi^ero. 1 Clem. Al. Strohi. v. p. 675, Potter. 2 Plut. de Audiendis Poetis, p. 134, Wj^ttenb. ^ Jul. Poll. VII. 45. Another fragment has been lately published from a papyrus by Letronne, Fragmens iiiedits d'anciens poetes Grecs, Par, 1838, p. 7; ovk e^adprjaas old'' idibv de croi X^7w, where e^adpeu is dira^ Xeyofiepou. ^ Above, p. 40. ^ This seems to be the proper interpretation of the pa.ssage in Photius, Lex. s. v. oiideu vpbs rov Atouvcrou — to irpbcrdev eis rbv Aiovvaov ypd(pouT€S tovtois rjywvl^ovTO arrep Kai aarvpLKo. iXeyero' varepou 5e /xera^SavTes eis rpayusdlas ypdcpeiv Kara /niKpov eli fiv9ovs Kal laropias erpaTr-qaav /xt^Keri rod QeoO fxvrj/JLOvevouTes, odev Kal irrecpdji'r/crav K.T.X. Kal XafiatXeuv ev T(f vepl Qeaindos. Below, p. [69], note I. D. T. G. 5