Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/90

 72 CLASSIFICATION OF GREEK PLAYS. song, and as rpayoySla signifies a song of satyrs, so Kcof^oiBla means a song of comiTS. It is clear, from the manner in which the Athe- nian writers speak of tlie country Dionysian procession, that it was considered as a comus^ ; and we think this view of the case is con- firmed by the epithet ^vyKcofio^, which Dicseopolis applies to Phales as the companion of Bacchus '^ The Phallic processions, from which the old Comedy arose, seem to have been allowed in very early times in all cities ; Aristotle tells us that they still continued in many cities even in his time^, and the inscriptions quoted above '^ prove that a lyrical Comedy had developed itself from them. In the time of the orators, the Wv- (j^aWoL were still danced in the orchestra at Athens^, and we learn from the speech of Demosthenes against Conon, that the riotous and profligate young men, who infested the streets, delighted to call themselves by names^ derived from these comic buffooneries. But probably they were always more common in the country, which was their natural abode ; and if a modern scholar^ is right in concluding from the words of the Scholiast on Aristophanes®, that there were two sorts of Phallic processions, the one public, the other private, we cannot believe that the private vintage cere- monies ever found their way into the great towns. Pasquinades of the coarsest kind seem to have formed the principal part of these rural exhibitions 9, and this was probably the reason wliy Comedy was established at Athens in the time of Pericles; for the demagogues, wanting to invent some means of attacking their political opponents with safety, could think of no better way of efiecting this than by introducing into the city the favourite country sports of the lower orders, and then it was, and not till then, that ^ Thus in an old law quoted by Demosthenes (c. Mid. p. 517), we have 6 kQ/xos Kal ol /cw//.y5oi. 2 Acharn. 263 : ^aXrjs, iraXpe Bukx^ov, 3 TO, 0aXXifcct a in kuI vdv iv 7roXXa?s tup iroXecov Sca/xipei vojiU^Sfxeva. Aristot. Poet. c. IV. ■* Above, pp. 45 sqq. ^ Hypeiides apud Harpocrat. v. '106(f)aoi. ^ They termed themselves 'lOvcpaWoi and AvroXriKvdoi. Demosth. Conon, 194 (1261). Cf. Athen. xiv. p. 622; Lucian, ii. 336. '' Schneider, de Orig. Com. p. 14. ^ Acharn. 243 (p. 775, 1. 32, Dind,): TreiaOhres odu toXs 7jyy€fJ.4vois oi 'AO-qvaioi ^dWovs I5ig. Kal dr}fMO(Tia KarecrKevaaav Kal tovtois iy^paipov tov debv. ^ Platonius, irepl dLa<popas Kijipufi^iCov: 'TrroO^aeis fikv yap t^j TraXatas K(a/x(p8ias fiaav avrai rb arparTjyoTs einTLp.q.v, k. t, X.