Page:The Tragic Drama of the Greeks (1896).djvu/27

.] the rustic songs of the Attic villagers into the tragedies of Sophocles and the comedies of Menander.

It has been shown that the Attic festivals in honour of Dionysus were of two kinds, held in spring and winter respectively. The winter festivals are associated with the birth of comedy. At these meetings, on the occasion of the sacrifice, a 'comus,' or band of revellers, marched along in procession, carrying aloft the phallus, and chanting songs to Dionysus, which were therefore called 'phallic songs.' In the intervals between the choruses the leader of the procession amused the spectators with a display of impromptu scurrilities, either in the way of monologue, or of dialogue between himself and the other singers. This mixture of song and satire by the 'comus' eventually developed into the choruses and dialogues of 'comedy'; and although in course of time the comic drama underwent such transformation in style and structure as to lose all traces of its origin, still the characteristic features of the primitive phallic songs were long retained at Athens in the parabasis of the old comedy—a curious interlude, in which high-flown lyrical passages alternated with humorous spoken addresses on passing events.

The tragic drama, on the other hand, is to be traced back to the spring festivals of Dionysus, when the country people met