The Historians' History of the World 03

Of all kinds of lyric poetry none was cultivated in Athens so admirably and successfully as the dithyrambus, the chant in praise of the god Dionysus, the giver of blessings—the branch of religious poetry which showed a capacity for development beyond all others. Lasus of Hermione, the tutor of Pindar, had changed this form of song (originally no more than the medium of an enthusiastic nature worship) into an artistically constructed choral chant and invested it with such splendour by bold and varied measures and the rippling music of flutes, as to cast the fame of Arion, its original inventor, into the shade. From the Peloponnesus Lasus brought the new art to the court of the Pisistratidæ at Athens. At that time everything connected with the worship of Dionysus was regarded with special favour, the dithyrambus was introduced into state festivals, and wealthy citizens vied with one another in equipping and training Bacchic choirs, composed of fifty singers who danced circling the flaming altars of Dionysus; and no expense was spared to procure new songs for the Attic Dionysia from the greatest masters, such as Pindar and Simonides. The latter could boast that he had won no less than fifty dithyrambic victories at Athens. But the evolution of the dithyrambus did not stop there.

The dithyrambus not only included every metre and rhythm known to earlier kinds of lyric poetry, but it contained elements which tended to pass beyond the limitations of the lyric. For the festal chorus regarded the god whose praises they, sang as an immanent presence and, as it were, lived through all that befell him, whether of persecution or victory; and it was therefore but a short step to pass beyond the assumption that their audience was acquainted with the events which formed the subject of their chants, and to call them to mind by narration or set them forth by spectacular representation. The leaders of the dithyrambic chorus accordingly interspersed their singing with recitations, and thus epic and song were combined. The epic recitation was then rendered more effective by the aid of action and costume, the god himself was made visible in his suffering and triumph, the leader of the chorus undertook the part, the dancers were transformed into satyrs—attendants of the god and partakers of his fortunes; and thus from the union of the old forms of poetry there sprang a new form, the drama, the richest and most perfect of all.

The Greeks were by nature gifted with dramatic talent. Their natural vivacity induced them to clothe every doubt or deliberation in the form of a dialogue. Thus even in Homer we find the germ of the drama, which now reaped the benefit of the entire evolution of the older art methods. For all that dance and song had invented in the way of balanced rhythm, effective metre, and poetic imagery, was here united, enlivened by the art of mimicry, which made the person of the actor the instrument of artistic exposition, and warmed by the joyous fires of the Bacchic festival.

The cycle of representation could not but be limited so long as the action was confined by ceremonial considerations to the subjects offered by the worship of Bacchus. The Greeks therefore went a step farther and in place of the fortunes of Bacchus took other subjects equally well calculated to arouse lively sympathy, and thus (when this form of art had been invented) there flowed in an abundance of materials and fertile themes, the storehouse of Homeric and post-Homeric epos was flung open, the national heroes were introduced to the nation in a novel and striking guise, and a vast field of activity was opened to dramatic art.

This advance had already been made beyond the borders of Attica; for before the time of Clisthenes the hero Adrastus had been substituted for Dionysus, and it may be that a similar enlargement of the scope of dithyrambic poetry had also taken place at Corinth. But it was at Athens alone that these rudiments of the drama reached their full development. As the epic had mirrored the heroic days of old, as the lyric kept pace with the development of the nation for three centuries after the decline of the epic, so the drama was the form of poetry which began to flower at the moment when Athens became the pivot of Greek history. Originating from humble beginnings in the time of Solon, it grew in magnitude and importance with the growth of the city’s greatness, and is associated with the history of Athens in every stage of its development.

TRAGEDY