The Historians' History of the World 03

He introduced a second actor on the stage, and thus made the play a real drama, by which means lively colloquy first became possible. Dialogue, for which the Athenians were singularly well qualified by their love of talking, readiness and acute reasoning faculty, was thus transferred to the stage, and this gave it a wholly novel interest. The language of the dialogue was in the main that of ordinary life, while older phonetic principles prevailed in the chorus, which was thus less familiar to the ear and produced an impression of solemnity and dignity which suited well with its character of the oldest element of tragedy and the religious centre about which it had crystallised. The choruses were shortened to allow the action to proceed more vigorously, the characters of the dramatis personæ

were more sharply defined, a distinction was made between leading and secondary parts, and the parts of secondary characters of lower station bore the stamp of the common people, as distinguished from the heroic figures of the play. The stage itself was brought to a higher pitch of perfection. It was effectively fitted up as an ideal scene by Agatharchus, the son of Eudemus, an artist from Samos, who cultivated scene painting scientifically as a branch of art, and mechanism was pressed into the service to raise shades from the depths of the earth or cause gods to hover in the air by artificial means. The spectacle as a whole gained in solemn dignity no less than in spiritual import and moral significance.

The principal aim of the earlier poets had been to express and induce emotional moods; but the object of the drama was to present the legends of olden times completely in their general connection, and for this purpose Attic drama was so arranged that three tragedies were joined to form a single whole, in order to display upon a harmonious plan the successive developments of the mythical story, and these three tragedies, which were so many acts of one great drama, were followed by a Satyr-drama as afterpiece. This led back from the affecting solemnity of the tragedies to the popular sphere of the Dionysian festival, where the diverting adventures witnessed and enacted by the satyrs restored the minds of the spectators to innocent mirth. It was a healthy trait of popular sentiment which thus mingled jest and earnest, and one of which we see other evidences in vase painting and the sculptures of the temples.

Such was the tetralogy of Attic drama, which, if not invented by Æschylus yet received its artistic consummation at his hands. The dithyrambic chorus was divided into groups, each consisting of twelve (and later of fifteen) persons, so that there was a special chorus for each part of the tetralogy, to follow sympathetically the action of the dramatis personæ

and fill up the pauses with dance and song. The orchestra

, where the chorus was placed, lay between the stage and the spectators, just as the chorus itself symbolically occupied an intermediate position between the audience and the heroes of the drama.

The Greeks were accustomed to look upon the poets as their teachers, and no man could gain recognition as a poet among them who had only talent, imagination, and artistic skill to show as proofs of his poetic vocation; this required a thorough education of heart and mind and clear insight into things human and divine. Hence the calling of a poet laid claim to the whole man and the man’s whole life, and none conceived of it more nobly than Æschylus. Like Pindar he takes his hearers into the very heart of the myth, drawing out its moral earnestness and illuminating it with the light of historical experience. Humanity, as represented by Æschylus in the Titan Prometheus, with its constancy through struggles and misery, its proud self-respect, its indefatigable inventive genius, with its tendency, too, to rashness and arrogant boasting, is the generation of his own contemporaries, with their reckless aspirations; but no wisdom avails man save that which comes from Zeus, no skill and intelligence save that which is based on devout morality. Thus, without petty premeditation the poet becomes a true teacher of the people; in an age of incipient scepticism he endeavours to uphold the religion of his forefathers, to purify popular conceptions and to draw forth the kernel of wholesome truth from the many-hued tinsel of popular fables. It was the mission of the poet to maintain harmony between popular tradition and advancing knowledge.