TRAVEL S IN GREE C E. A CHAP. LXIX. Hiftory of the Grecian Theatre. my researches BOUT that time I finished relative to the dramatic art, concerning the origin and progrefs of which writers are divided, fince the various ftates of Greece affert their diffe rent claims to the honour of having given it birth*; but I have preferred the traditions of the Athenians, becaufe I have believed them to be the moft probable. Buleng. de Theatr. lib. 1, cap. 2. Arift. de Poet. t. ii. cap. 3, p. 654. This moft regular and most fublime of all the arts took birth in the bofom of tumultuous pleafures, and the extravagances of intoxication. Let us convey ourselves in imagination about three centuries back from the prefent time. In the festivals of Bacchus, folemnized in the cities with lefs ceremony and pomp, but with a more lively joy, than they are now celebrated, hymns were fung which were the offspring of the true or feigned ecftafies of a poetical delirium; I mean to speak of thofe dithyrambics which fometimes difplayed the flights of genius, and ftill more frequently the obfcure, flashes of a heated imagination. While these refounded in the aftonished ears of the multitude, choruses of Bacchants and Fauns, ranged around certain obfcene images, which they carried in triumphal proceffion, chanted lascivious fongs, and sometimes facrificed individuals to public ridicule. A ftill greater licentiousness reigned in the worship paid to the fame divinity by the inhabitants of the country, and especially at the feafon when they gathered the fruits of his beneficence. Vintagers, befmeared with wine-lees, and intoxicated with joy and the juice of the grape, rode forth in their carts, and attacked each other on the road with grofs farcasms, revenging themselves on their neighbours with ridicule, and on the rich by publishing their injustice *. Among the poets who flourished at that time, fome celebrated the great actions and adventures of gods and heroes, and others attacked with afperity the vices and abfurdities of individuals. The former took Homer for their model, and fupported themselves by his example, of which they made an improper ufe. Homer, the most tragic of poets, the model of all who have fucceeded him, had in the Iliad and the Odyssey brought to perfection the heroic poem, and in his Margites had employed pleasantry. But as the charm of his works depends in a great measure on the paffions and motion with which he knew to animate them, the poets who came after him endeavoured to introduce into theirs an action which might excite emotion or mirth in the spectators: some even attempted to produce both, and ventured certain rude effays, which have fince been ftyled indifferently either tragedies or comedies, because they unite the characters of those two Schol. in Prolegom. Schol. Ariftoph. in Nub. v. 295. Ariftoph. p. xii. Donat. Fragm. de Comced. et Tragoed. Buleng. de Theatr. lib. 1, cap. 6. f Arift. de Poet. cap. 4, t. ii. p. 654. Plat. de Rep. lib. 10, p. 598 et 607. Id. in Theat. t. i. P. 152. Ariftot. ibid. |