CONTENT S. Page III. Names of illuftrious men, arranged in alphabetical order, 400 IV. Roman meafures reduced to French (and English), V. Roman fect reduced to French (and English) feet, VI. Roman paces reduced to French toifes (and English yards), 409 VIII. Grecian feet reduced to French (and English) feet, X. Stadia estimated in French leagues of 2500 toises each, XI. Athenian money reduced to French (and English), 6 TRAVELS IN GREE CE. CHAP. LXIX. Hiftory of the Grecian Theatre. ABOUT that time I finished my researches relative to the dramatic art, concerning the origin and progress of which writers are divided, fince the various ftates of Greece affert their different claims to the honour of having given it birth 2; but I have preferred the traditions of the Athenians, because I have believed them to be the most probable. This most regular and fublime of all the arts took birth in the bofom of tumultuous pleasures, and the extravagances of intoxication. Let us convey ourselves, in imagination, about three centuries back from the present 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 those dithyrambics which fometimes dif played the flights of genius, and still more frequently the ob fcure flashes of a heated imagination. While these refounded in the astonished ears of the multitude, chorufes of Bacchants and Fauns, ranged around certain obfcene images, which they carried in triumphal proceffion, chanted lascivious fongs, and fometimes facrificed individuals to public ridicule. A still greater licentiousness reigned in the worship paid to the fame divinity by the inhabitants of the country, and especially at the season when they gathered the fruits of his beneficence. Vintigers, 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 gross sarcasms, revenging themselves on their neighbours with ridicule, and on the rich by publishing their injustice . g Among the poets who flourished at that time, fome celebrated the great actions and adventures of gods and heroes f, and others attacked with afperity the vices and absurdities of individuals. The former took Homer for their model, and fupported themselves by his example, of which they made an improper use. 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 pleafantry. 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: fome even attempted to produce both, and ventured certain rude effays, which have fince been styled indifferently either tragedies or comedies, becaufe they unite the characters of those two dramas i. The authors of these sketches have been d Plut. de Cupid. Divit. t. ii. p. 527. e Schol. Ariftoph. in Nub. v. 295. Schol. in Prolegom. Ariftoph. p. 12. Donat. Fragm, de Comed. et Traged. Buleng. de Theatr. lib. I. cap. 6. f Arift. de Poet. cap. 4. t. ii. p. 654. 8 Plat. de Rep. lib. 10. p. 598. et 607. Id in Theæt. t. i. p. 152. h Ariftot. ibid. i Schol. in Ariftoph. in Proleg. p. 12. |