“And for that sacred race nor pestilence, nor deadening age is blended in their lot. Apart from war and toil they dwell, acquittal winning from exacting Nemesis.”
Near the cheerful modern village of Marathona in the valley of Avlona above the plain of Marathon are remains of an ancient gateway to the villa of Herodes Atticus. The inscription placed over his portal by this beneficent humanist and teacher was: “The Gate of Immortal Unanimity.” A few miles to the southwest, on the northern slope of Pentelicus, the American school excavated on an upland farm, called Dionyso, the remains of the ancient Icaria, the earliest Attic home of Dionysus and the birthplace of Thespis, the father of Attic tragedy. An epigram in the Anthology by Dioscorides records the claims of Thespis:—
“Thespis am I, who the tragedy strain
Shaped for the masque and was first to combine
Charms that were new when Bacchus would fain
Marshal his chorus, stained with wine.
Figs Attic grown, or a goat was the prize
Won in the contests, till new I devise.
They that come after all this will revise,
Myriad years reshape, refine,