Peisistratus greatly encouraged the idea of Athens as the leading member of the Ionic States of Greece. Up to this time great Ionian cities like Miletus and Ephesus had been far ahead of Athens in wealth and civilisation. It is hard to say how Peisistratus persuaded them that Athens was in some sort their mother city unless such was the fact. He inaugurated the solemn purification of Delos, by removing the dead from the island. Henceforth the Apollo of Delos was to share with the Poseidon of Mycale the patronage of Ionia. Both at the Panionic festivals of Delos and the Panathenaic festivals at Athens the solemn recitation of Homer formed an important part of the proceedings. It was Peisistratus who caused an authorised version of Homer to be prepared at Athens. Certain portions were selected and edited. Thus at length Homer became a fixed canon.

Another festival instituted by Peisistratus led to important literary results. This was the Great Dionysia. Dionysus was a late-comer in Olympian mythology, probably from Thrace. As the god of wine, his coming had to face some opposition from the temperance party, but like a god he triumphed. It was at the Dionysia that, as we shall see, the Athenian drama took its rise as a service of worship to the god.

Literature found a whole-hearted patron in the great

1. CORINTHIAN VASE.
3. BLACK-FIGURED VASE. 		2. RED-FIGURED VASE.
4. WHITE POLYCHROME VASE.

tyrant’s younger son Hipparchus. At his court were, among others, Simonides, Anacreon, and Onomacritus. Simonides of Ceos is specially associated with the dithyramb, the chorus in honour of Dionysus, which played a great part in the development of the chorus of tragedy. He was also a composer of odes of victory for successful athletes, though here his fame was eclipsed by his younger rival Pindar. But it is chiefly as a writer of elegies and epitaphs and epigrams that his fame survives. Every one knows that epitaph he wrote on Leonidas and his Three Hundred Spartans at Thermopylæ.

“Go tell at Sparta, thou that passest by,
That here, obedient to her word, we lie.”

His fine ode on the same subject is still extant. Anacreon is known even to the “general reader,” through Byron:

“Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
We will not think of themes like these!
It made Anacreon’s song divine,
He served—but served Polycrates—
A tyrant; but our masters then
Were still, at least, our countrymen.”