In the elegy, the oldest form of Greek lyric—so perfect an expression of the Ionic spirit in its varied measures and uses—a new form had been evolved in Ionia itself, side by side with the older one in which Theognis had expounded his party rancour and Solon his statesman-like wisdom—a lighter form which touched upon life in accents untinged by grief, the song of joyous conviviality, giving the gaiety of the banquet a higher consecration by the introduction of ethical ideas. “To drink, to jest, to bear a just mind,” sang Ion, and brought public affairs gracefully into the conversation. Dionysius the Athenian, a statesman of note in the age of Pericles, associated himself with Ion in this form of verse, and the lighter kind of elegy so appealed to the intellectual character of contemporary Athens that even Sophocles and Æschylus composed elegies of this sort. The fifth century was so rich in life and movement that these occasional verses were produced in great abundance; the epigram itself is no more than a subsidiary kind of elegiac verse. Its concise form was due to its original purpose, which was to serve as an inscription on some public monument, and it is therefore more closely connected with the great events of the time than any other kind of poetry. Simonides of Ceos was esteemed above all other Greeks as a writer of occasional verse in the best sense of the term, so much so that Sparta commissioned the Ionian poet to sing the praise of her Leonidas. With inimitable felicity he immortalised the events of the Wars of Liberation in brief pregnant epigrams inscribed on monuments of every sort, sang the praises of the fallen in elegies, and celebrated the days of Artemisium and Marathon in grand cantatas which were performed by festal choirs.
The state did what it could to advance the cause of art. It offered poets brilliant opportunities for distinguishing themselves at the celebrations held in honour of its victories, and gave prizes for the best performances. As Themistocles had been assisted by Simonides, so Cimon was assisted by the genius of Ion, who in like manner laboured to hand down his fame to posterity. Pericles was led by his own tastes as well as by political considerations to do all that lay in his power to foster the art of song in Athens. For this purpose he introduced the musical competitions at the Panathenæa, and so summoned all men of talent to vie publicly one with another. He himself was the organiser and lawgiver in this department, and settled with profound artistic knowledge the manner in which the singers and cithara-players should appear at the festivals. If in spite of all these efforts lyric poetry did not take the place we might have anticipated in the Athens of Pericles, and Simonides found no worthy successors, the principal reason must be sought in the fact that another stronger and richer voice of poetry arose, into which the lyric was merged and so lost its individual importance.
Of all kinds of lyric poetry none was cultivated in Athens so admirably and successfully as the dithyrambus, the chant in praise of the god Dionysus, the giver of blessings—the branch of religious poetry which showed a capacity for development beyond all others. Lasus of Hermione, the tutor of Pindar, had changed this form of song (originally no more than the medium of an enthusiastic nature worship) into an artistically constructed choral chant and invested it with such splendour by bold and varied measures and the rippling music of flutes, as to cast the fame of Arion, its original inventor, into the shade. From the Peloponnesus Lasus brought the new art to the court of the Pisistratidæ at Athens. At that time everything connected with the worship of Dionysus was regarded with special favour, the dithyrambus was introduced into state festivals, and wealthy citizens vied with one another in equipping and training Bacchic choirs, composed of fifty singers who danced circling the flaming altars of Dionysus; and no expense was spared to procure new songs for the Attic Dionysia from the greatest masters, such as Pindar and Simonides. The latter could boast that he had won no less than fifty dithyrambic victories at Athens. But the evolution of the dithyrambus did not stop there.
The dithyrambus not only included every metre and rhythm known to earlier kinds of lyric poetry, but it contained elements which tended to pass beyond the limitations of the lyric. For the festal chorus regarded the god whose praises they, sang as an immanent presence and, as it were, lived through all that befell him, whether of persecution or victory; and it was therefore but a short step to pass beyond the assumption that their audience was acquainted with the events which formed the subject of their chants, and to call them to mind by narration or set them forth by spectacular representation. The leaders of the dithyrambic chorus accordingly interspersed their singing with recitations, and thus epic and song were combined. The epic recitation was then rendered more effective by the aid of action and costume, the god himself was made visible in his suffering and triumph, the leader of the chorus undertook the part, the dancers were transformed into satyrs—attendants of the god and partakers of his fortunes; and thus from the union of the old forms of poetry there sprang a new form, the drama, the richest and most perfect of all.
The Greeks were by nature gifted with dramatic talent. Their natural vivacity induced them to clothe every doubt or deliberation in the form of a dialogue. Thus even in Homer we find the germ of the drama, which now reaped the benefit of the entire evolution of the older art methods. For all that dance and song had invented in the way of balanced rhythm, effective metre, and poetic imagery, was here united, enlivened by the art of mimicry, which made the person of the actor the instrument of artistic exposition, and warmed by the joyous fires of the Bacchic festival.
The cycle of representation could not but be limited so long as the action was confined by ceremonial considerations to the subjects offered by the worship of Bacchus. The Greeks therefore went a step farther and in place of the fortunes of Bacchus took other subjects equally well calculated to arouse lively sympathy, and thus (when this form of art had been invented) there flowed in an abundance of materials and fertile themes, the storehouse of Homeric and post-Homeric epos was flung open, the national heroes were introduced to the nation in a novel and striking guise, and a vast field of activity was opened to dramatic art.
This advance had already been made beyond the borders of Attica; for before the time of Clisthenes the hero Adrastus had been substituted for Dionysus, and it may be that a similar enlargement of the scope of dithyrambic poetry had also taken place at Corinth. But it was at Athens alone that these rudiments of the drama reached their full development. As the epic had mirrored the heroic days of old, as the lyric kept pace with the development of the nation for three centuries after the decline of the epic, so the drama was the form of poetry which began to flower at the moment when Athens became the pivot of Greek history. Originating from humble beginnings in the time of Solon, it grew in magnitude and importance with the growth of the city’s greatness, and is associated with the history of Athens in every stage of its development.
TRAGEDY
Thespis was the founder of Attic tragedy, for it was he who introduced the alternation of recitation and song and arranged the stage and costumes. The story goes that Solon had small liking for the new art, believing the violent excitement of the emotions by the representation of imaginary events to be prejudicial, but that the tyrants favoured this popular diversion, like everything else connected with the democratic worship of Dionysus, because it suited the purpose of their policy to provide brilliant entertainments for the population at the expense of wealthy citizens. About 550 B.C. they summoned the chorus leader from Icaria to the city, competitions between rival tragic choruses were introduced, and the stage near the black poplar in the market place became a centre of Attic festivity.