GREEK DRAMA: (A) ORIGIN Modern drama, from Shakespeare onwards, is confessedly an entertainment. Its true intent is for our delight, and if it does not entertain it has difficulty in justifying its existence. Also each play as a general rule is, or affects to be, a piece of free fiction, with imaginary characters and invented plot. Greek drama in its origin was a ritual performed for a religious pur pose. Its object was not to entertain the spectators, though it might do that incidentally, but to obtain certain blessings for the com munity. Tragedy was never a piece of free fiction : it was an acted representation of the 7r6.Oos or death of some hero ; and comedy, though it used fictitious characters, followed certain fixed ritual forms. When dramas, or Judi scenici, were introduced (361 B.e.) from Etruria into Rome, their object was to check a plague.
A series of researches by different scholars (see at end) during the past 3o years enables us now to understand much more clearly the real nature of the Dionysiac ritual which took form in tragedy and comedy.
1. Religious Origin.—The drama in both its forms is a per formance connected with Dionysus. It is produced at his festival, in his theatre, under the presidency of his priest, by performers who are technically known as Aeovvaov TEXvirai. In Aristoph anes' Frogs Dionysus, the god presiding over drama, is the hero of the play.
Drama (8paµa) means "a thing done" or "performed"; and the drama is a performance in honour of Dionysus. One may compare the Bpwµ€va or "things done" and the SELKfXa, "tableaux" or "things shown" in the mysteries at Eleusis and elsewhere (cf. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 5o, 688 seq.); and even more helpfully the ecclesiastical plays of the middle ages. These were sometimes tableaux, sometimes extracts from the liturgy made dramatic and divided between performers, sometimes they were developed into plays in the full sense, representing such subjects as the Passion or the Massacre of the Innocents. Such plays sometimes included characters outside the Gospel, e.g., the un guentarius from whom Mary Magdalene buys cosmetics. Some times they left both the Bible and the Liturgy aside and dealt with the adventures of saints. In the original plays of the nun, Hroswitha, again, we find a performance completely detached from the Church ritual, and standing on its own feet.
Thus we see that the mediaeval religious plays were gradually extended both in subject and treatment far beyond the original limits. And the same process seems to have taken place in Athens. The extant plays are mostly concerned with non-Dionysiac leg ends; and the Greek proverb oi)Uv irpds Tov Acovvcrov ("nothing to do with Dionysus") is supposed to refer to this extension of the field of drama. Yet it would be rash to suppose that all Attic drama dealt originally with Dionysus and thence spread to other cults. It is more likely that dramata existed in many rituals of the Mediterranean religion from the earliest times.
Aristotle in his account of drama remarks that man is "by nature imitative"; extremely ancient xopoi, or dancing grounds, like those from which the drama developed, have been found in Thera, Crete, etc. ; they are assumed as an ordinary institution in the Homeric poems; while in the dialogue Minos (attributed to Plato) it is remarked that tragedy was "ancient in Athens." There is also sufficient, though not abundant, evidence of the use of tableaux and acting in other cults besides the Dionysiac to justify this hypothesis. However, it remains certain that in classical Greek times the drama was the sacer ludus of Dionysus.
2. Tragedy and Comedy.—Drama took two forms, distinct and never combined, Kwycgola and rpa-ycp5ia, komos-song and tragos-song respectively. The first name is transparent, a komos being a revel, and almost every extant comedy ending with a revel scene. The second is obscure, and must be considered more carefully below.
To begin with comedy, we find in it almost always a komos and associated therewith, as habitually on Greek drinking vases, a yaµos (gamos) or union of the sexes. Of the II plays of Aristophanes eight end in a gamos: Ach. 1,198 seq.; Equ. 1,389 seq.; Vesp. 1,342 seq.; Pax 1,316; Av. 1,728; Lys. 1,275 seq.; Eccl. 876 seq.; Plut. 1,042 seq. And we may note that in the first three of these it is dragged in and not naturally deduced from the plot. That is to say, it probably comes from the under lying ritual.
Also, all through the classical period, the chorus and the per formers in comedy wear artificial phalli, i.e., visible representa tions of the male organ of generation. This was of course con trary to normal manners, and was to some extent disguised in the 5th century, except in the bird or beast choruses. This fea ture also is usually (except e.g., in the Lysistrata) quite irrelevant to the plot. It comes from the ritual, and the ritual is a well known fertility ritual connected with the vegetation-spirit or year-daemon.
In its historical development we may notice how comedy moves further and further away from a mere phallic fertility rite, becoming more intellectual, literary and, incidentally, decent. Aristophanes boasts more than once how he has raised the tone of comedy, but amid all refinements the ritual phalli were still retained, in inconspicuous form, even in plays like the Frogs and the Birds. By the time of Menander they had disappeared (cf. Nub. 537 seq.; Vesp. 1,o15 seq.; Pax 736 seq.).
Thus Comedy is a perfectly intelligible performance of komos and gamos in the ritual of the vegetation or fertility spirit, Dionysus. It represents, we may say, the triumph and marriage of the year-daemon.
3. Essentials of Tragedy.—If we seek for some similar con stant feature in tragedy, we find generally (a) an Aircov (aition) i.e., the explanation or cause of some rite or custom. Thus the Prometheus trilogy explained the festival Prometheia, the Ajax explains the ritual of the Aianteia, the Eumenides explains the origin of the worship of the Eumenides at the Areopagus, the Hippolytus the worship of that hero by maidens, the 1 phigenia in Tauris the curious ritual of Artemis at Brauron, the Medea the lamentation for Medea's children, etc. We find (b) that the aition is almost always a death, and the ritual to be explained a tomb worship : e.g., that of Alcestis, Hippolytus, Eurystheus (Hclid.) Neoptolemus, Peleus and Thetis (Androm.), Rhesus, etc. Some tragedies indeed seem to be taken more from the epic tradition than from any ritual. The Septem is a treatment of the old siege-motive, found in very early Minoan paintings as well as in the Iliad and the Thebais; but the trilogy to which it belongs is based on the regular year-king sequence, in which the Old King is killed by the Young King helped by the Queen. Some of the plays about Orestes (e.g., Soph. Electra) become epic rather than religious, but they also are rooted in the year king ritual. And even the most definitely epic or heroic stories seem always to have in them a dirge or a sacred tomb, e.g., Troades, Antigone, Persae.
Thus it seems essential to tragedy to contain a dirge or a tomb ritual, and to act the aition of it: i.e., the story from which the observance is supposed to be derived. It is also noticeable that the death of the hero or heroine is normally not enacted, but, as in the year-ritual of Osiris, Adonis, Pan, etc., regularly related by a messenger.
4. Death and Resurrection.—Thus, as comedy gives the komos-gamos, so tragedy gives the 76.eos-9pfpos ("violent death and lamentation") of its hero or heroine.
Now a marriage-revel plus a slaying and lamentation is the content of the traditional pre-Christian religious drama once prevalent all over the Mediterranean world, and still not quite extinct under the name of "the Mummers' Play." It celebrates the birth and growth, the victorious battle and marriage; the lost battle and death, and sometimes the resurrection, of a hero representing the year, or the annual revivification of the world, first new and then old. And Dionysus was just such a being, akin, as Sir James Frazer has shown, to Attis, Adonis and Osiris. Comedy gives the triumph and marriage of the hero, tragedy his defeat and death, narrated always by a messenger. As for his birth and growth, we have that described in the Hymn to Hermes, the Ichneutae and the parodos of the Bacchae; and it is possible that this was properly the content of the dithyramb. At least Plato says that the dithyramb was Acovuaou yivEacs, oiµac ("the birth of Dionysus, I imagine") (Laws 700B) .
There is one further element commonly, though not always, present in the mummers' play, viz., the resurrection of the slain hero. This resurrection or renewal motive occurs in many myths (Cook, Zeus, ii. 210 seq.) and is common in comedy (Knights, Geras, Amphiaraus, cf. Clouds, Wasps: see Cornford, Attic Comedy, pp. ; cf. also Bacchae 184 seq.; Hclid. 786 seq.; Andr. 548-765). It seems possible that this was represented in the satyr play, which normally followed the third tragedy, and represented the arrival of Dionysus with his attendant daimones (Themis p. 344 seq.; Cook, Zeus, i. pp. 68o, 696 seq.) . At any rate a trace of it seems to exist in the constantly recurring deification or heroization of the chief characters : Alcestis, Hip polytus, Heracles, etc.
Thus it seems that in dithyramb, comedy, tragedy and satyr play we have traces of the birth and growth, the marriage, the death and the resurrection of the year-daemon, which formed the subject of a complete ancient mummers' play. We may notice that the tragic hero is never Dionysus himself but regularly some hero who in some way takes his place.
5. The Goat Song.—We have seen above that the tragodia or goat-song, with its enigmatic name, describes the iraOos or violent death of the hero, generally by some form of ritual slaying and particularly by sparagmos or dismemberment. When we observe that a goat was the animal commonly sacrificed to Dionysus, and particularly was so at Icaria, where tragedy is said to have been invented by Thespis, it seems reasonable to suppose that the goat-song was the song sung over the sacrificed and often dismembered goat. It is certain that in Graeco-Roman tradition generally the goat was specially associated with Dio nysus, and practically certain that the dismembered kid or goat, of which we hear so often, was the representative or the em bodiment of the god. (Farnell, Cults, v. pp. 165 seq. 302e, 303.) In particular the sparagmos or Scaairaaµos of the kid, whose blood the worshippers sacramentally drank, tells its own tale. The goat-song is the song of the dismembered goat, which is really the god. (Cf. Eratosthenes' "The Icarians then first danced around a goat.") In the lists of typical sacrifices we find : "a pig to Ceres, a goat to Liber (Dionysus) (Sere. Aen. 3, 18; id. ib. 8, 343 ; other passages in Farnell, Cults, p. 393) . Also when the Gods disguised themselves, proles Semeleia capro . . . latuit (Ov. Met. v. 329); so Baccho caper omnibus axis caeditur; caper Bacchi mactatur ad arcs, etc. For the sacramental sparagmos of small animals cf. the horrible word vEI3A'ECV and lines such as Aesch. Eum. 26 (Xayth BLe, s' H€vOe? Karappiv/ as µopov) and the many examples of animals, children, etc. alleged or supposed to be torn in Dionysiac rites (Farnell, Cults, v. p. 301). These victims, it is generally agreed, are torn as surrogates or substi tutes for the god himself.
When, therefore, Herodotus tells us (v. 67) that at Sicyon they used to honour Adrastus instead of Dionysus, celebrating his "sufferings" (7s6€a) with tragic choruses, we may naturally suppose that other people in their tragic choruses celebrated the "sufferings" of Dionysus. What were these "sufferings"? 6. The Dismemberment.--It is commonly argued that the accounts we possess of the sparagmos or dismemberment of Dionysus are "late," occurring mainly in Plutarch and the Chris tian fathers. As a matter of fact they occur in Eratosthenes (cf. 24o B.c.) . But further we have the express testimony of Herodo tus, a contemporary of the bloom of tragedy, that the character istic worship of Dionysus was "in almost all respects the same" as that of Osiris (see Themis, p. 342 ; Hdt. ii. 48 : ItXXnv avacyovac 6pri v rw Ltcovvacac of Aiyvirrcoc, 7rXr)v Xopwv, Kara ravra axiaov iravra "EXXnac). Ordinarily Herodotus simply uses the name Dionysus for Osiris (as here, cf. ii. 144 "Osiris is Dio nysus in Greek" ; cf. ii. 42, etc) . That is to say, Dionysus is Osiris, and the ritual is, apart from the dramatic choruses, al most exactly the same. We know the ritual of Osiris; and must therefore conclude that the ritual of Dionysus also contained a sparagmos, mourning, search, discovery and resurrection. It seems at first sight extraordinary that, if this was so, there is no mention of this ritual in classical times. The explanation is given by Herodotus. When there is mention of Osiris's death and lamentation he has a religious scruple against men tioning Dionysus' name in such a connection (ii., 61, "They lament but whom they lament I must not say"; cf. ii. 132, "When the Egyptians lament the god whom I may not name in this connection," so ii. 17o, 86). It was forbidden to speak of the death of the god who was the life of the world. It was ipprrov (ineffable), and, in the manner of ancient religion, a surrogate took the god's place. We find a frequent sparagmos of beings who have committed some sin against Dionysus or other gods: of Pentheus by Maenads, Orpheus by Maenads, Lycurgus by horses, Hippolytus by horses, Dirce by a bull, Actaeon by hounds, etc. This use of a surrogate was made easier by the fact that both at Eleusis (Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 5o, 688 seq.) and in the Osiris rite (Hdt. ii. 171) the myth was conveyed by tableaux, not words. Thus the death of Pentheus, wearing Dionysiac dress, would be shown by exactly the same tableau as that of Dionysus. The • truth could be shown to the wise and at the same time veiled from the unknowing. Such facts help to ex plain the charge of "profaning the mysteries" which was brought against Aeschylus.
Aristotle's two statements, that tragedy arose "from the leaders of the dithyramb" and comedy "from those of the phallic [songs]" are thus intelligible. The dithyramb (see above) is perhaps used for the whole birth and death story of Dionysus; the exarchontes are the actors as opposed to the chorus. T a 4aXXtKa form that part of the year ritual which is concerned with the gamos, and perhaps also, as in the Osiris rite, with re-birth or resurrection. In the remains of tragedy that we possess a few plays, like the Bacchae, and Aeschylus' Edoni, show the full Dionysus ritual almost unaltered; its influence is visible in others, such as the Hippolytus and Andromache, which have a sequence of scenes showing agon, pathos or sparagmos, messenger, threnos, theophany. But elsewhere we find that other rituals have left almost equally clear traces : the regular earth-and-year sequence —Old King, Young King who with the help of the Queen slays him, Third King who avenges or saves—in the Oresteia, the Prometheus and the Laius-Jocasta-Oedipus story. The rite of supplication at an altar occurs in a great number of plays, from Aeschylus' Supplices onwards. One can see also great influence exerted by the idea of the theophany or resurrection. Not only do most of Euripides' plays end with the appearance of a divine being, and a large number of comedies with the rejuvenescence of an old man, but most tragedies end with the quasi-deification of some hero or heroine, or at least the foundation of some wor ship. Most influential of all these ritual types is the figure of the pharmakos, the old polluted year, the sin-bearer, who has to be stoned or cast out, to suffer for his people. Oedipus and Orestes are typical; but almost every tragic hero has the traces of the pharmakos about him, he bears some pollution and he dies for the sake of others.
Thus, while we must allow for the influence of epic legends and heroic sagas upon tragedy, and of mere stories upon comedy, in the main Greek drama grows from a dramatization of ritual, and almost always of some ritual connected with the cult of the year spirit or vegetation spirit. When drama was put specially under the charge of Dionysus the specific Dionysus ritual, re sembling that of Osiris, with its sparagmos and search and dis covery, became prominent ; but it was not exclusive, and through the earlier part of the 5th century other themes were fully as common. It is the year-religion in general which provides tragedy with its main scheme and exhibits life in the tragic pattern as a thing which, like the corn and flowers, like the young animals, like the sun and earth themselves, begins gentle and gracious, grows gradually great and commits the sin of hubris (pride), and at last in payment of that sin must fall and die.
(G. G. A. M.)