or comedy was performed in the theatre of Dionysus. This theatre-money has rightly been compared to modern grants in aid of education, or to the remission of school-fees. At these festivals, which were religious ceremonies animated by the noblest poetry, the citizen felt himself a sharer in the best spiritual inheritance of the city. The Thucydidean Pericles alludes to this when he says, "we have provided for a weary mind many relaxations from toil, in the festivals and sacrifices which we hold throughout the year" (II. 38). If we are inclined to be surprised at the extreme smallness of the State-payments above noticed, and to ask how they could make any appreciable difference, we must remember three things: first, that the purchasing power of money was immensely greater then than it is now; next, that ancient civilisation rested on a basis of slavery, without which the full development of the Attic democracy would have been impossible; lastly, we must remember the genuine frugality and simplicity of Athenian life—greatly favoured, as it was, by a happy climate;—the simplicity to which Pericles refers when he says, "we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness." In the same Funeral Oration, indeed, Pericles speaks of the beautiful objects which surrounded Athenians in their private houses,—objects of which the daily delight, as he says, banishes gloom; but it would be an error to imagine that these words could apply only to the homes of the richer citizens; nothing was more
