Of course, other influences may also have helped. There was a mimetic element in the earliest popular poetry, and we hear of 'drômena' (things performed)—the word lies very near 'drâma' (performance)—in many religious cults. The birth of Zeus was acted in Crete; his marriage with Hera, in Samos, Crete, and Argos. There were sacred puppets, 'Daidala,' at Platæa. The 'Crane-Dance' of Delos showed Theseus saving the children from the Labyrinth; and even the mysteries at Eleusis and elsewhere made their revelations more to mortal eyes by spectacle than to mortal ears by definite statement.
The first step in the transformation of the goat-choir took place on Attic soil, when the song poetry of the Dorian met the speech poetry of Ionia. A wide-spread tradition tells us that Thespis of the village Icaria was the first poet who, "to rest his dancers and vary the entertainment," came forward personally at intervals and recited to the public a speech in trochaic tetrameters, like those metrical harangues which Solon had declaimed in the market-place.[1] His first victory was in 534 B.C. His successors were Choirilus and a foreigner who performed in Attica, Pratinas of Phlius.
The choir were still satyrs at this stage. What was the poet? Probably he represented the hero of the play, the legendary king or god. An old saying, not understood afterwards, speaks of the time "when Choirilus was a king among satyrs." But if the poet represented one character, why should he not represent more? If he
- ↑ Aristotle does not mention Thespis; and the pseudo-Platonic dialogue Minos says expressly that tragedy did not start, "as people imagine," with Thespis, nor yet with Phrynichus, but was much older. See Hiller in Rh. Mus. xxxix. 321.
