ing of this form of entertainment is connected with the name of one Arion of Corinth. In his hands the dithyrambic dance and song (such was the name) became an orderly and solemn ceremony, and as such was kept up for many years in different parts of Greece. The number of the chorus was raised to fifty, and set music and words were composed for it. But it was in Attica, the land of the drama, that the first great addition was made to the simplicity of this chorus. Thespis, an inhabitant of one of the country districts, introduced into the pauses of the choric song a rude dialogue, maintained probably at first by himself on the one hand, and the leader of the singers on the other. This may have been sometimes comic, not much more dignified than the repartees with which our clowns fill up the pauses in a circus; sometimes it consisted of questions and answers concerning some story or exploit of Bacchus or Hercules;—at any rate, it soon grew to more. The actor, for so we must now begin to call him, would narrate, not without explanatory gesture and action, some mythical story, while the chorus would sing from time to time songs in continuation of his tale, or in comment upon it; songs of triumph when a victory was described, of mourning when the action was sad, and at all times of moral and pious reflection upon the dealings of the gods with men.
Such was the earliest form of the Attic tragedy, and much as it was afterwards developed, it never entirely lost this form. To the one actor of Thespis another was soon added, so that there was now a complete
