He alone was at once a god and a hero; comparable in might with Zeus; one who had striven and suffered like Achilles. The people who kept festival in his honour, and who danced round his altar, would sing of his sufferings and his triumphs. Then, as such festivals became more systematic, a certain number of persons was set apart from the general body of worshippers, for the purpose of conducting the dance in a more regular manner. These chosen persons were called the Chorus; a circular dancing-place (orchestra) was marked out for them, with the altar of Dionysus at its centre; and, since they danced round the altar, they were called a circular or "cyclic" Chorus. Only three years ago (1886) the German explorers of the Dionysiac theatre at Athens traced parts of the enclosure of the old circular orchestra,—the orchestra of the great Attic dramatists,—close to the site of the older temple in the precinct of Dionysus. In the theatre at Epidaurus—the clearest illustration of the classical Greek period—the complete circle of the orchestra is marked out by a ring of flat stones in the ground; and one result of the explorations made there and elsewhere since 1883 has been to establish that down to the Roman age the complete circle of the orchestra was always left clear in front of the place where the actors stood.
From the primitive Chorus, dancing round the altar of Dionysus, drama was developed, so far as we know, by three steps. (1) First, it became usual for a member of the Chorus to vary the dance
