The Athenians were of all people living the most addicted to raillery and invective: these village songs and festivities of Bacchus gave a scope to the wildest extravagances of mummery and grimace, mixt with coarse but keen raillery from the labourers and peasants concerned in the vintage: the women from their carts, masked and disguised with lees of wine, and men accoutred in rude grotesque habits like satyrs, and crowned with garlands of ivy and violets, vented such prompt and irregular sallies, as their inebriated fancies furnished on the instant, or else rehearsed such little traditional and local ballads in Iambic metre, as were in fashion at the time; accompanying them with extravagant gesticulations and dances incidental to the subject, and suitable to the character of the deity they were celebrating.

The drunken festivities of the ancient Danes, when they sacrificed to their rural deities—Annua ut ipsis contingeret felicitas, frugumque et annona uberrimus proventus-and the Highland ceremonies and libations of the Bel-tein are of this character.

The Athenian calendar was crowded with these feasts drinking-matches were rewarded with prizes and even crowns of gold; their Phallic ceremonies were of this description: they used vehement gesticulations in reading and speaking; their rhapsodists carried this habit to excess, and in the dithyrambic hymn every outrageous gesture, which enthusiasm inspires, was put in practice: the dithyramb was conceived in a metaphorical inflated style, stuffed with an obscure jargon of sounding phrases, and performed in honour of Bacchus.

In these dithyrambic verses and Phallic songs we have the foundation of tragedy and comedy; the solemn and swelling tone of the first, and the petulant vivacity of the latter, appositely point to the respective character of each. The satire and scurrility

they indulged from their vintage waggons, their masks and disguises in the hairy habits of satyrs, their wanton songs and dances at the Phallic ceremonies, and the dark bombast of the dithyramb, chanted by the rhapsodists with every tumid and extravagant action, all together form a complete outline of the first drama: as soon as dialogue and repartee were added, it became to all intents a mask, and in this state it is discovered in very early times throughout the villages of Greece. When it had reached this period, and got something like the shape of a drama, it attracted the curiosity of the villagers, who, in reward for their amusement in the spectacle, decreed a prize to the performance agreeable to the object in view, and the means of the spectators; this prize consisted of a cask of wine, and the performance before named simply Comedia or the village-song, was thenceforward called Trugadia, or the song for the cask, compounded of rpúya and ὠδή.

These names are descriptive of the drama in its progressive stages, from a simple village song, till it took a more complicated form by introducing the Satyrs, and employing the chorus in recitation through a whole fable, which had a kind of plot or construction, though certainly not committed to writing. In this stage, and not before, the prize of the cask of wine was given, and thence it proceeded to attract not the husbandmen and labourers only, but the neighbours of better degree. The drama under the designation of Trugadia was satiric, and wholly occupied in the praise of Bacchus : it was unwritten, jocose, and confined to the villages at the seasons of the Trina Dionysia; but after a prize however inconsiderable had been given, that prize created emulation, and emulation stimulated genius.

The village bards now attempted to enlarge their

walk, and not confining their spectacles merely to Bacchus and the Satyrs began to give their drama a serious cast, diverting it from ludicrous and lascivious subjects to grave and doleful stories, in celebration of illustrious characters amongst their departed heroes; which were recited throughout by a chorus, without the interventions of any other characters than those of the Satyrs, with the dances proper thereunto.

This spur to emulation having brought the drama a step forward, that advance produced fresh encouragement, and a new prize was now given, which still was, in conformity to the rustic simplicity of the poem and its audience, a Goat, rpayos, a new prize created a new name, and the serious drama became distinguished by the name of Tragedia, or the song for the goat: thus it appears that Tragedy, properly so called, was posterior in its origin to comedy; and it is worthy of remark that Trugadia was never applied to the tragic drama, nor Tragadia to the comic: after this comedy lost its general designation of Trugædia, and was called by its original name of the village-song or Comedia.

The next step was a very material one in point of advance, for the village poets having been excited by emulation to bring their exhibitions into some shape and consistence, meditated an excursion from the villages into the cities, and particularly into Athens: accordingly in Olymp. liv. Susarion, a native of Icarius, presented himself and his comedy at that capital, rehearsing it on a moveable stage or scaffold, presuming on the hope, that what had given such delight to the villagers would afford some amusement to the more refined spectators in Athens: this was the first drama there exhibited, and we should naturally expect, that a composition to be acted before the citizens of the capital should be committed to

writing, if we did not know that the author was on these occasions the actor of his own piece: the rude interludes of Bacchus and the Satyrs being introduced upon the scene according to their old extemporary manner by the Sileni and Tityri, whose songs and dances were episodical to the drama: it continued to be the custom for authors to act their own plays in the times of Phrynichus and Eschylus, and I therefore think it probable Susarion's comedy was not a written drama; and I close with the authorities for Epicharmus being the first writer of. comedy, who, being retained in an elegant court at Syracuse, choosing his plots from the Margites, and rejecting the mummeries of the Satyrs, would naturally compose his drama upon a more regular and elaborate plan.

NUMBER CXXVIII.

IN the plan which I have laid down for treating of the literature of the Greeks, and to which I have devoted part of these papers, I have thought it advisable, for the sake of perspicuity, to preface the account with an abstract of the Athenian history, within those separate periods which I mean to review. In conformity to this plan I have already brought down my narration to the death of Pisistratus, and this has been followed with a state of the drama at that period: I now propose to proceed with the history to the battle of Marathon inclusive, beyond which I shall have no occasion to follow it, and shall then resume my account of the literature of the Greeks, which will comprehend all the dramatic authors, both tragic and comic, to the death of Menander.

At the decease of Pisistratus the government of Athens devolved quietly upon Hipparchus, who associated his brother Hippias with him in power. Pisistratus had two other sons by a second wife, who were named Jophon and Thessalus; the elder died in his father's lifetime, and the other, who was of a turbulent and unruly spirit, did not long survive him.

Hipparchus was not less devoted to science and the liberal arts than his father had been: the famous Phæa, who had personated Minerva, shared his throne, and though he communicated with his brother Hippias on matters of government, and imparted to him so great a portion of authority, that they were jointly styled Tyrants of Athens, yet it seems evident that the supreme power was actually vested in Hipparchus; and it is extraordinary, for the space of fourteen years, until his death, his vernment was undisturbed by any disagreement with his brother or complaint from his subjects.

and says

go

The most virtuous citizens of Athens, in the freest hours of their republic, look back upon this reign as the most enviable period in their history. Plato himself asserts, that all the fabulous felicity of the golden reign of Saturn was realized under this of Hipparchus: Thucydides gives the same testimony, that his government was administered without envy or reproach: the tradition of the golden days of Hipparchus was delivered down through many generations, and became proverbial with the Athenians. A prince, who had deserved so well of letters, was not likely to be forgotten by poets, historians, or philosophers; but such was the public tranquillity under his administration, that the patriots and declaimers for freedom in the most popular times have not scrupled to acknowledge and applaud it.

Hipparchus not only augmented the collection of