Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Delphian Course, Vol. 3: A Systematic Plan of Education, Embracing the World's Progress and Development of the Liberal Arts
The first original of the drama was a religious worship, consisting only of a chorus, which was nothing else but an hymn to a deity. As luxury and voluptuousness prevailed over innocence and religion, this form of worship degener ated into tragedies; in which, however, the chorus so far remembered its first office as to brand everything that was vicious and recommend everything that was laudable, to inter cede with Heaven for the innocent and to implore its vengeance on the criminal.
Homer and Hesiod intimate to us how this art should be applied, when they represent the Muses as surrounding Jupiter, and warbling their hymns about his throne. - Addison: Spec tator, 405.
The origin of the Greek drama is to be found in the yearly celebrations observed in honor of Dionysus, god of wine. Riotous festivals were held, during which the god of wine was extolled with carousals and boisterous songs, - these having been introduced into Greece from Thrace, where they were even Wilder in their nature. Dionysus had taught men how to grow the vine and how to make delicious wine from its fruit. He was conceived to be a rollicking god, jolly and restless, and was very popular in Hellas. Myths connected him with a company of satyrs - half men, half goats, who sang his praises and drank his wine, and went about leading others to join their train. That he might be appropriately worshipped, people banded together in companies at certain seasons of the year and indulged in noisy revelry, as Silenus and his satyrs were supposed to do. In fantastic dances and wild choruses they did honor to the god.
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