and Euripides, and a host of other writers whose plays are lost to us, are taken.  The new wine that was poured into the old bottles of the dromena at the Spring Festival was the heroic saga.  We know as an historical fact, the name of the man who was mainly responsible for this inpouring—­the great democratic tyrant Peisistratos.  We must look for a moment at what Peisistratos found, and then pass to what he did.

He found an ancient Spring dromenon, perhaps well-nigh effete.  Without destroying the old he contrived to introduce the new, to add to the old plot of Summer and Winter the life-stories of heroes, and thereby arose the drama.

Let us look first, then, at what Peisistratos found.

The April festival of Dionysos at which the great dramas were performed was not the earliest festival of the god.  Thucydides[37] expressly tells us that on the 12th day of the month Anthesterion, that is in the quite early spring, at the turn of our February and March, were celebrated the more ancient Dionysia.  It was a three-days’ festival.[38] On the first day, called “Cask-opening,” the jars of new wine were broached.  Among the Boeotians the day was called not the day of Dionysos, but the day of the Good or Wealthy Daimon.  The next day was called the day of the “Cups”—­there was a contest or agon of drinking.  The last day was called the “Pots,” and it, too, had its “Pot-Contests.”  It is the ceremonies of this day that we must notice a little in detail; for they are very surprising.  “Casks,” “Cups,” and “Pots,” sound primitive enough.  “Casks” and “Cups” go well with the wine-god, but the “Pots” call for explanation.

The second day of the “Cups,” joyful though it sounds, was by the Athenians counted unlucky, because on that day they believed “the ghosts of the dead rose up.”  The sanctuaries were roped in, each householder anointed his door with pitch, that the ghost who tried to enter might catch and stick there.  Further, to make assurance doubly sure, from early dawn he chewed a bit of buckthorn, a plant of strong purgative powers, so that, if a ghost should by evil chance go down his throat, it should at least be promptly expelled.

For two, perhaps three, days of constant anxiety and ceaseless precautions the ghosts fluttered about Athens.  Men’s hearts were full of nameless dread, and, as we shall see, hope.  At the close of the third day the ghosts, or, as the Greeks called them, Keres, were bidden to go.  Some one, we do not know whom, it may be each father of a household, pronounced the words:  “Out of the door, ye Keres; it is no longer Anthesteria,” and, obedient, the Keres were gone.

But before they went there was a supper for these souls.  All the citizens cooked a panspermia or “Pot-of-all-Seeds,” but of this Pot-of-all-Seeds no citizen tasted.  It was made over to the spirits of the under-world and Hermes their daimon, Hermes “Psychopompos,” Conductor, Leader of the dead.