Cicero, in speaking of the influence of Peisistratos on literature, says:  “He is said to have arranged in their present order the works of Homer, which were previously in confusion.”  He arranged them not for what we should call “publication,” but for public recitation, and another tradition adds that he or his son fixed the order of their recitation at the great festival of “All Athens,” the Panathenaia.  Homer, of course, was known before in Athens in a scrappy way; now he was publicly, officially promulgated.  It is probable, though not certain, that the “Homer” which Peisistratos prescribed for recitation at the Panathenaia was just our Iliad and Odyssey, and that the rest of the heroic cycle, all the remaining “slices” from the heroic banquet, remained as material for dithyrambs and dramas.  The “tyranny” of Peisistratos and his son lasted from 560 to 501 B.C.; tradition said that the first dramatic contest was held in the new theatre built by Peisistratos in 535 B.C., when Thespis won the prize.  AEschylus was born in 525 B.C.; his first play, with a plot from the heroic saga, the Seven Against Thebes, was produced in 467 B.C.  It all came very swiftly, the shift from the dithyramb as Spring Song to the heroic drama was accomplished in something much under a century.  Its effect on the whole of Greek life and religion—­nay, on the whole of subsequent literature and thought—­was incalculable.  Let us try to see why.

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Homer was the outcome, the expression, of an “heroic” age.  When we use the word “heroic” we think vaguely of something brave, brilliant, splendid, something exciting and invigorating.  A hero is to us a man of clear, vivid personality, valiant, generous, perhaps hot-tempered, a good friend and a good hater.  The word “hero” calls up such figures as Achilles, Patroklos, Hector, figures of passion and adventure.  Now such figures, with their special virtues, and perhaps their proper vices, are not confined to Homer.  They occur in any and every heroic age.  We are beginning now to see that heroic poetry, heroic characters, do not arise from any peculiarity of race or even of geographical surroundings, but, given certain social conditions, they may, and do, appear anywhere and at any time.  The world has seen several heroic ages, though it is, perhaps, doubtful if it will ever see another.  What, then, are the conditions that produce an heroic age? and why was this influx of heroic poetry, coming just when it did, of such immense influence on, and importance to, the development of Greek dramatic art?  Why had it power to change the old, stiff, ritual dithyramb into the new and living drama?  Why, above all things, did the democratic tyrant Peisistratos so eagerly welcome it to Athens?