The other dance was comic.  The masked dancers chanted the praises of Dionysos mingled with jeers addressed to the spectators or with humorous reflections on the events of the day.  The same was done for the comic chorus as for the tragic chorus:  actors were introduced, a dialogue, all of a piece, and the spectacle was transferred to Athens.  This was the origin of Comedy.  This is the reason that from this time tragedy has been engaged with heroes, and comedy with every-day life.

Tragedy and comedy preserved some traces of their origin.  Even when they were represented in the theatre, they continued to be played before the altar of the god.  Even after the actors mounted on the platform had become the most important personages of the spectacle, the choir continued to dance and to chant around the altar.  In the comedies, like the masques in other days, sarcastic remarks on the government came to be made; this was the Parabasis.

=The Theatre.=—­That all the Athenians might be present at these spectacles there was built on the side of the Acropolis the theatre of Dionysos which could hold 30,000 spectators.  Like all the Greek theatres, it was open to heaven and was composed of tiers of rock ranged in a half-circle about the orchestra where the chorus performed and before the stage where the play was given.

Plays were produced only at the time of the festivals of the god, but then they continued for several days in succession.  They began in the morning at sunrise and occupied all the time till torch-light with the production of a series of three tragedies (a trilogy) followed by a satirical drama.  Each trilogy was the work of one author.  Other trilogies were presented on succeeding days, so that the spectacle was a competition between poets, the public determining the victor.  The most celebrated of these competitors were AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.  There were also contests in comedy, but there remain to us only the works of one comic poet, Aristophanes.

THE ARTS

=Greek Temples.=—­In Greece the most beautiful edifices were constructed to the honor of the gods, and when we speak of Greek architecture it is their temples that we have in mind.

A Greek temple is not, like a Christian church, designed to receive the faithful who come thither to pray.  It is the palace[86] where the god lives, represented by his idol, a palace which men feel under compulsion to make splendid.  The mass of the faithful do not enter the interior of the temple; they remain without, surrounding the altar in the open air.

At the centre of the temple is the “chamber” of the god, a mysterious sanctuary without windows, dimly lighted from above.[87] On the pavement rises the idol of wood, of marble, or of ivory, clad in gold and adorned with garments and jewels.  The statue is often of colossal size; in the temple of Olympia Zeus is represented sitting and his head almost touches the summit of the temple.  “If the god should rise,” they said, “his head would shatter the roof.”  This sanctuary, a sort of reliquary for the idol, is concealed on every side from the eyes.  To enter, it is necessary to pass through a porch formed by a row of columns.