honour of Cybele, the Cyclops, the Sorrows of Niobe, the Tragic End of
Semele, the Wars of the Titans, the Judgment of Paris, Daphne pursued by
Apollo, the Bucolic Dance, and the Dance of Flowers.




CHAPTER V.

Thespis--The Progress of Tragedy and Comedy--Aeschylus--The
Epopée--Homer--Sophocles--Euripides--Grecian Mimes--The First Athenian
Theatre--Scenery and Effects.


When Thespis first pointed out the tragic path, and when (as Horace
tells us in his Odes) that "The inventor of the Art carried his vagrant
players on a cart," by his introduction of a new personage, who relieved
the chorus, or troop of singers, by reciting some part of a well-known
history, or fable, which gave time for the chorus to rest. All that the
actors repeated between the songs of the chorus was called an episode,
or additional part, consisting often of different adventures, which had
no connexion with each other. Thus Pantomime, the song, and the dance,
which were at first the only performances, became gradually and
insensibly a necessary and ornamental part of the drama.

From this time, the actor, or reciter, was more attended to than the
chorus; however, his part was executed, and it had the powerful charms
of novelty to recommend it, and quickly obscured the lustre of the
chorus, whose songs were now of a different nature, insomuch that the
original subject of them, the praise of Bacchus, was by degrees either