Needless to say the translation--Dean Plumptre's in the main--
fails to bring out the force of the original.

We must remember that for his audiences the story he had to tell
was not the important thing. They knew it in advance; it was
one of their familiar legends. What they went to hear was
Aeschylus' treatment of it; his art, his poetry, his preaching.
That was what was new to them: the thing for which their eyes
and ears were open. We go to the theater, as we read novels, for
amusement; the Athenians went for aesthetic and religious ends.
So Aechylus had ready for him an efficient pulpit; and was not
suspect for using it. We like Movies shows because they are
entertaining and exciting; the Athenian would have damned them
because they are inartistic.

I said, he had a pulpit ready for him; yet, as nearly as such a
statement can come to truth, it was he himself who invented the
drama. It was, remember, an age of transition: things were
passing out from the inner planes: the Mysteries were losing
their virtue. The Egyptian Mysteries had been dramatic in
character; the Eleusinian, which were very likely borrowed or
copied or introduced from Egypt, were no doubt dramatic too.
Then there had been festivals among the rustics, chiefly in
honor of Dionysos not altogether in his higher aspects, with
rudimentary plays of a coarse buffoonish character. By 499, in
Athens, these had grown to something more important; in that
year the wooden scaffolding of the theater in which they were
given broke down under the spectators; and this led to the
building of a new theater in stone. It was in 499 Aeschylus first
competed; the show was still very rudimentary in character. Then