the chorus were at first, as an ancient writer tells us, just men and
boys, tillers of the earth, who danced when they rested from sowing and
ploughing.

Now it is in the relation between the _orchestra_ or dancing-place of
the chorus, and the _theatre_ or place of the spectators, a relation
that shifted as time went on, that we see mirrored the whole development
from ritual to art--from _dromenon_ to drama.

* * * * *

The orchestra on which the Dithyramb was danced was just a circular
dancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and
sometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle. This circular
orchestra is very well seen in the theatre of Epidaurus, of which a
sketch is given in Fig. 1. The orchestra here is surrounded by a
splendid _theatron_, or spectator place, with seats rising tier above
tier. If we want to realize the primitive Greek orchestra or
dancing-place, we must think these stone seats away. Threshing-floors
are used in Greece to-day as convenient dancing-places. The dance
tends to be circular because it is round some sacred thing, at first a
maypole, or the reaped corn, later the figure of a god or his altar. On
this dancing-place the whole body of worshippers would gather, just as
now-a-days the whole community will assemble on a village green. There
is no division at first between actors and spectators; all are actors,
all are doing the thing done, dancing the dance danced. Thus at
initiation ceremonies the whole tribe assembles, the only spectators are
the uninitiated, the women and children. No one at this early stage
thinks of building a _theatre_, a spectator place. It is in the common
act, the common or collective emotion, that ritual starts. This must