blems, which purposely obscured, so as to afford but dim and distant glimpses of the forms within, necessarily exercised and sharpened the wit and induced keen and persevering habits of investigation. The reward also and the penalty had the same tendency. A crown, an extra junket, and the applause of the company, cheered the successful Edipos, while the lackwit who beat about the bush without catching the owl, had to make wry faces over a cup of brine or pickle. Theodectes, the sophist, a man distinguished for the excellence of his memory, obtained reputation as a riddle-solver, and denominated such questions the "springs of memory." But whatever the interrogatories themselves may have been, the reward, to which their solution often led, was rather a source of forgetfulness, consisting of a goblet of wine which, when no interpreter could be found, passed to the propounder. The riddle was of course a mine of wealth to the comic poets, who could not be supposed to forego the use of so admirable a contrivance to raise expectation and beget surprise. But it is clear, from the examples still preserved, that they oftener missed than hit. Antiphanes's griphoi on "bringing and not bringing;" on the "porridge-pot;" on a "tart," &c., are poor things; but the following from the "Dream" of Alexis is good: A. A thing exists which nor immortal is, A. SLEEP-that puts all our cares and pains to flight.3 1 Pollux. vi. 108. Suidas. v. ypipos, t. i. p. 628, seq. 2 Etym. Mag. 341, 35, sqq. 3 Athen. x. 71. The following from Eubulos is not amiss: B. A. What is it that, while young, is plump and heavy, Antiphanes, in his Sappho, introduces a very ingenious riddle, partly for the purpose of offering a sarcastic explanation directed against the orators: There is a female which within her bosom Even with the absent, and inform the deaf.1 The poet introduces the "Lesbian maid," explaining the riddle, and this passage of the Athenian comic writer may be regarded as the original of those fine lines in Ovid, which Pope has so elegantly translated: Heaven first taught LETTERS for some wretch's aid, They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires, The virgin's wish without her fears impart, By this time, however, the reader will probably be of opinion, that we have lingered long enough about the dinner-table and its attendant pastimes. We shall therefore hasten the departure of the guests, who after burning the tongues of the animals that had been sacrificed, to intimate that whatever had been uttered was to be kept secret, offered 1 Athen. x. 73. libations to Zeus, Hermes, and other gods, and took their leave, in ancient times before sunset; but afterwards, as luxury and extravagance increased, the morning sun often enabled them to dispense with link-boys. Examples, indeed, of similar perversions of the night occur in Homer and Virgil, but always among the reckless or effeminate in the palaces of princes, whence, in all ages, the stream of immorality has flowed downward upon society to disturb and pollute it. The company assembled at Agathon's, also, sit up all night in Plato; and Aristophanes represents drunken men reeling home through the agora by daylight. 220 CHAPTER VII. THE THEATRE. IT is far from being my purpose to repeat the information which may be obtained from a hundred authors on the rise and progress of scenic representation in Greece. I shall, on the contrary, confine myself chiefly to those parts of the subject which others have either altogether neglected, or treated in a concise and unsatisfactory manner. It would, nevertheless, be beside my purpose to attempt the clearing up of all such difficulties as occur in the accounts transmitted to us of the Hellenic drama; and, in fact, notwithstanding the laborious investigations into which I have been compelled to enter, I feel that there are many points upon which I can throw no new light, and which appear likely for ever to baffle the ingenuity of architects and scholars. Dionysos, being a deity connected with agriculture, his worship naturally took its rise, and for a long time prevailed chiefly, in the country. His festivals were celebrated with merriment; and, the power of mimicry being natural to man, the rustics, when congregated to set forth the praise of their tutelar god, easily glided into the enactment of a farcical show. And dramatic exhibitions at the outset were little superior to the feats of Punch, though, so great was their suitableness to the national character, that, in the course of time, every town of note had its own theatre, as it had of old its own dithyrambic bard;' and dramatic writers were 1 Schol. Aristoph. Av. 1404. multiplied incomparably beyond what they have been in any other country. Both tragedy and comedy,' properly so called, took their rise in Attica, and there only, in the ancient world, flourished and grew up to perfection. The theatre, in fact, formed at length a part of the constitution, and, probably, the worst part, its tendency being to foster personal enmities, to stir the sources of malice, and, while pretending to purge off the dross of the passions by the channels of sorrow and mirth, to induce habits of idleness and political apathy, by affording in the brilliant recesses of a mock world a facile refuge from the toils and duties of the real one. Nevertheless, it may be curious to open up a view into that universe of shadows wherein the vast creations of Eschylus, of Sophocles, of Euripides, of Aristophanes, and Menander displayed themselves before the eyes of the Athenians, with a costly grandeur and magnificence never equalled save in imperial Rome. It has been already remarked, that to the Dionysiac theatre of Athens the architectural speculations of Vitruvius on dramatic edifices apply, this building having constituted the model on which similar structures were afterwards erected.2 By carefully studying its details, therefore, we shall be enabled to form a tolerably just conception of all the theatres once found in Greece, though each, perhaps, may have been slightly modified in plan, general arrange 1 See Bentley, Dissert. on Phal. i. 251. On the form and construction of ancient theatres, see Chandler, Travels, &c., who describes the ruins of the theatre of Teos. i. 110; of Ephesos, 138; of Miletos, (457 feet in length,) 168; of Myos, 191; of Stratonica, 222; of Nysa, built with a blueveined marble, 245; of Laodicea, 262; of Ægina, ii. 16; of Athens, 113; of Eleusis, 215; on the theatre of Syracuse, see Antiq. of Athens, &c. Supplementary to Stuart, by Cockerel, Donaldson, &c. p. 38.-See a plan of the theatre in the grove of Asclepios at Epidauros, pl. 1. p. 55, and another of that of Dramysos, near Joannina, pl. 3.-(Compare on the Dionysiac Theatre, Leake, Topog. of Athens, p. 53, sqq.) |