CHAPTER III.
ANTECEDENTS: NATIONAL AND POLITICAL.
Athens and the drama.—By a coincidence fruitful in results, the worship of the Theban Dionysus had been carried from Eleutheræ to Athens, and had taken firm root in the affections of the people, before the grand awakening of national life which had its triumph in the Persian War. Without the reforms of Cleisthenes, without Marathon, Attic tragedy would have existed, but could never have attained perfection. The same causes which made the Parthenon excel the temple of Theseus, wrought still more powerfully in giving undying significance to the works of Æschylus and Sophocles. The art in which a nation takes delight and pride at the moment when its own life is culminating, has a supreme chance of reaching its own highest form; and the drama, being a thing dependent upon "public means" (χορηγίας δεόμενον) could not have grown at all, had not this service been willingly undertaken as a public burden (λειτουργία). The Pisistratidæ, indeed, might have undertaken this for their own glory. But in the succeeding age this liberality on the part of wealthier men was but the outward sign of the spontaneous universal interest. The audience of Æschylus and Sophocles were in fact the Athenian citizens en masse, assembled in the spirit of Dionysus at moments of high solemnity, and finding in his observance an outlet for profound emotions which stirred them individually and socially. They were a people who had lately learned that political freedom is an excellent
