localities. At these revels, with their attendant processions, the utmost license was allowed. Especially was this true in the matter of speech. The band of mummers who marched about at the festival of Pan or Dionysus not only sang songs in honour of the god, but were permitted by custom to mock at and insult those persons whose influence and authority ordinarily kept them in awe. Gradually; first, by giving them a song to sing—written specially for the occasion—next by organising their improvised clowning into definite set acting, the Komoi, or bands of revellers, developed into the chorus and actors who performed a Komoidia or comedy. We can thus understand two characteristics of Aristophanes which are apt to strike the modern reader with astonishment and repulsion. The reckless abuse and bitter satire of the old comedy were a continuation of the freedom and license of the village festivals, while his indecency is due, partly to the survival at the festivals of Dionysus of very primitive forms of worship, and partly to the simple and outspoken frankness of the Greeks on topics which modern taste leaves rigorously unmentioned. Towards that "nostalgie de la bone" which is so dangerous a snare to all emotional races, the Greek attitude of mind was one of frank recognition. If, as Aristotle says, the object of tragedy is "to purge our minds of pity and terror" by representing pathetic and awe-inspiring scenes upon the stage, then it is easy to understand how the Greeks brought themselves to believe that the lower emotions and desires might, in a similar manner, be purged away by free and outspoken comedy.
But the period during which the political outspokenness of Aristophanes and his contemporaries flourished was a short one. Comedy developed in Greece far more rapidly than tragedy. The chorus was abolished—the last plays of Aristophanes himself are almost without it—so that we may regard him as not only the greatest writer of the old comedy, but also as the first of the new school of writers in whose work the plot of the play is developed, and the old abuse of political opponents disappears. In the hands of the writers of the fourth century, comedy ceases to be a pamphlet or manifesto directed against men and opinions the poet dislikes, and becomes more and more the form of
