sented on any public
stage in Christendom. The whole play is beyond the toleration of modern
mores. We meet with jugglers in Homer,[1994] also mountebanks and
tumblers.[1995] The _kubisteteres_ spun around on the perpendicular axis
of the body, and are compared to the wheel of the potter. Then they
pitched down head-foremost, like plungers or tumblers turning
somersaults. Some archaeologs have thought that the play of these persons
had some analogy with that of the cubic stones which were so prominent
in the cult of the Phrygian Cybele. If that analogy is accepted, then
the pyramidal dance must be regarded as originally hieratic and
consecrated to Cybele. That dance was at first aristocratic, but
speedily became popular and descended to the mountebanks.[1996]

+618. Origin of Athenian drama.+ The theater originated in the Dionysiac
mysteries of the Greeks, in which dramatic action and responsive
choruses were employed. Sex symbols were used without reserve.
Intoxication and ecstasy belonged to due performance. In later mysteries
dramatic action was employed to present myths and legends, or religious
doctrines, in order to get the powerful effects in suggestion which
dramatic action exerts. Many myths presented acts such as later mores
could not tolerate. Allowance had to be made for the representations, as
we now make allowances for Bible stories and Shakespeare. We know that
the mysteries were often in bad repute for their indecency and realism,
even in an age of low standards. Anybody who is not in the convention
can scoff at it, however low his own code may be. The Greeks described
the Phrygian mysteries as abominable and immoral, while they praised and
admired the Eleusinian. "The former were introduced by slaves and
foreigners, and participated in by the superstitious and ignorant. They
were celebrated for money by strolling priests, and any one who paid a
fee was initiated without preparation, except some ritual acts. There
was no solemnity in the surroundings, and no dignity in the ceremonial,
but all was vulgar and sordid."[1997] The Athenian drama, in the fifth
century B.C., went through an amazing development and reached high
perfection. The art of the theater was especially cultivated. As to the
effect of the dramas on the character of the spectators, it is to be
noticed that they were presented only once in the year, at the greater
festival of Dionysus in the spring, and that then a large number of
plays wer