tradition, is originally the ritual play of Dionysus, performed at his
festival, and representing, as Herodotus tells us, the 'sufferings'
or 'passion' of that God. We are never directly told what these
'sufferings' were which were so represented; but Herodotus remarks that
he found in Egypt a ritual that was 'in almost all points the same'. (1)
This was the well-known ritual of Osiris, in which the god was torn
in pieces, lamented, searched for, discovered or recognized, and the
mourning by a sudden Reversal turned into joy. In any tragedy which
still retained the stamp of its Dionysiac origin, this Discovery and
Peripety might normally be expected to occur, and to occur together. I
have tried to show elsewhere how many of our extant tragedies do, as a
matter of fact, show the marks of this ritual.(2)

(1) Cf. Hdt. ii. 48; cf. 42,144. The name of Dionysus must not be openly
mentioned in connexion with mourning (ib. 61, 132, 86). This may help to
explain the transference of the tragic shows to other heroes.

(2) In Miss Harrison's _Themis_, pp. 341-63.

I hope it is not rash to surmise that the much-debated word
__katharsis__, 'purification' or 'purgation', may have come into
Aristotle's mouth from the same source. It has all the appearance of
being an old word which is accepted and re-interpreted by Aristotle
rather than a word freely chosen by him to denote the exact phenomenon
he wishes to describe. At any rate the Dionysus ritual itself was a
_katharmos_ or _katharsis_--a purification of the community from the
taints and poisons of the past year, the old contagion of sin and death.
And the words of Aristotle's definition of tragedy in Chapter VI
might have been used in the days of Thespis in a much cruder and
less metaphorical sense. According to primitive ideas, the mimic
representation on the stage of 'incidents arousing pity and fear' did
act as a _katharsis_ of such 'passions' or 'sufferings' in real life.
(For the word _pathemata_ means 'sufferings' as well as 'passions'.)
It is worth remembering that in the year 361 B.C., during Aristotle's
lifetime, Greek tragedies were introduced into Rome, not on artistic but
on superstitious grounds, as a _katharmos_ against a pestilence (Livy
vii. 2). One cannot but suspect that in his account of the purpose
of tragedy Aristotle may be using an old traditional formula, and
consciously or unconsciously investing it with a new meaning, much as he
has done with the word _