and manly; the subject serious and moral. For they consisted
chiefly of praises of heroes who had died for Sparta, or else of
expressions of detestation for such wretches as had declined the
glorious privilege."

About this time the art of choral song began to be much cultivated in
Greece, particularly in connection with the cult of certain
divinities, especially Dionysos and Apollo. By the term choral song we
are not to understand anything resembling our singing of a chorus in
parts. There was no part-singing in Greece, but merely a singing, or
rather chanting, of national and patriotic songs in unison,
accompanied by the cithara, the national instrument.

Plato speaks of the imitative and semi-dramatic character of the
choral dance ("Laws," II, 655): "Choric movements are imitations of
manners occurring in various actions, chances, characters--each
particular is imitated, and those to whom the words, the song or the
dances are suited, either by nature or habit, or both, cannot help
feeling pleasure in them and calling them beautiful."

About 500 B.C. a room was rented upon the market place for the
practice of the chorus. Every town had its body of singers, who sang
and performed the evolutions of the representative dance appropriate
to the service of the particular divinity to whom they were devoted.
Presently competitive singing came into vogue, in connection with the
famous games, and the art of the poet was taxed, as well as the
musical and more purely vocal arts of the singers themselves, striving
in honorable competition for the glory of their native towns.

In some of the festival occasions the proceedings of the choral songs
were varied by the leader, who improvised rhapsodies upon topics
connected with the life of the divinity or upon national stories. At
proper points the chorus came in with the refrain, which remained a
fixed quantity, being put in, apparently, at whatever points the
inspiration or breath of the leader needed a point of repose. None of
these compositions have come down to us, but the allusions to them in
ancient writings give, perhaps, a sufficiently accurate idea of their
nature.

The added interest incident to the fresh improvisations of the leader
in this form of choral song presently opened toward a lyric drama.
Thespis is credited with having been the first to place the leader
upon a centrally located stage where he could be plainly seen and
heard by all concerned. Now the recitat