the well-known and very beautiful lines of Moschus in the _Lament for
Bion_, which may be freely translated thus:

Ah me! The mallows, anise, and each flower
That withers at the blast of winter's breath
Await the vernal, renovating hour
And joyously awake from feigned death.

The idea which impelled these ancient Greeks to perform ritualistic
_dromena_ on their orchestras, which took the place of what we should
call the stage, is not yet dead. Miss Harrison quotes from Mr. Lawson's
work on modern Greek folklore, which is a perfect mine of knowledge on
the subject of the survival of ancient religious customs in modern
Greece, the story of an old woman in Euboea who was asked on Easter Eve
why village society was in a state of gloom and despondency, and who
replied: "Of course, I am anxious; for if Christ does not rise
to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year."

It was during the fifth century that the _dromenon_ and the Dionysiac
Dithyramb passed to some extent away and were merged into the drama.
"Homer came to Athens, and out of Homeric stories playwrights began to
make their plots." The chief agent in effecting this important change
was the so-called "tyrant" Pisistratus, who was probably a free-thinker
and "cared little for magic and ancestral ghosts," but who for political
reasons wished to transport the Dionysia from the country to the town.
"Now," Miss Harrison says, "to bring Homer to Athens was like opening
the eyes of the blind." Independently of the inevitable growth of
scepticism which was the natural result of increased knowledge and more
acute powers of observation, it is no very hazardous conjecture to
assume that the quick-witted and pleasure-loving Athenians welcomed the
relief afforded to the dreary monotony of the ancient _dromena_ by the
introduction of the more lively episodes drawn from the heroic sagas.
"Without destroying the old, Pisistratus contrived to introduce the new,
to add to the old plot of Summer and Winter the life-stories of heroes,
and thereby arose the drama."

Having established her case so far, Miss Harrison makes what she herself
terms "a great leap." She passes from the thing _done_, whether
_dromenon_ or drama, to the thing _made_. She holds that as it was the
god who arose from the rite, similarly it was the ritual connected with
the worship of the god which gave birth to his representation in
sculpture. Art, she says, is not, as is commonly supposed,