the hill-side or on wooden seats; there was
as yet no permanent _the{-a}tron_ or spectator-place, still less a stone
stage; the _dromena_ were done on the dancing-place. But for
spectator-place they had the south slope of the Acropolis. What kind of
wooden stage they had unhappily we cannot tell. It may be that only a
portion of the orchestra was marked off.

* * * * *

Why did Peisistratos, if he cared little for magic and ancestral ghosts,
take such trouble to foster and amplify the worship of this
maypole-spirit, Dionysos? Why did he add to the Anthesteria, the
festival of the family ghosts and the peasant festival "in the fields,"
a new and splendid festival, a little later in the spring, the _Great
Dionysia_, or _Dionysia of the City_? One reason among others was
this--Peisistratos was a "tyrant."

Now a Greek "tyrant" was not in our sense "tyrannical." He took his own
way, it is true, but that way was to help and serve the common people.
The tyrant was usually raised to his position by the people, and he
stood for democracy, for trade and industry, as against an idle
aristocracy. It was but a rudimentary democracy, a democratic tyranny,
the power vested in one man, but it stood for the rights of the many as
against the few. Moreover, Dionysos was always of the people, of the
"working classes," just as the King and Queen of the May are now. The
upper classes worshipped then, as now, not the Spirit of Spring but
_their own ancestors_. But--and this was what Peisistratos with great
insight saw--Dionysos must be transplanted from the fields to the city.
The country is always conservative, the natural stronghold of a landed
aristocracy, with fixed traditions; the city with its closer contacts
and consequent swifter changes, and, above all, with its acquired, not
inherited, wealth, tends towards democracy. Peisistratos left the
Dionysia "in the fields," but he added the Great Dionysia "in the city."

Peisistratos was not the only tyrant who concerned himself with the
_dromena_ of Dionysos. Herodotos[40] tells the story of another tyrant,
a story which is like a window opening suddenly on a dark room. At
Sicyon, a town near Corinth, there was in the _agora_ a _heroon_, a
hero-tomb, of an Argive hero, Adrastos.

"The Sicyonians," says Herodotos, "paid other honours to Adrastos, and,
moreover, they celebrated his death and disasters with tragic choruses,
not honouring Dionysos but Adrast