os." We think of "tragic" choruses as
belonging exclusively to the theatre and Dionysos; so did Herodotus, but
clearly here they belonged to a local hero. His adventures and his death
were commemorated by choral dances and songs. Now when Cleisthenes
became tyrant of Sicyon he felt that the cult of the local hero was a
danger. What did he do? Very adroitly he brought in from Thebes another
hero as rival to Adrastos. He then split up the worship of Adrastos;
part of his worship, and especially his sacrifices, he gave to the new
Theban hero, but the tragic choruses he gave to the common people's god,
to Dionysos. Adrastos, the objectionable hero, was left to dwindle and
die. No local hero can live on without his cult.

The act of Cleisthenes seems to us a very drastic proceeding. But
perhaps it was not really so revolutionary as it seems. The local hero
was not so very unlike a local _daemon_, a Spring or Winter spirit. We
have seen in the Anthesteria how the paternal ghosts are expected to
look after the seeds in spring. The more important the ghost the more
incumbent is this duty upon him. _Noblesse oblige_. On the river
Olynthiakos[41] in Northern Greece stood the tomb of the hero Olynthos,
who gave the river its name. In the spring months of Anthesterion and
Elaphebolion the river rises and an immense shoal of fish pass from the
lake of Bolbe to the river of Olynthiakos, and the inhabitants round
about can lay in a store of salt fish for all their needs. "And it is a
wonderful fact that they never pass by the monument of Olynthus. They
say that formerly the people used to perform the accustomed rites to
the dead in the month Elaphebolion, but now they do them in
Anthesterion, _and that on this account the fish come up in those months
only_ in which they are wont to do honour to the dead." The river is the
chief source of the food-supply, so to send fish, not seeds and flowers,
is the dead hero's business.

Peisistratos was not so daring as Cleisthenes. We do not hear that he
disturbed or diminished any local cult. He did not attempt to move the
Anthesteria with its ghost cult; he only added a new festival, and
trusted to its recent splendour gradually to efface the old. And at this
new festival he celebrated the deeds of other heroes, not local but of
greater splendour and of wider fame. If he did not bring Homer to
Athens, he at least gave Homer official recognition. Now to bring Homer
to Athens was like opening the