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conditions that produce an heroic age? and why was this influx of heroic
poetry, coming just when it did, of such immense influence on, and
importance to, the development of Greek dramatic art? Why had it power
to change the old, stiff, ritual dithyramb into the new and living
drama? Why, above all things, did the democratic tyrant Peisistratos so
eagerly welcome it to Athens?

In the old ritual dance the individual was nothing, the choral band, the
group, everything, and in this it did but reflect primitive tribal life.
Now in the heroic _saga_ the individual is everything, the mass of the
people, the tribe, or the group, are but a shadowy background which
throws up the brilliant, clear-cut personality into a more vivid light.
The epic poet is all taken up with what he called _klea andron_,
"glorious deeds of men," of individual heroes; and what these heroes
themselves ardently long and pray for is just this glory, this personal
distinction, this deathless fame for their great deeds. When the armies
meet it is the leaders who fight in single combat. These glorious heroes
are for the most part kings, but not kings in the old sense, not
hereditary kings bound to the soil and responsible for its fertility.
Rather they are leaders in war and adventure; the homage paid them is a
personal devotion for personal character; the leader must win his
followers by bravery, he must keep them by personal generosity.
Moreover, heroic wars are oftenest not tribal feuds consequent on tribal
raids, more often they arise from personal grievances, personal
jealousies; the siege of Troy is undertaken not because the Trojans have
raided the cattle of the Achaeans, but because a single Trojan, Paris,
has carried off Helen, a single Achaean's wife.

Another noticeable point is that in heroic poems scarcely any one is
safely and quietly at home. The heroes are fighting in far-off lands or
voyaging by sea; hence we hear little of tribal and even of family ties.
The real centre is not the hearth, but the leader's tent or ship. Local
ties that bind to particular spots of earth are cut, local differences
fall into abeyance, a sort of cosmopolitanism, a forecast of
pan-Hellenism, begins to arise. And a curious point--all this is
reflected in the gods. We hear scarcely anything of local cults, nothing
at all of local magical maypoles and Carryings-out of Winter and
Bringings-in of Summer, nothing whatever of "Suppers" for the souls, or
even of w