The worship of the god Dionysus,--later mixed up in tradition with Bacchus,--was responsible for much reckless license that was the earliest form of comedy. Dionysus, being deity of the vineyard, as well as of phallic worship, lent himself readily to the grotesque representations and hysterical orgies of his followers and Greek Comedy was probably the outcome of this. In these Dionysiac festivals the processions and parades represented everything imaginable that was bizarre or ridiculous. As in all ages, before and since, the mummers clothed themselves in the likeness of animals, and invented horrible masks. Comedy came to be abuse, ridicule and parody of sacred things. Notwithstanding Coleridge’s comment, laughter was universal in Greece and Plato declared the _agelastoi_ or non-laughers to be the least respectable of mortals. Small wonder then that their mirth exhibited itself in drawings and paintings. These mediums were easier to come by than writings, and the early grotesques and caricatures of the Greeks are drawings on Greek vases which show the playfulness as well as the serious purpose of the artist-potter. The first and greatest of Greek poets adds strokes of wit to his stories of the Trojan war. When Ulysses returns from the siege of Ilium he stops at the island of Sicily, and he and his companions are caught by the one-eyed giant Polyphemus and imprisoned in his cave. Then comes the story of the crafty leader’s escape, after some of his companions had been slain and eaten by the monster. It is a most amusing story, told with all Greek humor, how the giant was blinded with the burnt stick which gouged out his eye while in a drunken sleep; how the Greeks escaped through the entrance by clinging under the bodies of his sheep, while he felt of them one by one to see that not a Greek escaped. Then comes the giant’s howling call to his distant companions, and in answer to their question, who had blinded him, his telling them that “Outis” (Nobody) had done it, _Outis_ (_Nobody_) being the name Ulysses had given the giant as his own. “If nobody has done it”, replied his companions, “then it is the act of the gods”, and they left him to endure his loss. Thus the Greeks escape to their ships and taunt the monster as they flee away, followed by his vain pursuit. Homer relieves the wisdom of Ulysses and the dignity of Agamemnon with the gibes of Thersites or the rude humor of the suitors of Penelope, the trick of whose embroidery is itself an amusing story. Greece, of course, was the cradle of all that we now call art. Landscape painters, painters of animals and portrait limners, as well as still life artists and sculptors and workers in mosaics reached a high state of perfection. Then naturally the caricaturists and comic artists could not be wanting there. Burlesque affected their pencils and brushes as it had their speech and caricature and parody were rampant.