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 Adrastos." 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.