During the best period of the chorus its mimetic dancing must have been a wonderful spectacle. We hear of highly-skilled performers who could reproduce action so that the audience followed every detail. They seem to have “accompanied” some portions of the episodes in this manner; and that fact may account for a rather curious feature in the _Ion_. The messenger gives a remarkably detailed description of the designs upon the embroideries wherewith Ion roofed his great banqueting-marquee—the constellations and “Dawn pursuing the stars” are all described. Possibly this was written for the sake of an unusually brilliant mimetic evolution by groups of choreutæ. The chorus had other duties during the episodes. As a body they normally showed themselves interested spectators; thus the chorus of _Orestes_ enter in order to inquire of Electra concerning her sick brother. Not infrequently they do more, taking an actual share in events. At the close of _Agamemnon_ the Argive elders are at point to do battle with Ægisthus and his henchmen; in _Alcestis_ they join the funeral procession; at other times they aid the persons of the play, not only by misleading enemies (_Choephorœ_) or directing friends (_Œdipus Tyrannus_) but by keeping watch (_Orestes_). Further, the coryphæus almost always delivers two or three lines at the end of every long speech, save when it ends a scene. These little interpolations are invariably obvious and feeble. After Hermione’s tirade against women the coryphæus comments thus: “Too freely hast thou indulged thy tongue against thy sex. It is pardonable in thee, but still women should gloss over the weaknesses of women.” Anyone who has listened to the delivery of some splendid passage in Shakespeare, an outburst of Lear or Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech, will remember how the applause which follows it drowns the next speaker’s opening lines. Some pause is needed. This is provided in Greek tragedy by the insertion of a line or two which will not be missed if inaudible. The satyric chorus diverged little from the tragic in the points discussed under this section. It had, however, a special type of dance called the “Sikinnis”. “One of the postures used ... was called the owl, and is variously explained by the old grammarians as having consisted in shading the eyes with the hands, or in turning the head to and fro like an owl.”[198] VI. THE AUDIENCE The time of the Dionysiac festivals, especially the great Dionysia, was a holiday for all Athens, and the centre of enjoyment was the show of tragedies and comedies. At sunrise the theatre was filled with a huge throng prepared to sit packed together for hours facing the sun with no interval for a meal or for exercise. It is important to remember that in Athens that incalculable play-goer, “the average man,” did really enjoy and appreciate first-class dramatic work.