We must now consider what is perhaps the greatest and the most original creation of the Greek mind--the drama. Its forms we have seen in lyric poetry and in pantomimic dances of the chorus, furnishing the elements of dialogue and representative action. These forms are to be found independently among other nations of antiquity, but their combination is peculiar to the Greeks, to whom the entire world is indebted for the art of the theatre. Like the dithyrambic chorus, whose close connection with the worship of Dionysos we have observed, the drama was perpetually associated with these Bacchic festivals. The very name tragedy (from [Greek: tragos] = goat) indicates its root form--the satyr play, executed by men disguised with fur skin and the cloven hoof to represent the votaries of the God. Here is added another element of the drama--impersonation--though earlier cases of it are seen, for instance, in the disguise of the poet Chrysothemis as the god Apollo, when performing his compositions. Allegory and symbolism were things to which the Greek mind naturally inclined. Mythological conceptions were often visualized, such as the favorite fight of Apollo and the dragon, the myth of Demeter and Persephone represented in the Eleusinian mysteries, etc. The word [Greek: dran] is the general expression for secret action in the Pagan cult, hence in the antique drama, no less than our own opera, we may recognize a sacred origin (cf. Chap. XI, p. 325). The dithyrambic chorus, whose members themselves are thought to have been disguised as satyrs, furnished the last preparatory step leading to the tragedy, which, it should be noted, gradually developed out of the non-choral sections, the solo speeches of the leaders.[41] Similarly, the Comedy had its beginning in the rather coarse witticisms of the choral leaders in the Bacchic processions of the Dionysos festival (cf. Aristotle, 'Poetics,’ 4).