manner they gradually make their exit from the orchestra.[962] The comic dance was called the ‘kordax’. Its movements were coarse and lascivious, and its general style was suggestive of the phallic songs out of which comedy had been developed. It was a dance for drunken people, and no one but a man without any sense of shame would dance it when he was sober. It was considered vulgar and disgraceful by Plato, and excluded from his commonwealth.[963] Aristophanes, in the Clouds, takes credit to himself for having abandoned it in that play; but, as the scholiast remarks, he frequently introduces it elsewhere.[964] In the comic dances the wildest movements were admissible. The chorus, at the end of the Wasps, when encouraging the sons of Carcinus to fresh exertions, bid them ‘whirl round like tops, and fling their legs up into the sky’. Occasionally the circular dance of the dithyrambic chorus was adopted in comedy.[965] The dance used in the satyric drama was called the ‘sikinnis’. It was mainly a parody and caricature of noble and graceful dances, and was very violent and rapid in its movements. One of the postures used in the satyric dance 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.[966] § 7. _The Music._ The music of a Greek play was simple in its character, and altogether subordinate to the poetry. As Plutarch remarks, it was a sort of seasoning or relish, the words being the main attraction.[967] Any comparison therefore between a Greek play and a modern opera, as far as the music is concerned, must be entirely illusive. In the first place all Greek choral singing was in unison. The use of harmony in choral compositions was apparently unknown to the Greeks. Even in modern times Greek Church Music has retained the practice of chanting in unison. Consequently the general style of the music in a Greek drama must have been exceedingly simple and severe compared with the intricate combinations of modern music. In the second place, the music was fitted to the words, instead of the words being subordinated to the music. Each note of the music corresponded, in most cases, to a separate syllable of the verse, and the time of the music was determined entirely by the metre of the verse. The ode was chanted in unison, syllable after syllable, by the whole body of the choreutae. The modern practice of adapting the words to the exigences of the music, and making different parts of the chorus sing different words at the same time, was altogether unknown. Hence it is probable that the words of a Greek chorus were heard with considerable distinctness by the whole audience. When all the singing was in unison, and the notes of the music corresponded to the syllables of the verse, there was no reason why this should not be the case. In modern choral singing the poetry is so far sacrificed to the music that