But of all instruments of public education perhaps the most important was the Drama. This word, which we associate with entertainment after dinner, with tinsel and bad ventilation, meant to the Greeks a religious solemnity destined to the praise of gods and the edification of men. During the fifth century at Athens the stage was far the most powerful form of literary and artistic expression--so much so that as Greek literature in this period is almost entirely absorbed by Athens, all the other voices of poetry are for a time reduced to silence. The amazingly rapid development of this form of expression was largely due to the concentration with which the literary [Illustration: PLATE LII. THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT PHIGALEIA [BASSÆ] _English Photo Co., Athens_] genius of Greece pursued it. Athenian drama, Tragic, Comic, and Satyric, was produced at the festivals of Dionysus, and it has generally been supposed to have taken its rise from rude choruses in honour of the wine-god, developed by Arion and others into the Dithyramb. This is an ancient and respectable theory. The Satyric Drama is obviously connected with wine and the wine-god’s goatish followers, the Satyrs. Comedy was derived from _kōmē_, a village, being originally the rustic form of the same species of mimetic worship. As for Tragedy, that was traced etymologically to the Greek for a goat, and of course the goat has a family relationship with Dionysus. But it has recently been argued that Tragedy was certainly the earliest form of the drama to be developed, and though _we_ may wind up an evening’s jollification by going to see “Othello,” yet ancient Tragedy has, as was often remarked by the ancients themselves, nothing to do with wine or Dionysus, and is scarcely of the festive character that we should associate with that cheerful deity. Professor Ridgeway has shown some reason to believe that the drama took its rise in quite a different manner--namely, from the funeral ceremonies held at the tomb of a dead hero. He shows the frequent appearance of tombs in the scenery of Tragedy, and adduces evidence to prove that the Greeks did include mimetic representations of the dead hero and his deeds among the ceremonies performed in his honour. This would account not only for the character of Tragedy, with its sombre musings upon Death and Fate, but also for the milieu in which its scenes invariably moved--namely, the Epic circle of heroes. Professor Ridgeway further points out that the worship of Dionysus was itself not a very ancient nor a strictly Greek cult. Theatres and dancing-floors are, however, as old as Cnossos.