Very recently, notable efforts have been put forth to interpret the religious practices of the Greeks, partly in the light of anthropology and partly in accordance with the new psychological method which inquires, not what the god is, but what are the social activities and the social organization of his devotees. Whatever may be said for these avenues of approach in other respects, in practice those who employ them have shown more eagerness to assemble data which might be considered confirmatory of their theories than to reach an unprejudiced interpretation of the whole body of ancient evidence. Thus, much has been made of present-day carnivals in Thessaly, Thrace, and Scyrus,[13] and these ceremonies are employed as if they were assured survivals of the primitive rites from which Greek drama developed and as if their evidence were of greater value than the most firmly established data in the ancient tradition. Now the a priori possibility that these carnivals should retain their essential features unchanged through two and a half millenniums amid all the vicissitudes which have come upon these regions must be pronounced infinitesimal. And an examination of the details confirms this impression. Certain parts of the ceremonies are parodies of the Christian rites of marriage and burial. Not only an Arab but also a Frank appear in the cast of characters. Though Phrynichus is said to have been the first to represent female rôles,[14] such rôles abound in these modern plays. Yet there is another defect in this assumption which is still more serious. If there is one well-authenticated fact in the history of Greek drama, expressly stated in ancient notices and fully substantiated by the extant plays, it is that tragedy arose from a choral performance and only gradually acquired its histrionic features. On the contrary, these carnivals are predominantly histrionic; there is either no chorus or its rôle is distinctly secondary. Had Aristotle been guilty of such a _faux pas_, we can easily imagine the derisive comments in which modern investigators would have indulged at his expense.