learning that he had been seized by pirates, were shipwrecked near Mt. Aetna, and enslaved by the Cyclops (vss. 11 ff.). The situation in the _Trackers_ is still more forced. The play deals with the theft of Apollo’s cattle by the infant Hermes. Upon the offer of a reward, the satyrs turn detectives in order to track down the stolen beasts. Thus it will be seen that in both plays the Dionysiac element is a mechanical, extraneous feature in the plot. It is not surprising that the dramatic poets should chafe under the limitations of so clumsy a compromise.[235] Yet again, in the case of comedy the situation was still different. The embryonic form of comedy, the comus, was originally intended by a sort of sympathetic magic to superinduce friendly powers and to expel malign spirits, and involved neither plot, unity of theme, nor fiction. When these features were introduced, they were influenced by mature tragedy and by the Sicilian mime, which had already reached a high stage of development (see pp. 36 f. and 46-52, above). As a result, though comedy had become as much a part of Dionysiac worship as was tragedy or satyric drama, it did not go through a stage of Bacchic or semi-Bacchic themes, but passed at once to fictitious subjects. The difference between tragedy and comedy in this regard is clearly indicated by Antiphanes, a poet of Middle Comedy:[236] Tragedy is a happy creation in every respect, since the audience knows the plot before ever a word has been spoken. The tragic poet needs only to awaken their memories. If I barely mention Oedipus, they know all the rest: that his father is Laius, his mother Jocaste, who are his sons and daughters, what he has done, and what will befall him.... This is not possible for us, but we must invent everything: new names, preceding events, the present circumstances, the catastrophe, and the exposition. Furthermore, the Sicilian mime seems to have been unassociated with religious worship, and perhaps this fact has a share in explaining the irreverent, almost atheistic, tendency which Attic comedy manifested. Though it was part of divine worship, it treated the divinities with the utmost disrespect. Even Dionysus himself, the patron deity of the festivals, is represented in Aristophanes’ _Frogs_ as cowardly, lecherous, and foolish, beaten with many stripes before the eyes of his worshipers.