In one point of view the history of the chorus is extremely remarkable. At first, and for some time, it constituted in itself the whole of the spectacle exhibited at the Dionysiac festivals, where its songs and dances, accompanied by such rude music as the times afforded, satisfied the demands of the popular taste, and were consequently supposed to be everything that the god required. By degrees, as experience suggested improvements either in the music, in the manner of dancing, or in the materials and composition of the odes, the movements, singing, and appearance of the Chorus, assumed a more artificial form, which was necessarily carried forward many steps in the career of amelioration by the institution of rival bodies of Choreutæ, who, from the natural principle of emulation, endeavoured to excel each other. Next, a detached member of its own body, mounted on a table, enacted the part of a stranger or messenger come to announce something which it imported the servants of Dionysos to know. This table was doubtless placed directly in front of the altar of Bacchos, on the steps of which the leader of the chorus was probably mounted in after ages, to hold communication with the stranger; and, as this altar ripened through many gradations into the Thymele, so the aforesaid table rose through innumerable changes into the Logeion. It may be remarked, moreover, that the slope of a hill,[974] when any such existed near the village, would naturally be chosen on such occasions to afford the peasants an opportunity of standing behind each other on ascending levels, and thus, without inconvenience, beholding the show; and where such natural aid did not present itself, they probably threw up embankments of turf in the semicircular form, which experience proved to be most convenient, and, out of this rude contrivance, grew those vast and magnificent structures, which afterwards constituted one of the noblest ornaments of Greece. ----- Footnote 974: Cf. Scalig. Poet, i. 21. Leroy, Ruines des plus beaux Monumens de la Grèce, p. 14. ----- The single actor, detached in the manner we have said from the Chorus, speedily acquired greater importance, and the aid of poetry was called in to frame and adorn his recitals; and as, during the songs and dances of the Chorus, he necessarily remained idle, the idea soon suggested itself that a second actor[975] would be an improvement, upon which dialogue and the regular drama sprang into existence. ----- Footnote 975: Cf. Hesych. v. νέμησις ὑποκριτῶν. -----