The sports,[1593] which took place during the vintage, were loud and frolicsome, and distinguished sometimes for their excessive licence. They brought forth a number of wine skins, filled tight, to the village green, and there smearing them liberally with oil the staggering rustics sought, each in his turn, to leap and stand upon one of them with his naked foot.[1594] The missing, slipping, and falling, the awkward figure they sometimes made upon the ground, the jokes, and shouts, and laughter of the bystanders, mingled with the twanging of rustic instruments, and the roar of Bacchanalian songs, constituted the charm of the rural Dionysia, out of which, through many changes and gradations, arose, as we have seen, the Greek drama. In order without shame to give the freer licence to their tongues, they sometimes covered their faces with masks, formed with the bark of trees, which, there can be no doubt, led to those afterwards employed in the theatre. Sometimes a sort of farce[1595] was acted, representing the search of the Athenians for the bodies of Icarios and Erygone. The former, according to tradition, was the person who taught the inhabitants of Attica the use of wine, with which on a certain occasion he regaled a number of shepherds. These demi-savages, observing their strength and their reason fail, imagined themselves to have been poisoned, and falling, in revenge, upon the donor, put him to death. His dog Mœra escaped, and leading Erygone to the spot where her father had been murdered, she immediately hung herself on the discovery of the corpse. Upon this they were all transported to the skies, and changed into so many constellations, namely Boötes,[1596] the Dog, and the Virgin, by whose brilliancy we are still rejoiced nightly. Soon afterwards the maidens of Attica were seized with madness and hung themselves in great numbers, upon which the oracle being consulted, commanded the Athenians to make search for the bodies of Icarios and Erygone. Being able to discover them nowhere on earth, they suspended ropes from the branches of lofty trees, by swinging to and fro on which they appeared to be conducting their search in the air; but many of these adventurous explorers receiving severe falls, they were afterwards contented with suspending to the ropes little images after their own likeness, which they sent hither and thither in the air as their substitutes. ----- Footnote 1593: Virg. Georg. ii. 580, sqq. Hes. Scut. Heracl. 291, sqq. Cf. Schol. Theocrit. i. 48. Footnote 1594: See Book ii. chapter 3. Footnote 1595: Serv. ad Virg. Georg. ii. 389. Footnote 1596: Æl. de Anim. vi. 25. -----