Perhaps this day was concluded by a “Comus,” as public processions of this kind often followed common banquets, and since it was the god of wine who was specially to be honoured, it was, no doubt, very splendidly equipped. The next days were occupied with representations of tragic tetralogies and comedies; it is not certain whether these lasted two or more days, but it is probable that they continued for three days, and that on each of these a tetralogy was performed in the morning and a comedy in the afternoon. On the evening of the third day of the performances, which concluded the whole festival, the prizes were distributed; in these musical contests they consisted of bulls and tripods. These last were often set up in a public street on a high pedestal by the victors, and hence it acquired the name “Street of Tripods.” Very different in character from these Dionysiac festivals of Attica were the night celebrations which took place in some parts of Greece, but especially on the Cithaeron and Parnassus, on the Islands, and in Asia Minor, every other year, and in which only women, both married and unmarried, took part. The wild and orgiastic character of these Dionysia originated in Thrace, but spread very quickly, and found much favour among the women, who were inclined to this kind of ecstatic worship. They fell in the middle of winter, about the time of the shortest day; the women dressed for the purpose in Bacchic costume, threw deer-skins over their shoulders, let their hair fly loose, and took in their hands the thyrsus staff and tambourine, and thus wandered to the hills near their homes, and there performed all manner of mysterious ceremonies, sacrifices, dances, etc., amid the wildest merriment resulting from the juice of the grape, which was seldom allowed them. We can form some notion of the wild nature of the proceedings from the descriptions of the poets and artistic representations of Maenads; still, we must always remember that both poets and artists described not so much the customs of their own day as those of mythical or heroic periods, and permitted themselves many exaggerations which did not correspond to reality. These descriptions of Greek, and especially Athenian, festivities must suffice, and we pass over a number of festivals in Greece and the colonies, of which we know little more than the names. Those who desire a striking picture of a great festival, which, though Oriental in its origin, had become Hellenised, celebrated in a great city in the Alexandrine age, should read the splendid description by Theocritus in his Fifteenth Idyll of the Feast of Adonis at Alexandria. CHAPTER XII. THE THEATRE.