The satyric drama is the one in which we can trace the fewest changes, but it had only a short existence. It was invented by Pratinas, a contemporary of Aeschylus, probably with the intention of compensating the public, who must have sadly missed the popular sports which had formerly enlivened the celebration of the Dionysia, and to satisfy their desire for coarser fare. At first the satyric drama seems to have preceded the tragedies, but this was soon changed. In the best period of the drama we never find satyric plays alone without tragedies preceding them; they were so essentially a part of the tragedy that we only hear of tragic writers as composers of satyric dramas. The best period of the satyric drama was the time of Pratinas and Aeschylus; Sophocles and Euripides, too, composed them--one by the latter has come down to us, the “Cyclops”--but at that time its best period was already over, since it no longer formed the necessary conclusion of a dramatic tetralogy. Still, satyric dramas retained their position on the stage until the second century, and, in fact, the Alexandrine poets made a fresh attempt to connect the satyric drama with tragedies in a tetralogy. We know very little about the subject of these later satyric dramas. The titles of Alexandrine plays that have come down to us show that at that time actual life was introduced, though the mythological subjects which had formed the sole basis of the ancient satyric drama were also used. The ancient drama, under which we include tragedy, satyric drama, and comedy, was a combination of three arts--poetry, music, and dancing. The last was, as a rule, confined to the chorus, and it very seldom happened that an actor in the play performed a dance, but the musical part belonged not only to the chorus but also to the actors; for though the usual dialogue consisted merely in recitation, yet there were long passages in the purely dramatic part which were not declaimed by the actors, but sung. Our modern writers express very different opinions about the mode in which the dialogues were recited. It appears to us most probable that in comedy there was, as a rule, only speaking, without any musical accompaniment; while in tragedy continuous musical composition was introduced alternating with dramatic speech--that is, spoken recitation, accompanied by music--and even with simple declamation. Then there were also solo songs by the actors, of which the metre was lyric, and these bore some resemblance to the airs of our modern opera; they are less common in the older tragedy than in Euripides, with whom they sometimes take a disproportionately large place. There were also musical dialogues between the actors and chorus, in particular its leader. The instruments used for accompaniment were the lyre and cithara, and also the flute. The stringed instruments were used chiefly for striking a few notes like the chords struck at our recitations; the flute only indicated the chief notes, and accompanied