lexity was here necessary. The origin of the comic
drama furnishes an illustration of this. It commenced in the harvest
homes of Greece and Sicily--in the festivals of the grape-gatherers at
the completion of the vintage. They paraded the villages, crowned with
vine-leaves, carrying poles and branches, and smeared with the juice of
grapes. Their aim was to provoke general merriment by dancing, singing,
and grotesque attitudes, and by giving rein to their coarse and
pugnacious propensities. Spectators and passers by were assailed with
invectives, pelted with missiles, and treated to all that hostile humour
which is associated with practical joking. So vile was their language
and conduct that "comedy" came to signify abuse and vilification. As the
taste for music and rhythm became general in that sunny clime, even
these rioters adopted a kind of verse, by which rustic genius could give
additional point to scurrility. Thus arose the Iambic measure used at
the festivals of Ceres and Bacchus, and afterwards fabled to have been
invented by Iambe, the daughter of the King of Eleusis. Hence, also,
came the jesting used in celebrating the rites of Ceres in Sicily, and
the custom for people to post themselves on the bridge leading to
Eleusis in Attica, and to banter and abuse those going to the festivals.
The story of Iambe only marks the rural origin of the metre, and its
connection with Ceres, the Goddess of Harvest. Eleusis was her chosen
abode, and next in her favour was Paros; and here we accordingly find
the first improvement made upon these uncouth and virulent effusions.
About the commencement of the 7th century, Archilochus, a native of this
place, harnessed his ribaldries better, and put them into a "light horse
gallop." He raised the Iambic style and metre so as to obtain the
unenviable notoriety of having been the first to dip his pen in viper's
gall. Good cause had he for his complaints, for a young lady's father,
one Lycambes, refused to give him his daughter's hand. There was
apparently some difficulty about the marriage gifts--the poet having
nothing to give but himself. Rejected, he took to writing defamatory
verses on Lycambes and his daughters, and composed them with so much
skill and point that the whole family hanged themselves. Allusions,
which led to such a catastrophe, could not now be regarded as
pleasantries; but at that time he obtained a high reputation, and
perhaps the suicide of the wretched Lycambes w