yers might be better viewed. It was simply a tent, or rude hut, in
which the players, or rather dancers, could put on their ritual dresses.
The fact that the Greek theatre had, to begin with, no permanent stage
in our sense, shows very clearly how little it was regarded as a
spectacle. The ritual dance was a _dromenon_, a thing to be done, not a
thing to be looked at. The history of the Greek stage is one long story
of the encroachment of the stage on the orchestra. At first a rude
platform or table is set up, then scenery is added; the movable tent is
translated into a stone house or a temple front. This stands at first
outside the orchestra; then bit by bit the _scene_ encroaches till the
sacred circle of the dancing-place is cut clean across. As the drama and
the stage wax, the _dromenon_ and the orchestra wane.

This shift in the relation of dancing-place and stage is very clearly
seen in Fig. 2, a plan of the Dionysiac theatre at Athens (p. 144). The
old circular orchestra shows the dominance of ritual; the new curtailed
orchestra of Roman times and semicircular shape shows the dominance of
the spectacle.

[Illustration: Fig. 2. Dionysiac Theatre at Athens.]

Greek tragedy arose, Aristotle has told us, from the _leaders_ of the
Dithyramb, the leaders of the Spring Dance. The Spring Dance, the mime
of Summer and Winter, had, as we have seen, only one actor, one actor
with two parts--Death and Life. With only one play to be played, and
that a one-actor play, there was not much need for a stage. A _scene_,
that is a _tent_, was needed, as we saw, because all the dancers had to
put on their ritual gear, but scarcely a stage. From a rude platform
the prologue might be spoken, and on that platform the Epiphany or
Appearance of the New Year might take place; but the play played, the
life-history of the life-spirit, was all too familiar; there was no need
to look, the thing was to dance. You need a stage--not necessarily a
raised stage, but a place apart from the dancers--when you have new
material for your players, something you need to look at, to attend to.
In the sixth century B.C., at Athens, came _the_ great innovation.
Instead of the old plot, the life-history of the life-spirit, with its
deadly monotony, new plots were introduced, not of life-spirits but of
human individual heroes. In a word, Homer came to Athens, and out of
Homeric stories playwrights began to make their plots. This innovation
was the death of r