Note 41 — INTRODUCTION

Cf. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion² (1908), p. 568. Of course, I do not mean to deny that impersonation was subsequently borrowed from true drama by rites of various kinds which had not contained it at first. This situation probably obtained with reference to the Eleusinian mysteries in their later forms.

The indebtedness of tragedy to epic poetry for subject matter, dignity of treatment and of diction, and development of plot, including such technical devices as recognition (ἀναγνώρισις) and reversal of situation (περιπέτεια) is too well established to require argument. Aeschylus is said to have declared that his tragedies were “slices from Homer’s bountiful banquets” (Athenaeus, p. 347E). The pertinent passages from Aristotle’s Poetics have been conveniently assembled by Throop, “Epic and Dramatic,” Washington University Studies, V (1917), 1 ff.