File:Pindar exalts an athlete winner of the Olympic Games (14782332814).jpg

Identifier: sixthousandyears01sand (find matches)
Title: Six thousand years of history
Year: 1900 (1900s)

Giuseppe Sciuti  (1834–1911)
	Alternative names	Giuseppe Sciuti
	Description	Italian painter and decorator
	Date of birth/death	26 February 1834	13 March 1911
	Location of birth/death	Zafferana Etnea	Rome
	Work period	1863-1911
	Work location	Rome (1875–1911); Catania (1850s date QS:P,+1850-00-00T00:00:00Z/8 –1863); Florence (1863–1867); Naples (1867–1875); Zafferana Etnea (1850s date QS:P,+1850-00-00T00:00:00Z/8 –1863)
	Authority file	: Q3108143 VIAF: 15569094 ISNI: 0000000066753057 ULAN: 500030025 LCCN: nr90016973 GND: 118939998 WorldCat

Subjects: World history
Publisher: Philadelphia : E.R. DuMont
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image:
expense of the performance was borne by some wealthy
man. It was the worship of Dionysos that gave rise both
to tragedy and comedy. From the hymns sung in chorus
at his festivals arose the drama, or poetry of action,
when the leader of the chorus assumed the character of
Dionysos, and described with gestures some exploit of the
god, or enacted the part of any person engaged in the
adventure which his words described. The exclamations
and remarks of the chorus would, with the leaders utter-
ances, form dialogues, and here is found the germ of what
we call a play. Thespis, the father of Greek tragedy, a
ta festival of the year B. C. 535, introduced an independent
actor, with whom the leader of the chorus held a dialogu
during the pauses of the choral song.
Phrynichus (flourished about B. C. 510-480) is re-
garded by many as the real inventor of tragedy, from his
improvements in the character of the subjects treated.
Instead of the stories, often of a ludicrous turn, about
Dionysos, he selected as his theme some story of the heroic
Text Appearing After Image:
PINDAR AT THE OLYMPIAN GAMES
Painting by G. Sciuti

HISTORY OF GREECE 161
age of Greece, or some event of recent times. The intro-
duction by the poet Aeschylus, born B. C. 525, of a sec-
ond actor, making the dialogue entirely independent of the
chorus, gave its true lasting form to the dramatic art.
Action could now be represented in completeness before
the eye, accompanied by speech, and this is the drama as
it has been in Europe ever since the age of Pericles in
Greece. The works of Thespis and of Phrynichus are
lost, and the grand Greek tragedy survives in a few of
probably the best plays of its chief authors, Æschylus
Sophocles, and Euripides, who succeeded each other in the
order given, Sophocles being born in B. C. 495, and Eurip-
ides in B. C. 480. Æschylus had grandeur, Sophocles
grace, and Euripides subtlety and pathos. The word
tragedy means goat-song, as connected with the offering
of a goat (an animal injurious to vines) to Dionysos
before the singing of the choral hymn. From rude begin-
nings Attic genius thus carried the dramatic art, within
half a century's space, to the highest point of its develop-
ment in ancient times.

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