It was only when feeling had been raised to an extraordinary pitch through the excitement of choric song and the imagined presence of Dionysus at his feast, that there came the passion for impersonation, the desire for immediate vision (ἔποψις) of the acts and objects about which emotion had become transcendent. Hence came the power that wove together the pre-existing elements of Greek poetry and art into a new creation, having an intense life, a novel charm and fascination, of its own.
The fact that the lyric element in tragedy was prior to the dramatic—that the actors were originally members of a chorus—shows that the drama took its rise, not from the mere love of imitation, or from the habit of recitation, but from the imperative need for expression.
Sophocles and the religious aspect of the drama.—In Sophocles tragedy has long since broadened from its source, and the strictly religious motive is veiled under the free handling of triumphant art. Hardly any of his subjects are taken immediately from the Dionysiac legend. The gods seldom come upon the scene, and their several attributes are less distinct than in Æschylus. Their absolute control of human things appears indirectly. They work through the passions of men. But the Bacchic fire still springs forth unbidden. The thought of Dionysus is ever at hand, especially in connection with Thebes. And while Zeus is absolute, and the predominance under him of Athena in the Ajax, and of Apollo in several plays, is clearly acknowledged, the poet's sympathy for the mystic side of all religion, his reverence for the powers of the under-world—that longing for things unseen, and for the revelation of eternal truths, which the Eleusinian worship had encouraged—has a deeper and more pervading influence upon his work.
