CHAPTER II.
The Athenian Tragedy .-- Its Origin .-- Thespis .-- Phrynichus .-- Aeschylus.
-- Analysis of the Tragedies of Aeschylus.
I.

From the melancholy fate of Miltiades, we are now invited to a subject no less connected with this important period in the history of Athens.

The interval of repose which followed the battle of Marathon allows us to pause, and notice the intellectual state to which the Athenians had progressed since the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons.
We have remarked the more familiar acquaintance with the poems of Homer which resulted from the labours and example of Pisistratus.
This event (for event it was), combined with other causes,--the foundation of a public library, the erection of public buildings, and the institution of public gardens--to create with apparent suddenness, among a susceptible and lively population, a general cultivation of taste.

The citizens were brought together in their hours of relaxation [6], by the urbane and social manner of life, under porticoes and in gardens, which it was the policy of a graceful and benignant tyrant to inculcate; and the native genius, hitherto dormant, of the quick Ionian race, once awakened to literary and intellectual objects, created an audience even before it found expression in a poet.

The elegant effeminacy of Hipparchus contributed to foster the taste of the people--for the example of the great is nowhere more potent over the multitude than in the cultivation of the arts.