Copy 1, Volume 1

The history of the manners and customs of ancient Greece / By J.A. St. John.

  • James Augustus St. John
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history of the manners and customs of ancient Greece / By J.A. St. John. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    449/464 (page 413)
    dee]) a terror over the theatre, that children were thrown into fits, and pregnant women seized with premature birth-pangs. This, if admitted, would be evidence decisive as regards the tragic stage. But, because it is impossible to elude its force, modern critics boldly assume the privilege to treat the whole passage contemptuously, opposing scorn when they have no counterproof to oppose. Such a mode of arguing, however, by whomsoever pursued, must clearly bear upon the face of it the mark of so¬ phistry, for in that way there is no position which might not be overthrown or established. But our anonymous authority has not been left to encounter the attacks of the critics and historians alone. Other ancient authors, though their corro¬ borative testimonies have, hitherto, been generally overlooked, furnish incidental hints and revelations which, duly weighed, will, I make no doubt, be admitted to amount to positive proof. Describing the temple of Demeter at Eleusis, Strabo observes, that so vast were its dimensions, that during the celebration of the mysteries, it would contain the whole multitude usually assembled at the theatre.1 Now, in the mysteries, we know that the Athenians of both sexes, and of all ages above childhood, were present, so that, if men only had been admitted to the theatre, it need not have been half the size of the Eleusinian temple, and, consequently, would have furnished the geographer with no proper sub¬ ject of comparison. Again, in the passage quoted above, from Plato, the presence of women at both the tragic and comic theatres is indubitably pre¬ sumed, since, to judge of both these kinds of exhi¬ bitions, it was necessary either to see them, or to read the plays. If they read the plays there could 1 O^Xov Searpov celaadai cv- tatress,” a word used by Aristo- vdfievov.—Strab. ix. i. p. 238.— phanes, and, doubtless, applied We have in Pollux, ii. 56. and to women forming part of a tliea- iv. 121., Qedrpia “ a spectatress,” trical audience, and awOectrput “ a fellow spec-