Various difficulties beset the scholar investigating the origins of Greek drama. The ancient evidence is fragmentary, sometimes unreliable, and often difficult to interpret; Greek drama is the original drama, and from those to whom dramatic representation is a commonplace a real effort of imagination is required in dealing with its possible origins and early history; and scholars of a previous age, writing under the influence of early anthropological studies and their generation's innate notion of progress as ordered and inevitable, have sometimes bedevilled the whole investigation. Not all of these difficulties can be removed, nor are they without their compensating advantages. Anthropology can provide very interesting and suggestive parallels, and can help us to see significance where we might otherwise have missed it; and ritual no doubt has much to do with the beginnings of drama. But in attempting to explain the existence of the great drama of fifth-century Greece, we should do well to view with suspicion any theory which traces a direct and merely thickening line from primitive ritual to Aeschylus or Aristophanes, and regards the plays not as dramas but as interesting sources of evidence for primitive ‘survivals’. The more new facts about the origins (the plural is used with intent) of drama become known, the more complex these origins appear; and however much an artist is influenced (as he must be) by the conventions and inheritance of his own age, we should remember that that inheritance will include conscious intelligence and individual genius, as well as primitive ritual and superstition.

In most branches of classical study, in the interpretation of history, in criticism, whether textual or literary, and most noticeably in archaeology, the present generation knows more than its parents did; that a similar advance has not been made in the strictly linguistic studies is perhaps due partly to an unexpressed assumption that we already know all that we are likely to know about the classical languages, but is certainly due even more to a love of tradition for its ownsake; what was good enough for Kennedy is good enough for us.

Imitation, in the sense of the conscious adaptation and transference of an idea, a phrase, or a passage, from one poetical context to another, was a recognized procedure of ancient poetry, as it still is of modern. It is however a difficult art and on occasion, as we shall see, the re-working of alien material, though it may be poetically successful, is none the less achieved at some cost of clarity, accuracy, or literal truth.

The ancients had no more difficulty than the modern commentator in distinguishing the attitude of the Stoics and the Peripatetics to men's emotions. On the one hand the Peripatetics believed that the emotions were given to man as a necessary part of his being, and though intended to be subordinate to man's reason, they were nevertheless capable of giving him help. The work of reason therefore can be compared to that of the vine-dresser, whose task it is to lop off the wild growth, but to cultivate and dispose the serviceable remainder. On the other hand the Stoics maintained that the passions were ‘συστολὴ ἄλογος’, an irrational mental contraction, and that the wise man would not be subject to any of them.

The mysterious crise de profession which saw the painter Euphronios switch to potting in the heyday of his career is a worthwhile topic for discussion and one on which scholars have manifestly avoided committing themselves. That the pioneer red-figure artist should up and change professions quite unannounced and apparently without reason is a curious fact indeed and one which perhaps the optician alone can explain.

One of the privileges which the Athenians prized very highly was parrhesia—the right of free speech. From the foundation of the democracy until the dangers of uncensored speech in the Pelopon-nesian War made some restraint advisable this privilege remained unimpaired, and it is an important part of their political, if not of their social, system. The recognition of this right of free speech should mean that no grievance need remain unspoken, and that politicians could be well informed about the state of public opinion.

The fable as a form of story is characteristically Greek. It is true that fables are also found in early Oriental literature; but these are either imitations (and very feeble imitations) or parallel growths, which never reached the fine flower of the Greek versions. And from the earliest times fables have been associated with the name of one man: Aesop the slave.

No reader of Herodotus would wish away the story of Arion's rescue by the dolphin (1. 23–4), or could imagine the story better told. The development of the story reflects epic models. At the outset we have the mention of a marvel, that of a man who rode on a dolphin's back; then the rapid narrative leading to the marvel itself, with much vivid detail lavished on the three central scenes (Arion's singing in his ceremonial robes, his leap into the sea, and the rescue itself); next the hurrying to the denouement, the confrontation between Arion and the sailors; and the ancecdote ends as it began, with an allusion to the man on a dolphin's back – this time in the shape of a bronze statue, still to be seen at Taenarum. The narrative contains everything needed to make it immediately comprehensible, but all superfluous elements have been suppressed. Even the initial reference to Arion as the leading lyre-player of his time is by no means an irrelevant detail: the fact is crucial to the way in which the anecdote is shaped, for this would have turned out quite differently, had Arion not been so famous for his skill.