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of the performance. Finally, in the golden age of the Attic stage, the chorus dancers and singers were carefully trained at great expense, and the dialogue and choral odes formed the masterpiece of some great poet—and then the Greek drama, the most splendid creation of human genius, was complete.
341. The Subjects of the Tragic Poets. The tragic poets of Athens drew the material of their plays chiefly from the myths and legends of the heroic age, just a Shakespeare for many of his plays used the legends of the semihistorical periods of his own country or of other lands. These legendary tales they handled freely, so changing, coloring, and moralizing them as to render them the vehicle for the conveying of great ethical lessons, or of profound philosophical ideas regarding the divine government of the world.
342. The Leading Idea of Greek Tragedy. Symonds believes the fundamental idea of Greek tragedy to be the doctrine of Nemesis. Nemesis, it will be recalled, was the goddess who punished pride and presumption.
To understand how the Greeks should have come to regard insolent self-assertion or the unrestrained indulgence of appetite or passion as the most heinous of sins, we must recall the legend upon the front of the Delphian temple—"Measure in all things." As proportion was the cardinal element of beauty in art, so was wise moderation the prime quality in virtue. Those who moderated not their desire of fame, of wealth, of dominion, were the most impious of men, and all such the avenging Nemesis failed not to bring, through their own mad presumption and overvaulting ambition, to overwhelming and irretrievable ruin. We shall see in a moment how this idea inspired some of the greatest of the Greek dramas.
343. The Three Great Tragic Poets. There are three great names in Greek tragedy—Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These dramatists, as we have seen (sect. 247), all wrote during the century which followed the victories of the Persian Wars. Of the century which followed the victories of the two hundred and fifty-eight dramas produced by these poets, only thirty-two have come down to use; all the others have perished through the accidents of time.