ponsible for several innovations. In 534 B.C. Thespis put on his first tragedy at the festival of Dionysus at Athens. Aeschylus wrote the first tragedy in the sense the word is used today. Tragic performances remained an important element in the civic worship of Dionysus. The dithyramb also developed along independent lines as a choral medium.
             The plots were taken from the great cycles of mythology. Myths and legends recorded what was thought to be the collective social, political and religious history of the people. These stories included many problems of human life and the nature of the gods. The custom requiring use of these mythological stories in tragedy satisfied an essential requirement of the religious function of the drama, for it enabled the poets to deal with subjects of great moral dignity and emotional significance.
             From a dramatic point of view, the use of plots and characters already familiar to the audience gave the poets many opportunities for the use of irony and subtle allusions that are not available to the modern playwright.
             Theaters were built in the open air, and were sometimes quite large; the Theater of Dionysus at Athens had 17,000 seats. They were usually built in hollowed out hillsides, insuring excellent acoustics. The theatron was the area in which the audience sat; horseshoe-shaped, the rows of seats rose upward and backward in tiers. The first row of seats were stone thrones for principal citizens and the priest of Dionysus. The orchestra, the dancing place of the chorus, was a circular area at ground level, enclosed on three sides by the U-shaped theatron. The thymele in the center of the orchestra was an altar to Dionysus on which sacrifices were made. The altar was sometimes used as a stage prop during plays. The right and left entrance passages were called the parodoi.
             The chorus assembled in the orchestra after marching in through the right or left parodos, and remained there during the re...