"A man walking down from to passes the . If it is the evening, a dramatic performance is probably taking place inside. It may be a tragedy, or some form of comedy. If it is a musical comedy and he enters, he will see elaborate scenery and a play which may open with a prologue and which is partly composed of dialogue between the various characters, partly of songs in various sung by a chorus to the accompaniment of an orchestra. As the words in italics indicate, our imaginary passer-by will have seen, though he may not have suspected it, a symbol of the indelible mark which the Greeks have set on the aesthetic and intellectual life of Europe, and of the living presence of Greece in the twentieth century. An ancient Athenian might be startled at the sight of a musical comedy and its chorus, but he would be looking at his own child, a descendant, however distant, degenerate, and hard to recognize, of that chorus which with dance and song moved round the altar of Dionysus in the theatre of his home."
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Non-fiction authors from EnglandUniversity of Oxford facultyUniversity of Oxford alumniMembers of the American Philosophical SocietyClassical scholars
Original Language: English
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|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TQPJ45pKPiQC&pg=PA1|pages=1–14}} (quote from pp. 1–2; selections chosen and edited by R. W. Livingstone; 1st edition 1923; text at archive.org)
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Richard Livingstone
(23 January 1880 – 26 December 1960) was a British and ist. In 1931 he was made Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 1948 he was elected an international member of the . He also received honorary doctorates from ten universities.
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