Poetry had at least an equally potent influence upon contemporary ethics. The works of the great poets were the chief medium of education, and large quantities of them were learned by heart in all the elementary schools.[696] What the boys learned, they then recited, with as much dramatic action as they were capable of: the rhapsodes provided them with models. Thus the boys really _acted_ the poets as far as they could. Acting was a new thing in Hellas in Solon’s time, and it was received with apprehension. When Thespis first acted one of his plays, Solon asked him if he was not ashamed to tell such lies in public, making himself out to be what he was not. Thespis replied that it was only in fun. Then Solon struck the ground with his stick and said, “We shall soon find this fun of yours invading our commercial transactions.” Later, when Peisistratos obtained the bodyguard, to which he owed his tyranny, by pretending to have been wounded by his enemies, Solon said the stratagem was a case of acting.[697] This objection was echoed by Plato, and is not wholly unjustified by the course of history. For the great vice of Hellenic life was its insincerity: it is impossible to tell how far a Hellene is in earnest. It is this vice which ruins their oratory; it is this which, in later times, made the “hungry little Greek” the type of a fawning liar in Roman opinion. It was not only in recitations that acting played a great part. The dances were essentially dramatic: it was this quality which enabled them to give birth to the drama. In the war-dance all the gestures and attitudes of attack and defence in actual battle were represented. The Dionysiac dances were originally the acts of devotees trying to assimilate themselves to the god in his sufferings and triumphs.
How vividly a Hellene entered into the dramatisation may be seen from the case of the rhapsode Ion. When he recited Homer, his eyes filled with water and his hair stood on end; and his audience were in much the same condition. The effect in the “Mimetic” dances, where music, gestures, rhythm, and poetry all combined to produce a single impression, must have been greater still; the audience, as well as the performers, must often have been quite carried away. Such performances were very frequent. Is it unnatural to suppose that such frequent assimilation had an important effect on the Hellenes, with their artistic temperament and great susceptibility? At any rate, Plato, Aristotle, and Aristophanes, not to mention lesser names, believed that it had.