In ancient times the Athenian people were not the masters, but the servants of the laws.

'Of what laws ?' In the first place, there were laws about music, and the music was of various kinds: there was one kind which consisted of hymns, another of lamentations; there was also the paean and the dithyramb, and the so-called 'laws' (nomoi) or strains, which were played upon the harp.

The regulation of such matters was not left to the whistling and clapping of the crowd; there was silence while the judges decided, and the boys, and the audience in general, were kept in order by raps of a stick.

But after a while there arose a new race of poets, men of genius certainly, however careless of musical truth and propriety, who made pleasure the only criterion of excellence.

That was a test which the spectators could apply for themselves; the whole audience, instead of being mute, became vociferous, and a theatrocracy took the place of an aristocracy.