In the course of the preparation of the introductory article on ‘Drama’ for Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, my attention was directed, not only to the problem of the origin of this type of drama, but also to the basal meaning of the Greek term . It need scarcely be said that the rise of tragedy is almost universally connected with the cult of Dionysos (for the most recent exponents of this theory see Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, pp. 568 sqq., Cambridge, 1908; Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, p. 1436, Munich, 1906; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, v. 229 sqq., Oxford, 1909). On the other hand, the theory has been advanced by Crusius (Preussische Jahrbiicher, lxxiv. [1893], 394), Hirt (Indogermanen, pp. 477 sq., 727, Strassburg, 1905–07), and especially Ridgeway (Address before the Hellenic Society, May, 1904 [cf. Athenaeum, No. 3995, p. 660, and Maas in Wochenblatt für klassische Philologie, 1904, pp. 779–783]; and particularly in his Origin of Tragedy, Cambridge, 1910), that tragedy arose not from the Dionysos-cult, but from the desire to honour and appease the dead. It is to this latter theory that I strongly incline, and I feel that tragedy can be connected with the cult of Dionysos only through this deity's aspect of a chthonic god who gave release from the lower world and who was later identified with Attis, Adonis, and Osiris (cf. Harrison, chap. viii.; Farnell, chap, v.; Gruppe, pp. 1407–1440).