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Myth and music are the principal roots of drama. Myths always played an important role in human societies. They created a process of communication between people, in which some individuals shared with others their understanding of the world. That was achieved by offering a representation of the world and by giving it a plot, so that it would be interesting and familiar to the audience and not just a dry lesson. Music could play a similar role, communicating situations and emotions by sounds and harmony. In the western tradition, the first "tragedies" were myths which were danced and sung by a "chorus" at festivals in honour of Dionysus (God of Wine), in ancient Greece. The earliest presentations probably consisted of a chorus of men dancing in a ring, reciting or chanting some Greek myth while individual performers would stand on a rough wooden platform or cart. Spectators were seated on a hillside to view these early "plays". In the open-air, day-lit Greek theatre, the chorus was a practical necessity. It made the transitions between scenes, giving actors the chance to enter and leave the playing area, and even announced what characters those actors portrayed. But the function of the chorus goes beyond this. The choral odes, acco