The beginning of drama was connected to the rituals of germination and fertility by the supporters of an ethnologic theory, from which some isolated elements, such as the use of masks seem to have come. However, the element of possession, during which the person impersonating deities feels transported by them, and which already existed in many civilizations, is not proof of the origin of tragedy from some kind of religious drama. Nevertheless, it is easier to locate certain similarities of tragedy in other pre-existing literary genres. The plots of tragedies are usually mythological, concerning subjects that have been treated by epic poetry and from Stesichorus onwards constituted the core of narrative choral lyric poetry. The choruses of tragedies have obvious traces of that poetry both in the dialect that they use, which includes many Doric elements, and in the metre. Obviously the Peloponnesian influence, where a powerful choral lyric tradition survived, was decisive. The dialogic parts that were expressed in iambic trimeter are related to Ionic tradition and Archilochus, but most probably they owe more to Solon. The latter cultivated and developed the iambic trimeter as a means of political rhetoric.

Aristotle, without mentioning the sources that he used, believed that tragedy was born of the Dionysian dithyramb. Although we do not know much about the dithyramb, it seems that there existed a coryphaeus (leader of the chorus), who sang the main parts and the chorus, that repeated the refrains. According to a tradition which survived until the Roman period, the transition from the dithyramb to drama was an achievement of Thespis from the demos of Icaria in Attica. Although many versions have been suggested, it seems quite possible that he was the first who impersonated a role and addressed the chorus. Thus he did not sing any more but he narrated. The conventional dates attributed to this innovation of Thespis are those of the Great Dionysia between 536/5-533/2 B.C. Shortly after the simple presentation of tragedies it was succeeded by dramatic contests with the support of Pisistratus. The tyrrant's attitude has been interpreted as an effort to strengthen Dionysian worship and to weaken other earlier ones that were under the control of the aristocrats. There were also other regions that claimed the creation of tragedy, mainly the north Doric Peloponnese. In Corinth, during the period of Periander, Arion decisively contributed to the development of the dithyramb from a poetic improvisation into a studied literary song. In Sicyon the tyrant Cleisthenes connected these dances to Dionysus, in order to efface the worship of the Argive hero Adrastus, who was honoured with tragic dances. Finally, it is said that the satyric dramas were presented for the first time in Phlius by Pratinas, who later settled in Athens, and participated in a dramatic contest with Aeschylus between 499-496 B.C.

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