The Greek Theater and Its Drama

Chapter IX Theatrical Records372

The technical word used of bringing out a play was διδάσκειν (“to teach”), and the technical name for the director of the performance was didascalus (διδάσκαλος) or “teacher.” We have already noted (p. 198, above) that didascalia (διδασκαλία; “teaching”) was the name for a group of plays brought out by a tragic playwright at one time, and the same word was applied to a record of the theatrical contests. At the beginning the didascalus and the author were identical, for the reason that the primitive poets taught the choreutae what they were to sing, that the poets in the one-actor period carried the histrionic parts themselves and still taught the choreutae their rôles, and that even when they had ceased to act in their plays they yet continued to train those who did.

The Athenian archons seem to have kept records of the contests at the Dionysiac festivals, the archon eponymus for the City Dionysia and the king archon for the Lenaea. These records, of course, were not compiled in the interests of literary research such as flourished in Alexandrian times but merely for the private convenience of the officials and for documentary purposes. Apparently they consisted of a bald series of entries, chronicling the choregi, tribes, poet-didascali, actors, plays, and victors in the various dithyrambic and dramatic events. In the fourth century B.C. these archives were published by Aristotle in a work entitled Didascaliae. His service probably was mainly that of unearthing the material and arranging it in chronological sequence and of making it available to a wider public, for Dr. Jachmann has made it seem clear that he did not edit the archons’ record to any great extent. In consequence Aristotle’s book contained too much and was overloaded with unimportant details. Its main value consisted in being a court of last resort and a source from which smaller and less unwieldy lists might be compiled.

Some of these indirect products of Aristotle’s industry were entered upon stone and are still preserved in fragments. The first of these is for convenience referred to as the Fasti (“calendar” or “register”) and contained the annual victors in each event at the City Dionysia from about 502/1 B.C. when volunteer comuses were first given a place in the festival program. This inscription was cut upon the face of a wall built of four rows of superimposed blocks and almost six feet in height. The text was arranged in vertical columns. There were originally sixteen of these and most of them contained one hundred and forty-one lines. The presence of a heading over the first five columns, however, reduced the lines upon them to one hundred and forty. For the most part the lines in adjoining columns were placed exactly opposite one another, but toward the bottom of col. 13 the writing was crowded so that this column perhaps contained no less than one hundred and fifty-three lines. As the entries for 346-342 B.C. fell in this space, most authorities accept Dr. Wilhelm’s conclusion that the body of the inscription was cut at that period and received additional entries, year by year, for subsequent festivals until about 319 B.C.373 Whoever was responsible for the original inscription must have excerpted the appropriate items from Aristotle’s Didascaliae and, for the brief period intervening between the publication of Aristotle’s book and 346-342 B.C., from the original archives.

	— πρῶτ]ον κῶμοι ἦσαν τῶ[ι Διονύσωι —
	[Ξ]ενοκλείδης ἐχορήγε	Πανδιονὶ[ς ἀνδρῶν]	[ὁ δεῖνα ἐχορήγει]
	[Μ]άγνης ἐδίδασκεν	Κλεαίνετ[ος Κυδαθη: ἐχορήγει]	[ὁ δεῖνα ἐδίδασκε]
	τραγωιδῶν	κωμωιδῶ[ν]	[ὑποκριτὴς ὁ δεῖνα]
	Περικλῆς Χολαρ: ἐχορή	Θαρ[— — ἐχορήγει]	[Ἐπὶ Τιμαρχίδου 447/6]
5	Αἰσχύλος ἐ[δ]ίδασκε	[ὁ δεῖνα ἐδίδασκε]	[—ὶς παίδων]
	[Ἐπὶ Χάρητος 472/1]	[τραγωιδῶν]	[ὁ δεῖνα ἐχορήγει]
	[— παίδων]	[...]: ἐχορή	Ἐ[ρεχθηὶς ἀνδρῶν]
	[ὁ δεῖνα ἐχορήγει]	[...] ἐδίδασκεν	Βίω[ν ἐχορήγει]
	[— ἀνδρῶν]	[Ἐπὶ Φίλο]κλέους 459/8	κω[μωιδῶν]
10	[ὁ δεὶνα ἐχ]ο[ρήγει]	[Οἰ]νηὶς παίδων	Ἀνδ[— ἐχορήγει]
	[κωμωιδῶν]	Δημόδοκος ἐχορήγε	Καλ[λίας ἐδίδασκεν]
	[ὁ δεῖνα ἐχ]ορήγει	Ἱπποθωντὶς ἀνδρῶν	τρα[γωιδῶν]
	[... ἐδίδ]ασκεν	Εὐκτήμων Ἐλευ: ἐχορή	Θαλ[— ἐχορήγει]
	[τραγωιδῶν]	κωμωιδῶν	Κα[ρκίνος ἐδίδασκε]
15	[ὁ δεῖνα ἐχ]ορήγει	Εὐρυκλείδης ἐχορήγει	ὑπ[οκριτὴς ὁ δεῖνα]
	Πολυφράσμω]ν ἐδίδασ	Εὐφρόνιος ἐδίδασκε	Ἐπ[ὶ Καλλιμάχου 446/5]
	[Ἐπὶ Πραξιέργο]υ 471/0	τραγωιδῶν	[κτλ.]
	[... ντὶς πα]ίδων	Ξενοκλῆς Ἀφιδνα: ἐχορή
	[... ἐχο]ρήγει	Αἰσχύλος ἐδίδασκεν
20	[... ἀνδρ]ῶν	Ἐπὶ Ἅβρωνος 458/7
	[... ἐχ]ορήγ	Ἐρεχθηὶς παίδων
	[κωμωιδῶν]	Χαρίας Ἀγρυλῆ: ἐχορή
	[... ἐχορήγε]ι	Λεωντὶς ἀνδρῶν
	[κτλ.	Δεινόστρατος ἐχορ[ήγει]
		κωμωιδῶν
		[... ἐχ]ορήγ[ει

The character of the Fasti will appear most clearly from Fig. 75,374 a transcript and restoration of two fragments on which were originally cut the tops of cols. 3-5. The Greek letters within brackets are restorations where the stone is broken away or illegible. Inasmuch as the entries follow a fixed order from year to year and occupy a definite number of lines, except as slight changes were occasionally introduced into the program, it is often easy to restore everything but proper names. Of the heading of the inscription, which extended over the first five columns, only the center is preserved. When complete it probably read somewhat as follows: οἵδε νενικήκασιν... ἀφ’ οὗ πρῶτ]ον κῶμοι ἦσαν τῶ[ι Διονύσωι Ἐλευθερεῖ (“The following gained the victory... since first there were comuses in honor of Dionysus Eleuthereus”). Let us examine more closely the record of the year which begins at line nine in the second column of Fig. 75 (col. 4 in the complete inscription). The entries for each year begin with ἐπί (“in the time of”), followed by the name of the Athenian archon eponymus in the genitive case. The archon for this year was Philocles, whose term ran from July, 459 B.C., to July, 458 B.C. Since the festivals came in the spring the record under consideration is for the City Dionysia of 458 B.C. The inscription is so formulaic and condensed that it has necessarily been expanded somewhat in the following translation:

In the archonship of Philocles.

The tribe Oeneis was victorious with a dithyrambic chorus of boys;

Demodocus was choregus.

The tribe Hippothontis was victorious with a dithyrambic chorus of men;

Euctemon of Eleusis was choregus.

In the contest of comedians:

Euryclides was choregus,

Euphronius was didascalus.

In the contest of tragedians:

Xenocles of Aphidnae was choregus,

Aeschylus was didascalus.

This was the year in which Aeschylus competed in Athens for the last time and was victorious with his Orestean trilogy.

About 278 B.C. two other inscriptions were compiled from Aristotle’s publication of theatrical records. I refer to the stone Didascaliae and to the Victors’-Lists. The former gave the full program of the dramatic, but not the dithyrambic, events for each year and fell into four divisions, dealing respectively with tragedy and with comedy at each of the two festivals. Fig. 76a 375 gives a transcript of two fragments which reproduce the programs of tragedy at the City Dionysia in 341 and 340 B.C. They may be freely translated, as shown on p. 323.

		[Ἐπὶ Σωσιγένους σατυρι] 342/1
		[— —]
		[παλαι]ᾶι Νε[οπτόλεμος]
		[Ἰφιγε]νείαι Εὐρ[ιπ]ίδο[υ]
		[ποη]: Ἀστυδάμας
		[Ἀχι]λλεῖ ὑπε: Θετταλός
5		Ἀθάμαντι ὑπε: Νεοπτόλ[εμος]
		[Ἀν]τιγόνηι ὑπε: Ἀθηνόδω[ρος]
		[Εὐ]άρετος δ[εύ:] Τεύκρωι
		[ὑπ]ε: Ἀθηνόδωρος
		[Ἀχι]λλεῖ ὑ[πε]: Θετταλός
10		[... ε]ι ὑπ[ε: Ν]εοπτόλεμος
		[Ἀφαρεὺς] τρί: Πελιάσιν
		[ὑπε: Νεοπτ]όλεμος
-κι		Ὀρέστηι [ὑπε: Ἀθηνόδωρος]
		Αὔγηι ὑπε: Θεττα[λός]
	—
15		ὑπο: Νεοπτόλεμος ἐνίκ[α]
	—
ς		Ἐπὶ Νικομάχου σατυρι 341/0
		Τιμοκλῆς Λυκούργωι
	—
		παλαιᾶι: Νεοπτόλεμ[ος]
-αι		Ὀρέστηι Εὐριπιδο
	—
20		ποη: Ἀστυδάμας
		Παρθενοπαίωι ὑπε: Θετ[ταλός]
		[Λυκά]ονι ὑπε: Νεοπτόλε[μος]
		[...ο]κλῆς δεύ: Φρίξωι
-ι		[ὑπε:] Θετταλός
25		[Οἰδί]ποδι ὑπε: Νεοπτολ[εμος]
	—
		[Εὐάρ]ετος τρί
		[Ἀλκ]μέ[ων]ι: ὑπε: Θεττα[λός]
		[...λ]ηι: ὑπε: Νεοπτό[λε]
		[ὑπο: Θ[ετταλὸς ἐνίκα
30		[Ἐπὶ Θεο]φράστου σα[τυρι 340/39
		[...] Φορκίσ[ι]
		[παλαιᾶι· Νικ?]όστρ[ατος]
		[... Εὐ]ριπί[δου]
		[...]ο [...

There are several matters here which are worthy of comment. It will be noted that by 341 B.C. the tragic poets no longer closed each group of plays with a satyric drama, but one satyr-play was performed instead as a preface to the tragic contest. It followed that the playwrights, the number of whose dramas now corresponded to that of the star performers, were no longer handicapped by being allotted the exclusive services of a single star and his troupe but were placed upon terms of perfect equality by having all the stars in turn at their command, each for a different tragedy. This explains why in 340 B.C., when we must suppose that three players of the first rank with their supporting companies were for some reason not available, the number of tragedies presented by each playwright was likewise reduced to two and the histrionic talent was thus kept evenly distributed. The fact that the tragic writers no longer devoted whole trilogies to different aspects of the same theme made it easy to reduce the number of tragedies in any year in order to conform to an emergency in the histrionic conditions. Furthermore, old tragedies were not now permitted to compete with new ones, as was said to have been the practice in the case of Aeschylus’ plays after his decease (see p. 203, above); but beginning at the City Dionysia of 386 B.C., as we learn from the Fasti, an old tragedy was performed, outside of the contest, every year. It is interesting to observe that in both these years and again in 339 B.C. (see next to the last line in Fig. 76a) plays of Euripides were chosen for this purpose, and this is in accord with the steady growth of that poet’s popularity as compared with Aeschylus and Sophocles. As already stated, the Didascaliae were inscribed in 278 B.C., but the record was kept up to date by contemporaneous entries for over a century subsequently.

In the archonship of Sosigenes (342/1 B.C.). Satyr-play:

— was poet with his —.

Old tragedy: Neoptolemus acted in Euripides’ Iphigenia.

Poets: Astydamas was first with the Achilles acted by Thettalus with the Athamas acted by Neoptolemus with the Antigone acted by Athenodorus;

Evaretus was second with the Teucer acted by Athenodorus with the Achilles acted by Thettalus with the — acted by Neoptolemus;

Aphareus was third with the Daughters of Pelias acted by Neoptolemus with the Orestes acted by Athenodorus with the Auge acted by Thettalus; the actor Neoptolemus was victor.

In the archonship of Nicomachus (341/0 B.C.). Satyr-play:

Timocles was poet with his Lycurgus.

Old tragedy: Neoptolemus acted in Euripides’ Orestes.

Poets: Astydamas was first with the Parthenopaeus acted by Thettalus with the Lycaon acted by Neoptolemus;

—cles was second with the Phrixus acted by Thettalus with the Oedipus acted by Neoptolemus;

Evaretus was third with the Alcmeon acted by Thettalus with the — acted by Neoptolemus; the actor Thettalus was victor.

The Victors’-Lists were prepared at the same time as the stone Didascaliae and were likewise derived from Aristotle,376 but they were very different in character. They recorded the aggregate of victories won by poets and actors in tragedy and comedy at each of the two festivals—eight lists in all. I shall content myself with citing one fragment from the list of tragic poets who were victorious at the City Dionysia (cf. Fig. 77 a and b).377 The names were arranged in the chronological order of their first victory at the festival in question, in this case the City Dionysia; and after each name was entered the total number of victories gained at that festival. We are especially interested in two names in this list, Aeschylus and Sophocles. Of course the former’s name did not originally head the list; it stood in the eleventh line. The numeral is broken away from behind his name, but we know from other sources that he won thirteen (ΔΙΙΙ) victories. He died before the establishment of the tragic contest at the Lenaea, so that his competition was restricted to the City Dionysia. But Suidas reports that according to some Aeschylus had gained twenty-eight victories. Perhaps the larger number is not to be rejected as worthless but is to be regarded as including the victories which Aeschylus’ plays are said to have won after his decease in competition, at both festivals, with the works of living tragedians. To Sophocles the inscription assigns eighteen (ΔΓΙΙΙ) victories at the City Dionysia, and that is the number which most authorities give. But Suidas, who regularly records the aggregate of victories at both festivals, credits him with twenty-four victories. Sophocles must, therefore, have been victorious six times at the Lenaea. Euripides’ name does not appear upon any extant portion of the Victors’-List. He is usually stated to have won five victories, but some notices report fifteen. Possibly we are to understand that he won ten Lenaean victories. His comparative lack of success while living thus stands in striking contrast to his popularity subsequently.

		[......]ασ[—]
		[Καρκί]νος ΔΙ
10	—	[Ἀστ]υδάμας ΓΙΙ [—?]
	[Αἰ]σχύ[λος —]	[Θεο]δέκτας ΓΙΙ
	[Εὐ]έτης Ι	[Ἀφα]ρεύς ΙΙ
	[Πο]λυφράσμ[ων —]	[....ω]ν ΙΙ	Αι
	[Νόθ]ιππος Ι	......	Φρ-
15	[Σοφ]οκλῆς ΔΓΙΙΙ	......... ΙΙ	Ὁμ-
	[....]τος ΙΙ[—?]		ΔΙ
	[Ἀριστι]ας [—]		Ξ-

Dr. Reisch has propounded an ingenious and plausible theory with reference to the housing of the Didascaliae and the Victors’-Lists (cf. op. cit., pp. 302 ff.). He believes that these catalogues were prepared for the master of contests (the agonothete, see p. 271, above) for the year 278 B.C., who also erected a special structure in the precinct of Dionysus Eleuthereus to receive them. The dedicatory inscription is extant, but unfortunately the name of the agonothete is broken away. He supposes this building to have been hexagonal, with three sides of solid wall and the other three left open. This arrangement was designed to afford a maximum of light for reading the inscriptions on the interior of the building. On the left wall, as one passed through the main entrance, were cut the tragic Didascaliae of the City Dionysia. On the architrave above was the Victors’-List for the tragic poets at this festival, and on the architrave over the adjoining (open) side to the right was the Victors’-List for the tragic actors. On the next wall to the right were the comic Didascaliae of the City Dionysia, and on the architrave above that side and the adjoining (open) one were the Victors’-Lists of the comic poets and actors who had won victories at this festival. On the third wall stood both the comic and also the tragic Didascaliae of the Lenaea. On the architrave above this wall were the Victors’-Lists of the comic poets and actors at the Lenaea, and on the architrave above the sixth (open) side were those of the tragic poets and actors at the same festival. Dr. Reisch’s reconstruction may be incorrect in some minor details, but must certainly be accepted in principle.

One matter in connection with all these inscriptions has been a subject of keen controversy among scholars, and the end is not yet. The problem is too complicated to be discussed upon its merits here, but the general situation may be outlined. When a poet did not serve as his own didascalus but brought out his play through someone else, did the name of the didascalus or that of the poet appear in the records? On a few points general agreement is possible. For example, when a poet had applied for a chorus in his own name but died before the festival and someone else had to assume his didascalic duties, care seems to have been taken at all periods to indicate the original didascalus. Again, in cases of deliberate deception, as when a man without dramatic powers secured the consent of a playwright to bring out the latter’s work as his own and applied for a chorus as if for his own play, naturally the name of the pseudo-author would be the only one to appear in the records. The crucial case remains, viz., when a dramatist wished to be relieved of the burden of stage management and arranged for a didascalus to ask for a chorus and assume responsibility for the performance. The matter becomes important with reference to Aristophanes and the correct restoration of the Victors’-Lists for comic poets at the City Dionysia and the Lenaea.

When Aristophanes had written his first play, the Banqueters, youth, inexperience, diffidence, or some other motive for desiring to avoid the responsibility of staging his play caused him to intrust it to Callistratus for production at the Lenaea of 427 B.C. The same process was repeated at the City Dionysia of 426 B.C. and the Lenaea of 425 B.C., when Callistratus brought out Aristophanes’ Babylonians and Acharnians, respectively. The former piece was apparently unsuccessful, but the latter was awarded the first prize. At the Lenaea of 424 B.C. Aristophanes was equally successful with the Knights, which, however, he produced in his own name. In vss. 512 ff. of this play the chorus declares that many Athenians approached the poet and expressed their surprise that he had not long before asked for a chorus in his own name. This passage implies that the real authorship of Aristophanes’ earlier pieces was known to a large section of the public, and makes it clear that he had produced no earlier plays in his own name. Therefore if he had won a City victory during this period the comedy with which he won it must have been brought out in the name of another. The earliest City Dionysia, then, at which he could have produced a play in his own name was in 424 B.C., two months later than the Knights. Now in the Victors’-List for comic poets at the City Dionysia (Fig. 78),378 the letters Ἀρι appear in line seven of the second column. Is the name of Aristophanes or that of Aristomenes to be restored here?

We know that Eupolis, whose name stands next below in the list, won a victory at the City Dionysia of 421 B.C. and that Hermippus and Cratinus were successful at the City festival in 422 and 423 B.C., respectively. This leaves the City Dionysia of 424 B.C. for some unknown victor, who may have been Aristophanes producing a play in his own name. But, on the other hand, these victories of Hermippus and Cratinus were certainly not their first, and it is possible that the victory of Eupolis in 421 B.C. was also not his first. If any of these men was in fact the City victor in 424 B.C., Aristophanes’ name could be read at this point on the stone only by supposing that he had won a City victory at some date prior to the Knights and consequently with a play which had been brought out by another. If this hypothesis is correct, it would automatically be established that at this period victories were credited to the actual poet rather than to his didascalus. The argument here is by no means conclusive, however, and most authorities follow Dr. Wilhelm in restoring the name of Aristomenes, another poet who belonged to the same general period.

	[Ἀστικαὶ ποητῶν]	[Τηλεκλεί]δης ΙΙΙ	Νικοφῶ[ν —]
	[κωμικῶν]	[.........]ς Ι	Θεόπομπ[ος —]
	[Χιωνίδης —]	—	Κη]φισό[δοτος —]
	—	—	...]ι[ππος? —]
5	— Ι	Φερ[εκράτης —]	—
	[.........]ς Ι	Ἕρμ[ιππος —]	—
	—	Ἀρι[στομένης —]	—
	[Μάγνη]ς ΔΙ	Εὔ[πολις —]	—
	[......ο]ς Ι	Κα[λλίστρατος —]	—
10	[Ἀλικιμέ]νη[ς] Ι	Φρύ[νιχος —]	—
	[......]ς Ι	Ἀμ[ειψίας —]	—
	[Εὐφρόν]ιος Ι	Πλά[των —]	—
	[Ἐκφαν]τίδης ΙΙΙΙ	Φιλ[ωνίδης —]	—
	[Κρατῖνος] ΓΙ	Λύκ[ις —]	—
15	[Διοπ]είθης ΙΙ	Λεύ[κων —]	—
	[Κρά]της ΙΙΙ
	[Καλλία]ς ΙΙ

The same problem recurs in connection with the comic Victors’-List for the Lenaea (Fig. 79).379 Here Aristophanes’ name is certainly to be restored somewhere in the lacuna below the name of Eupolis in the first column. But whether his name stood in a position corresponding to his own victory in 424 B.C. or in one corresponding to his victory through the agency of Callistratus in the previous year, or whether (to state it differently) the name of Callistratus must be restored ahead of Aristophanes’ own name because of his victory in 425 B.C., are questions which are still incapable of categorical answers. Lack of space will prevent a further argument of the matter, and I must close with a summary of Dr. Jachmann’s conclusions. His discussion is not only the latest but takes certain factors into account which had previously been ignored. He points out that the archons’ records, Aristotle’s Didascaliae, and the different types of inscriptions must be sharply differentiated and that the first named are the ultimate source of all the others. The archons, of course, kept their records with no thought of later literary investigations but mainly with a view to having a definite list of men whom they were to hold responsible for different events upon their programs. Naturally, then, they had no interest in current or subsequent charges of plagiarism, pretended authorship, etc. Jachmann maintains that prior to about 380 B.C. the archons entered the name of the didascalus alone, but after that date they recorded the names of both didascalus and poet when these differed. He supposes the change to have been due to a law, which was made necessary by the increasing practice of intrusting plays to men who were not their authors and to the consequent differentiation of function between poets and didascali. According to Jachmann the same situation probably obtained also in Aristotle’s Didascaliae; but in the Victors’-Lists and the inscriptional Didascaliae only the didascali were listed before 380 B.C. and after that date only the poets. In the Fasti, on the contrary, only the didascali, as the use of the verb ἐδίδασκε would indicate, appeared at any time.

	[Ληναικ]α[ὶ ποη]τῶν	Πο[.....] Ι	Φίλι[ππος Γ?]ΙΙ	—
	[κωμικ]ῶν	Με[ταγένη]ς ΙΙ	Χόρη[γος —]	Διο[νύσι]ος Ι
	[Ξ]ενόφιλος Ι	Θεό[πομπ]ος ΙΙ	Ἀναξα[νδρί]δης ΙΙΙ	Κλέ[αρχ]ος [Ι. ]
	[Τ]ηλεκλείδης Γ	Πολ[ύζηλο]ς ΙΙΙΙ	Φιλέτα[ιρο]ς ΙΙ	Ἀθηνοκλῆς[
5	Ἀριστομένης ΙΙ	Νικοφ[ῶν —]	Εὔβουλος ΓΙ	Πυρ[ήν?] Ι	5
	Κρατῖνος ΙΙΙ	Ἀπο[λλοφάνη]ς Ι	Ἔφιππος Ι[.?]	Ἀλκήνωρ Ι
	Φερεκράτης ΙΙ	Ἀμ[ειψίας —]	[Ἀ]ντιφάν[ης] ΓΙΙΙ	Τιμοκλῆς Ι
	Ἕρμιππος ΙΙΙΙ	Ν[ικοχάρης —]	[Μ]νησίμ[αχος] Ι	Προκλείδης Ι
	Φρύνιχος ΙΙ	Ξενο[φ]ῶν Ι	Ναυ[σικράτ]ης ΙΙΙ	Μ[έν]ανδρος Ι[ —
10	Μυρτίλος Ι	Φιλύλλιος Ι	Εὐφάνη[ς —]	Φ[ι]λήμων ΙΙΙ	10
	[Εὔ]πολις ΙΙΙ	Φιλόνικος Ι	Ἄλεξις ΙΙ [—]	Ἀπολλόδωρο[ς—]
	—	[.......]ς Ι	[Ἀρ]ιστ[οφῶν —]	Δίφιλος ΙΙΙ
	—	[Κηφισόδοτος Ι	—	Φιλιππίδης ΙΙ[—
	—	—	—	Νικόστρατος [—
15	—	—	—	Καλλιάδης Ι	15
	—	—	—	Ἀμεινίας Ι
	—	—	[Ἀσκληπιό?δω]ρος Ι	Ι Ι Ι

Besides some other inscriptions of lesser importance than those already discussed, Aristotle’s Didascaliae was the source, directly or indirectly, also of several treatises, collections of classified data, catalogues, etc., dealing with various phases of Greek theatrical history and compiled by such men as Dicaearchus, Callimachus, and Aristophanes of Byzantium. I shall close with an account of one of these. I refer to the system of numbering which was applied to ancient plays. Thus, according to the ancient hypothesis (argument) to Sophocles’ Antigone that drama “was counted the thirty-second” (λέλεκται δὲ τὸ δρᾶμα τοῦτο τριακοστὸν δεύτερον), and the first hypothesis to Aristophanes’ Birds declares that that comedy “is the thirty-fifth” (ἔστι δὲ λέ). Before going farther it will be best to state that the latter numeral is inexplicable under any theory, but that Dindorf’s substitution of ιέ for λέ (“fifteen” for “thirty-five”) is a satisfactory and convincing emendation. With the publication of the Vatican hypothesis to Euripides’ Alcestis in 1834 a third numeral came to light: τὸ δρᾶμα ἐποιήθη ι̅ζ̅ (“the drama was made seventeenth”). By far the most significant numeral, however, was published in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri in 1904. Here at the top of the last column of a hypothesis to Cratinus’ lost Dionysalexandros stood the following heading, doubtless repeated from the beginning of the hypothesis, which is now lost:

Διονυσ[αλέξανδρος]	“The Dionysalexandros
η̅	Eighth
κρατ[εινου]	Of Cratinus”

Finally, one of the fragmentary hypotheses to two of Menander’s plays published in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri of 1914 begins as follows: “The Imbrians, commencing ‘For how long a time, Demeas, my good man, I... you.’ This he wrote in the archonship of Nicocles, being his [7·]th play (ταύτην [ἔγρα]ψεν ἐπὶ Νικοκλέο[υς..]την καὶ ἑβδομηκοστ[ήν]), and he gave it for production at the Dionysia; but on account of the tyrant Lachares the festival was not celebrated. Subsequently it was acted by the Athenian Callippus.” This numeral is partly illegible, but was in the seventies, probably seventy-first, seventy-third, seventy-sixth, or seventy-ninth, possibly seventy-fourth or seventy-fifth.

The interpretation of these numerals has suffered from the fact that they did not become known simultaneously and from the further fact that for the most part explanations have been advanced by editors who contented themselves with proposing the most plausible interpretation of the particular numeral before them without taking the others into consideration. Of the many suggestions offered I shall here confine my discussion to two, the chronological and the alphabetical. The former interpretation is the oldest and receives confirmation from the fact that Terence’s comedies are not only arranged chronologically in our manuscripts but are provided with numerals on that basis in the didascalic notices which are prefixed to these Latin plays. These numbers, of course, would trace back the system only to the Romans and to about the time of Varro in the first century b.c. But inasmuch as Aeschines’ speeches are arranged on the same principle, there can be no doubt that the Alexandrian Greeks were familiar with it. The chronological interpretation, however, has been open to three objections: (1) It is impossible for Aristophanes’ Birds to have been thirty-fifth in a chronological arrangement of his plays. This obstacle may be evaded by accepting Dindorf’s emendation. (2) The Antigone and Alcestis numerals are somewhat smaller than we might expect, since they seem to assign too few plays to the earlier years of Sophocles’ and Euripides’ activity as playwrights. This is not a serious objection but must be taken into account. (3) The Alcestis took the place of a satyric drama and therefore stood fourth in its group. Consequently its numeral ought to be divisible by four, and the number seventeen does not satisfy this requirement and does not seem consistent with the tetralogic system employed at the City Dionysia during this period.

These difficulties are not insuperable, but first I wish to refer to another interpretation, which has enjoyed great popularity. There is no doubt that the Greeks were acquainted, and at an early date, with the alphabetical arrangement of titles. The Oxyrhynchus arguments to Menander’s plays, for example, seem to have been arranged in accordance with this principle. The objection that there would be no point in recording numerals derived from an alphabetical system for the reason that it would be as easy to turn to a given play by means of its initial letters as by means of its number is invalid because in alphabetical lists the Greeks ignored all letters except the first. For example, fifteen of Euripides’ extant titles begin with alpha, and there was no a priori method of knowing which of the fifteen places available the Alcestis would occupy (Fig. 80).380 It becomes necessary, then, to examine the alphabetical explanation without prejudice, and fortunately it is now possible to reach an incontrovertible conclusion. The numerals have never lent themselves cordially to this interpretation, but the final coup de grâce was delivered by the recent discovery of the numeral for Menander’s Imbrians. Menander is said to have written from one hundred and five to one hundred and nine pieces, but only eighty-six titles are now known. Fifty-one of these, however, have initial letters which come after iota in the Greek alphabet. Now the smallest restoration which is possible for the Menander numeral is seventy-one, and seventy-one plus fifty-one make one hundred and twenty-two, or thirteen more than the largest number recorded by any authority as the aggregate of Menander’s works. Therefore the alphabetical explanation must be rejected.

We may now return to the chronological interpretation, and first let us note the light which the Dionysalexandros numeral throws upon the situation. It is significant that this number is not incorporated within the hypothesis but stood at the top of the last column and had doubtless appeared also at the beginning of the hypothesis (now lost). In my opinion this was the original form of such a notice and shows why in the fuller form of statement found elsewhere a different verb is employed in each case—λέλεκται, ἔστι, ἐποιήθη, and ἔγραψεν. When Aristophanes of Byzantium, or whoever was responsible for the change, transferred these items from the heading and made them integral parts of the hypothesis, finding no verb in the original version before him and resting under the necessity of now using one, he did not deem it essential to paraphrase the information always in the same way but, as was natural, employed now one expression and now another. If it be true that the original function of the numerals was as we find it in the Cratinus hypothesis, only one explanation is possible—it was a device for the convenience of some library, probably that at Alexandria. If so, every play in the collection would bear a number and these numbers would run consecutively for each author. In other words if any play were not preserved in the library, that fact would not be indicated by an unoccupied number being left as a gap in the enumeration. Of course it is conceivable that the basis of arrangement was purely arbitrary and even varied with each author, and in fact there has been a distinct tendency among recent authorities to accept some such pessimistic conclusion. But it is more probable, until the contrary be proved, that some rational system (alphabetical, chronological, etc.) was employed and employed consistently.

Now there can be little room left for doubt as to what system was actually chosen, when it is observed that the foregoing statement of the numerals’ purpose and use obviates two of the three objections to the chronological interpretation. Euripides produced his first play in 455 B.C. and died in 406 B.C. He is said to have written ninety-two plays, or an average of one and four-fifths per annum. If the Alcestis were actually his seventeenth piece he must have written less than one play a year between 455 B.C. and 438 B.C., when the Alcestis was produced, and two and one-third plays a year thereafter. It is true that Euripides’ career opened slowly and that many of his later works are characterized by hasty and careless execution. But this disparity is too great, even apart from the objection that ex hypothesi the Alcestis numeral ought to be a multiple of four. If we suppose, however, that only the plays that were preserved received a number, the situation at once clears. We are informed that seventy-eight of Euripides’ works (four of them spurious) were preserved. This is confirmed by the fact that seventy-two of his titles are now known, for the number of titles now extant generally approximates closely the number of an author’s plays which were known by the ancients. If, then, the Alcestis was seventeenth among the seventy-eight works which were passing under the name of Euripides in antiquity and if it retained the same relative position as in the complete list, it must have been about the twentieth play which he brought out. This number, being divisible by four, would be suitable for the last play of a tetralogy and would have the merit of reducing slightly the disproportion between the earlier and the later activity of the poet. Moreover, since the earlier plays of a dramatist are more likely to have been lost than the later ones, it is possible to suppose that the Alcestis may have been twenty-fourth or even twenty-eighth in a complete list (chronological) of his writings. The point is that the purpose of the numerals as deducible from the Dionysalexandros instance is capable of obviating all objections to the chronological interpretation of the Alcestis numeral.

Similarly, Sophocles is said to have written one hundred and twenty-three plays, and his career extended from about 468 B.C. to 406 B.C., yielding an average of about two plays per annum. Inasmuch as the Antigone was probably performed in 441 B.C. and bears the numeral thirty-two, an unmodified chronological interpretation would give an average of one and one-seventh plays a year for Sophocles’ earlier period and of two and three-sevenths for his later period. But we now have fragments of somewhat more than one hundred Sophoclean plays; and if the Antigone was thirty-second among these and retained the same relative position as at first, it would have been about the thirty-seventh play which Sophocles wrote. Of course this is a mere estimate, but again this solution has the merit of assigning a slightly larger number of plays to the earlier years of the poet and of reducing, to that extent, the only objection to the chronological interpretation of this numeral.

Aristophanes’ first comedy was produced in 427 B.C., and his last one not much later than 388 B.C. To him were attributed forty-four plays, four of which were considered spurious. Apparently all of his works were known to the ancients. The Birds was produced at the City Dionysia of 414 B.C. in the fourteenth year of his activity as a playwright. There is, therefore, no a priori reason for refusing to believe that it was Aristophanes’ fifteenth play. Nor does any obstacle arise from the chronology of the plays, so far as they can be dated. On the other hand the traditional numeral, thirty-five, is inexplicable under any logical system of enumeration, while Dindorf’s emendation is paleographically simple. Therefore we must accept the substitution and the chronological interpretation.

Cratinus’ career began about 452 B.C. and closed in 423 B.C. or soon thereafter. Most scholars suppose his Dionysalexandros to have been brought out in 430 or 429 B.C., though I was myself at first inclined to favor an earlier date. He is said to have written twenty-one plays. Twenty-six titles, however, were accepted for him by Meineke and Kock in their editions of the Greek comic fragments. Probably a few of these titles must be rejected as spurious or transferred to the younger Cratinus, but it is also possible that Cratinus was much more productive than is commonly supposed and that twenty-one was the number of his preserved works in Alexandrian times, not of all that he had composed. As the custom of publishing comedies seems to have started only at about the beginning of Cratinus’ career (see p. 55, above), it would not be surprising if many of his plays, especially of his earlier plays, were lost. At any rate in a chronological arrangement of twenty-one comedies, whether they were the whole or only the preserved part of Cratinus’ work, the Dionysalexandros could be the eighth. These conclusions are acceptable to Professor R. H. Tanner, who will shortly publish a dissertation dealing with the chronology of Cratinus’ plays and whose results on the point now under discussion he has kindly permitted me to summarize here. He follows Croiset in assigning the Dionysalexandros to the Lenaea of 430 B.C.; six plays he definitely dates before the Dionysalexandros, and a seventh somewhat less positively. In the thirteen remaining he has found nothing to indicate a date prior to 430 B.C. Some of them certainly belong to the period subsequent to 430 B.C. It will be seen that these conclusions are in thorough accord with my interpretation of the numeral.

The chronology of Menander’s life is not free from uncertainties, but these do not seriously affect the present discussion. His first play was performed perhaps as early as 324 B.C., and his decease probably took place in 292/1 B.C. During these thirty-three or thirty-four years he composed some one hundred and nine pieces or slightly over three per annum. Now Nicocles was archon in 302/1 B.C. If, then, the hypothesis is correct in assigning the Imbrians to the archonship of this man, the number seventy-one (the smallest restoration which is possible) or seventy-nine (the largest possible) would almost perfectly fit the requirements of the case. Eighty-six Menandrian titles are now known, and it is not likely that many of his plays were lost in Alexandrian times.

We may, therefore, summarize the preceding discussion as follows: If we follow Dindorf in reading ιέ for λέ in the hypothesis to Aristophanes’ Birds, the numerals are capable of a uniform interpretation; they were a library device and were assigned to the plays represented in some collection, most probably that at Alexandria, according to the dates of their premières. It is needless to state that in establishing the chronological sequence of the plays in their possession the library authorities would depend upon Aristotle’s Didascaliae or other handbooks derived therefrom.

Footnotes

1 Cf. Hermann Deckinger, Die Darstellung der persönlichen Motive bei Aischylos und Sophokles (1911), p. 1.

2 Cf. Aristotle Poetics 1449a8. The other passages cited in this paragraph are ibid. 1449b33 and 1450a10, 1450b17-21, 1453b1-3, 1462a12, and 1462a14-17.

3 Cf. his paper entitled “Dramatic Criticism and the Theatre” in Creative Criticism, p. 56 (1917).

4 Cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1403b33 (Jebb’s translation). This statement needs to be interpreted in the light of pp. 190 f., below.

5 Cf. op. cit., p. 56. The italics are mine.

6 Cf. Clayton Hamilton, The Theory of the Theatre (1910), p. 3; and J. B. Matthews, North American Review, CLXXXVII (1908), 213 f.: “They believe that the playhouse has now, has had in the past, and must always have a monopoly of the dramatic form. They cannot recognize the legitimacy of a play which is not intended to be played. They know that the great dramatist of every period when the drama has flourished has always planned his plays for performance in the theater of his own time, by the actors of his own time, and before the spectators of his own time”; and The Independent, LXVIII (1910), 187: “In other words, the literary quality is something that may be added to a drama, but which is not essential to its value as a play in the theater itself.”

7 Cf. Conversations with Eckermann, March 28, 1827 (Oxenford’s translation).

8 Cf. The Inn of Tranquillity (1912), p. 277.

9 Cf. Classical Philology, IX (1914), 96.

10 Cf. Euripides and His Age (1913), p. 89. See p. 217, below.

11 Cf. The Theatre of Ideas (1915), pp. 9 ff. (copyrighted by the George H. Doran Company).

12 Cf. Welcker, Nachtrag zu der Schrift über die Aeschylische Trilogie nebst einer Abhandlung über das Satyrspiel (1826); Furtwängler, “Der Satyr aus Pergamon,” Berliner Winckelmannsfest Programm, XL (1880); U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Einleitung in die griechische Tragödie [Vol. I of his edition of Euripides’ Heracles (1889)], pp. 43 ff. and Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, XXIX (1912), 464 ff.; Bethe, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Theaters im Altherthum (1896); G. Körte, “Satyrn und Böcke,” in Bethe’s Prolegomena, pp. 339 ff.; Wernicke, “Bockschöre und Satyrdrama,” Hermes, XXXII (1897), 290 ff.; Schmid, Zur Geschichte des gr. Dithyrambus (1901); Reisch, “Zur Vorgeschichte der attischen Tragödie,” in Festschrift Theodor Gomperz (1902), pp. 451 ff.; Crusius, s.v. “Dithyrambos,” in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie, V, 1203 ff. (1903); Dieterich, “Die Entstehung der Tragödie,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XI (1908), 163 ff. [Kleine Schriften, pp. 414 ff.]; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, V, 85 ff., and especially pp. 224 ff. (1909), and “The Megala Dionysia and the Origin of Tragedy,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, XXIX (1909), xlvii; Ridgeway, The Origin of Tragedy with Special Reference to the Greek Tragedians (1910), and The Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races in Special Reference to the Origin of Greek Tragedy (1915), reviewed by Flickinger in Classical Weekly, XI (1918), 107 ff.; Nilsson, “Der Ursprung der Tragödie,” Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, XXVII (1911), 609 ff. and 673 ff.; Jane Harrison, Themis, a Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (1912); Murray, “The Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy,” in Miss Harrison’s Themis, pp. 341 ff.; Flickinger, “Tragedy and Satyric Drama,” Classical Philology, VIII (1913), 261 ff.; and Cook, Zeus, a Study in Ancient Religion, I (1914), 665 ff. and 695 ff.

13 Cf. Lawson, Annual of British School at Athens, VI (1900), 125 ff.; Dawkins, ibid., XI (1905), 72 ff.; and Wace, ibid., XVI (1910), 232 ff.

14 Cf. Suidas, s.v. “Phrynichus.”

15 Cf. Euripides the Rationalist, p. 243.

16 Cf. von Wilamowitz, Neue Jahrbücher f. kl. Altertum, XXIX (1912), 474, and Cook, Zeus, I, xiii f.

17 Cf. his Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, p. 135. This opinion is confirmed by the fact that men of such importance as Thespis and Phrynichus are not so much as mentioned in the Poetics.

18 Cf. Poetics 1449a9-11: γενομένη <δ’> ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς αὐτοσχεδιαστική,... καὶ ἡ μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐξαρχόντων τὸν διθύραμβον.

19 Cf. Laws 700 B: καὶ ἄλλο (sc. εἶδος ᾠδῆς) Διονύσου γένεσις, οἶμαι, διθύραμβος λεγόμενος.

20 Cf. Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci⁴, II, 404, fr. 77:
ὡς Διονύσοι’ ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι μέλος
οἶδα διθύραμβον, οἴνῳ συγκεραυνωθεὶς φρένας.

21 Cf. ibid., III, 559, fr. 1, vs. 16.

22 Cf. Olymp. XIII, 18 f.:
ταὶ Διονύσου πόθεν ἐξέφανεν
σὺν βοηλάτᾳ χάριτες διθυράμβῳ;

Βοηλάτᾳ is usually explained by reference to the ox prize, cf. schol. Plato, Republic, 394C: εὑρεθῆναι μὲν τὸν διθύραμβον ἐν Κορίνθῳ ὑπὸ Ἀρίονός φασι. τῶν δὲ ποιητῶν τῷ μὲν πρώτῳ βοῦς ἔπαθλον ἦν, τῷ δὲ δευτέρῳ ἀμφορεύς, τῷ δὲ τρίτῳ τράγος, ὃν τρυγὶ κεχρισμένον ἀπῆγον. Kern, Crusius, and Ridgeway, however, refer it to the practice of an Arcadian community, the Cynaethaens, of whom Pausanias (viii. 19. 1) speaks as follows: “And as to the things most worthy of mention there is a shrine of Dionysus there, and in the winter season they celebrate a festival, in which men who have anointed themselves with oil lift up a bull from the herd, whatever one the god himself puts in their minds to lift, and carry it to the shrine. Such was their manner of sacrifice.” Cf. Pauly-Wissowa, V, 1041 and 1206, and Origin of Tragedy, p. 6.

23 Cf. Kaibel, Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, p. 115, fr. 132;

οὐκ ἔστι διθύραμβος ὅκχ’ ὕδωρ πίῃς.

24 Published by Rabe in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, LXIII (1908), 150.

25 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 1448b1: καὶ τὸ ποιεῖν αὐτοὶ [sc. οἱ Δωριεῖς] μὲν δρᾶν, Ἀθηναίους δὲ πράττειν προσαγορεύειν. In referring to this passage von Wilamowitz says: “So viel wahr ist, dass δρᾶμα in der Tat ein Fremdwort ist; man redet im Kultus nur von δρώμενα”; cf. op. cit., p. 467, n. 3.

26 Cf. Haigh, The Tragic Drama of the Greeks (1896), p. 17, n. 1, and Pickard-Cambridge in Classical Review, XXVI (1912), 54. It is also possible that Arion’s employment of a new generic term (δράματα) for his dithyrambs is alluded to. Herodotus may have taken it as a matter of course that everyone knew what this new name was and consequently failed to mention it, thus leaving the passage ambiguous.

27 Cf. Suidas, s.v. “Arion”: λέγεται καὶ τραγικοῦ τρόπου εὑρετὴς γενέσθαι καὶ πρῶτος χορὸν στῆσαι <κύκλιον> καὶ διθύραμβον ᾆσαι καὶ ὀνομάσαι τὸ ᾀδόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ χοροῦ καὶ σατύρους εἰσενεγκεῖν ἔμμετρα λέγοντας. I cannot agree with Reisch, op. cit., p. 471, and Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit., p. 54, in thinking that this notice refers to three separate types of performances instead of one.

28 See p. 7, n. 4, above.

29 Cf. Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit., p. 55.

30 Cf. Suidas, s.v. “Thespis”: Θέσπις Ἰκαρίου πόλεως Ἀττικῆς, τραγικὸς ἑκκαιδέκατος ἀπὸ τοῦ πρώτου γενομένου τραγῳδιοποιοῦ Ἐπιγένους τοῦ Σικυωνίου τιθέμενος, ὡς δέ τινες, δεύτερος μετὰ Ἐπιγένην· ἄλλοι δὲ αὐτὸν πρῶτον τραγικὸν γενέσθαι φασί.

31 Cf. Suidas, s.v., Photius, s.v., and Apostolius xiii. 42: Ἐπιγένου τοῦ Σικυωνίου τραγῳδίαν εἰς τὸν Διόνυσον ποιήσαντος, ἐπεφώνησάν τινες τοῦτο· ὅθεν ἡ παροιμία.

32 Cf. The Origin of Tragedy, p. 58.

33 About a dozen explanations in addition to those discussed in the text are listed and criticized in Classical Philology, VIII (1913), 269 ff.

34 Cf. Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium, p. 14: ἀφ’ οὖ Θέσπις ὁ ποιητὴς [ὑπεκρίνα]το πρῶτος, ὃς ἐδίδαξη [δρ]ᾶ[μα ἐν ἄ]στ[ει καὶ ἆθλον ἐ]τέθη ὁ [τ]ράγος, ἔτη ΗΗ𐅄[ΔΔ·], ἄρχοντος Ἀθ[ήνησι]... ναιου τοῦ προτέρου.

35 Cf. op. cit., ρ. 468: “An der Tatsache, dass in älterer Zeit dem Tragödenchor ein Bock als Preis (der als Opferthier und Opferschmaus dienen sollte), gegeben wurde, wie dem Dithyrambenchor zu gliechem Zwecke ein Stier, daran zu zweifeln ist kein Grund.”

36 Cf. op. cit., p. 59: “Since the interpretation of τραγῳδία as the ‘song of the men in goat-costume’ must be given up, the word can be interpreted as the ’song around’ or ‘for the goat’—whether the goat be sacrifice or prize.”

37 Cf. Eusebius’ Chronica, Ol. 47, 2 (591-590 B.C.; Armenian version, Ol. 48, 1): τοῖς ἀγωνιζομένοις παρ’ Ἕλλησι τράγος ἐδίδοτο, ἀφ’ οὖ καὶ τραγικοὶ ἐκλήθησαν. Jerome’s Latin version reads: “his temporibus certantibus in agone (de voce add. R) tragus, id est hircus, in praemio dabatur. Unde aiunt tragoedos nuncupatos.”

38 Contrary to Herodotus, these choruses were τραγικοί only after the transfer, not before—a negligible error.

39 Of course, it is possible to argue that goats may have been sacrificed to Adrastus and that τραγικός and τραγῳδός were consequently older terms than is maintained in the text; this would also explain why the goat was continued as a prize after the sacrifice proper had been given over to Melanippus. Cf., however, Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, V, 233 and note d.

40 Cf. Plato Minos 321A: ἡ δὲ τραγῳδία ἐστὶ παλαιὸν ἐνθάδε, οὐχ ὡς οἴονται ἀπὸ Θέσπιδος ἀρξαμένη οὐδ’ ἀπὸ Φρυνίχου, ἀλλ’ εἰ θέλεις ἐννοῆσαι, πάνυ παλαιὸν αὐτὸ εὑρήσεις ὂν τῆσδε τῆς πόλεως εὕρημα.

41 Cf. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion² (1908), p. 568. Of course, I do not mean to deny that impersonation was subsequently borrowed from true drama by rites of various kinds which had not contained it at first. This situation probably obtained with reference to the Eleusinian mysteries in their later forms.
The indebtedness of tragedy to epic poetry for subject matter, dignity of treatment and of diction, and development of plot, including such technical devices as recognition (ἀναγνώρισις) and reversal of situation (περιπέτεια) is too well established to require argument. Aeschylus is said to have declared that his tragedies were “slices from Homer’s bountiful banquets” (Athenaeus, p. 347E). The pertinent passages from Aristotle’s Poetics have been conveniently assembled by Throop, “Epic and Dramatic,” Washington University Studies, V (1917), 1 ff.

42 Cf. Plutarch Solon xxix. If Thespis treated the traditional myths with some freedom, that may have added to Solon’s anger.

43 Cf. Diogenes Laertius iii. 56: τὸ παλαιὸν ἐν τῇ τραγῳδίᾳ πρότερον μὲν μόνος ὁ χορὸς διεδραμάτιζεν, ὕστερον δὲ Θέσπις ἕνα ὑποκριτὴν ἐξεῦρεν ὑπὲρ τοῦ διαναπαύεσθαι τὸν χορόν.

44 Cf. The Origin of Tragedy, p. 60.

45 Cf. Hiller, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, XXXIX (1884), 329.

46 Cf. Horace Ars Poetica, vs. 276:

dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis.

47 Cf. Kleine Schriften, p. 422, and Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, XXIX (1912), 474.

48 Cf. Suidas, s.v. “Thespis”: μνημονεύεται δὲ τῶν δραμάτων αὐτοῦ Ἆθλα Πελίου ἢ Φόρβας, Ἱερεῖς, Ἠίθεοι, Πενθεύς.

49 Cf. Diogenes Laertius v. 92. Both Aristoxenus and Heraclides were pupils of Aristotle.

50 Cf. Ridgeway, op. cit., p. 69.

51 Cf. Suidas, s.v. οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον (quoted on p. 29, n. 2, below).

52 The cognomen was due to the belief that the image and cult were derived from Eleutherae. At Eleutherae itself, however, his cognomen would naturally be different. There he was known as Διόνυσος Μελάναιγις, “Dionysus of the Black-Goat-Skin.” From this fact an abortive attempt has recently been made to derive a new explanation for tragic performances being denominated “goat-songs”; cf. Classical Philology, VIII (1913), 270.

53 Cf. Marmor Parium (quoted on p. 14, n. 2, above).

54 Cf. Poetics 1449a19 ff., Bywater’s translation.

55 Cf. op. cit., p. 472. This exegesis has now been commended by Pickard-Cambridge; cf. Classical Review, XXVI (1912), 53. Cornford has expressed the same view by means of a neat paraphrase: ἐκ σατυρικοῦ εἰς σεμνὸν μετέβαλεν, cf. The Origin of Attic Comedy (1914), p. 214, n. 1. Gomperz’ translation (1897) reads as follows: “Was das Wachstum ihrer Grossartigkeit anlangt, so hat sich das Trauerspiel im Gegensatze zur ursprünglichen Kleinheit der Fabeln und der zum Possenhaften neigenden Artung der Diction ihres satyrspielartigen Ursprungs wegen erst spät zu höherer Würde erhoben.... Ursprünglich hatte man sich nämlich, da die Dichtung satyrhaft und mehr balletartig war, des trochäischen Tetrameters bedient.”

56 Cf. Poetics 1449a22 f., Butcher’s translation.

57 In 467 B.C. Aristias concluded his tragedies with the Palaestae, “a satyric drama of his father Pratinas” (cf. arg. Aesch. Seven against Thebes). It is generally supposed that this was a posthumous piece. But Professor Capps suggests that Pratinas may frequently have provided a satyr-play for someone’s else trilogy, and thus explains the disproportionate number of satyric dramas in Pratinas’ list and of tragedies in other poets’ lists.

58 Cf. Suidas, s.v. “Pratinas”:... Φλιάσιος, ποιητὴς τραγῳδίας, ἀντηγωνίζετο Αἰσχύλῳ τε καὶ Χοιρίλῳ, ἐπὶ τῆς ἑβδομηκοστῆς Ὀλυμπιάδος, καὶ πρῶτος ἔγραψε Σατύρους... καὶ δράματα μὲν ἐπεδείξατο νʹ, ὦν Σατυρικὰ λβʹ. ἐνίκησε δὲ ἅπαξ. Note that the earliest name was simply Σάτυροι, “satyrs.” Murray has proposed another interpretation of Suidas’ phrase: “I take this to mean that Pratinas was the first person to write words for the revelling masquers to learn by heart. Thespis, like many early Elizabethans, had been content with a general direction: ‘Enter Satyrs, in revel, saying anything’” (incorporated in Miss Harrison’s Themis, p. 344). Nevertheless, he adds that he “does not wish to combat” the other view.

59 Fig. 3 is taken from Furtwängler and Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalarei, first series, II, Pls. 11-12. The membrum virile has been omitted in the reproduction.

60 Cf. op. cit., I, 696 f.

61 This was originally assembled by Hartwig in Römische Mittheilungen, XII (1897), 89 ff. and Wernicke, op. cit. It is now conveniently summarized by Cook, op. cit., pp. 697 ff.

62 Fig. 4 is taken from Baumeister, Denkmäler, Fig. 422. The two craters at Deepdene are illustrated in Cook, op. cit., Pl. XXXIX, Figs. 1-2.

63 The three dinoi are discussed by Miss Bieber in Athenische Mitteilungen, XXXVI (1911), 269 ff. and Pl. XIII, Figs. 1-3 and Pl. XIV, Figs. 1-5. My Figs. 5-7 are taken from her publication, corresponding to Pl. XIII, Fig. 1, Pl. XIV, Fig. 4, and Pl. XIV, Figs, 1 and 2 respectively. Cook maintains that all six vases are descended from a fresco by Polygnotus, op. cit., pp. 700 f.; but this suggestion seems improbable.

64 Cf. De Prott, “De Amphora Neapolitana Fabulae Satyricae Apparatum Scaenicum Repraesentante,” in Schedae Philologicae Hermanno Usener Oblatae (Bonn, 1891), pp. 47 ff. It seems strange that De Prott should mar his own interpretation by supposing the figure whom I have called Hesione to be a Muse. The Scythian cap ought to be decisive.

65 Cf. Miss Bieber, op. cit., Pl. XIV, Fig. 3.

66 Except the eleventh and twelfth choreutae on the Naples crater (Fig. 4), viz., the figure with a lyre near the middle of the lower row and the fully clad figure next to the last on the right. If De Prott is correct in considering these figures choreutae, they must be regarded (I suppose) as having not yet completed their make-up.

67 Fig. 8 is taken from Baumeister, Denkmäler, Fig. 424. The choreutae in this scene are not to be understood as having no tails; their position does not permit this feature to be seen, cf. Haigh, The Attic Theatre³, p. 293, note.

68 Cf. Etymologicum Magnum, s.v.: τραγῳδία:... ἢ ὅτι τὰ πολλὰ οἱ χοροὶ ἐκ σατύρων συνίσταντο, οὓς ἐκάλουν τράγους σκώπτοντες ἢ διὰ τὴν τοῦ σώματος δασύτητα ἢ διὰ τὴν περὶ τὰ ἀφροδίσια σπουδήν· τοιοῦτον γὰρ τὸ ζῷον. ἢ ὅτι οἱ χορευταὶ τὰς κόμας ἀνέπλεκον, σχῆμα τράγων μιμούμενοι.

69 Cf. Horace Ars Poetica, vss. 220 f:
carmine qui tragico vilem certavit ob hircum,
mox etiam agrestis Satyros nudavit, etc.

70 Cf. Suidas and Photius, s.v. οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον and Apostolius xiii. 42. After giving the explanation of this phrase already cited on p. 12, n. 3, above, they continue: βέλτιον δὲ οὕτως, τὸ πρόσθεν εἰς τὸν Διόνυσον γράφοντες τούτοις ἠγωνίζοντο, ἅπερ καὶ Σατυρικὰ ἐλέγετο· ὕστερον δὲ μεταβάντες εἰς τὸ τραγῳδίας γράφειν, κατὰ μικρὸν εἰς μύθους καὶ ἱστορίας ἐτράπησαν, μηκέτι τοῦ Διονύσου μνημονεύοντες, ὅθεν τοῦτο καὶ ἐπεφώνησαν. καὶ Χαμαιλέων ἐν τῷ Περὶ Θέσπιδος τὰ παραπλήσια ἱστορεῖ. The word παραπλήσια leaves it doubtful for how much of this notice Chamaeleon (Aristotle’s pupil) should be held responsible. But at the most his accountability cannot extend beyond explaining the introduction of non-Dionysiac themes; the side remarks are Byzantine.

71 Cf. von Wilamowitz, N. Jahrbücher f. kl. Altertum, XXIX (1912), 461, and Tanner, Transactions American Philological Association, XLVI (1915), 173 ff.

72 Fig. 9 is taken from the Journal of Hellenic Studies, XI (1890), Pl. XI, and is reproduced by permission of the Council of the Hellenic Society.

73 Reisch, op. cit., pp. 456 f., considers the goat-men Pans, or choreutae in some such comedy as Eupolis’ Αἶγες.

74 Cf. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, p. 69, fr. 207:

τράγος γένειον ἆρα πενθήσεις σύ γε.

The use of the nominative τράγος instead of a vocative is harsh, and Shorey, Classical Philology, IV (1909), 433 ff., interprets the line as an abbreviated comparison with ὡς omitted: “<If you kiss that fire>, you’ll be the goat (in the proverb) who mourned his beard.” Of course, this play must have been written considerably before 456 B.C., the year of Aeschylus’ decease.

75 Cf. Oxyrhynchus Papyri, IX (1912), 59:
νέος γὰρ ὢν ἀνὴρ
πώγωνι θάλλων ὡς τράγος κνήκῳ χλιδᾷς.

76 Cf. Euripides’ Cyclops, vss. 79 f.:
δοῦλος ἀλαίνων
σὺν τᾷδε τράγου χλαίνᾳ μελέᾳ.

Reisch thinks the goatskin characterized the chorus as shepherds; cf. op. cit., p. 458, note; Ridgeway considers it “the meanest form of apparel that could be worn by a slave”; cf. Origin of Tragedy, p. 87.

77 Fig. 10 is taken from Höber, Griechische Vasen, Fig. 57 (1909).

78 Cf. Reinach, Repertoire des Vases Peints, I, 193, or Baumeister, Denkmäler, Supplementtafel, Fig. 7.

79 Cf. op. cit., p. 459. The possibility of direct borrowing had already been denied by Wernicke, op. cit., pp. 302-6. Wernicke’s objections are not altogether convincing.

80 Fig. 11 is taken from a photograph for which I am indebted to Professor Heinrich Bulle. He was also kind enough to express the following judgment with regard to the inscription: “Ich kann nicht mit Ch. Fränkel, Satyr-und Bakchennamen auf Vasenbildern (1912), S. 35, der Lesung von Schulze (Göttinger gel. Anz. 1896, S. 254) ΣΙΒΥΡΤΑΣ zustimmen; denn die Inschrift ist ja rechtslaüfig. Man kann übrigens auch deutlich an dem Kleinerwerden der Buchstaben sehen, dass der Zeichner von links nach rechts geschrieben hat. Ich glaube mit Urlichs, (Verzeichniss d. Antikensammlung d. Univ. Wurzburgs, I, S. 50), dass es eine einfache Verschreibung aus ΣΑΤΥΡΟΣ ist.” The membrum virile has been omitted in the reproduction.

81 Cf. the contemporaneous sileni in connection with the “wagon-ship” of Dionysus; see Fig. 65 and p. 121, below.

82 Why “almost” is inserted here does not appear. Many Greek divinities are mentioned on Ridgeway’s pages, but none is recognized as “totally independent” of the cult of the dead.

83 Cf. his Dramas and Dramatic Dances, etc., pp. 63, 337, 385, and passim.

84 Cf. Marrett, Classical Review, XXX (1916), 159.

85 Cf. Zieliński, Die Gliederung der altattischen Komödie (1885); Humphreys, “The Agon of the Old Comedy,” American Journal of Philology, VIII (1887), 179 ff.; Poppelreuter, De Comoediae Atticae Primordiis (1893); A. Körte, “Archäologische Studien zur alten Komödie,” Jahrbuch d. archäologischen Instituts, VIII (1893), 61 ff.; Loeschcke, Athenische Mittheilungen, XIX (1894), 518, note; Bethe, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Theaters im Alterthum (1896), pp. 48 ff.; Mazon, Essai sur la Composition des Comédies d’Aristophane (1904); Capps, “The Introduction of Comedy into the City Dionysia,” University of Chicago Decennial Publications, VI (1904), 266 ff., and in Columbia University lectures on Greek Literature (1912), pp. 124 ff.; Navarre, “Les origines et la structure technique de la comédie ancienne,” Revue des Études anciennes, XIII (1911), 245 ff.; White, The Verse of Greek Comedy (1912); Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy (1914), reviewed by Flickinger in Classical Weekly, VIII (1915), 221 ff.; and Ridgeway, The Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races with an Appendix on the Origin of Greek Comedy (1915), reviewed by Flickinger, Classical Weekly, XI (1918), 109 f.

86 I am indebted to Professor Capps for this translation; the word is generally taken to mean “masks” here.

87 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 1449a37-b9.

88 The phallus was a representation of the membrum virile, and such ceremonies were primarily intended to secure fertility.

89 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 1449a9-13.

90 The second is, of course, the personification of Increase; the first is not so obvious. Some connect it with Demeter; it has also been proposed to interpret it as the Cretan form of ζημία, “damage.” The one would therefore represent the productive and the other the destructive powers; cf. Macan’s edition ad loc. This would accord very neatly with Cornford’s positive and negative charms.

91 Cf. Jacoby, Das Marmor Parium, p. 13: ἀφ’ οὑ ἐν Ἀθ[ήν]αις κωμω[ιδῶν χο]ρ[ὸς ἐτ]έθη, [στη]σάν[των πρώ]των Ἰκαριέων, εὑροντος Σουσαρίωνος, καὶ ᾆθλον ἐτέθη πρῶτον ὶσχάδω[ν] ἄρσιχο[ς] καὶ οἴνου με[τ]ρητής, [ἔτη.... The exact date is not determinable but is limited to a period of twenty years by other entries just before and after this one.

92 Figs. 12 and 13 are taken, by permission of the Council of the Hellenic Society, from the Journal of Hellenic Studies, II (1881), Pl. XIV, A1 and B1; Fig. 14 from Poppelreuter, op. cit., p. 8; and Figs. 15 and 16 from Robinson, Boston Museum Catalogue of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Vases (1893), p. 136.

93 Cf. Capps, University of Chicago Decennial Publications, VI, 286, and American Journal of Philology, XXVIII (1907), 186 f.

94 The divisions of tragedy are discussed on pp. 192 f., below. Five of the terms applied to the divisions of comedy appear also in tragedy, viz., prologue, parodus, episode, stasimum, and exodus; several, if not all, of the five seem to have originated in tragedy.

95 From this second half of the parabasis comedy developed another epirrhematic division to which Zieliński also gave the name of syzygy. This was not exclusively choral, however, stood at no definite point in the play, and differed in still other respects from the epirrhematic syzygy of the parabasis. Three syzygies appear in Aristophanes’ Acharnians and Birds, none in his Lysistrata, Women in Council, and Plutus. Cf. White, op. cit., § 677. Since it is apparent that such syzygies are not primary in origin, they have been ignored in the foregoing discussion.

96 Or at least reflect its influence; cf. the syzygies mentioned in the last note.

97 Cf. Cornford, op. cit., p. 46.

98 Cf. White, “An Unrecognized Actor in Greek Comedy,” Harvard Studies, XVII (1906), 124 f.

99 Cf. Zieliński, op. cit., p. 190.

100 Published by Usener in Rheinisches Museum f. Philologie, XXVIII (1873), 418.

101 Cf. Aristophanes’ Clouds, vss. 537 ff. (Rogers’ translation). The original of “filthy symbols” is σκύτινον καθειμένον. It has therefore been suggested, especially since there seems to be an allusion to a phallus even in the Clouds (vs. 734), that Aristophanes is not to be understood as discontinuing the use of the phallus altogether in this play, but merely as abandoning the φαλλος καθειμένος in favor of the less indecent φαλλὸς ἀναδεδεμένος. Both types are seen in Fig. 17.

102 Figs. 17-19 are taken from Körte, op. cit., p. 69 (Fig. 1), p. 78 (Fig. 3), and p. 80 (Fig. 5), respectively. In Fig. 17 there are only three actors; the end figures are flute-players. Körte believes this scene to be taken from Middle Comedy. In Fig. 19 the phallus has been omitted.

103 Figs. 20 and 21 are taken from Körte, op. cit., p. 91 (Fig. 8), and Baumeister’s Denkmäler, Fig. 2099, respectively. The phallus has been omitted from some of the actors.

104 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 1448a31 f.

105 Those who admit this claim rest under the necessity of placing the introduction of actors at this early date. This would mean that comedy had actors before tragedy did! On the other hand, the reader needs to be warned that I place the introduction of comic actors later than most writers.

106 Cf. Aristophanes’ Wasps, vs. 57, and Kock, Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, I, 9 f., fr. 2 (Ecphantides), and I, 323, fr. 244 (Eupolis).

107 Von Wilamowitz’ skepticism with regard to Megarian comedy, however, has not gained many converts; cf. “Die megarische Komödie,” Hermes, IX (1875), 319 ff.

108 Cf. Navarre, op. cit., p. 268. The same fact is brought out more graphically in the lithographic table at the close of Zieliński’s book.

109 The episodes referred to in this sentence are more properly termed “mediating scenes” in contradistinction to the true episodes (5) which follow the parabasis (cf. White, The Verse of Greek Comedy, §§ 679 f.). Twenty-six connecting links of this sort occur in Aristophanes, twenty of them just before an agon or parabasis. Syzygies are also employed to extend the length of the play, especially in the first half (cf. p. 41, n. 1, above).

110 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 1448a32-4.

111 Cf. Aristophanes’ Frogs, vss. 416-30, Rogers’ translation. The original is more vulgar than would be tolerable in an English translation.

112 Cf. Kaibel, Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, p. 18.

113 Some would interpret this passage as meaning that Cratinus was the first to observe the aesthetic law that not more than three persons should participate in the same conversation (cf. Rees, The So-called Rule of Three Actors in the Classical Greek Drama, p. 9, n. 1). When the only speakers were the individual choreutae, who were twenty-four in number, such a restriction must have been unheard of. On the other hand, if it should prove true that Megarian actors were brought in before the time of Cratinus, then we must suppose that their number was at first in excess of three and was reduced to three by him. Of course, the use of but three actors in the tragedy and comedy of this period would automatically result in not more than three persons participating in a conversation and so in the observance of the aesthetic law. This statement, however, is subject to the qualification that the chorus leaders continued to have speaking parts both in comedy (see p. 44, above), and in tragedy (cf. pp. 164 f. and 169, below), and that a fourth actor was occasionally employed (cf. pp. 171 and 182, below). In any case I am of the opinion that conscious formulation of the aesthetic law was not made until Hellenistic times (see pp. 187 f., below).

114 Cf. Aristophanes’ Knights, vss. 522 f., Rogers’ translation.

115 Cf. “The Introduction of Comedy into the City Dionysia,” University of Chicago Decennial Publications, VI, 266 ff.

116 Cf. Columbia University Lectures on Greek Literature, p. 130.

117 Cf. Cornford, op. cit., pp. 179 and 193, n. 1; see p. 48, above.

118 It is unfortunate that there is at present no satisfactory book dealing with the Greek theater on the structural side. English readers are practically restricted to Haigh’s The Attic Theatre, revised by Pickard-Cambridge in 1907, which devotes nearly one hundred pages to a summary and criticism of the different views. But this work has already been off the press for a decade and on the main issue, viz., as to whether the Greek theater of the classical period was provided with a raised stage for actors, makes too many concessions to the traditional view. For German readers, on the other hand, the situation is not a great deal better. Dörpfeld’s book has been before the public for over twenty years, and in the interim his opinions have necessarily changed on many points. He has promised a thoroughly revised second edition, which is demanded also by the excavation of additional theaters and by the publication of numerous special articles. But it is hardly likely that this promise will ever be redeemed. The only comfort is to be derived from the fact that, as works of major importance have appeared, Dörpfeld has promptly published critiques which have often been of such length as to furnish convenient restatements of his views. These more recent works in German, however, have attempted merely to force a modification of certain details in Dörpfeld’s position; they are in no wise calculated to serve as independent presentations of the whole matter or as a means of orientation for the uninitiated.
From the extensive bibliographical material which is available it is manifestly impossible to cite more than a fraction here. The outstanding books are Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater (1896), defended against reviewers and partially modified in “Das griechische Theater Vitruvs,” Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII (1897), 439 ff., and XXIII (1898), 326 ff.; Puchstein, Die griechische Bühne (1901), answered by Dörpfeld in Athenische Mittheilungen, XXVIII (1903), 383 ff.; and Fiechter, Die baugeschichtliche Entwicklung des antiken Theaters (1914), summarized by its author and criticized by Dörpfeld in Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, Anzeiger, XXX (1915), 93 ff. and 96 ff., respectively. Other important publications are von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, “Die Bühne des Aischylos,” Hermes, XXI (1886), 597 ff.; Todt, “Noch Einmal die Bühne des Aeschylos,” Philologus, XLVIII (1889), 505 ff.; Capps, “Vitruvius and the Greek Stage,” University of Chicago Studies in Classical Philology, I (1893), 3 ff.; Bethe, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Theaters im Alterthum (1896), and “Die hellenistischen Bühnen und ihre Decorationen,” Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, XV (1900), 59 ff. (answered by Dörpfeld in “Die vermeintliche Bühne des hellenistischen Theaters,” ibid., XVI [1901], 22 ff.); Petersen, “Nachlese in Athen: Das Theater des Dionysos,” ibid., XXIII (1908), 33 ff.; and Versakis, “Das Skenengebäude d. Dionysos-Theaters,” ibid., XXIV (1909), 194 ff., answered by Dörpfeld, ibid., pp. 224 ff. Still other titles will be cited as they are needed in the discussion. See also p. 221, below. For reports on the excavations of various theaters the reader should consult the bibliographical references given by Dörpfeld-Reisch and Fiechter in their footnotes.

119 For a slight variability in the application of the word orchestra see p. 83 and nn. 1 and 2, below; see also p. 72, n. 3.

120 Fig. 22 is specially drawn and does not exactly reproduce any single theatrical structure. Fig. 23 is taken, simplified and slightly altered, from Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater, Pl. VIII (a).

121 Dörpfeld claims that the name was given because the speakers stood there in addressing the public assemblies and that the same place was known as the theologium when used by divinities; cf. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXIII (1898), 348 f., and XXVIII (1903), 395, and Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, Anzeiger, XXX (1915), 98. Reisch thought that logium was the name of some kind of special structure in the orchestra; cf. Das griechische Theater, p. 302. Inscriptions prove the presence of a logium in the Delian theater in 279 B.C. (εἰς τὸ λογεῖον τῆς σκηνῆς) and 180 B.C. (τὴν κατασκευὴν τῶν πινάκων τῶν ἐπὶ τὸ λογεῖον); cf. Homolle, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, XVIII (1894), 162 and 165, and Robinson, American Journal of Philology, XXV (1904), 191; but they do not make its nature clear. Personally I am of the opinion that at Athens speakers always stood in the orchestra to address the public assemblies until the building of the Nero stage about 67 A.D.; cf. Flickinger, Plutarch as a Source of Information on the Greek Theater (1904), p. 55, and see p. 102, below. My present view, therefore, is that logium suffered a change of meaning, being first applied to the top of the proscenium and being used for elevated action of various kinds, as explained in the text, and afterward being applied to the stage as the place of actors and public speakers. In either case, it referred to the same general part of the theater, viz., an elevated platform in front of the scene-building. But the original application of this term is one of the most perplexing problems in connection with scenic antiquities, and it is earnestly to be hoped that additional evidence may be brought to light which will unmistakably reveal its earlier history. The word does not appear in literature until Roman times (thrice in Plutarch), but then indisputably means “stage.” See next paragraph in text.

122 “Theater” (θέατρον) is derived from θεᾶσθαι, to “see,” and was originally applied to the space occupied by the spectators. The wider meaning was a natural but later development. It is customary to employ the Latin term cavea (“an excavated place”) to express the narrower meaning.

123 Fig. 24 is taken from Wilberg’s drawing, simplified by the omission of numerous details, in Forschungen in Ephesos, II, Fig. 96. I am responsible for the addition of the names.

124 That this platform (or rather its equivalent in purely Roman theaters) might be conventionally regarded as the roof of the scene-building appears from Seneca Medea, vs. 973 (Medea speaking): “excelsa nostrae tecta conscendam domus,” and vs. 995 (Jason speaking): “en ipsa tecti parte praecipiti imminet.”

125 The word occurs only in Pollux, Onomasticon, IV, § 127.

126 Dörpfeld applies the term to the first story of the purely Greek (stageless) theater (see p. 100, below).

127 For a discussion of the technical terms from the traditional standpoint, cf. A. Müller, “Untersuchungen zu den Bühnenalterthümern,” Philologus, Supplementband, VII (1899), 3 ff. Many of the terms, notably σκηνή, have numerous secondary meanings; cf. Flickinger, Plutarch as a Source of Information on the Greek Theater, pp. 23 ff., and Scherling, De Vocis Σκηνή, Quantum ad Theatrum Graecum Pertinet, Significatione et Usu (1906). Thymele is sometimes extended in application so as to denote the whole orchestra; hence θυμελικός was sometimes applied to purely orchestral performers (or their performances) in contradistinction to those who came into more immediate relationship with the scene-building and who were in consequence known as σκηνικοί (see pp. 96 f., below).

128 Fig. 25 is taken from a photograph by Professor D. M. Robinson.

129 Figs. 26 f. are taken from photographs by Dr. A. S. Cooley; Fig. 28 from one by Professor D. M. Robinson.

130 Fig. 1 is taken from a photograph furnished by Professor D. M. Robinson.

131 Fig. 29 is specially drawn and is based upon several different drawings.

132 Fig. 30 is taken from Wieseler’s Theatergebäude und Denkmäler d. Bühnenwesens bei den Griechern und Römern, Pl. I, Fig. 1, and is magnified two diameters as compared with the original coin. See also the medallion on the outside cover, which is reproduced from the British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins, Attica, Megaris, Aegina, Pl. XIX, Fig. 8. Fig. 31 is from a photograph by Dr. A. S. Cooley.

133 Fig. 32 is redrawn, with slight alterations, from Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater, Pl. II. The age of the different remains is indicated in colors in ibid., Pl. I.

134 Cf. Photius, s.v. ἴκρια. τὰ ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ, ἀφ’ ὤν ἐθεῶντο τοὺς Διονυσιακοὺς αγῶνας πρὶν ἤ κατασκευασθῆναι τὸ ἐν Διονύσου θέατρον; likewise s.v. ληναῖον and ὀρχήστρα.

135 Cf. Suidas, s.v. Πρατίνας... ἀντηγωνίζετο δὲ Αὶσχύλῳ τε καὶ Χοιρίλῳ, ἐπὶ τῆς ἑβδομηκοστῆς Ὀλυμπιάδος,... ἐπιδεικνυμένου δὲ τούτου συνέβη τὰ ἴκρια, ἐφ’ ὧν ἑστήκεσαν οἱ θεαταί πεσεῖν. καὶ ἐκ τούτου θέατρον ᾠκοδομήθη Ἀθηναίοις. It is also possible that the orchestra in the precinct of Dionysus is somewhat earlier than is maintained in the text, possibly going back to the vicinity of 534 B.C., and that it was the earlier and less substantial seats near it which collapsed ca. 499 B.C.

136 Figs. 33 f. are taken from photographs by Dr. A. S. Cooley. The position of these stones is marked by B and C respectively in Fig. 32. Another arc of the same orchestral circle is indicated by a cutting in the native rock near the east parodus, A in Fig. 32.

137 Fig. 32a is taken from F. Noack, Σκηνὴ Τραγική, eine Studie über die scenischen Anlage auf der Orchestra des Aischylos und der anderen Tragiker (1915), p. 3.

138 Possibly the seats did not go back of this road at this period; they certainly did in the fourth century (Fig. 32).

139 Cf. Dignan, The Idle Actor in Aeschylus (1905), p. 13, n. 14.

140 Or in the south half of the old orchestra in case the orchestra was moved fifty feet nearer the Acropolis at this time (see p. 68, below).

141 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 1449a18, and Vitruvius, De Architectura, VII, praefatio, § 11.

142 Dörpfeld, following Reisch, is willing to accept a date as early as 421-415 B.C., cf. Das griechische Theater, pp. 21 f.

143 Fig. 35 is taken from Fiechter, op. cit., Fig. 14.

144 So Furtwängler, “Zum Dionysostheater in Athen,” Sitzungsberichte d. bayer. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München, philosophisch-philologische u. historische Classe, 1901, p. 411; Puchstein, op. cit., pp. 137 ff.; E. A. Gardner, Ancient Athens, pp. 435 f. and 448; and Fiechter, op. cit., p. 11. Dörpfeld, on the contrary, would attribute these foundations to the Lycurgus theater in the next century; cf. Das griechische Theater, pp. 59 ff.

145 Cf. Dörpfeld, “Das griechische Theater zu Pergamon,” Athenische Mittheilungen, XXXII (1907), 231; but differently in Das griechische Theater, pp. 61 ff.

146 As in the Hellenistic theater (Fig. 38).

147 Except possibly at Thoricus (see p. 103, below).

148 Cf. pseudo-Plutarch X Oratorum Vitae, 841D and 852C.

149 Cf. Dörpfeld, “Das Theater von Ephesos,” Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, Anzeiger, XXVIII (1913), 38.

150 Dörpfeld, “Das Theater von Ephesos,” Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, Anzeiger, XXVIII (1913), 40 f.

151 Fig. 38 is taken from Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater, Fig. 26.

152 Cf. ibid., p. 63. This shift has been disputed by many but is defended by Fiechter, op. cit., pp. 9 ff.

153 Cf. Dörpfeld, Das griechische Theater, p. 89.

154 Cf. ibid., p. 89; Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII (1897), 459; XXIII (1898), 330 and 347; and XXVIII (1903), 414. For the Graeco-Roman stage see pp. 80 ff. and 110 f., below.

155 Fig. 39 is from a photograph taken by Dr. Lewis L. Forman and furnished by Dr. A. S. Cooley. Owing to its change of function, in Roman times the orchestra was sometimes known as the κονίστρα (= the Latin arena); owing to its change of shape, it was sometimes called σῖγμα from its resemblance to the semicircular form of the Greek letter Ϲ.

156 Fig. 40 is taken from Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater, Fig. 32.

157 Fig. 41 is from a photograph belonging to Northwestern University; the stone steps at the left and another slab at the right do not appear in this view (see Fig. 39). For the latest interpretation and drawing of the frieze, cf. Cook, Zeus, I, 708 ff., and the pocket at end of his volume.

158 Fig. 42 is taken from Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII (1897), 452.

159 Vitruvius, of course, speaks of Roman feet, which are equal to 11.65 English inches.

160 Fig. 43 is taken from Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII (1897), 453. This drawing differs somewhat from that given in Das griechische Theater, Fig. 66, which was prepared while Dörpfeld was still of the opinion that Vitruvius was describing the Hellenistic theater and had misapprehended the function of its proscenium (see p. 81, below). He now includes the proscenium at the back of the stage in the scaenae frons.

161 Whatever scaena may mean in Latin, in scaena in this context is at least equivalent to “on the stage.”

162 Cf. p. 61, n. 2, above and pp. 96 f., below.

163 Cf. Pollux Onomasticon iv, § 123: καὶ σκηνὴ μὲν ὑποκριτῶν ἴδιον, ἡ δὲ ὀρχήστρα τοῦ χοροῦ.

164 Cf. ibid., iv, § 127: εἰσελθόντες δὲ κατὰ τὴν ὀρχήστραν ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν ἀναβαίνουσι διὰ κλιμάκων.

165 Dörpfeld’s views were first given general publicity in the Appendix to Müller’s Lehrbuch der griechischen Bühnenalterthümern (1886), pp. 415 f., but were not published in full until 1896. They have suffered modification in several material points since then.

166 Cf. De Architectura v. 8, 2: “ita his praescriptionibus qui voluerit uti, emendatas efficiet theatrorum perfectiones.”

167 This is now Dörpfeld’s name for what he at first called the Asia Minor type; cf. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXVIII (1903), 389 and 414. The latter term was unfortunate as suggesting a geographical restriction which had no basis in fact.

168 Cf. Plutarch Life of Pompey, c. xlii.

169 It is significant that Vitruvius seems to have depended upon Asia Minor rather than the Greek mainland for his knowledge of Greek architecture; cf. Noack, “Das Proscenion in der Theaterfrage,” Philologus, LVIII (1899), 16 ff.

170 Cf. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII (1897), 439 ff.

171 Cf. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII (1897), 443, 449 f., and 454, and Fiechter, op. cit., pp. 59 ff.

172 It is easy to see why he should do so. When Hellenistic theaters were made over into Graeco-Roman structures, several rows of seats were often removed, resulting in a drop of several feet between the auditorium and the orchestra (see p. 116, below, and Fig. 24). So distinct a line of demarcation could scarcely be ignored in favor of any less clearly marked boundary. In fact, the orchestra in the narrowest sense (see next note) was sometimes not indicated at all in the Graeco-Roman theaters.

173 The word is applied also to a still more restricted space which in some Graeco-Roman and most earlier theaters is marked off by a circular boundary.

174 Of course, Dörpfeld and Fiechter cite only a fraction of the instances available (others are given in Puchstein’s table, op. cit., p. 7), but it is to be inferred that they bring forward those which are most favorable to their own position and most difficult for their opponents to explain. For example, the proscenium of the Hellenistic theater in Athens was about thirteen feet (English) high, which exceeds Vitruvius’ maximum. Consequently Fiechter says nothing about it. In general, the Hellenistic proscenia were higher than the Graeco-Roman stages.

175 Doubtless for the reason that in the pitlike Graeco-Roman orchestra the smaller circle really was not needed and often was not indicated (see p. 83, n. 1).

176 Cf. Dörpfeld, Athenische Mittheilungen, XXVIII (1903), 403 and 405.

177 Cf. Bethe, Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, XV (1900), 71 f., and Dörpfeld, ibid., XVI (1901), 35 f.

178 Cf. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXVIII (1903), 424 ff. The arguments advanced in this article are reaffirmed as still valid in Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, Anzeiger, XXX (1915), 99 ff.

179 Cf. Hermes, XXI (1886), 603.

180 Cf. “The Greek Stage According to the Extant Dramas,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, XXII (1891), 5 ff. Similar results were obtained by White, “The ‘Stage’ in Aristophanes,” Harvard Studies, II (1891), 159 ff.

181 Fig. 45 is from a photograph belonging to the University of Chicago. The inscription beneath the seat reads: “Of the priest of Dionysus Eleuthereus.”

182 Cf. scholium on vs. 299 of the Frogs: ἀποροῦσι δέ τινες πῶς ἀπὸ τοῦ λογείου περιελθὼν καὶ κρυφθεὶς ὄπισθεν τοῦ ἱερέως τοῦτο λέγει. φαίνονται δὲ οὐκ εἶναι ἐπὶ τοῦ λογείου ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τῆς ὀρχήστρας.

183 Cf. Graeber, De Poetarum Atticorum Arte Scaenica (1911), p. 4.

184 Cf. Rees, “The Function of the Πρόθυρον in the Production of Greek Plays,” Classical Philology, X (1915), 128 and n. 2. For other interpretations consistent with a stageless theater, cf. White, Harvard Studies, II (1891), 164 ff., and Capps, Transactions of the American Philological Association, XXII (1891), 64 ff. A convenient summary from the pro-stage point of view may be found in Haigh, The Attic Theatre³, pp. 166 f.

185 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 1456a29, and see pp. 144 ff., below.

186 Cf. White, op. cit., p. 167, note, and Robert, “Zur Theaterfrage,” Hermes, XXXII (1897), 447.

187 See pp. 99, 116 f., 134 f., and 144-49, below. Cf. Capps, “The Chorus in the Later Greek Drama,” American Journal of Archaeology, X (1895), 287 ff.; Körte, “Das Fortleben des Chors im griechischen Drama,” N. Jahrbücher f. kl. Altertum, V (1900), 81 ff.; Flickinger, “ΧΟΡΟΥ in Terence’s Heauton and Agathon’s ΕΜΒΟΛΙΜΑ,” Classical Philology, VII (1912), 24 ff.; and Duckett, Studies in Ennius (1915), pp. 53 ff.

188 See p. 147, below, and cf. Graf, Szenische Untersuchungen zu Menander (1914), p. 14. The same motive appears also in the fifth century, in Euripides’ Phoenician Maids, vss. 192 ff., and Phaethon (Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, p. 602, fr. 773, vss. 10 ff.); cf. Fraenkel, De Media et Nova Comoedia (1912), p. 71, and Harms, De Introitu Personarum in Euripidis et Novae Comoediae Fabulis (1914), p. 60; see p. 282, below.

189 The former phrase occurs in Aristotle’s Poetics 1453a27, 1455a28, 1459b25, and 1460a15, and Demosthenes xix, p. 449, § 337; the latter in Aristotle’s (?) Poetics 1452b18 and 25, Aristotle’s Problems 918b26, 920a9, and 922b17, and Demosthenes xviii, p. 288, § 180. Cf. Richards, Classical Review, V (1891), 97, and XVIII (1904), 179, and Flickinger, “The Meaning of ἐπὶ τῆς σκηνῆς in Writers of the Fourth Century,” University of Chicago Decennial Publications, VI (1902), 11 ff., and “Scaenica,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, XL (1909), 109 ff.

190 Cf. Athenaeus, p. 211 B.

191 Cf. Diodorus Siculus xi. 10, Plutarch Life of Brutus, c. xlv, and Life of Demetrius, c. xxxii, and Lucian (?), Lucius sive Asinus, § 47.

192 Cf. American Journal of Philology, XVIII (1897), 120.

193 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 1460a11-17.

194 Cf. Aristotle (?) Poetics 1452b24 f.

195 Cf. Clemens Alexandrinus (Potter), p. 688, and Vitruvius viii, praefatio § 1. Incidentally it may be remarked that Euripides’ philosophizing and personal views are found in his choral odes no less than in the histrionic parts of his plays (see p. 140, below).

196 Cf. Frei, De Certaminibus Thymelicis (1900), pp. 14 and 15. The dissertation provoked a controversy between Bethe and Dörpfeld; cf. Bethe, “Thymeliker und Skeniker,” Hermes, XXXVI (1901), 597 ff., and Dörpfeld, “Thymele und Skene,” ibid., XXXVII (1902), 249 ff. and 483 ff.

197 Cf. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXVIII (1903), 420 f.

198 The Greek text has already been quoted on p. 78, nn. 1 and 2.

199 Cf. Clouds, vss. 1486 ff. A somewhat similar use of ladders is mentioned in Euripides’ Bacchanals, vss. 1212 ff.

200 Cf. Pollux iv. 124: τὸ δὲ ὑποσκήνιον κίοσι καὶ ἀγαλματίοις κεκόσμηται πρὸς τὸ θέατρον τετραμμένοις, ὑπὸ τὸ λογεῖον κείμενον.

201 Also, the front wall of this room, just as σκηνή is not only the scene-building as a whole but also its front wall; cf. Flickinger, Plutarch as a Source of Information on the Greek Theater, pp. 43 f.

202 Cf. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXVIII (1903), 418 ff.

203 Robert would emend the text so that the statement would explain the proscenium instead of the hyposcenium; cf. Hermes, XXXII (1897), 448. In that case ὑπό must mean “behind,” a possible meaning, and Pollux would be speaking of the proscenium in a theater with a stage. Pollux includes the proscenium in his catalogue of theater parts (see pp. 97 f., above), but does not define it.

204 Cf. Plutarch Life of Lycurgus, c. vi, and Flickinger, Plutarch as a Source of Information on the Greek Theater (1904), p. 52.

205 Cf. Plutarch Life of Demetrius, c. xxxiv.

206 Cf. Plutarch Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae 823B, and see p. 59, n. 1, above.

207 Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Aratus, c. xxiii: ἐπιστήσας δὲ ταῖς παρόδοις τοὺς Ἀχαιοὺς αὐτὸς ἀπὸ τῆς σκηνῆς εἰς τὸ μέσον προῆλθε. For other interpretations, cf. Robert, Hermes, XXXII (1897), 448 ff.; Müller, Philologus, Supplementband, VII (1899), 52 f. and 90 f.; Dörpfeld, Athenische Mittheilungen, XXVIII (1903), 421 ff., etc.

208 A convenient chronological table of the extant theaters is given by Fiechter, op. cit., pp. 24-27.

209 Fig. 46 is taken from Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater, Fig. 50. Figs. 47-52 are from photographs by Dr. A. S. Cooley.

210 Figs. 53-54 are redrawn from Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater, Figs. 44-45, respectively; Fig. 55 is from a photograph by Dr. A. S. Cooley.

211 Cf. Pollux Onomasticon iv, § 132: αἱ Χαρώνιοι κλίμακες.

212 Cf. Fossum in American Journal of Archaeology, II (1898), 187 ff. and Pl. IV; see p. 288, n. 2, below.

213 A convenient series of excerpts from the Delian inscriptions is given by Haigh, The Attic Theatre³, pp. 379 ff.

214 Fig. 56 is taken from Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater, Fig. 35; and Fig. 57 is from a photograph of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens.

215... ἀγω] νοθετήσας τὸ προσκήνιον καὶ τοὺς πίν[ακας, and... ἱερεὺ]ς γενόμενος — τὴν σκηνὴν καὶ τὰ θυρώμ[ατα τῷ Ἀμ]φιαράῳ. For the functions of an agonothete, see pp. 271 f., below. For the θυρώματα, cf. Dörpfeld in Athenische Mittheilungen, XXVIII (1903), 394, and Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, Anzeiger, XXX (1915), 102; wrongly interpreted in Das griechische Theater, p. 109.

216 Fig. 58 is taken from Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII (1897), Pl. X.

217 Cf. Dörpfeld in Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII (1897), 458, and XXVIII (1903), 429.

218 Fig. 59 is taken from Niemann’s drawing in Forschungen in Ephesos, II, Pl. VIII; and Figs. 60-62 are from drawings by Wilberg, ibid., Figs. 5, 56, and 57, respectively. Cf. also Dörpfeld, “Das Theater von Ephesos,” Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, Anzeiger, XXVIII (1913), 37 ff.

219 Fig. 63 is redrawn from Athenische Mittheilungen, XXIII (1898), Pl. XI; the cross-hatched walls belong to the Graeco-Roman rebuilding. Fig. 64 is from a photograph taken by Professor C. P. Bill and furnished by Dr. A. S. Cooley.

220 Cf. Dörpfeld, in Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII (1897), 456 ff.

221 Cf. Dörpfeld, ibid., XXII (1897), 458 f.; XXIII (1898), 337; and XXVIII (1903), 426.

222 Cf. Duckett, Studies in Ennius (1915), p. 70.

223 Cf. the works mentioned on pp. xvii and xx f., above. There is no special literature on this subject.

224 Cf. chaps. iv and ix and the bibliographies on pp. 196 and 318, below.

225 A drachma contained six obols and was worth about eighteen cents without making allowance for the greater purchase value of money in antiquity.

226 Cf. Haigh, The Attic Theatre (3d ed. by Pickard-Cambridge, 1907), p. 1.

227 The affirmative side of the question is presented by Haigh, op. cit., pp. 324 ff.; the negative by Rogers, Introduction to Aristophanes’ Women in Council (1902), pp. xxix ff.

228 Cf. Frickenhaus, “Der Schiffskarren des Dionysos in Athen,” Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, XXVII (1912), 61 ff. Fig. 65 originally appeared as Beilage I, Fig. 3, in connection with this article. It is taken from a drawing by Signor G. Gatti, a photograph of which was furnished me through the courtesy of Professor Ghisardini, Director of the Museo Civico at Bologna.

229 Cf. Plautus’ The Casket, vss. 89 f.:
per Dionysia
mater pompam me spectatum duxit,

and vss. 156 ff.:

fuere Sicyoni iam diu Dionysia.
mercator venit huc ad ludos Lemnius,
isque hic compressit virginem, adulescentulus,
<vi>, vinulentus, multa nocte, in via.

For the differences between Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy, see p. 39, above.

230 Cf. his Preface to Bajazet.

231 Cf. Ribbeck, Rheinisches Museum, XXX (1875), 145.

232 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics 1456a6 and 1453a19.

233 Cf. ibid., 1451b25.

234 Cf. Oxyrhynchus Papyri, IX (1912), 30 ff.

235 For still further developments in the history of satyric drama see pp. 198 f., below.

236 Cf. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, II, 90, fr. 191.

237 Cf. Freytag’s Technique of the Drama², translated by MacEwan, p. 75, and Hense, Die Modificirung der Maske in der griechischen Tragödie² (1905), pp. 2 f.

238 Cf. Lounsbury, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1902), p. 175 (italics mine).

239 Cf. ibid., p. 204. The passages referred to are Sophocles’ Philoctetes, vss. 38 f., 649 f., and 696-99, and Antigone, vss. 1016-22 and 1080-83. The expressions employed in the Greek could be seriously objected to only by the most fastidious.

240 Cf. Haigh, The Attic Theatre³, p. 2.

241 Cf. argument, Demosthenes’ Against Midias, §§ 2 f.

242 In addition to the works mentioned on pp. xvii and xx f., above, cf. Decharme, Euripides and the Spirit of His Dramas (1892), translated by Loeb (1906); Capps “The Chorus in the Later Greek Drama,” American Journal of Archaeology, X (1895), 287 ff.; Helmreich, Der Chor bei Sophokles und Euripides (1905); A. Körte, “Das Fortleben des Chors im gr. Drama,” N. Jahrb. f. d. kl. Altertum, V (1900), 81 ff.; Flickinger, “ΧΟΡΟΥ in Terence’s Heauton, The Shifting of Choral Rôles in Menander, and Agathon’s ἘΜΒΟΛΙΜΑ,” Classical Philology, VII (1912), 24 ff.; Stephenson, Some Aspects of the Dramatic Art of Aeschylus (1913); Fries, De Conexu Chori Personae cum Fabulae Actione (1913); and Duckett, Studies in Eunius (1915).

243 Nevertheless, it has been ignored by certain recent writers on the origin of tragedy, cf. Classical Philology, VIII (1913), 283.

244 Whether the satyric chorus was increased at the same time is unknown. In Fig. 4, which represents a satyric drama of about 400 B.C., not more than twelve choreutae are represented.

245 For the differences between sileni and satyrs and for their appearance on the stage, see pp. 24-32.

246 Cf. the scholia to Sophocles’ Ajax, vs. 134, to Euripides’ Phoenician Maids, vs. 202, etc.

247 Conversations with Eckermann, July 5, 1827 (Oxenford’s translation).

248 Cf. Graeber, De Poetarum Atticorum Arte Scaenica (1911), pp. 56 ff.

249 Cf. Flickinger, op. cit., pp. 28 ff.

250 Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics, 1456a26 ff.

251 Cf. Philologus, LXX (1911), 497 f.

252 Cf. Revue des Études anciennes, XIII (1911), 273.

253 In the Jernstedt fragment; cf. Capps, Four Plays of Menander, pp. 98 f.

254 Cf. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, II, 333 f., fr. 107.

255 Cf. Verrall, Euripides the Rationalist, p. 219, note.

256 Cf. Archer, Play-making, p. 142.

257 Cf. The Origin of Attic Comedy, p. 107.

258 Cf. Zur Dramaturgie des Äschylus (1892), p. 135.

259 Cf. Euripides’ Helen, vs. 184, and Medea, vss. 131 ff.

260 Cf. Euripides’ Hecabe, vs. 105, and Electra, vss. 168 ff.

261 Cf. Sophocles’ Maidens of Trachis, vs. 103, and Ajax, vs. 143, Euripides’ Hippolytus, vss. 129 ff., etc.

262 Cf. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, vs. 144, and Antigone, vss. 164 f., Euripides’ Trojan Women, vss. 143-45, Aristophanes’ Clouds, vs. 269, Peace, vss. 296 ff., Birds, vss. 310 f., and Plutus, vs. 255, etc.

263 Cf. Verrall’s edition of Euripides’ Ion (1890), p. lx.

264 Cf. p. 89 of his edition (1896).

265 Cf. John Dennis, The Impartial Critick (1693).

266 Cf. Tovey, Letters of Thomas Gray, II, 293 f.

267 Cf. Dennis, op. cit.

268 Four Plays of Euripides (1905), pp. 125-30.

269 Cf. Murray, Euripides and His Age (1913), p. 238.

270 Thucydides Mythistoricus (1907), p. 147 (italics mine).

271 In addition to the works mentioned on pp. xvii and xx f., above, cf. Detscheff, De Tragoediarum Graecarum Conformatione Scaenica ac Dramatica (1904); Rees, “The Meaning of Parachoregema,” Classical Philology, II (1907), 387 ff.; The So-called Rule of Three Actors in the Classical Greek Drama (1908); “The Number of the Dramatic Company in the Period of the Technitae,” American Journal of Philology, XXXI (1910), 43 ff., and “The Three Actor Rule in Menander,” Classical Philology, V (1910), 291 ff.; O’Connor, Chapters in the History of Actors and Acting in Ancient Greece (1908); Leo, Der Monolog im Drama (1908), and Plautinische Forschungen² (1912), pp. 226 ff.; Listmann, Die Technik des Dreigesprächs in der griechischen Tragödie (1910); Kaffenberger, Das Dreischauspielergesetz in der griechischen Tragödie (1911); Foster, The Divisions in the Plays of Plautus and Terence (1913); Stephenson, Some Aspects of the Dramatic Art of Aeschylus (1913); Graf, Szensiche Untersuchungen zu Menander (1914); and Conrad, The Technique of Continuous Action in Roman Comedy (1915), reviewed by Flickinger in Classical Weekly, X (1917), 147 ff.
Fig. 66 is taken from Baumeister’s Denkmäler, Fig. 1637. The apparent height of the tragic actors is said to have been increased by means of the ὄγκος projecting above the head and of thick-soled boots (κόθορνοι), both represented in Fig. 66. The employment of such paraphernalia rests upon late evidence, however, and has been disputed for fifth-century tragedy; cf. for example Smith, “The Use of the High-soled Shoe or Buskin in Greek Tragedy of the Fifth or Fourth Centuries B.C.,” Harvard Studies, XVI (1905), 123 ff. For the costumes of comic actors, see pp. 46 f., above.

272 Cf. Capps, “The Introduction of Comedy into the City Dionysia,” University of Chicago Decennial Publications, VI, 269, n. 37.

273 Cf. Tanner, Transactions of American Philological Association, XLVI (1915), 185-87. For Sophocles, cf. Jebb’s Electra, p. lvii.

274 Cf. Rees, Classical Philology, V (1910), 291 ff., and Kaffenberger, op. cit., p. 10.

275 Cf. C. F. Hermann, De Distributione Personarum inter Histriones in Tragoediis Graecis (1840), pp. 32-34.

276 Cf. Prescott, “Three Puer-Scenes in Plautus and the Distribution of Rôles,” Harvard Studies, XXI (1910), 44. It ought to be added that some authorities deny that Prometheus was represented by a dummy, believing that this tragedy belonged to the three-actor period (see further, p. 228, below).

277 Cf. Lewes, Life of Goethe², p. 424.

278 Cf. Four Plays of Euripides (1905), pp. 1 ff.

279 Cf. the scholium on vs. 93.

280 Cf. Devrient, Das Kind auf der antiken Bühne (1904).

281 Cf. Oxyrhynchus Papyri, VI (1908), 69.

282 Cf. Rees, American Journal of Philology, XXXI (1910), 43 ff.

283 Cf. Horace Ars Poetica, vs. 192; see also p. 53, n. 1, above.

284 Cf. Leo, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, LII (1897), 513.

285 Cf. Seneca’s Agamemnon, vss. 981 ff.

286 Cf. Lounsbury, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, pp. 111 f.

287 Cf. U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Herakles², I, 119, note, and Euripides Alcestis, vss. 393 ff.

288 Cf. Aristotle’s Rhetoric 1403b33, quoted as the motto of this chapter.

[289] Cf. Play-making, p. 129.

290 Cf. The So-called Rule of Three Actors in the Classical Greek Drama, pp. 45-60.

291 In addition to the works mentioned on pp. xvii and xx f., above, cf. A. T. Murray, On Parody and Paratragoedia in Aristophanes (1891); Mazon, “Sur le Proagôn,” Revue de Philologie, XXVII (1903), 263 ff.; Rees, “The Significance of the Parodoi in the Greek Theater,” American Journal of Philology, XXXII (1911), 377 ff.; Graeber, De Poetarum Atticorum Arte Scaenica (1911); Robert, Die Masken der neueren attischen Komödie (1911); and the bibliography listed on p. 318, below.

292 Cf. Acharnians, vss. 501 ff., Starkie’s edition, excursus V, and Croiset, Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens, pp. 42 ff. (Loeb’s translation).

293 Cf. Demosthenes’ Against Midias, § 74.

294 It probably began upon the tenth day of Elaphebolion (cf. Adams, Transactions of American Philological Association, XLI [1910], 60 ff.) and closed on the fifteenth.

295 Cf. the Introduction to Hayley’s edition, pp. xxiii ff.

296 Cf. Capps, in Classical Philology, I (1906), 219, note on l. 5, and Wilhelm, Urkunden dramatischer Aufführungen in Athen, pp. 195 ff.

297 Cf. The Theory of the Theater, p. 118.

298 Cf. his Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, pp. 48 f.

299 Cf. Dryden, Dramatic Essays (Everyman’s Library edition), p. 20.

300 Cf. Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana, p. 245.

301 Cf. note on vs. 38 in Tucker’s edition.

302 Cf. note on these lines in Starkie’s edition, and Murray, op. cit., p. 30.

303 Figs. 68 f. are taken from Robert, op. cit., Figs. 55 and 77, respectively.

304 Cf. Laws 659A-C.

305 See pp. xvii f. above, and cf. Bartsch, Entwickelung des Charakters der Medea in der Tragödie des Euripides (Breslau, 1852), p. 24. For the Boeotian version of the incident in Euripides’ Suppliants, cf. Pausanias i. 39. 2.

306 There is a tradition that this play was not produced in Athens, and some maintain that it was first played at Argos. In that case, in addition to appealing to the convictions of the pro-Athenian, anti-Spartan party in Argos, there must also have been the political motive of gaining converts for that party.

307 Cf. Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, translated by Black and Morrison, p. 38.

308 In addition to the works mentioned on pp. xvii and xx f., above, and the bibliography listed on pp. 57-59, above, cf. Hense, Die Modificirung der Maske in der griechischen Tragödie² (1905); Dignan, The Idle Actor in Aeschylus (1905); Flickinger, “Scaenica,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, XL (1909), 109 ff.; Robert, Die Masken der neueren attischen Komödie (1911); Rees, “The Significance of the Parodoi in the Greek Theater,” American Journal of Philology, XXXII (1911), 377 ff., and “The Function of the Πρόθυρον in the Production of Greek Plays,” Classical Philology, X (1915), 117 ff.; Harms, De Introitu Personarum in Euripidis et Novae Comoediae Fabulis (1914); Mooney, The House-Door on the Ancient Stage (1914); and Rambo, “The Wing-Entrances in Roman Comedy,” Classical Philology, X (1915), 411 ff.

309 Cf. Craig, On the Art of the Theatre (1911), pp. 13 and 54 ff., and Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus (1907), p. 142, n. 2.

310 Fig. 70 is taken from Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater, Fig. 43; Fig. 71 is from a photograph taken by Professor L. L. Forman and furnished by Dr. A. S. Cooley.

311 Cf. Three Plays for Puritans, p. xxxvi.

312 Fig. 72 is taken from Puchstein, Die griechische Bühne, Fig. 3.

313 Cf. Ridgeway, Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races, p. 83.

314 Fig. 73 is taken from Baumeister, Denkmäler, Fig. 980. Within the prothyron are the king of Corinth and his daughter, Jason’s second wife. The latter is being assisted by her brother. In front lies an opened box which contained the poisoned gifts. From the other side the queen comes rushing. In the foreground is Medea slaying one of her children, while a youth tries to rescue the other. In the center is Oistros, the demon of madness, mounted upon a dragon chariot. Further on Jason is hastening to aid his boys, and on the extreme right is the ghost of Aeetes, Medea’s father. The design is apparently not based upon Euripides’ Medea. Cf. Earle’s edition, pp. 60 f.

315 Cf. Discours des trois unités, I, 119 (Regnier’s edition; 1862).

316 Cf. Legrand, The New Greek Comedy, pp. 356 f., Loeb’s translation.

317 For another interpretation cf. Mooney, op. cit., p. 19 and n. 13.

318 The Ajax is one of the earliest among Sophocles’ extant plays, but its exact date is not known. I have assumed that it preceded the introduction of a proscenium about 430 B.C. (see p. 235, above). If it was written after that innovation, the statement in the text would have to be altered accordingly, but the general method of procedure remains the same in either case.

319 Cf. Jebb, The Attic Orators, Vol. I, p. ciii.

320 In addition to the works mentioned on pp. xvii and xx f. and the bibliography listed on pp. 57-59, above, cf. Campbell, Classical Review, IV (1890), 303 ff.; Verrall in his edition of Euripides’ Ion (1890), pp. xlviii ff.; Krause, Quaestiones Aristophaneae Scaenicae (1903); Kent, “The Time Element in the Greek Drama,” Transactions of the American Philological Association, XXXVII (1906), 39 ff.; Felsch, Quibus Artificiis Adhibitis Poetae Tragici Graeci Unitates Illas et Temporis et Loci Observaverint (1907); Polczyk, De Unitatibus et Loci et Temporis in Nova Comoedia Observatis (1909); Marek, De Temporis et Loci Unitatibus a Seneca Tragico Observatis (1909); Wolf, Die Bezeichnung von Ort und Zeit in der attischen Tragödie (1911); Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art⁴ (1911), pp. 274 ff.; Brasse, Quatenus in Fabulis Plautinis et Loci et Temporis Unitatibus Species Veritatis Neglegatur (1914); and Manning, A Study of Archaism in Euripides (1916).

321 ΧΟΡΟΥ is printed at this point in most editions but occurs in no manuscript (see p. 145, above); it has been inserted by the editors.

322 Cf. Scott, Classical Philology, VIII (1913), 453 ff.

323 Πάλαι in vs. 587 is entirely subjective; cf. Conrad, The Technique of Continuous Action in Roman Comedy (1915), pp. 22 ff.

324 For example, the slips which occur in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (vss. 725 and 881).

325 Cf. Discours des trois unités, I, 113 f. (Regnier’s edition), quoted by Butcher, op. cit., pp. 294 f.

326 Cf. the introduction to his edition of the Agamemnon, and Four Plays of Euripides, pp. 1-42.

327 Cf. Dramatic Essays (Everyman’s Library edition), p. 18.

328 Cf. Poetics 1449b12-14.

329 Cf. England’s edition of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, p. xxvii.

330 Cf. The Bookman, XXX (1909), 37.

331 Cf. Archer, Play-making, pp. 123 f.

332 Cf. Poetics 1450a38 f.

333 Cf. Poetics 1450b22-35.

334 Cf. The Old English Dramatists, III.

335 Cf. Poetics 1451a15-22.

336 Cf. Technique of the Drama, MacEwan’s translation², pp. 30 ff.

337 Cf. Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1902), pp. 150 f.

338 Cf. Poetics 1459b22-28.

339 Cf. op. cit., p. 92.

340 Cf. Dramatic Essays (Everyman’s Library edition), pp. 12 f.

341 Cf. Poetics 1454a31 ff.

342 Cf. Thucydides Mythistoricus (1907), p. 146.

343 In addition to the works mentioned on pp. xvii and xx f., above, cf. Petersen, Preisrichter der grossen Dionysien (1878); Hayley, “Social and Domestic Position of Women in Aristophanes,” Harvard Studies, I (1890), 159 ff.; Lounsbury, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1902); Goodwin’s edition of Demosthenes’ Against Midias, Appendix IV (1906); Capps, “Epigraphical Problems in the History of Attic Comedy,” American Journal of Philology, XXVIII (1907), 179 ff.; Legrand, Daos; Tableau de la comédie grecque pendant la période dite nouvelle (1910), translated by Loeb in 1917 under the title The New Greek Comedy; Sheppard, Greek Tragedy (1911); and Ruppel, Konzeption und Ausarbeitung der aristophanischen Komödien (1913).

344 A mina was equivalent to one hundred drachmae and was worth about $18, though allowance must be made for the greater purchase value of money in those days.

345 Cf. Lysias xxi, §§ 1-5.

346 Cf. his Life of Nicias, III.

347 Cf. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, c. 56.

348 Cf. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, I, 16, fr. 15 (Cratinus).

349 Cf. Sheppard, op. cit., p. 58.

350 Cf. Legrand, op. cit., pp. 312-15 and 455 f.

351 Cf. Prescott in Classical Philology, XI (1916), 132.

352 Cf. Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East² (1913), p. 48.

353 Cf. Albright, The Shakesperian Stage (1909), pp. 148 f.

354 In addition to the works mentioned on pp. xvii and xx f., above, cf. Thirlwall, “On the Irony of Sophocles,”Philological Museum, II (1833), 483 ff.; Neckel, Das Ekkyklema (1890); Trautwein, De Prologorum Plautinorum Indole atque Natura (1890); Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater (1896), pp. 234 ff.; Bethe, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Theaters im Alterthum (1896), pp. 100 ff.; Exon, “A New Theory of the Eccyclema,” Hermathena, XI (1901), 132 ff.; Leo, Der Monolog im Drama, ein Beitrag zur griechisch-römischen Poetik (1908); Polczyk, De Unitatibus et Loci et Temporis in Nova Comoedia Observatis (1909); Flickinger, “Dramatic Irony in Terence,” Classical Weekly, III (1910), 202 ff.; Arnold, The Soliloquies of Shakespeare (1911); Fensterbusch, Die Bühne des Aristophanes (1912), pp. 51 ff.; Harms, De Introitu Personarum in Euripidis et Novae Comoediae Fabulis (1914); and Rees, “The Function of the Πρόθυροv in the Production of Greek Plays,” Classical Philology, X (1915), 134 ff.

355 Cf. scholia to Aeschylus’ Eumenides, vs. 64, Aristophanes’ Acharnians, vs. 408 and Clouds, vs. 184, and Clemens Alexandrinus, p. 11 (Potter).

356 Fig. 74 is specially drawn, but owes several features to Figs. 93 f. in Dörpfeld-Reisch, Das griechische Theater. Since Exon’s discussion and drawing of the eccyclema presuppose a theater with a stage, it has been necessary to modify his conception so as to bring it into conformity with the Dörpfeld theory.

357 See p. 244, n. 1, above.

358 Cf. scholia to Aristophanes’ Acharnians, vs. 408 and Women at the Thesmophoria, vs. 284; Pollux iv. 128, and Eustathius, p. 976, 15.

359 The exostra (ἐξ, “out” + ὠθεῖν, to “push”) seems to have performed about the same function as the eccyclema; cf. Pollux iv. 129; perhaps it was only the more specific name for this later type.

360 On the basis of ἀναβάδην in vs. 399, for which the scholiasts preserve two interpretations, some writers would have us believe that Euripides was shown in the second story. Tracks for the wheels of an eccyclema have been reported on the logium level of the theater at Eretria (see p. 107, above).

361 Cf. Poetics 1454b1 and 1461b21.

362 Cf. Euripides and the Spirit of His Dramas, pp. 263 ff., Loeb’s translation (1906).

363 According to late authorities Greek theaters were provided with revolving prisms (periacti) with a different view painted on each of their three sides. These could be turned to indicate a change of scene. There is no evidence, however, that this contrivance was employed during the classical period of Greek drama, although Dörpfeld thought that a place was provided for it in the earlier parascenia at Epidaurus (cf. Das griechische Theater, p. 126). The geranos (“crane”) and the krade (“branch”) were probably only other names for the μηχανή.

364 Cf. Themistius Oration xxvi, 316 D.

365 Cf. Poetics 1451b26.

366 Cf. Archer, Play-making, p. 119.

367 Cf. Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Zimmern’s translation, p. 377.

368 Cf. Euripides and His Age, p. 206.

369 Cf. Reitzenstein, Hermes, XXXV (1900), 622 ff.

370 Cf. Kock, Fragmenta Comicorum Atticorum, II, 500, fr. 79.

371 Aristotle’s theory of the purificatory effects of tragedy has not fallen within the scope of my text, but I cannot forbear citing Fairchild, “Aristotle’s Doctrine of Katharsis and the Positive or Constructive Activity Involved,” Classical Journal XII (1916), 44 ff.

372 Cf. Capps, “Dramatic Synchoregia at Athens,” American Journal of Philology, XVII (1896) 319 ff.; “Catalogues of Victors at the Dionysia and Lenaea,” ibid., XX (1899), 388 ff.; “The Dating of Some Didascalic Inscriptions,” American Journal of Archaeology, IV (1900), 74 ff.; “The Introduction of Comedy into the City Dionysia,” Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, VI (1904), 259 ff.; and “Epigraphical Problems in the History of Attic Comedy,” American Journal of Philology, XXVIII (1907), 179 ff.; Wilhelm, Urkunden dramatischer Aufführungen in Athen (1906), and “Eine Inschrift aus Athen,” Anzeiger d. Akademie d. Wissenschaften in Wien, phil.-hist. Klasse, XLIII (1906), 77 ff.; Clark, “A Study of the Chronology of Menander’s Life,” Classical Philology, I (1906), 313 ff.; Oxyrhynchus Papyri, IV (1904), 69 ff., and X (1914), 81 ff.; O’Connor, Chapters in the History of Actors and Acting in Ancient Greece (1908); Jachmann, De Aristotelis Didascaliis (1909); and Flickinger, “Certain Numerals in the Greek Dramatic Hypotheses,” Classical Philology, V (1910), 1 ff.

373 Reisch, however, in his review of Wilhelm in Zeitschrift f. östr. Gymnasien, LVIII (1907), 297 f. maintained that the original cutting went to the bottom of col. 14. This would postpone the preparation of the inscription until about 330 B.C. and would make it a feature of the completion of the theater by Lycurgus at about that time. He suggests that the Fasti stood in the left parodus of the theater.

374 Fig. 75 is taken from Wilhelm, Urkunden dramatischer Aufführungen in Athen, p. 18, and represents fragments a and f of Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, II, 971.

375 Fig. 76a is taken from Wilhelm, op. cit., p. 40, and represents Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, II, 973.

376 Körte, “Aristoteles’ ΝΙΚΑΙ ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΑΚΑΙ,” Classical Philology, I (1906), 391 ff., maintained that the Victors’-Lists were transferred to stone straight from another book of Aristotle’s entitled Νῖκαι Διονυσιακαὶ Ἀστικαὶ καὶ Ληναϊκαί (“Victories at the City Dionysia and the Lenaea”). Our knowledge of the nature of this work is confined to what can be inferred from its title and is too vague to justify dogmatic conclusions.

377 Figs. 77a and b are taken from Wilhelm, op. cit., 101, and represent Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, II, 977a and ab respectively.

378 Fig. 78 is taken from Wilhelm, op. cit., p. 107 and represents Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, II, 977i and k, together with two previously unpublished fragments.

379 Fig. 79 is taken from Wilhelm, op. cit., p. 123, and represents Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, II, 977d, e, f, g, and h.

380 Fig. 80 is taken from Clarac, Musée de Sculpture, III, Pl. 294, Fig. 65. Note that the first play in the list on the background is the ΑΛΚΕΣ[ΤΙΣ].