the Eumenides, tried to reconcile conflicting traditions by supposing a Chorus of fifty to be supplied, two of whom were told off as actors, while the remaining forty-eight were divided amongst the four dramas of the tetralogy. The choreutae who were unemployed in each particular drama are supposed by him to have been held in reserve as supernumeraries,-for example, as the twelve Areopagites and the attendants of Athena in the Eumenides. It is enough to have alluded to this theory, which is useful as reminding us that Aeschylus must have always had a large number of supernumerary performers at his command.1

From the moment of the introduction of the second actor, the evolution of the tragic art proceeds with rapid strides. Several stages of this development are distinctly manifest in the extant Aeschylean plays.

In the Supplices of Aeschylus we find tragedy not far removed from its choral origin. The dialogue is nascent, naïve, unformed; the lyrical numbers, on the other hand, are full and perfect. The sweetness of their cadences reminds us of what is said of Phrynichus, the predecessor of Aeschylus, how he charmed the Athenians of his day with harmonious strains.

Here the Chorus have unmistakably the

1 This point is rightly insisted on by Dr. Verrall. infra, Chap. VII.

But see

principal rôle—the parts of Danaüs, the King, and the Herald merely serving to keep the story on foot and to link together the various utterances of the maidens.

On

In the Persae (472 B.C.) the action on the stage becomes more important, although the drama is still mainly lyrical. Atossa is an imposing figure, and the Ghost of Darius, rising above his tomb, is invested with pathetic sublimity. But the dialogue is largely maintained between the Chorus and one actor. Hardly anywhere is it necessary to have two persons at once upon the stage. the other hand, the art of tragic narrative has reached maturity in the account of the battle of Salamis. In the Seven (467 B.C.) there is a manifest development of dialogue-not, indeed, as yet between two chief persons, but first between Eteocles and the Scout (1st Messenger), and afterwards between Antigone and the Herald. The prominence of the principal person is also clearly marked, and this makes an advance in dramatic business. There is a prologue before the entrance of the Chorus, and Eteocles begins the play.

In each of the remaining plays of Aeschylus there is a prologue, but it is not assigned to the chief person except in the Choëphoroe, where Orestes, addressing Pylades, is the speaker. In the Agamemnon the Watchman prologises, in

the Eumenides, the Pythoness, in the Prometheus,
Kratos ("Power") and Hephaestus; Prometheus
being present, indeed, but silent.

The Agamemnon (458 B.C.) shows an immense
advance in dramatic and tragic force, which is
continued in the Choëphoroe.
The climax of
the Agamemnon, where the Cassandra-scene is
followed by the death-shriek, perhaps marks the
highest point reached by Attic tragedy.

Aeschylus is credited with the introduction of
the second actor, and by the time when he pro-
duced the Choëphoroe he had adopted the further
improvement (attributed to Sophocles) of the third
actor. And, as already observed, there is hardly
any limit to the number of supernumeraries whom
he is ready to bring on the stage for the purposes
of a procession or other ceremony. But, on the
other hand, even his maturest work retains much
of the simplicity of structure, with regard to
dialogue, which must have characterised the art
when, as in the time of Thespis, the one actor, in
the intervals of choral song, conversed with the
Coryphaeus.1 Such dramatic business as occurs in
the Supplices between Danaüs and King Pelasgus,
or between the Herald and the King, may be
described as inchoate, or only half-evolved. It is
sketchy and crude. In the Persae the presence of

1 What remains to be said upon this subject is reserved for the separate chapters on Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Atossa no doubt adds greatly to the impressiveness of the ghost-raising scene. But very little of dramatic interchange takes place between the two great personages, although that little is nobly and pathetically conceived.

In the Seven, as already indicated, the Scout is only a Chorus-leader with brevet rank. Even in the Agamemnon the passages which require the presence of two actors are few and brief, and excepting in the dialogue between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon before his entry to the palace, there is no conversation between them, even when present, Cassandra is silent, Clytemnestra addresses the Chorus rather than the Herald; and again, when she and Aegisthus are on the stage together, she makes no answer to the taunts of the Elders. From the Sophoclean point of view, this is not economy but parsimony. Yet nothing in Sophocles is more essentially dramatic than the climax of the Choëphoroe.

CHAPTER IV

SUBJECTS OF GREEK TRAGEDY-CHOICE OF

FABLE 1

THE tragic poet hardly ever invents his fable. His duty is to present in the concrete, with living power, an action of which some lineaments are already given in legend or tradition. It was only when the great period of Hellenic tragedy was past that such an elegant caprice could be attempted as the Flower of Agathon, in which the persons (so-called) were invented by the poet. The taste for novelty, to which such a poem appealed, would be attributed by lovers of Aeschylus to the degeneracy of the contemporary theatre. A good reason for the preference of known subjects is assigned by Aristotle :-"What is possible is credible, and what once happened was clearly possible." A capital advantage is gained, in point of verisimilitude, when that is represented

1 Continual reference should be made to Smith's Dictionary of Classical Biography and Mythology. See also the first volume of Grote's History of Greece.