Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/473

 Byzantium (c. 200 B.C.)—who, like Callimachus, was at the head of the Alexandrian Library—and by other scholars of Alexandria and of Pergamum. Several of these writings were extant as late, at least, as the end of the second century after Christ. Athenaeus shows this. He had met with a mention of a play, ascribed to a poet of the fourth century B.C., of which the title was new to him. It has not been registered, he says, either by Callimachus, or by Aristophanes, or by the authors of the Pergamene records (p. 336 c). Among the last-named was Carystius of Pergamum (iio B.C.), who wrote a book. The notices which have come down to us from these sources enable us to trace fourteen tetralogies. Four are by Aeschylus, the earliest which can be dated being the Persae tetralogy in 472 B.C.: the next the Theban in 467, and then the Oresteia in 458; the fourth tetralogy is the. Five are by Euripides, belonging to the years 438, 431, 415, 411 (?), and 405 (?) B.C. Of the remaining five, one is by Aristias, son of Pratinas, in 467 B.C., and another by Polyphradmon, in the same year; the third is by Philocles, nephew of Aeschylus, in 429; the fourth by Xenocles, who defeated Euripides with it in 415; and the fifth by Meletus in 405. The citations of the last two from the are among those five citations of that work which have Aristotle's name added. To this list we may add a tetralogy by Nicomachus, a contemporary of Euripides, on the strength of Suidas s.v., as explained