Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/474

 by Meineke. The dramatic career of Sophocles began in 468, and he died in 406 or 405 B.C. Thus all through his active life as a poet tetralogies were being produced by other poets.

We are now in a position to estimate the various explanations which have been given of the statement in Suidas—that Sophocles began the practice of play contending against play, and not tetralogy against tetralogy. .

(1) Godfrey Hermann, in his work on the Composition of Tetralogies (1819), takes the meaning to be that Sophocles abandoned tetralogy altogether, and exhibited only a single tragedy on each occasion. Stress is laid on the fact that no extant notice records a tetralogy by Sophocles. But against this negative evidence—the importance of which is very greatly diminished by the scantiness of the notices which we possess—we have to set this fact, that on at least two occasions when Sophocles competed for the tragic prize, he is known to have competed against a tetralogy. This was the case in 438 B.C., when Euripides produced the Alcestis in place of a satyr-drama. The argument to that play says:—"Sophocles was first; Euripides was second, with the Cressae, Alcmaeon in Psophis, Telephus, and Alcestis." It was the case again in 431 B.C., when Euripides brought out the Medea. The argument says: "Euphorion