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 about drama at the Lenaea amounts to this. In the earlier times, the Rural Dionysia in December was the only festival with Dionysiac choral performances. It was probably under Peisistratus, about 550 B.C., that the festival of the Lenaea, held in January, was instituted. The Lenaea then became the chief occasion for producing the choruses. It was at the Lenaea that Thespis exhibited, in the later years of Peisistratus; it was the Lenaea that witnessed the performances of Choerilus and Pratinas, and the earlier works of Aeschylus. The institution of the Great Dionysia, held in March, may probably be placed about 478 B.C. The Great Dionysia then became the chief occasion for Tragedy, and seems to have been the only festival at which Tragedy was produced down to about 430 B.C., when the Lenaea—which had meanwhile been monopolised by Comedy—began once more to be used for Tragedy also, though perhaps not, at first, every year. But the Tragic contest at the Great Dionysia always continued to be the principal one, just as the Lenaea continued to be peculiarly the festival of Comedy. If, then, the innovation made by Sophocles concerned only the Lenaea, it would not have been of much significance; nor could it have been made at all before the later period of his career. There is equally little probability in Bergk's suggestion that the Rural Dionysia was the festival at which Sophocles produced single plays, while producing tetralogies at the Great Dionysia and at the Lenaea.