Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/481

 less than in the Sophoclean, the fourth piece, the satyr-play, had, as a rule, no link of story or of idea with the trilogy. If, therefore, Suidas had intended to draw the distinction between Aeschylus and Sophocles which Welcker attributes to him, he ought not to have said : he ought to have said. And further, Welcker candidly admits that, so far as the usage of the term can be traced elsewhere, that usage affords no warrant for the restriction which he imagines Suidas to have placed upon it. Further, if Suidas meant merely to distinguish between groups of connected and of unconnected plays, he has expressed his whole thought very obscurely:  does not suit this. We may add that, as nothing more than the external unity of consecutive exhibition was necessarily denoted by, there is just as little reason for supposing that anything more was denoted by. And so Welcker's interpretation fails.

We have now considered five explanations: (1) that of Godfrey Hermann—Sophocles gave up tetralogy altogether; (2) that of Boeckh and Bergk—he exhibited single plays at the Lenaea, or at the Rural Dionysia, while retaining tetralogy at the Great Dionysia; (3) that of Mr Goodrick—he composed tetralogies, but caused only one play of the group to be acted at the Great Dionysia; (4) that of C. F. Hermann—he arranged that, in the performance of three competing tetralogies, one play from the first should be followed by one play