Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/341

 ATHENIAN TRAGEDY 319 project was realized before the invasion of Xerxes, we do not accurately know ; but after his destructive occupation of Athens, the theatre, if any existed previously, would have to be rebuilt or renovated along with other injured portions of the city. It was under that great development of the power of Athena which followed the expulsion of Xerxes, that the theatre with its appurtenances attained full magnitude and elaboration, and Attic tragedy its maximum of excellence. Sophokles gained his first victory over .^Eschylus in 4G8 B.C. : the first exhibition of Eu- ripides was in 455 B.C. The names, though unhappily the names alone, of many other competitors have reached us : Philokles, who gained the prize even over the GEdipus Tyrannus of Sopho- kles ; Euphorion son of JEschylus, Xenokles, and Nikomachus, all known to have triumphed over Euripides ; Neophron, Achoeus, Ion, Agathon, and many more. The continuous stream of new tragedy, poured out year after year, was something new in the history of the Greek mind. If we could suppose all the ten tribes contending for the prize every year, there would be ten tetralogies or sets of four dramas each, three tragedies and one satyrical farce at the Dionysiac festival, and as many at the Lenaean. So great a number as sixty new tragedies composed every year, 1 ia 1 The careful examination of Welckcr (Gricch. Tragodie. vol. i, p. 76) makes out the titles of eighty tragedies unquestionably belonging to Sopho- kles. over and above the satyrical dramas in his tetralogies. Welcker has considerably cut down the number admitted by previous authors, carried by Fabricius as high as one hundred and seventy-eight, and even, by Bceckh, as high as one hundred and nine (Welcker, ut sup. p. 62). The number of dramas ascribed to Euripides is sometimes ninety-two, sometimes seventy-five. Elmslcy, in his remarks on the Argument to the Medea, p. 72, thinks that even the larger of these numbers is smaller than what Euripides probably composed ; since the poet continued composing for fifty ycurs, from 455 to 405 B.C., and was likely during each year to have composed one, if not two, tetralogies ; if he could prevail upon the archon to grant him a chorus, that is. the opportunity of representing. The didas- kalies took no account of any except such as gained the first, second, or third prize. "Welcker gives the titles, and an approximative guess at the contents, of fifty-one lost tragedies of the poet, besides the seventeen remain- ing (p. 443). Aristarchus the tragedian is affirmed by Suidas to have composed seventy Vagedics, of which only two gained tic prize. As many as a hundred and