Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/342

 320 mSTORY OF GSEECE. not to be thought of; yet we do not know what was the usaal num ber of competing tetralogies : it was at least three ; since the first, second, and third are specified in the didaskalies, or theatrical records, and probably greater than three. It was rare to repeat the same drama a second time unless after considerable altera- tions ; nor would it be creditable to the liberality of a choregus to decline the full cost of getting up a new tetralogy. Without pretending to determine with numerical accuracy how many dra- mas were composed in each year, the general fact of unexampled abundance in the productions of the tragic muse is both authentic and interesting. Moreover, what is not less important to notice, all this abun- dance found its way to the minds of the great body of the citizens, not excepting even the poorest. For the theatre is said to have accommodated thirty thousand persons :' here again it is unsafe to rely upon numerical accuracy, but we cannot doubt that it was sufficiently capacious to give to most of the citizens, poor as well as rich, ample opportunity of profiting by these beautiful compo- sitions. At first, the admission to the theatre was gratuitous ; but as the crowd of strangers as well as freemen, was found botl excessive and disorderly, the system was adopted of asking a price, seemingly at the time when the permanent theatre was put in complete order after the destruction caused by Xerxes. The the- atre was let by contract to a manager, who engaged to defray, either in whole or part, the habitual cost incurred by the state ip the representation, and who was allowed to sell tickets of admis- sion. At first, it appears that the price of tickets was not fixed, so that the poor citizens were overbid, and could not get places. Accordingly, Perikles introduced a new system, fixing the price of places at three oboli, or half a drachma, for the better, and one obolus for the less good. As there were two days of representa- tion, tickets covering both days were sold respectively for a drachma and two oboli. But in order that the poor citizens might be enabled to attend, two oboli were given out from the public treasure to each citizen rich as well as poor, if they chose to twenty compositions arc ascribed to Neophron, forty four to Achjeas, forti to Ion (Welcker, ib. p. 889). 1 Plato, Symposion, c. 3, p. 175.