A curious figure in this history is DIONYSIUS the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse from 405-367 B.C. Like Frederick the Great of Prussia, not satisfied with political and military glory, he aspired to literary triumphs. With a pathetic hero-worship he purchased and treasured the desk of Æschylus, and similar objects which had belonged to Euripides, hoping (says Lucian[95]) to gain inspiration from them. The prince frequently tried his fortune at the dramatic contests in Athens, but for long without success, and naturally became a butt of the Attic wits, who particularly relished his moral aphorisms (such as “tyranny is the mother of injustice”!); Eubulus devoted a whole comedy to his tragic _confrère_. In 367 B.C. he heard with joy that at last the first prize had fallen to him at the Lenæa for _Hector’s Ransom_; gossip said that his death in the same year was due to the paroxysms of gratified vanity. Little is known about the contents of his dramas, but we hear that one play was an attack upon the philosopher Plato. In other works, too, he appears to have discussed his personal interests. Lucian preserves the bald verse:— Doris, Dionysius’ spouse, has passed away, and the astonishing remark:— Alas! alas! a useful wife I’ve lost. But one may be misjudging him. Perhaps by “useful” (χρησίμην) he meant “good” (χρηστήν); Dionysius had a curious fad for using words, not in their accepted sense, but according to real or fancied etymology.[96] Ancient critics set great store by CARCINUS, the most distinguished of a family long connected with the theatre. One hundred and sixty plays are attributed to him, and eleven victories. He spent some time at the court of the younger Dionysius, the Syracusan tyrant, and his longest fragment deals with the Sicilian worship of Demeter and Persephone. We possess certain interesting facts about his plots. Aristotle[97] as an instance of the first type of Recognition—that by signs—mentions among those which are congenital “the stars introduced by Carcinus in his _Thyestes_” (evidently birthmarks). More striking is a later paragraph:[98] “In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes.... The need of such a rule is shown by the fault found in Carcinus. Amphiaraus was on his way from the temple. This fact escaped the observation of one who did not see the situation. On the stage, however, the piece failed, the audience being offended at the oversight.” This shows incidentally how little assistance an ancient dramatist obtained from that now vital collaborator, the rehearsal. In the _Medea_[99] of Carcinus the heroine, unlike the Euripidean, did not slay her children but sent them away. Their disappearance caused the Corinthians to accuse her of their murder, and she defended herself by an ingenious piece of rhetorical logic: “Suppose that I _had_ killed them. Then it would have been a