If this was done by Thespis, he was the founder of European drama. His _floruit_ may be assigned to the year 535 B.C., the date of the first dramatic competition at Athens. But little is known of him. Aristotle in his _Poetic_[11] does not mention his name. Far later we have the remarks of Horace, “Diogenes Laertius,”[12] and Suidas. Horace tells[13] that Thespis discovered tragic poetry, and conveyed from place to place on waggons a company of players who sang and acted his pieces, their faces smeared with lees of wine: “Diogenes Laertius” says that Thespis “discovered one actor”. Suidas gives us the names of several plays, _Phorbas_ or _The Trials_ (ἆθλα) _of Pelias_, _The Priests_, _The Youths_, _Pentheus_. We possess four fragments alleged to belong to these, but they are spurious. Aristotle,[14] moreover, affirms that Tragedy was in the first place a matter of improvization. The conclusion seems to be that Thespis did not “write plays” in the modern sense of the phrase. He was much more like those Elizabethan dramatists who provided “the words” for their actors, and for whom printing and publication were only thought of if the play had achieved success upon the boards. He stood midway between Æschylus and the unknown actor-poets before Arion who improvized as they played. The next name of importance is that of CHŒRILUS the Athenian, who competed in tragedy for the first time during the 64th Olympiad (524-1 B.C.) and continued writing for the stage during forty years. He produced one hundred and sixty plays, and obtained the first prize thirteen times. Later generations regarded him as especially excellent in the satyric drama[15] invented by his younger contemporary Pratinas. To him were attributed the invention of masks, as a substitute for the wine-lees of Thespis, and more majestic costume. We know by name only one of his works, the _Alope_, which is concerned with the Attic hero Triptolemus. A fragment or two reveal an unexpected preciosity of style; he called stones and rivers “the bones and veins of the earth”. PRATINAS of Phlius, in the north of the Peloponnese, is said to have competed with Æschylus and Chœrilus in the 70th Olympiad (500-497 B.C.). His great achievement, as we have said, was the invention of satyric drama. Fifty plays are attributed to him, of which thirty-two were satyric. Hardly any fragments of these are extant, but we get some conception of the man from a _hyporchema_ in which he complains that music is encroaching upon poetry: “let the flute follow the dancing revel of the song—it is but an attendant”. With boundless gusto and polysyllabic energy he consigns the flute to flames and derision.