The Trojan cycle was particularly familiar from the theater because the dramatists, exploiting the tradition that the Romans were descendants of the Trojans, had presented all the good plays that they could find on this theme. Livius had produced an _Equus Trojanus_, an _Achilles_, an _Aegisthus_, and an _Ajax_, which must have told of every phase of the subject, and the Livian _Hermione_ had familiarized them with some of the aftermath of the war. Plautus’ ready mention of Procne and Philomela is readily explained by recalling that Livius had presented the _Tereus_. The impression made by the Trojan cycle of Livius had been deepened by the several plays written on these myths by Naevius; the _Hesione_, _Iphigenia_, _Hector_, _Equus Trojanus_, and _Andromache_ all dealt with characters of the Trojan cycle, while the _Danae_ and the _Lycurgus_ supplied adjacent myths that the Plautine audiences evidently knew. These plays—and of course there were many whose names have been lost—would account for most of the familiar references in Plautus. Furthermore, Ennius was producing tragedies at the very festivals for which Plautus wrote, and here and there we can actually recognize in Plautus certain lines that were spoken as parodies of Ennian lines.[8] We do not know the chronology of the plays of these dramatists. If we could synchronize them now we should probably find that the references to Andromeda, Alcumeo, Thyestes, and other characters of the Greek myths would fall in neatly with plays of Ennius on these themes which had been recently produced. It is quite beside the point to ask how much “literature” the Plautine audience knew. They knew no literature as such, but they all attended the festival shows which were free. There they learned the stories of a large number of the plays of Euripides and Sophocles as easily as our working classes learn, without opening a book, about Arab sheikhs, Long Island drawing rooms, Roman chariot races, and Cleopatra’s wiles. To them in fact a play of Euripides was often the latest popular sensation. Many years ago when Max Reinhardt first staged _Oedipus_ in the Circus at Berlin at prices that attracted hundreds of laboring men I overheard these remarks: “This Sophocles, is he a Berliner?” “I don’t know; the name sounds Russian; but he knows how to make a good show.” Those two men had enjoyed the play all the more because they did not know they were being educated in the ancient classics; and that is how Plautus’ audience had innocently learned its Greek mythology. Naturally Plautus was too wise not to exploit this rich vein of interest.