There were several advantages in the smallness of the number. In the first place the dialogue gained in clearness and simplicity, owing to the fewness of the persons taking part in it. This simplicity was especially well suited to the severe and statuesque character of Greek tragedy, in which the rapid movement of a dialogue between a large number of persons would have been altogether inappropriate. In the extant Greek tragedies even the three actors permitted by custom are used with considerable reserve. In most cases one of them stands by in silence, while the other two carry on the dialogue. The two change from time to time, but it is only on rare occasions and for brief periods that all three converse promiscuously together. There was another obvious advantage in the restriction. As only three actors were needed, it was easy to ensure that they should all be performers of first-rate excellence. In modern times the large number of actors required constitutes a great difficulty. It is rare to see the subordinate characters in a play of Shakespeare even tolerably performed. The effect of the piece is spoiled by the feebleness of the princes, dukes, lords, and ladies who crowd the stage. In the Greek drama, owing to the limitation upon the number of the performers, this difficulty was avoided, and a high standard of excellence maintained throughout the play. It was all the more necessary, among the Greeks, to take some precaution of this kind, since the size of the theatre demanded unusual powers in the actor. In a modern theatre an actor, however poor, can at any rate usually be heard. But in the vast open-air theatre at Athens it required a man with an exceptionally clear and powerful voice to make himself audible to the vast multitude of spectators. It cannot have been an easy task to find actors who combined histrionic talent with voices of sufficient power, and if a large number had been required, there would have been great difficulty in meeting the demand. The original Greek word for an actor was ‘hypokrites’. Etymologically the word seems to have meant ‘one who answers’.[680] In the times before Aeschylus, when there was only one actor, all the dialogue was necessarily carried on between the actor and the chorus. It is therefore not improbable that the duty of replying to the questions and remarks of the chorus may have been regarded as the salient feature in the performance of the actor, and have given rise to his name, as the old grammarians assert. In the course of the fourth century the old Attic word for an actor went out of use, and a new one was substituted. Henceforward actors were generally called ‘artists’, or ‘artists of Dionysus’.[681]