keenest interest, but seldom actively interferes. In the pauses between the action it moralizes on the significance of the incidents which have just occurred. Such is its position during the middle of the century. It has been removed from the stress and turmoil of the action into a calmer and more remote region, though it still preserves its interest in the events upon the stage. But in the later plays of Euripides a further development is noticeable. The chorus begins to lose even its interest in the action. In the pauses between the dialogue it sings odes of a mythological character, which have only the remotest connexion with the incidents of the plot. In the course of the dialogue itself it converses less frequently with the actors than it had done hitherto. There is also a tendency to transfer much of the music from the orchestra to the stage. The old duets between actors and chorus are reduced both in size and number, and their place is taken by solos and duets sung exclusively upon the stage. This tendency to exclude the chorus from the play was carried still further by Agathon, who gave up all pretence of connexion between the plot and the songs of the chorus, and converted his odes into professed interludes. In the time of Aristotle this practice had become universal. The choral odes were now regarded in much the same light as the pieces of music performed between the acts in a modern theatre.[850] Whether the chorus still took any part in the dialogue is not stated. But we can hardly doubt that the tendency already strongly marked in Euripides had been developed to its natural results, and that the tragic chorus of the later fourth century was practically excluded from all share in the conduct of the play. After the fourth century very little is known about its history. But the evidence seems to show that it was sometimes discarded even as early as the third century; and in later times this came to be more and more the ordinary custom. Even when retained, its functions were merely those of the modern band.[851]