As a matter of fact the evidence upon the subject, if considered without prejudice, makes it practically certain that there were no restrictions of the kind suggested. The audience at the dramatic performances, whether tragic or comic, was drawn from every class of the population. Men, women, boys, and slaves were all allowed to be present. The evidence from ancient authors is too copious to be accounted for on any other supposition. There are three passages in Plato which in themselves are almost enough to decide the question. In one place, speaking of poetry in general, and more especially of tragedy, Plato says it is a kind of rhetoric addressed to ‘boys, women, and men, slaves, and free citizens without distinction’. In another place, where he is treating of the management of his ideal republic, he says there will be no great readiness to allow the tragic poets to ‘erect their stages in the market-place, and perform before women and children, and the general public’. A passage of this kind would have very little point, unless it was intended as a condemnation of the prevailing practice. In a third place he declares that if there was a general exhibition of all kinds of public amusements, and the audience were called upon to state what they were most pleased with, the little children would vote for the conjuror, the boys for the comic poet, the young men and the more refined sort of women for the tragic poet.[985] These three passages of Plato are hardly consistent with the supposition that the drama was a spectacle which boys and women were never allowed to witness.