In addition to the above evidence there are also several places in Aristophanes where boys and women are referred to as forming part of the audience. For instance, in the Clouds Aristophanes prides himself on having refrained from introducing the phallus ‘to make the boys laugh’. In the Peace he says that ‘both the boys and the men’ ought to wish for his victory in the contest, because of his boldness in attacking Cleon. In another part of the Peace, when some barley is thrown among the male part of the spectators, Trygaeus remarks that the women have not got any.[986] Other passages of the same kind might be quoted. That women were present at the New Comedy is proved conclusively by a letter of Alciphron, in which Menander is supposed to be writing to his mistress Glycera. In this letter he says that nothing is dearer to him than to be crowned with the ivy of Dionysus, as victor in the comic contest, ‘while Glycera is sitting in the theatre and looking on.’[987] Other pieces of evidence are as follows. In Lucian’s dialogue Solon tells Anacharsis that the Athenians educate their sons by taking them to tragedies and comedies, and showing them examples of virtue and vice, so as to teach them what to imitate and what to avoid.[988] In the Frogs there is the well-known passage in which Aeschylus taunts Euripides with the immorality of his plays, which have caused women of refinement to commit suicide from very shame. If women were never present at the performance of the tragedies of Euripides, there would be very little meaning in the reproach.[989] Then again we are told that when Alcibiades was choregus, and ‘entered the theatre’ dressed in a splendid purple robe, he was admired ‘not only by the men, but also by the women’.[990] The shameless person in Theophrastus smuggles his sons into the theatre with a ticket which belongs to some one else. The miser never takes his sons to the theatre except when the entrance is free.[991] The regulation of Sphyromachus, providing that men, women, and courtesans should sit apart from one another, can hardly have referred to any place but the theatre.[992] The cumulative effect of all these passages is difficult to resist. It is impossible to explain them all away by far-fetched interpretations. Even the story of the effect produced by the Eumenides of Aeschylus upon the audience—of the boys dying of fright and the women having miscarriages—such a story, though in itself a foolish invention, could hardly have originated unless women and boys had been regularly present at the theatre.[993] That they were admitted at a later period is proved by the direct evidence of inscriptions in the theatre of Dionysus, which show that in Hadrian’s time seats were specially reserved for priestesses and other women.[994] This fact would not of course be conclusive evidence as to the custom which prevailed in the classical period of Athenian history. But, as far as it goes, it tends to confirm