A few remarks may be made here on the relative importance of the Lenaea and the City Dionysia from the theatrical point of view. The City Dionysia was much the most splendid and imposing gathering of the two. It was attended by larger crowds of people, and was subjected to stricter regulations. Aliens were not allowed to take part in the choruses; metics were forbidden to serve as choregi.[104] No such prohibitions existed at the Lenaea. It must obviously have been a much greater honour for a poet to produce his plays at the City Dionysia, before the vast concourse of citizens and strangers, than in the comparative privacy of the Lenaea. In tragedy this was more particularly the case. The great tragic poets, after their fame had been once established, seem to have mostly confined themselves to the City Dionysia. Sophocles, for instance, won eighteen victories there, and only two or six at the Lenaea.[105] The Lenaea would be generally reserved for inferior poets, or for youthful authors who had still their reputation to make. Thus in 418 one of the competitors was an obscure poet called Callistratus.[106] In 416 the victor was Agathon, who had never yet obtained a tragic prize.[107] Foreign poets may also have been generally confined to this festival. It was here that Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, won his solitary success.[108] The circumstances were rather different in regard to comedy. The leading comic poets seem to have made little distinction between the two festivals. Aristophanes produced his plays indifferently at both.[109] Cratinus won six Lenaean victories as opposed to three in the City, Teleclides five as opposed to three.[110] In explanation of this fact we should remember that comedy was the chief feature at the Lenaea, tragedy an appendage. Also, as the competitors in comedy only produced one play at a time, a poet of a fertile mind would need two contests in the year in order to exhibit what he had written. Still, in spite of the more equal distribution of the comic poets between the two festivals, there can be little doubt that even in comedy a ‘City victory’ was always the highest distinction.[111] § 8. _Rural Dionysia and Anthesteria._