Whether the decision of the judges was generally given with discernment, and how far it corresponded with the ultimate verdict of posterity, is a question of some interest. Both Aeschylus and Sophocles were usually successful, and this speaks highly for the taste of the judges. Aeschylus won thirteen victories; and as he produced four plays on each occasion, it follows that no less than fifty-two of his plays obtained the first prize. Whether the total number of his plays was seventy or ninety, the proportion of victories was very large.[135] Sophocles was equally fortunate. He won eighteen victories at the City Dionysia, and at least two at the Lenaea.[136] The number of his plays, as given by different authorities, varies from a hundred-and-four to a hundred-and-thirty.[137] Thus on the lowest estimate considerably more than half his plays gained the first position. Euripides was not so successful. He only won five victories, though he wrote between ninety and a hundred plays.[138] His failure was partly due to the fact that he often had the misfortune to contend against Sophocles. He was beaten by Sophocles in 438 and 431, and probably on many other occasions of which no record has been preserved.[139] But at other times he was defeated by very inferior poets. In 415 he was beaten by Xenocles, and on another occasion by the obscure poet Nicomachus.[140] But the most surprising verdict of which there is any record is the defeat of the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles by Philocles, the nephew of Aeschylus.[141] Of course the other three plays, along with which the Oedipus Tyrannus was produced, may not have been of equal merit. Still it must always seem an extraordinary fact, and a proof of the fallibility of Athenian judges, that a play which is generally allowed to be one of the greatest dramas of antiquity should have been defeated by a third-rate poet such as Philocles.