During the earlier period of the Athenian drama the principal part in the training and instruction of the chorus was undertaken by the poet himself. In fact, the regular name at Athens for a dramatic or dithyrambic poet was didaskalos, or ‘the teacher’, owing to the part he took in teaching his play or poem to the chorus. In the same way, when a poet brought out a tragedy or a comedy, the technical expression was that he ‘taught’ such and such a play. The play, or group of plays, exhibited by a single poet was called a ‘teaching’[242]. In addition to the evidence supplied by these expressions, there is also no lack of direct testimony as to the important part taken by the older poets in the production of their plays. In fact, they were quite as much stage-managers as poets. The older dramatic writers, such as Thespis, Pratinas, Cratinus, and Phrynichus, were called ‘dancers’, not only because of the prominent part which the chorus and the dancing filled in their plays, but also because they gave instruction in choric dancing.[243] Aeschylus is said to have superintended personally the whole of the training of his choruses, and to have invented many new dances and movements for them. His innovations in regard to the scenery and the dresses of the actors entirely transformed the outward appearance of the drama.[244] This intimate connexion between the poet and the stage, between the literary and the theatrical part of dramatic production, continued to exist during the great period of Athenian drama. Sophocles appeared personally in some of his plays. In the Thamyris he played the harp. In the Nausicaa he won great applause by the skill with which he played ball in the scene where Nausicaa is sporting with her maidens.[245] Euripides also seems to have superintended the training of his choruses in person, as there is a story in Plutarch which represents him as singing over one of his odes to the choreutae.[246]