From this reproduction of old plays of Aeschylus must be carefully distinguished those instances where plays, which Aeschylus had left unpublished at his death, were produced for the first time by his son Euphorion. It is said that Euphorion won four victories with his father’s unpublished tragedies. In a similar manner the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles was produced for the first time by his grandson four years after the poet’s death. And after the death of Euripides, his Iphigeneia in Aulis, Alcmaeon, and Bacchae were brought out by his son at the City Dionysia.[294] On such occasions as these, although no doubt the real authorship of the plays was perfectly well known at the time, the relative appeared as the nominal author. He asked for a chorus from the archon in his own name. The plays he produced were new ones. There is therefore no similarity between instances of this kind and those occasions when a man asked for a chorus, not in his own name, but in order to produce old plays of Aeschylus. It was not till the fourth century that the reproduction of old plays developed into a regular custom. The practice was at first confined to tragedy. This branch of the drama had passed beyond the period of healthy growth, and already showed symptoms of decay. The three great tragic poets of the fifth century had in their several lines exhausted the capabilities of Attic tragedy. Their successors were mostly feeble imitators of Euripides. Under such circumstances the tendency to fall back upon the early drama naturally became more prevalent. In the records of the City Dionysia during the latter half of the fourth century it is found that the series of new tragedies was invariably preceded by the performance of an old one.[295] The same practice was also no doubt adopted at the Lenaea. The actors who had the privilege of conducting these revivals would be selected by the archon, probably after a small preliminary competition of the kind described in the previous chapter.[296] It appears that these actors, in preparing the old plays for reproduction, were sometimes inclined to tamper with the text, and to introduce what they considered improvements, just as the plays of Shakespeare were adapted for the stage by Garrick in the last century. A law was passed by the orator Lycurgus to put a stop to this practice. It was enacted that a public copy should be made of the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and deposited in the state archives; and that the actors, in their performances, should not be allowed to deviate from the text of the copy.[297] It is very probable that this authorized version eventually found its way to Alexandria. Ptolemy the Third was a great collector of manuscripts. He borrowed from the Athenians an old copy of the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, promising to return it after he had made a transcript, and depositing fifteen talents as security. The transcript was made in the best possible style. Ptolemy