The rule of Greek dramaturgy which has just been described is liable to one notable exception—the dramatic characters may not commit murder before the eyes of the spectators but they may commit suicide there. Not, of course, that all suicides must take place within the audience’s vision; most of them, like all cases of manslaughter, are reported. But the important fact remains that at least in some instances suicide is enacted before the spectators’ very eyes. So, in Sophocles’ _Ajax_ that hero falls upon his sword (vs. 865), and in Euripides’ _Suppliants_ (vs. 1071) Evadne flings herself from the rocks upon her husband’s funeral pyre. It thus appears that it is neither the bare fact of death nor yet its mere hideousness which was obnoxious to ancient taste. The first conclusion is confirmed by the fact that the life-strength of Alcestis is allowed to ebb away upon the stage (Euripides’ _Alcestis_, vs. 391), and the second by the sight of Heracles racked by agonizing tortures in Sophocles’ _Maidens of Trachis_, vss. 983 ff. The distinction between what is permissible and what is forbidden seems to hinge upon a trivial matter, viz., whether only one character is involved or several. Passing now to the _raison d’être_ of this practice I will first mention some minor considerations. The paucity of actors in Greek drama (see p. 182, below) made any representation of mass effects, such as a battle, quite impossible. The lack of complicated stage machinery prevented the melodramatic actualism that modern audiences love so well. Being thus unaccustomed to the more difficult feats of realism, the ancients had not learned to demand it in lesser matters. Without a sigh they dispensed with that which everyone knew to be incapable of actual enactment before their eyes. Furthermore, in the absence of a drop curtain (see pp. 243 f., below) it would have been necessary for characters slain upon the stage either to rise and walk casually off, as in the Chinese theaters of today, or to be carried off. The first alternative is unthinkable in ancient Greece and the second would have been too monotonous. It has also been claimed[237] that the use of masks, each with its own unchanging features, would have been an insuperable obstacle to scenes of violence, as normally presupposing great and rapid changes in the facial expressions of the characters. But in connection with other scenes the Greeks frequently ignored and frequently evaded the difficulties caused by the immobility of their masks (see pp. 222 f., below); so there is no reason to believe that the use of masks would by itself have driven incidents of this nature from the Greek stage.