The difference between tragedy and comedy in their treatment of the chorus arises from the innermost nature of each, as has been well stated by Mr. Cornford: “The comic chorus has not, from the standpoint of art, the justification and utility which kept the chorus alive in tragedy to the last days of ancient drama. In tragedy it is needed for a high function, not to be so well fulfilled by any other means. It has to utter emotions that can be expressed only in lyric poetry, to say things which the audience longs to have said, but which cannot be said by any character on the stage.... Their function, too, is integral and need never decay. Nothing of this applies to the comic chorus. The audience here can completely relieve their feelings in laughter; there are no thoughts or emotions stirred that lie too deep for stage dialogue, no remoter universal meaning to be caught only in the passionate images of lyric poetry.”[257] Playwrights experience considerable difficulty in plausibly motivating the entrances of their characters, and this was a more troublesome problem in ancient times than it is today. I shall revert to the matter later in connection with the actors (see pp. 229 f. and 239, below), but I wish to touch upon it now as regards the chorus. Of course the chorus was so inevitably present in every Greek drama that it might be thought needless to account for its presence at all. As Richter[258] said: “The chorus in Attic tragedy is so firmly established, so much a matter of course, that its entrance does not need to be motivated.” Accordingly, in Aeschylus’ _Suppliants_, Sophocles’ _Philoctetes_, etc., the choral entrance is unmotived. In the _Suppliants_, however, the audience scarcely required to be explicitly told that the sacred precinct with its altars, which is what the orchestra represents in this play, was a natural place of retreat for refugees. Likewise it is quite unnecessary for Neoptolemus’ sailors, in the _Philoctetes_, to give an excuse for following their prince and captain ashore. On the contrary, in Aeschylus’ _Persians_ there is no self-evident reason why the Persian elders should go to the tomb of Darius or why Atossa should expect to meet them there rather than at the palace or the council chamber, and Aeschylus apparently felt no necessity of inventing a pretext. Nevertheless, in most instances the Greek playwrights did motivate their choral entrances. In Aeschylus’ _Seven against Thebes_ the chorus of maidens, through fear of the invading host, has fled for protection to the images of the gods on the acropolis (vss. 214 and 240). In Aeschylus’ _Prometheus Bound_ the ocean nymphs have been drawn to the hero’s side by the sound of the shackles being bolted upon him (vss. 133 f.). In the same writer’s _Libation-Bearers_ the maidservants are sent from the palace with offerings for the grave of Agamemnon (vss. 22 f.). In his _Eumenides_ the furies sing their first song behind the scenes within