other objects of interest; and this, of course, the poet cannot allow. Accordingly, when the point is raised (vss. 219 ff.), Ion replies that it is forbidden to enter the inner fane except after the offer of sacrifice. Finally, even at the very end of the play the chorus could not leave the stage except after the actors or in their company. This convention arose from the same conditions as have already been mentioned, but produced some incongruities of its own. For example, in Euripides’ _Iphigenia among the Taurians_ and _Helen_ the Greek slaves in the choruses are promised, as a reward for their silence and help, a return to Greece (see p. 156, above). But since in the latter play Helen and Menelaus make their final exit nearly five hundred lines before the end of the piece, it is manifestly impossible for the chorus to be spared. Consequently they are most unconscionably left in the lurch without a single word being said of their rescue. In the _Iphigenia_ they fare no better up to the time when Orestes’ ship is driven back to land; but in the final outcome Athena appears and includes the chorus among those whom King Thoas must allow to depart in peace (vss. 1467 f.). Possibly a desire to keep this promise to the chorus was one of the considerations that induced the poet to have the ship forced back to shore and thus to make a divine apparition unavoidable. So inextricably is the chorus interwoven with Greek drama that its influence may be detected almost anywhere. I have traced some of the broader effects, however, and in subsequent chapters minor results will be mentioned in connection with other factors. Ἐκεῖ (sc. ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι) μεῖζον δύνανται νῦν τῶν ποιητῶν oἱ ὑποκριταί.—ARISTOTLE. CHAPTER III THE INFLUENCE OF ACTORS[271]