Soon after Sophocles’ first appearance (468 B.C. or possibly 471 B.C.)[272] he introduced the third actor. First of all this innovation permitted a larger number of characters to be presented. In Aeschylus’ two-actor plays the characters number three in the _Suppliants_ in addition to the chorus and coryphaeus, four in the _Persians_, six in the _Prometheus_, and five in _Seven against Thebes_. In the three-actor plays Aeschylus’ characters range from five to seven, Sophocles’ from five to nine, and Euripides’ from seven to eleven, except that Euripides’ satyr-play, the _Cyclops_, has but three characters. Secondly, a third actor allowed greater flexibility in handling entrances and exits. An artificial pause, more or less improbably motived, to enable an actor to change his mask and costume before appearing in another rôle would now be less frequently required (see further, p. 231, below). Thirdly, it allowed three personages to appear side by side in the same scene, whereby in turn a certain aesthetic effect became possible. I refer to the varied emotions which one actor’s statements or conduct sometimes produce in two other characters. An excellent illustration is afforded by the scene with the Corinthian messenger in Sophocles’ _Oedipus the King_, vss. 924 ff. As the awful conviction is brought home to Jocaste that Oedipus is her son as well as her husband, she rushes from the stage to hang herself; but Oedipus, on the contrary, still lacking the fatal clue, becomes elated at the prospect of discovering his parents’ identity. Similarly in the same playwright’s _Electra_, vss. 660 ff., the false report of Orestes’ death cheers his mother with the assurance that her murder of Agamemnon must now remain unavenged, but plunges Electra into the desperation of despair. Such situations would have been impossible in the two-actor drama. Finally, the introduction of a third actor contributed to the decay of the chorus. We have already noted in the last chapter how the importance of the chorus steadily declined, especially in comedy. But this change was quantitative as well as qualitative. In the prehistrionic period the chorus and its coryphaeus, from the nature of the case, monopolized every line. After Thespis had brought in the first actor the chorus yielded but a small place to its rival. Even in the two-actor period in our earliest extant play, the _Suppliants_, the chorus sang five hundred and sixty-five verses out of a total of a thousand and seventy-four, and in addition to this the coryphaeus spoke ninety verses. In six of Aeschylus’ seven extant pieces the choral element varies from three-fifths to about one-half of the whole play. The _Prometheus_, for special reasons, is exceptional, the fraction being only one-sixth. The effect of the third actor is seen in the fact that in Sophocles the proportion varies from one-fourth to one-seventh and in Euripides from one-fourth to one-eighth.