We have now discovered why the dialogue technique of tragedy was more restricted than that of comedy, but there still remains a further question. Why was the number of actors in tragedy usually or always restricted to three, while four actors were not uncommon in comedy? So long as the poets did their own acting, there was no occasion for the state to interfere in the selection of actors. And this situation would naturally continue for some time after the plays were presented largely or wholly by actors alone—the poets would still have the matter in their charge. In fact there is no reason to suppose that the state interposed its authority before the establishment of the contest for tragic actors at the City Dionysia in 449 B.C. This supposition affords the best explanation for certain ancient notices. For example, Aeschylus is said to have used Cleander as his first actor and afterward to have associated Mynniscus with him, and Sophocles to have employed Tlepolemus continuously. Whatever truth or error may lie back of these statements they imply that in the first half of the fifth century the choice of actors rested solely with the poets. The same implication is inherent in the fact that the second and third actors were introduced by Aeschylus and Sophocles respectively. The poets must have made these additions upon their own initiative. For the state could not have shown partiality by providing Sophocles, for example, with more actors than were furnished the other dramatists in the same contest; and if they were all alike given an increased number, there would be no reason for crediting any one of them with the innovation. The state must have assumed supervision of the histrionic features of the dramatic contests at the same time that it established a prize for actors, viz., in 449 B.C. And since the tragedies of this period were presented by three actors, this number became crystallized, and so was never thereafter, so far as the state was concerned, exceeded in tragedy. Tragedies were added to the Lenaean program and a prize for tragic actors established for that festival simultaneously, about 433 B.C. Naturally the conventional number of tragic actors would be transferred from the older contest to the newer. In comedy, however, the development and tradition were entirely different (see pp. 52 f., above). Primitive comedies in Attica were performed by a double chorus of choreutae, who constituted an undifferentiated crowd and assumed no individual rôles, but sang (or spoke) singly, antiphonally, or in unison. Shortly before 450 B.C. regular actors were introduced in contradistinction to the choreutae; and Cratinus, imitating contemporaneous tragedy, set their number at three. Yet the choreutae did not for a long time entirely give up their old license and self-assertiveness. Consequently, it is not surprising that the number of performers did not remain at the tragic norm. The fact that a contest of