comic actors was not established at the Lenaea until about 442 B.C. (at the City Dionysia not until about 325 B.C.) allowed a slight interval for this reaction to assert itself before usage became legalized. Such, then, are the reasons for the number of actors being less restricted in comedy than in tragedy. For about a century, beginning with 449 B.C., the state annually engaged three tragic protagonists to be assigned by lot to the three poets who were about to compete with plays. Each protagonist seems to have hired his own subordinate actors (deuteragonist and tritagonist) and with their assistance presented all the plays (at the City Dionysia three tragedies and one satyric drama) which his poet had composed for the occasion. The victorious actor in each year’s contest was automatically entitled to appear the following year. The other two protagonists were perhaps selected by means of a preliminary contest, such as is mentioned for comic actors on the last day of the Anthesteria. These regulations applied, _mutatis mutandis_, also to the contest of comic actors and to the tragic and comic contests at the Lenaea. Thus at the Lenaea of 418 B.C. Callippides acted in the two tragedies of Callistratus, and Lysicrates in the other dramatist’s two plays. And it should be noted that, whereas Callippides won the prize for acting, Callistratus was defeated in the competition of tragedies. This must have been a point of considerable difficulty, for an actor’s chances must have been greatly hampered by his being required to present a poor series of plays; and a poet, likewise, must have suffered by reason of an inferior presentation of his dramas. But sometime in the fourth century, when the playwrights were no longer required to write satyr-plays (see p. 199, below), a more equitable system was introduced. Each of the protagonists in turn now acted one of the three tragedies of each poet, the histrionic talent at the disposal of each dramatist being thus made exactly the same. For example, at the City Dionysia of 341 B.C. (Fig. 76) Astydamas was the victorious playwright; his _Achilles_ was played by Thettalus, his _Athamas_ by Neoptolemus, and his _Antigone_ by Athenodorus. The same actors likewise presented the three tragedies of Evaretus and those of the third dramatist. On this occasion Neoptolemus won; a year later, under similar conditions, he was defeated by Thettalus.