indisputably violated it and possibly fourth-century comedies did also (see pp. 171-73, above). Therefore, if tragedy was more scrupulous it must have been because its actors were less numerous. But in truth it was not until the period of the technitae and their three-actor troupes that a hard-and-fast rule was established. Notwithstanding, the grammarians as a result of their closet study of Attic drama seized upon the observance of the law in fifth-century tragedy and usually in New Comedy, which was greatly influenced by Euripides, as a justification for tracing the practice back to an earlier origin. Except in one scene Seneca always observed the law.[285] But when Plautus and Terence attempted to transplant New Comedy to Italian soil, they encountered a difficulty. It was the use of masks which enabled the Greek playwrights to shift their actors from one rôle to another with lightning speed. But masks are said not to have been employed on the Roman stage until the next century. Therefore, even if the Greek comedies had been translated without modification it would have been quite impossible to present them at Rome with only three or four (maskless) actors. Accordingly, Plautus and Terence seem to have employed five or six performers and occasionally even more, and then proceeded to make further use of them so as to gratify the Roman desire for spectacular effects. By combining Greek plays into one Latin version (by “contaminating” them, to use the technical term) and by altering them freely they produced many scenes in which four or five persons participate in the same dialogue.