or technical grounds, than there would be in modern drama. In every period such a detail depends, or ought to be left to depend, entirely upon the requirements of the story chosen for dramatic presentation. Nevertheless, since the histrionic divisions in tragedy were more usually five and since comedy fell more and more under the domination of tragedy, the rigid principle was at last set up for both tragedy and comedy that each play should contain five acts, no more, no less; cf. Horace’s pronunciamento: “Let a play neither fall short of nor extend beyond a fifth act.” It should be observed, however, that our English word “act” conveys a misleading impression in this connection. The Greek word was simply “part” (μέρος) and denoted merely a division of the play as determined by choral _divertissement_, whether written or interpolated. These “parts,” therefore, depended upon the more or less accidental and haphazard activity of the chorus and often two or three of them would be required to make up an act in the modern sense. In other words the modern notion of an act as an integral part of the story, marking a definite stage in the unfolding of the plot, was for the most part yet to be developed, especially in comedy. The leveling effect of the five-act rule is seen in the modern editions of Plautus and Terence. It is certain that neither four nor any other fixed number of pauses was employed at the premier performances of these dramatists’ works. In some cases they seem to have been given continuous representation with neither choral intermezzi nor pauses at the points where the Greek originals had had _entr’actes_. From this, however, we must not infer that Plautus and Terence did not know where the acts or the “parts” began and closed. If for no other reason, the recurrence of ΧΟΡΟΥ in at least most of the Greek comedies which they were translating and adapting would not have permitted them to be ignorant on this point, for in my opinion, so far as pauses were inserted in the Roman performances, they coincided with the corresponding points of division in the Greek plays. But by this I do not mean that the Latin divisions were always as numerous as the Greek; in my judgment, owing to contamination and other modifying influences they were uniformly fewer. Moreover, when these comedies were first published for the use of a reading public, it seems that the manuscripts contained no indication of act divisions. Within a century of Terence’s death, however, partisans of the five-act dogma were already attempting to force their Procrustean theory upon his works. A later effort of this sort is preserved to us in the commentary of Donatus (fourth century A.D.) and passed into the printed editions, with some modifications, about 1496 A.D. Likewise, the Renaissance scholars, obsessed by the tradition of what had come to be considered an inviolable law, proceeded to divide each of Plautus’ twenty plays into five acts; cf. Pius’ edition of 1500 A.D.