Thus from the fact that the early plays had no prologues, there grew up the practice of having the chorus (or coryphaeus) introduce not merely the first actor but every new character, as he appeared. For example, when the king of Argos makes his entrance in the _Suppliants_ he engages in conversation with the Danaids, ignoring their father, and in reply to their question declares his name and station (vss. 247 ff.). Originally this technique was doubtless due in part also to the exigencies of the one-actor period (see p. 165, above), and it continued to be the regular practice, even after prologues were _en règle_, in all the plays of Aeschylus and in the earlier ones of Sophocles and Euripides. In comedy this method of procedure was less common, partly because this was no longer the usual convention in contemporaneous tragedy and partly because comedy closely approximates the manners of everyday life, which do not indorse this kind of introduction. When employed in comedy it was often intended to give a tone of tragic parody. For instance, in Aristophanes’ _Acharnians_, vss. 1069 f., the approach of a messenger is announced by the chorus as follows: “Lo, here speeds one ‘with bristled crest’ as though to proclaim some message dire,” the tragic tone of which in the original is unmistakable.[302] Phrynichus’ _Phoenician Women_ was the first play which we know to have had a prologue (476 B.C.). Aeschylus’ _Seven against Thebes_ has the earliest extant prologue (467 B.C.). Of course, this change in the economy of the play involved a change also in dramatic technique. Now the entrance of actors preceded that of the chorus. If one actor came alone he had to introduce himself, as Eteocles does in the _Seven_: “If we succeed, the credit belongs to heaven; but if we fail, Eteocles alone will loudly be assailed throughout the town.” If two actors enter together at the beginning of the play they may by alternately addressing each other by name make their identity clear to the audience, as Cratus and Hephaestus do in Aeschylus’ _Prometheus Bound_. Moreover, before his exit Cratus calls Prometheus, whom he has helped to nail to the rocky background, by name (vs. 85). We have seen that when the chorus opened a play they introduced the actors who followed them. It would be natural that when the relative position of actors and chorus was interchanged the technique of introduction should also be reversed; in other words, that one of the actors in the prologue should now introduce the on-coming chorus as the latter had previously introduced the actors. This actually occurs in this play: when the choreutae appear, the bound Prometheus addresses them as “children of Tethys and Oceanus,” vss. 136-40. The same artifice recurs in Aeschylus’ _Libation-Bearers_, vss. 10-16 (see below). But it is self-evident that this manner of introducing the chorus would seldom be satisfactory. In truth, as the chorus gradually but