Quite apart from these considerations, however, there is still something to be said for the Euripidean type of prologue. Knowing that the spectators had no playbill, whatever the dramatist wished to tell them concerning the antecedents of the dramatic action he had to tell them in the play itself. And though the plots of most tragedies were based upon oft-told myths, yet we have the authority of Aristotle[365] for the statement that even the best-known tales were known to but a few. Furthermore, the Greek practice of attacking the series of dramatic incidents, not at the beginning or in the middle, but only at the end, of excluding everything but the culmination or fifth act (see pp. 266 f., above), prevented the earlier events from actually being represented upon the stage. There was, therefore, a considerable body of facts which the poet had either to relate frankly and succinctly in a mass at the beginning or to attempt to weave into the play and disclose gradually as they were needed. Euripides preferred the former method, which he employed in all of his extant plays except possibly the _Iphigenia at Aulis_. It was borrowed by Sophocles in his _Maidens of Trachis_, was extensively imitated by Aristophanes despite his caustic criticisms, and was exceedingly popular among the writers of New Comedy. Even in modern times, notwithstanding all that has been said against it both by ancients and moderns, there have always been playwrights to whom this manner of approach has made the stronger appeal. The principle involved is well stated by a contemporaneous student of dramatic technique:[366] “It may not unreasonably be contended, I think, that, when an exposition cannot be thoroughly dramatized—that is, wrung out, in the stress of the action, from the characters primarily concerned—it may best be dismissed, rapidly and even conventionally, by any not too improbable device.”