This analogy is especially true when the irony arises from clashing intrigues, and the audience, admitted to the author’s confidence and sitting at his side, as it were, joins with him in awarding praise here and condemnation there. Again the playwright is the omnipotent creator and ruler of the little world that moves upon the stage. And the spectator, beholding the dramatic characters’ fruitless toil and plotting, baseless exultation, and needless despondency seems to be admitted behind the scenes of this world’s tragedy and to view the spectacle through the great dramatist’s eyes, learning that man must be content with little, humble ever, distrustful of fortune, and fearful of the powers above. Thus the slighter themes and less important reverses of comedy bring a purification (κάθαρσις) in their train no less truly than the more somber catastrophes of tragedy.[371] Footprints on the sands of time.—H. W. LONGFELLOW. CHAPTER IX THEATRICAL RECORDS[372] The technical word used of bringing out a play was διδάσκειν (“to teach”), and the technical name for the director of the performance was _didascalus_ (διδάσκαλος) or “teacher.” We have already noted (p. 198, above) that _didascalia_ (διδασκαλία; “teaching”) was the name for a group of plays brought out by a tragic playwright at one time, and the same word was applied to a record of the theatrical contests. At the beginning the didascalus and the author were identical, for the reason that the primitive poets taught the choreutae what they were to sing, that the poets in the one-actor period carried the histrionic parts themselves and still taught the choreutae their rôles, and that even when they had ceased to act in their plays they yet continued to train those who did. The Athenian archons seem to have kept records of the contests at the Dionysiac festivals, the archon eponymus for the City Dionysia and the king archon for the Lenaea. These records, of course, were not compiled in the interests of literary research such as flourished in Alexandrian times but merely for the private convenience of the officials and for documentary purposes. Apparently they consisted of a bald series of entries, chronicling the choregi, tribes, poet-didascali, actors, plays, and victors in the various dithyrambic and dramatic events. In the fourth century B.C. these archives were published by Aristotle in a work entitled _Didascaliae_. His service probably was mainly that of unearthing the material and arranging it in chronological sequence and of making it available to a wider public, for Dr. Jachmann has made it seem clear that he did not edit the archons’ record to any great extent. In consequence Aristotle’s book contained too much and was overloaded with unimportant details. Its main value consisted in being a court of last resort and a source from which smaller and less unwieldy lists might be compiled.