One matter in connection with all these inscriptions has been a subject of keen controversy among scholars, and the end is not yet. The problem is too complicated to be discussed upon its merits here, but the general situation may be outlined. When a poet did not serve as his own didascalus but brought out his play through someone else, did the name of the didascalus or that of the poet appear in the records? On a few points general agreement is possible. For example, when a poet had applied for a chorus in his own name but died before the festival and someone else had to assume his didascalic duties, care seems to have been taken at all periods to indicate the original didascalus. Again, in cases of deliberate deception, as when a man without dramatic powers secured the consent of a playwright to bring out the latter’s work as his own and applied for a chorus as if for his own play, naturally the name of the pseudo-author would be the only one to appear in the records. The crucial case remains, viz., when a dramatist wished to be relieved of the burden of stage management and arranged for a didascalus to ask for a chorus and assume responsibility for the performance. The matter becomes important with reference to Aristophanes and the correct restoration of the Victors’-Lists for comic poets at the City Dionysia and the Lenaea. When Aristophanes had written his first play, the _Banqueters_, youth, inexperience, diffidence, or some other motive for desiring to avoid the responsibility of staging his play caused him to intrust it to Callistratus for production at the Lenaea of 427 B.C. The same process was repeated at the City Dionysia of 426 B.C. and the Lenaea of 425 B.C., when Callistratus brought out Aristophanes’ _Babylonians_ and _Acharnians_, respectively. The former piece was apparently unsuccessful, but the latter was awarded the first prize. At the Lenaea of 424 B.C. Aristophanes was equally successful with the _Knights_, which, however, he produced _in his own name_. In vss. 512 ff. of this play the chorus declares that many Athenians approached the poet and expressed their surprise that he had not long before asked for a chorus in his own name. This passage implies that the real authorship of Aristophanes’ earlier pieces was known to a large section of the public, and makes it clear that he had produced no earlier plays in his own name. Therefore if he had won a City victory during this period the comedy with which he won it must have been brought out in the name of another. The earliest City Dionysia, then, at which he could have produced a play in his own name was in 424 B.C., two months later than the _Knights_. Now in the Victors’-List for comic poets at the City Dionysia (Fig. 78),[378] the letters Ἀρι appear in line seven of the second column. Is the name of Aristophanes or that of Aristomenes to be restored here?