Now there can be little room left for doubt as to what system was actually chosen, when it is observed that the foregoing statement of the numerals’ purpose and use obviates two of the three objections to the chronological interpretation. Euripides produced his first play in 455 B.C. and died in 406 B.C. He is said to have written ninety-two plays, or an average of one and four-fifths per annum. If the _Alcestis_ were actually his seventeenth piece he must have written less than one play a year between 455 B.C. and 438 B.C., when the _Alcestis_ was produced, and two and one-third plays a year thereafter. It is true that Euripides’ career opened slowly and that many of his later works are characterized by hasty and careless execution. But this disparity is too great, even apart from the objection that _ex hypothesi_ the _Alcestis_ numeral ought to be a multiple of four. If we suppose, however, that only the plays that were preserved received a number, the situation at once clears. We are informed that seventy-eight of Euripides’ works (four of them spurious) were preserved. This is confirmed by the fact that seventy-two of his titles are now known, for the number of titles now extant generally approximates closely the number of an author’s plays which were known by the ancients. If, then, the _Alcestis_ was seventeenth among the seventy-eight works which were passing under the name of Euripides in antiquity and if it retained the same relative position as in the complete list, it must have been about the twentieth play which he brought out. This number, being divisible by four, would be suitable for the last play of a tetralogy and would have the merit of reducing slightly the disproportion between the earlier and the later activity of the poet. Moreover, since the earlier plays of a dramatist are more likely to have been lost than the later ones, it is possible to suppose that the _Alcestis_ may have been twenty-fourth or even twenty-eighth in a complete list (chronological) of his writings. The point is that the purpose of the numerals as deducible from the _Dionysalexandros_ instance is capable of obviating all objections to the chronological interpretation of the _Alcestis_ numeral.