Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/111

selected the capture of that city as the subject of a historical tragedy. The skill of the dramatist, and the recent occurrence of the event, affected the audience even to tears, and Plnynichus was lined 1000 drachmæ for having recalled so forcibly a painful recollection of the misfortunes of an ally^[1] We have already mentioned the introduction of female characters into Tragedy by Phrynichus: he seems, however, to have been chiefly remarkable for the sweetness of his melodies^[2], and the great variety and cleverness of his figure dances^[3]. The Aristophanic Agathon speaks generally of the beauty of his dramas^[4], though of course they fell far short of the grandeur of Ælschylus^[5], and the perfect art of Sophocles. The names of seventeen tragedies attributed

1. (Greek characters) Herod, VI. 21.
2. (Greek characters) Aristoph. Av. 748. Philocleon, the old Dicast, as we are told by the chorus of his brethren, (Greek characters) Vesp. 269.   And a little before, these fellow-dicasts are represented by Bdelycleon as summoning their aged colleague at midnight.   (Greek characters) v. 219.   (Greek characters) Schol. in loc, " Scribendum — (Greek characters)— cum Suida in (Greek characters) Quod Aristarchum in codice suo legisse ex annotatione Scholiastæ cognoscitur. Aves, 748: (Greek characters) — Dindorf. See above, p. 64, note 6.
3. Plutarch {Symp. in. 9) has preserved part of an epigram, said to have been written by the dramatist himself, in which he thus commemorates the fruitfulness of his fancy in devising figure-dances: (Greek characters)
4. Thesmophor. 164 sqq.
5. The difference between Phrynichus and Æschylus is distinctly stated in several passages of the Ranæ:  (Greek characters) 909.   Upon which the Scholiast remarks,(Greek characters) The same fact is also forcibly declared in the address of the Chorus to ^-Eschylus in the same comedy :   (Greek characters) 1004.   That the word (Greek characters) does not imply anything merely comical and ludicrous in the tragedies before Æschylus, is clear from the use of the word (Greek characters), in v, 923.