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[ Out of fifty plays, thirty-two were satyrical.—Suidas in Prat.
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[ The Tetralogy was the name given to the fourfold exhibition of the three tragedies, or trilogy, and the Satyric Drama.
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[ Yet in Aeschylus there are sometimes more than two speaking actors on the stage,—as at one time in the Choephori, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electra (to say nothing of Pylades, who is silent), and again in the same play, Orestes, Pylades, and Clytemnestra, also in the Eumenides, Apollo, Minerva, Orestes. It is truly observed, however, that these plays were written after Sophocles had introduced the third actor. [Footnote The Orestean tetralogy was exhibited B. C. 455, only two years before the death of Aeschylus, and ten years after Sophocles had gained his first prize.: Any number of mutes might be admitted, not only as guards, etc., but even as more important personages. Thus, in the Prometheus, the very opening of the play exhibits to us the demons of Strength and Force, the god Vulcan, and Prometheus himself; but the dialogue is confined to Strength and Vulcan.
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[ The celebrated temple of Bacchus; built after the wooden theatre had given way beneath the multitude assembled to witness a contest between Pratinas and Aeschylus.
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[ 1st. The rural Dionysia, held in the country districts throughout Attica about the beginning of January. 2d. The Lenaean, or Anthesterial, Dionysia, in the end of February and beginning of March, in which principally occurred the comic contests; and the grand Dionysis of the city, referred to in the text. Afterward dramatic performances were exhibited also, in August, during the Panathenaea.