Fig. 80.—The Villa Albani Statue of Euripides in the Louvre with the Beginning of an Alphabetical List of His Plays.
We may now return to the chronological interpretation, and first let us note the light which the Dionysalexandros numeral throws upon the situation. It is significant that this number is not incorporated within the hypothesis but stood at the top of the last column and had doubtless appeared also at the beginning of the hypothesis (now lost). In my opinion this was the original form of such a notice and shows why in the fuller form of statement found elsewhere a different verb is employed in each case—λέλεκται, ἔστι, ἐποιήθη, and ἔγραψεν. When Aristophanes of Byzantium, or whoever was responsible for the change, transferred these items from the heading and made them integral parts of the hypothesis, finding no verb in the original version before him and resting under the necessity of now using one, he did not deem it essential to paraphrase the information always in the same way but, as was natural, employed now one expression and now another. If it be true that the original function of the numerals was as we find it in the Cratinus hypothesis, only one explanation is possible—it was a device for the convenience of some library, probably that at Alexandria. If so, every play in the collection would bear a number and these numbers would run consecutively for each author. In other words if any play were not preserved in the library, that fact would not be indicated by an unoccupied number being left as a gap in the enumeration. Of course it is conceivable that the basis of arrangement was purely arbitrary and even varied with each author, and in fact there has been a distinct tendency among recent authorities to accept some such pessimistic conclusion. But it is more probable, until the contrary be proved, that some rational system (alphabetical, chronological, etc.) was employed and employed consistently.
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.
Similarly, Sophocles is said to have written one hundred and twenty-three plays, and his career extended from about 468 B.C. to 406 B.C., yielding an average of about two plays per annum. Inasmuch as the Antigone was probably performed in 441 B.C. and bears the numeral thirty-two, an unmodified chronological interpretation would give an average of one and one-seventh plays a year for Sophocles’ earlier period and of two and three-sevenths for his later period. But we now have fragments of somewhat more than one hundred Sophoclean plays; and if the Antigone was thirty-second among these and retained the same relative position as at first, it would have been about the thirty-seventh play which Sophocles wrote. Of course this is a mere estimate, but again this solution has the merit of assigning a slightly larger number of plays to the earlier years of the poet and of reducing, to that extent, the only objection to the chronological interpretation of this numeral.
Aristophanes’ first comedy was produced in 427 B.C., and his last one not much later than 388 B.C. To him were attributed forty-four plays, four of which were considered spurious. Apparently all of his works were known to the ancients. The Birds was produced at the City Dionysia of 414 B.C. in the fourteenth year of his activity as a playwright. There is, therefore, no a priori reason for refusing to believe that it was Aristophanes’ fifteenth play. Nor does any obstacle arise from the chronology of the plays, so far as they can be dated. On the other hand the traditional numeral, thirty-five, is inexplicable under any logical system of enumeration, while Dindorf’s emendation is paleographically simple. Therefore we must accept the substitution and the chronological interpretation.
Cratinus’ career began about 452 B.C. and closed in 423 B.C. or soon thereafter. Most scholars suppose his Dionysalexandros to have been brought out in 430 or 429 B.C., though I was myself at first inclined to favor an earlier date. He is said to have written twenty-one plays. Twenty-six titles, however, were accepted for him by Meineke and Kock in their editions of the Greek comic fragments. Probably a few of these titles must be rejected as spurious or transferred to the younger Cratinus, but it is also possible that Cratinus was much more productive than is commonly supposed and that twenty-one was the number of his preserved works in Alexandrian times, not of all that he had composed. As the custom of publishing comedies seems to have started only at about the beginning of Cratinus’ career (see [p. 55], above), it would not be surprising if many of his plays, especially of his earlier plays, were lost. At any rate in a chronological arrangement of twenty-one comedies, whether they were the whole or only the preserved part of Cratinus’ work, the Dionysalexandros could be the eighth. These conclusions are acceptable to Professor R. H. Tanner, who will shortly publish a dissertation dealing with the chronology of Cratinus’ plays and whose results on the point now under discussion he has kindly permitted me to summarize here. He follows Croiset in assigning the Dionysalexandros to the Lenaea of 430 B.C.; six plays he definitely dates before the Dionysalexandros, and a seventh somewhat less positively. In the thirteen remaining he has found nothing to indicate a date prior to 430 B.C. Some of them certainly belong to the period subsequent to 430 B.C. It will be seen that these conclusions are in thorough accord with my interpretation of the numeral.
The chronology of Menander’s life is not free from uncertainties, but these do not seriously affect the present discussion. His first play was performed perhaps as early as 324 B.C., and his decease probably took place in 292/1 B.C. During these thirty-three or thirty-four years he composed some one hundred and nine pieces or slightly over three per annum. Now Nicocles was archon in 302/1 B.C. If, then, the hypothesis is correct in assigning the Imbrians to the archonship of this man, the number seventy-one (the smallest restoration which is possible) or seventy-nine (the largest possible) would almost perfectly fit the requirements of the case. Eighty-six Menandrian titles are now known, and it is not likely that many of his plays were lost in Alexandrian times.
We may, therefore, summarize the preceding discussion as follows: If we follow Dindorf in reading ιέ for λέ in the hypothesis to Aristophanes’ Birds, the numerals are capable of a uniform interpretation; they were a library device and were assigned to the plays represented in some collection, most probably that at Alexandria, according to the dates of their premières. It is needless to state that in establishing the chronological sequence of the plays in their possession the library authorities would depend upon Aristotle’s Didascaliae or other handbooks derived therefrom.