Aeschylus’ earlier play, the Suppliants, resembles the Persians in having no prologue, and so at vs. 12 of the parodus the choreutae disclose their identity by declaring that Danaus is their father. Moreover, since Danaus enters the orchestra simultaneously with the chorus, this statement serves to introduce him also, though he has no chance to speak until vs. 176. When he does speak, however, he makes assurance doubly sure by addressing the chorus as his “children.” Still again, in the fourth-century Rhesus, which also has no prologue, the chorus marches in and summons Hector by name from his quarters (vs. 10).
Thus from the fact that the early plays had no prologues, there grew up the practice of having the chorus (or coryphaeus) introduce not merely the first actor but every new character, as he appeared. For example, when the king of Argos makes his entrance in the Suppliants he engages in conversation with the Danaids, ignoring their father, and in reply to their question declares his name and station (vss. 247 ff.). Originally this technique was doubtless due in part also to the exigencies of the one-actor period (see [p. 165], above), and it continued to be the regular practice, even after prologues were en règle, in all the plays of Aeschylus and in the earlier ones of Sophocles and Euripides. In comedy this method of procedure was less common, partly because this was no longer the usual convention in contemporaneous tragedy and partly because comedy closely approximates the manners of everyday life, which do not indorse this kind of introduction. When employed in comedy it was often intended to give a tone of tragic parody. For instance, in Aristophanes’ Acharnians, vss. 1069 f., the approach of a messenger is announced by the chorus as follows: “Lo, here speeds one ‘with bristled crest’ as though to proclaim some message dire,” the tragic tone of which in the original is unmistakable.[302]
Phrynichus’ Phoenician Women was the first play which we know to have had a prologue (476 B.C.). Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes has the earliest extant prologue (467 B.C.). Of course, this change in the economy of the play involved a change also in dramatic technique. Now the entrance of actors preceded that of the chorus. If one actor came alone he had to introduce himself, as Eteocles does in the Seven: “If we succeed, the credit belongs to heaven; but if we fail, Eteocles alone will loudly be assailed throughout the town.” If two actors enter together at the beginning of the play they may by alternately addressing each other by name make their identity clear to the audience, as Cratus and Hephaestus do in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. Moreover, before his exit Cratus calls Prometheus, whom he has helped to nail to the rocky background, by name (vs. 85). We have seen that when the chorus opened a play they introduced the actors who followed them. It would be natural that when the relative position of actors and chorus was interchanged the technique of introduction should also be reversed; in other words, that one of the actors in the prologue should now introduce the on-coming chorus as the latter had previously introduced the actors. This actually occurs in this play: when the choreutae appear, the bound Prometheus addresses them as “children of Tethys and Oceanus,” vss. 136-40. The same artifice recurs in Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers, vss. 10-16 (see below). But it is self-evident that this manner of introducing the chorus would seldom be satisfactory. In truth, as the chorus gradually but unmistakably lost its importance, its individuality faded away, and the need of formally introducing or identifying it almost disappeared.
The chorus soon lost the exclusive privilege of introducing actors by addressing them. We have seen that Cratus and Hephaestus exercise this function for one another, and the former does the same for Prometheus. But the poets continued much longer to use the chorus in announcing the approach of a new character. Dr. Graeber (op. cit., p. 26) claims that Euripides was the first to employ an actor for this purpose. In his Alcestis (vss. 24 ff.), Apollo says:
Lo, yonder Death;—I see him nigh at hand,
Priest of the dead, who comes to hale her down
To Hades’ halls, etc.
[Way’s translation]
But just twenty years before, in Aeschylus’ Libation-Bearers (vss. 10-17), Orestes announced the approach of the chorus and Electra as follows: