Note 509 — Chapter LXVII · THE DRAMA. — RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS. — THE SOPHISTS.

The careful examination of Welcker (Griech. Tragödie. vol. i, p. 76) makes out the titles of eighty tragedies unquestionably belonging to Sophoklês, over and above the satyrical dramas in his tetralogies. Welcker has considerably cut down the number admitted by previous authors, carried by Fabricius as high as one hundred and seventy-eight, and even, by Boeckh, as high as one hundred and nine (Welcker, ut sup. p. 62).

The number of dramas ascribed to Euripidês is sometimes ninety-two, sometimes seventy-five. Elmsley, in his remarks on the Argument to the Medea, p. 72, thinks that even the larger of these numbers is smaller than what Euripidês probably composed; since the poet continued composing for fifty years, from 455 to 405 B.C., and was likely during each year to have composed one, if not two, tetralogies; if he could prevail upon the archon to grant him a chorus, that is, the opportunity of representing. The didaskalies took no account of any except such as gained the first, second, or third prize. Welcker gives the titles, and an approximative guess at the contents, of fifty-one lost tragedies of the poet, besides the seventeen remaining (p. 443).

Aristarchus the tragedian is affirmed by Suidas to have composed seventy tragedies, of which only two gained the prize. As many as a hundred and twenty compositions are ascribed to Neophron, forty-four to Achæus, forty to Ion (Welcker, ib. p. 889).