Note 55 — Chapter I · DRAMATIC CONTESTS AT ATHENS

That the word τετραλογία was applied only to a group of four plays connected in subject is proved by the statement of Suidas (s.v. Σοφοκλῆς) that Sophocles abandoned the practice of exhibiting ‘tetralogies’, though we know that he exhibited four plays at a time; and also by the application of the word by Greek writers to the Oresteia of Aeschylus (Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 1155), the Pandionis of Philocles (Schol. Aristoph. Av. 282), the Lycurgeia of Aeschylus (Schol. Aristoph. Thesm. 135), and the Lycurgeia of Polyphradmon (Arg. Aesch. Sept. c. Theb.). All these were groups of plays on a single subject.