Note 61 — Chapter I · DRAMATIC CONTESTS AT ATHENS

Suidas s.v. Σοφοκλῆς· καὶ αὐτὸς ἦρξε τοῦ δρᾶμα πρὸς δρᾶμα ἀγωνίζεσθαι, ἀλλὰ μὴ τετραλογίαν. The words seem to imply that he exhibited only one play at each festival: but the didascalic records show that this cannot have been the case. Probably, therefore, Suidas has misunderstood and misquoted his authority, who meant to say that Sophocles exhibited not single plays but groups of plays unconnected in subject. The suggestion of Oehmichen (Philol. Wochenschr., 1887, p. 1058) that after the reform of Sophocles each poet exhibited one of his plays on each successive day of the competition, and that this is what Suidas means, is rendered most improbable by the fact that tetralogies were still occasionally written; and that Sophocles would have no power, as poet, to make such a change in the arrangement of the festival.