Note 113 — INTRODUCTION

Some would interpret this passage as meaning that Cratinus was the first to observe the aesthetic law that not more than three persons should participate in the same conversation (cf. Rees, The So-called Rule of Three Actors in the Classical Greek Drama, p. 9, n. 1). When the only speakers were the individual choreutae, who were twenty-four in number, such a restriction must have been unheard of. On the other hand, if it should prove true that Megarian actors were brought in before the time of Cratinus, then we must suppose that their number was at first in excess of three and was reduced to three by him. Of course, the use of but three actors in the tragedy and comedy of this period would automatically result in not more than three persons participating in a conversation and so in the observance of the aesthetic law. This statement, however, is subject to the qualification that the chorus leaders continued to have speaking parts both in comedy (see p. 44, above), and in tragedy (cf. pp. 164 f. and 169, below), and that a fourth actor was occasionally employed (cf. pp. 171 and 182, below). In any case I am of the opinion that conscious formulation of the aesthetic law was not made until Hellenistic times (see pp. 187 f., below).