Of this class of the Grecian drama but one specimen remains, in the Cyclops of Euripides.

It is probable that the birth, no less than the genius of Aeschylus, enabled him with greater facility to make the imposing and costly additions to the exhibition, which the nature of the poetry demanded--since, while these improvements were rapidly proceeding, the poetical fame of Aeschylus was still uncrowned.

Nor was it till the fifteenth year after his first exhibition that the sublimest of the Greek poets obtained the ivy chaplet, which had succeeded to the goat and the ox, as the prize of the tragic contests.

In the course of a few years, a regular stage, appropriate scenery and costume, mechanical inventions and complicated stage machinery, gave fitting illusion to the representation of gods and men.

To the monologue of Phrynichus, Aeschylus added a second actor [14]; he curtailed the choruses, connected them with the main story, and, more important than all else, reduced to simple but systematic rules the progress and development of a poem, which no longer had for its utmost object to please the ear or divert the fancy, but swept on its mighty and irresistible march, to besiege passion after passion, and spread its empire over the whole soul.
An itinerant platform was succeeded by a regular theatre of wood--the theatre of wood by a splendid edifice, which is said to have held no less an audience than thirty thousand persons [15].