nd Agathon had sojourned there--though the practice of
producing plays at the Dionysia before the allies of Athens must have
led to their holding similar exhibitions at home--yet before the death
of Alexander we meet with no instance of a tragic poet writing or of a
tragedy written outside Athens. An exception should indeed be made in
favour of the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, who (like Critias in his
earlier days at Athens) was "addicted to" tragic composition. Not all
the tragedians of this period, however, were Athenians born; though the
names of Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, Iophon, the son of Sophocles,
and Euripides and Sophocles, the nephew and the grandson respectively of
their great namesakes, illustrate the descent of the tragic art as an
hereditary family possession. Chaeremon (fl. 380) already exhibits
tragedy on the road to certain decay, for we learn that his plays were
written for reading.

The Alexandrians.

Soon after the death of Alexander theatres are found spread over the
whole Hellenic world of Europe and Asia--a result to which the practice
of the conqueror and his father of celebrating their victories by scenic
performances had doubtless contributed. Alexandria having now become a
literary centre with which even Athens was in some respects unable to
compete, while the latter still remained the home of comedy, the tragic
poets flocked to the capital of the Ptolemies; and here, in the canon of
Greek poets drawn up by command of Ptolemy Philadelphus (283-247),
Alexander the Aetolian undertook the list of tragedies, while Lycophron
was charged with the comedies. But Lycophron himself was included in all
the versions of the list of the seven tragic poets famed as the "Pleias"
who still wrote in the style of the Attic masters and followed the rules
observed by them. Tragedy and the dramatic art continued to be favoured
by the later Ptolemies; and about 100 B.C. we meet with the curious
phenomenon of a Jewish poet, Ezechiel, composing Greek tragedies, of one
of which (the _Exodus_ from Egypt) fragments have come down to us.
Tragedy, with the satyr-drama and comedy, survived in Alexandria beyond
the days of Cicero and Varro; nor was their doom finally sealed till
the emperor Caracalla abolished theatrical performances in the Egyptian
capital in A.D. 217.

The tragedy of the great masters.

Thus Greek tragedy is virtually only another name for Attic; nor was any
departure from the lines lai