s, and Menander transferred it to
comedy. As the dialogue increased in importance, so the dramatic
significance of the chorus diminished. While in Aeschylus it mostly, and
in Sophocles occasionally, takes part in the action, its songs could not
but more and more approach the character of lyrical _intermezzos_; and
this they openly assumed when Agathon began the practice of inserting
choral songs (_embolima_) which had nothing to do with the action of the
play. In the general contrivance of their actions it was only natural
that, as compared with Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides should exhibit
an advance in both freedom and ingenuity; but the palm, due to a
treatment at once piously adhering to the substance of the ancient
legends and original in an effective dramatic treatment of them, must be
given to Sophocles. Euripides was, moreover, less skilful in untying
complicated actions than in weaving them; hence his frequent resort[67]
to the expedient of the _deus ex machina_, which Sophocles employs only
in his latest play.[68]

Characters.

Diction.

The other distinctions to be drawn between the dramatic qualities of the
three great tragic masters must be mainly based upon a critical estimate
of the individual genius of each. In the characters of their tragedies,
Aeschylus and Sophocles avoided those lapses of dignity with which from
one point of view Euripides has been charged by Aristophanes and other
critics, but which, from another, connect themselves with his humanity.
If his men and women are less heroic and statuesque, they are more like
men and women. Aristotle objected to the later tragedians that, compared
with the great masters, they were deficient in the drawing of
character--by which he meant the lofty drawing of lofty character. In
diction, the transition is even more manifest from the "helmeted
phrases" of Aeschylus, who had Milton's love of long words and sonorous
proper names, to the play of Euripides' "smooth and diligent tongue";
but to a sustained style even he remained essentially true, and it was
reserved for his successors to introduce into tragedy the "low
speech"--i.e. the conversational language--of comedy. Upon the whole,
however, the Euripidean diction seems to have remained the standard of
later tragedy, the flowery style of speech introduced by Agathon finding
no permanent favour.

Improvements in costume, &c.

Finally, Aeschylus is said to have made certain reforms in tra