innovation of Pratinas at once relieved tragedy of this problem, and gave the Satyrs a free stage for themselves; where, by treating the same class of subjects on which the tragedies were founded, in a totally different spirit, the poet not only preserved a popular feature of his art (the old chorus), but also presented stories that audiences found, for lack of a better word, fun. It has been suggested by some writers that Pratinas cultivated the satyric drama out of fear of being eclipsed by Aeschylus in tragedy. Others disagree and observe that the early life of Pratinas would very probably imbue him with a taste for that kind of the drama; for his native city, Phlius, was the neighbor of Sicyon, the home of those "tragic choruses", on the strength of which the Dorians claimed to be the inventors of tragedy. It was adjacent also to Corinth, where the cyclic choruses of Satyrs, which were ascribed to Arion, had been long established. Reputation This innovation of Pratinas was adopted by his contemporaries; but Pratinas is distinguished by the large proportion of his satyric dramas. He composed, according to the Suda, fifty plays, of which thirty-two were Satyr plays. Böckh, however, from an alternate reading of the Suda, assigns to Pratinas only twelve satyric dramas, thus leaving a sufficient number of tragedies to make three for every satyric drama, that is, twelve tetralogies and two single plays. In merit, the satyric dramas of Pratinas were considered the best ever written by his contemporaries, except only those of Aeschylus. Pratinas ranked high among the lyric, as well as the dramatic poets of his age. He also wrote dithyrambs and the choral odes called hyporchemata, and a considerable fragment of one of these is preserved in Athenaeus. Hyporcheme was closely related to the satyric drama by the humorous character which it often assumed, and dithyrambs by its ancient choruses of Satyrs. Pratinas may perhaps be considered to have shared with his contemporary Lasus of Hermione the honor of founding the Athenian school of dithyrambic poetry. Some interesting fragments of his hyporchemes are preserved, especially a considerable passage in Athenaeus which gives an important indication of the contest for supremacy which was then going on both between poetry and music, and between the different kinds of music. The poet complains that the voices of the singers were overpowered by the noise of