Theozotides' proposal to exclude adopted sons from the ceremony honoring war orphans at the City Dionysia is not grounded in ideology but is much more likely to be motivated by real or potential abuse of the city's benefits through unique features of Greek adoptions.
It is unfortunate that for the fifth century, the most fertile period of Greek drama, we have scarcely any reliable information about actors and acting conditions. According to traditional accounts, it was in this period that poets ceased to act in their own plays. The men who replaced them, though little more than a handful of names to us, represent the first step towards the great guilds of the Artists of Dionysius in the Hellenistic period. I propose here to use two pieces of attic relief sculpture, both from the end of the fifth century, as a window into the social history of the theatre in this formative era. Only one of these pieces has received full publication and discussion. I shall therefore deal in some detail with questions of style, date, and iconography to provide the basis for further observation on the changing role of theatre and the people of the theatre in fifth-century Athens.
The two passages in Acharnians where Dicaeopolis suddenly seems to become Aristophanes himself (at lines 37ff and 497ff) he evoked considerable interest recently. In both places Dicaeopolis refers to "his" troubles with Cleon in a way that makes it clear that he is speaking not as a character but as the poet.