If the cost of the production of each drama were reckoned, the Athenian people would appear to have spent more on the production of Bacchaes and Phoenician Women and Oedipuses and the misfortunes of Medeas and Electras than they did on maintaining their empire and fighting for their liberty against the Persians.

• Provide a place to train chorus.

• House and feed chorus and actors.

• Pay for costumes and props.

• Pay for extra actors (mutes).

• Choose poet and aulos player from the archon’s list.

• Select chorus members.

• Hire a chorus director (didâskalos, literally ‘a teacher’), if poet didn’t do this himself.

• Pay for dedication to Dionysus, if he won.

On the street leading to the entrance into the sanctuary of Dionysus in Athens, victorious choregoi set up bronze tripods to commemorate their victories in dramatic and other choral performances.  The tripods were sometimes supported by small buildings.  Below we see the best preserved choregic monument dedicated by a certain Lysicrates in 335/4 BC.  Some winning choregoi made less expensive dedications like masks and costumes, or tablets on which a dramatic scene had been painted.
 

The choregos might also take it upon himself to distribute wine and food to the audience, no doubt to win their good will.  Aristotle mentions that he noticed a significant increase in eating when the acting was bad (Nicomachean Ethics 1175b).  The Athenian audience seems to have been anything but polite, expressing loud approval or disapproval of the performances.  The disapproval could involve shouting, hissing, clucking, and heel banging.   Sometimes they even threw food.  Because of the unruliness of the audience, theater police were present, called “rod holders” (rhabdouchoi)
 

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