Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/321

299 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 299 account of the place of representation and the scenic arrangements as properly belongs to a history of literature. The ancient theatres were stone buildings of enormous size, calculated to accommodate the whole free and adult population of a Greek city at the spectacles and festal games; for example, the 16,000 Athenian citizens, with the educated women and many foreigners. These theatres were not designed ex- clusively for dramatic poetry ; choral dances, festal processions, and revels, all sorts of representations of public life and popular assemblies, were held in them. Hence we find theatres in every part of Greece, though dramatic poetry was the peculiar growth of Athens. Much, however, in theatrical architecture, such as it became in Athens, where the forms were determined by fixed rules, can only be explained by the adaptation of those forms to dramatic exhibitions. The Athenians began to build their stone theatre in the temple of Dionysus on the south side of the citadel,* in Olymp. TO. 1. B.C. 500 ; the wooden scaffolding, from which the people had heretofore witnessed the games, having fallen down in that year. It must very soon have been so far completed as to render it possible for the master-pieces of the three great tragedians to be represented in it; though perhaps the architectural decorations of all the parts were finished later. As early as the Peloponnesian war, singularly beautiful theatres were built in Peloponnesus and Sicily. § 4. The whole structure of the theatre, as well as the drama itself, may be traced to the chorus, whose station was the original centre of the whole performance. Around this all the rest was grouped. The orchestra (which occupied a circular level space in the centre, and, at the same time, at the bottom of the whole building) grew out of the chorus, or dancing place, of the Homeric times ;f a level smooth space, large and wide enough for the unrestrained movements of a numerous band of dancers. The altar of Dionysus, around which the dithyrambic chorus danced in a circle, had given rise to a sort of raised platform in the centre of the orchestra, the Thymele, which served as resting place for the chorus when it took up a stationary positron. It was used in various ways, according to purposes required by the particular tra- gedy ; whether as a funereal monument, a terrace with altars, &c.{ t Above, ch. III. § C. I It is sufficient here briefly to remark, that the form of the ancient Attic theatre should not be confounded with that usual in the Macedonian period, in Alexandria, Antiochia. and similar cities. In the latter, the original orchestra was divided into halves, and the half which was nearest the stage, was, by means of a platform of boards, converted into a spacious inferior stage, upon which the mimes or planipe- dariij as well as musicians and dancers, played ; while the stage, strictly so called, continued to be appropriated to the tragic and comic actors. This division of the orchestra was then called Ihymele, or even orchestra, in the limited sense of the word.
 * To h Aiovvirov (iccrpav or to Aiovjitou (iourfov.