Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/239

 GREEK PLAYS IN GENERAL. 221 the proscenium and oreliestra which were presented to the eyes of a Greek audience. With regard, however, to the minor arrangements of the stage, such as the painted scenes and the other machinery of exhibition, we are left in a great measure to an intei-pretation of the ancient descriptions ; for the more fragile materials of which these parts of the theatre were constructed have yielded to the stress of time, and so left us without any tangible evidence to support the scattered statements of ancient writers. It will be desirable, there- fore, before we proceed to give a general description of a Greek theatre, based on an examination of all the authorities, and in- cluding all the particulars for which we have any evidence, either monumental or literary, to present to the student the actual form of the best preserved of the ancient theatres, and to make this ocular demonstration the basis and starting-point of the more theo- retical reconstructions. The theatre at Aspendus belongs iTnquestionably to the times of the Eoman domination in Asia Minor. An inscription over the eastern door informs us that two brothers, A. Curtius Crispinus Arruntianus and A. Curtius Auspicatus Titinnianus, in accordance with their father's will, had contributed to the repairs or adornment of the theatre in honour of their ancestral gods and the imperial house ^ ; and it has been conjectured ^ from an inscription at Prse- neste, which one of the two brothers had set up to P. ^lius Pius Cm'tianus, that these persons lived in the time of M. Antoninus. Be that as it may, other inscriptions, placed on a pedestal in the interior, and over the door leading to the seats, inform us that the architect was a Greek, Zeno the son of Theodorus^. And we may infer that the theatre at Aspendus, though it belongs in its present state to the time of the Eoman Caesars, was probably built on the foundations, and perhaps to a certain extent according to the model of a previously existing Greek theatre. In its general features it corresponds to the restorations which have been made, with the aid 1 Bockh, C. I. III. p. 1 163: Dis patriis et domui Augustorum ex testamento A. Curtii Crispini A. Curtius Crispinus Arrun- tianus et A. Curtius Auspicatus Titinnianus fecei-unt. Geois TrarpioLS Kal 56/x.a; 'Le^a(xrQ>v €K diaOrjKTji A. Kovpriov KpeKnreivov A. Ko6pTio^ KpeLaireiPOS ^KppovV' TLavbs Kal A. Kovprios AvaTriKdros TiTLvviavbs eirolrjaav. 2 Henzen, Annali deW Institnto cli Corr. Arch. 1852, p. 165. ' Bockh, III. pp. 171, 1 161.