Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/243

 GREEK PLATS IN GENERAL. 223 prcecinctiones or divisions separated by a diazoma or lobby, and there are nineteen tiers of seats in each of these separate lialves of the theatre. The whole is crowned by a portico or gallery with fifty-eight arches. The great majority of the audience must have got to their places through the j)arod{ of the orchestra, from which there are steps leading to the rows of seats, or through the gallery at the upper end, which had doors behind it. It was, however, possible to reach the upper seats by a door at the north end of the seats leading to the diazoma. The scene-front is connected with the spectators' seats by walls on either side rising to the full height of the theatre, and there can be no doubt that this part of the building was covered in by a roof. There are three stories in the scene. In the first story there are five doors. A cubical basement of stone appears in each angle of the scene, and these are continued by the sides of the doors, so that there are twenty of them in all. Those in the corners have each of them an unfluted column reach- ing to the second story, and these columns are still found in the Greek theatre at Myra in Lycia. The other basements by the doors were probably the distances from the proscenium at which the movable scenery hung from the balconies above. Besides the five doors the first story has nine windows, of which the four larger stand between the doors, and the other five over the doors. These windows, like those in the upper story, are merely ornamental, as they do not go through the wall. In the second story, immediately over the cubical basements of the podium, there is a corresponding number of little balconies, each consisting of a slab resting on two supports projecting at right angles fr-om the wall. The faces of the latter are ornamented, like the frieze of a building, with the skulls of victims connected by garlands. On each of the balconies there is a low pedestal, and they are all connected by a naiTOw ledge, which may have served as the support of the planks laid across from one balcony to the other, when the exigencies of the performance required that the whole should be used as a continuous upper stage. It is to be remarked that Yitnivius, as we shall see, speaks of the pluteum in the singular; and there is no reason why these little bal- conies should not be regarded as really connected by the ledge to which reference has been made. There are no traces of balustrades. But the upper part of the scene served, no doubt, as a sufficient protection for the actors, when they had to appear on the second story. There are three little doors in tlie second story, leading to