Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/255

 GREEK PLAYS IN GENERAL. 233 impossible that the entrances of the chorus and the actors shouhl not have had the same reference to the quarters from which they were supposed to enter, this apparent inconsistency must be ex- plained by the fact that the scene and the Oiarpov, properly so called, were regarded as distinct buildings, the orchestra belonging to the latter ; and while the entrances on the stage were designated according to the right and left hands of the actors, the entrances of the chorus, which faced the stage, were denoted according to the right and left hands of the spectators. Consequently, the spec- tators looked to their right when they expected a new entrance, whether of actor or chorus, from the neighbourhood of the scene of action, but to their left when they expected to see an arrival from a distance. Thus in the Agamemnon, the chorus enters by the right parodos; the herald, and the king with Cassandra come from the left of the audience; and ^Egisthus, on the other hand, from the right side-door. It seems clear, from the original meaning of the word g-ktjvt], i. e. covered building, that the scene had a roof of some kind. There are but few traces of this in the existing monuments. But as far as the evidence is available it may be concluded that the roof was flat, and that it had a coping with battlements. The stage {Xoyelov, 6Kpi^a<^, LKpca, pidjntwm) was a long narrow platform extending to the whole length of the scene, and elevated to a height of ten or twelve feet above the orchestral Its breadth, according to Vitruvius, was one seventh of the diameter of the orchestra, but its length was nearly double the orchestral diameter. It was therefore a mere ledge at the foot of the scene, and was ap- propriately called the podium, according to the original application of that term. As we have already mentioned 2, the stage was a representative of the wooden table from which the exarchon spoke to his chorus, and to the end it seems to have a movable wooden from RLamnus, Marathon, &c., had made their way to the seats, led to the home- district. In order to reconcile this view with the text of Pollux, Kolster understands aypodev as meaning peregre, though he owns that he cannot produce an}' example of such a meaning. He supports his view by the statement that the ^evwv was on the right and the prison on the left of the centre door; for he argues that the prisoner was originally also the slave, who was connected with the labours of the field, and must therefore have his ergastvJum on the home-side, on which also, as Kolster thinks, the Ki(TLov, or stall for the cattle, was placed. It does not appear to us that this interpre- tation is in accordance with the principles of sound criticism. ^ In the Roman theatre the stage was at most five feet higher than the level of the orchestra. 2 Above, p. 60.