Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/259

 GREEK PLAYS IN GENERAL. 237 Pollux uses viro with the accusative to signify "behind" rather than "under" so that viro o^/elov Kei^ievov means "lying behind the stage." And for the same reason we must understand a cham- ber in the lower story of the scene, where we read that Asopodorus heard the applause given to one of the flute-players, being himself in the viroaK-qvLov'^, or that Phocion used to walk behind the scene when the audience was assembling^. As a general rule the action in a Greek drama was supposed to take place in the open air. In the earliest and rudest exhibitions the hero came forth from a wooden tent or hut {aKrjvrj) to the stage before it, which was originally and properly termed " the space before the tent" {TrpoaKrjvtov), and there naiTated his adventures or conversed with the chorus. This condition was imposed on the dramatist in the most perfect state of his art, and all the dialogue, in the regular development of an ancient play, is supposed to be carried on in some place more or less public. It might however be necessary to display to the eyes of the spectators some action which belonged to the interior or had just taken place behind the scene. For example, in the Agamemnon of ^Eschylus, the chorus on hearing the death-cry of the king proposes to rush in at once, and bring the matter to the proof while the sword is still wet (v. 1318). And immediately afterwards we see Clyt£emnestra standing where she had slain her husband (v. 1346). This change of scene to the interior was not effected, as it is with us, and as other changes of scene were effected by the Greeks, namely, by substituting a fresh pictorial background, but by pushing forward the chamber itself to the stage. Had they merely removed the curtain and shown a recess, such as seems to have been constructed in the smaller Roman theatres'*, the interior would have appeared dark in comparison with the day-light of the stage, and the spectators in the gi*eat theatres, especially those seated at the side, could not have seen what was going on. To obviate this difficulty ^ IV. § I ■28: SeiKwcn to, viro Trjif (Tktjvtju iv tols oUiais diroppTjTa irpaxdeura. Cf. Scbol. vEsch. Eumen. 47 : ra viro ttjv aK-qv-qv, "what is going on behind the scene." ^ Athen. Xiv. p. 531 F: hi.aTpi^b}v avrbs h ri2 VTroaKrjviip. ^ Plutarch, V. Phoc. v. : rbv ^uKlbipd (pacrt. TrXripovp-evov rod dedrpov wepLTraTeLv viro cTKrjurjv. given in the subjoined illustration (Fig. 4).
 * This recess is clearly indicated in the remains of the theatre at Pompeii, as