Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/319

 TRAGEDIES AND COMEDIES IN PARTICULAR. 293 at the beginning of the play the road to Pharsalus, for Peleiis is supposed to dwell there (v. 22) ; it must have represented a different direction, the road to Laceda^mon, in 746, 879, 1000, for Menelaus departs for Sparta, Orestes is on his way from the south to the shrine of Dodona, and Hermione departs in the same direction; and in 1069 the messenger comes from Delphi, so that there must have been an exliibition of all three faces of the periactos. In the Siq)- pllces the left jyeriactos indicates the road to Thebes from which the herald comes and to which he returns (v. 584); thither Theseus goes (v. 597 cf. 637) ; from thence come the messenger (v. 639), and the seven corpses ; also Theseus on his return (cf. 838). This penactos, however, is tm-ned to indicate the road to Argos by which Iphis comes in search of Evadne (v. 1034). In the Electra, the left-hand ])eriactos at first represents the road to Delphi by which Orestes and Pylades make their appearance; but as Electra's hus- band makes his exit by the same side in order to go to Lacedtemon, there must be a change of the side-scene for that purpose. As a sample of the manner in which Euripides put his Trage- dies on the stage, it will be sufficient to examine the Bacchce^ which is not only the most Dionysiac, but also one of the latest and most elaborate of his plays. Euripides, however, has left us, in addition to his Tragedies, a regular Satyric drama, and two tragi-comedies, which served the same purpose in a Tetralogy; and we must con- sider also the mode of representation in these two cases. The scene in the Bacclim represents the palace of Pentheus (vv. 60, 646) in the citadel at Thebes (653). Although there may have been some indications of towers and other fortifications as this last passage shows (cf. v. 172 : eirvp^/wa aarv Srj^alcov roSe), it is clear that the center of the scene representing the palace itself exhibited a Doric fa9ade with columns (591) and a frieze (1214). On the right of the palace, i. e. on the side leading to the city, there may have been a distant view of the oracular seat of Teiresias (347: ekOwv Be 6aKou^ tovK Xv olcovocTKoirei), and on the other side was seen the sacred memorial of Semele, namely, the spot where the smouldering ruins of her house stood, which Cadmus had sur- rounded with a fence and made sacred, and which Bacchus had enveloped in clusters of the mantling vine : V. 6 : opcD 5^ /J-rjTpbs fj.vr]fj.a ttjs Kepavvias T6b' iyyvi oikuv kp.I dofioju ipeiina