to have been brought to completion under the able administration of Lycurgus, who was finance minister of Athens between the years 338 and 326 B.C.13 For this reason the fourth-century theater is frequently referred to as the theater of Lycurgus or as the Lycurgean theater. 14 A plan of this building together with the precinct of Dionysus is shown in figure 6. Be it noted however that the large colonnade which adjoins the scene-building is not a part of the theater itself but belongs rather to the precinct.

FIG. 7. DORIC FAÇADE OF ONE OF THE Paraskenia OF THE LYCURGEAN THEATER AT ATHENS (after FiechtER).

The orchestra-area was composed of two parts: its northern half was a semicircle; its southern half, a rectangle. The portion inclosed by the auditorium was surrounded by an open gutter which was bridged by stone slabs placed opposite the aisles. The surface of the orchestra was of earth, and its diameter, as determined by the inner circumference of the gutter, was 19.61

18 See Pseudo-Plutarch, X Oratorum Vitae, 841 D and 852 C; also Hyperides, Orat. deperd. 118 (Kenyon); Pausanias I, 29, 16; and CIA II, 240.

14 Puchstein (op. cit., pp. 131 ff.) sought to prove that the erection of the permanent marble proskenion and the introduction of other changes in the scene-building, which Dörpfeld assigned to the Hellenistic period, were effected during the administration of Lycurgus. But this hypothesis has met with little favor; see Fiechter, op. cit., pp. 12, 13. Versakis ("Das Skenengebäude des Dionysos-Theaters," Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, XXIV (1909), pp. 194 ff.) tried, though in vain, to connect the figures of the Neronian (and Phaedrian) frieze with this period (pp. 214 ff.).

meters or sixty-four feet, four inches. This is equal to sixty Aeginetan-Attic feet of 12.87 inches (.327 m.) each, a fact that is believed by Dörpfeld to be "significant as showing that the orchestra was the starting point in the measurements and not incidentally derived from some other part of the theater." 15 As we shall see later (p. 31) the orchestra-area of the fifth-century theater had the same diameter. Whether the circle of the orchestra was ever made complete and indicated by means of a curbing, as in the theater at Epidaurus (Fig. 1), is not known. The parodi at their narrowest points were about eight and a half feet (2.60 m.) in width.16

17

The vast auditorium with its massive retaining walls, its row of handsome marble thrones and its tier upon tier of seats need not be described in detail. As the plan shows, it was quite irregular in shape, and extended upward to the scarp of the Acropolis. It provided accommodation for at least fourteen thousand persons. In ancient times a roadway which skirted the Acropolis close under its cliff had crossed the site of the theater. The earliest auditorium probably did not extend beyond this line (p. 23), but sooner or later the road came to be incorporated in the theater as a diazoma (passageway). In the Lycurgean auditorium the level of this diazoma was about twenty-six feet above that of the original road (Fig. 17) and the sweep of its curve was consequently made greater that it might conform the more exactly to the contour of the tiers of seats. We may note further that the curve of the rows of seats in the lower portion of the auditorium was not the same as that of the orchestra. The spaces on either side between the gutter and the row of thrones grew gradually

15 The quotation is from Flickinger (op. cit., p. 69), but is a paraphrase of Dörpfeld's statement (Das griechische Theater, p. 59).

16 It may be mentioned in passing that the scale of measurement given by Dörpfeld (op. cit., Taf. 2), is incorrect. It should be the same as that for Tafel 1; compare Tafeln 3 and 4.

17 If only sixteen inches were allowed for each person the seating capacity would have been about seventeen thousand (Dörpfeld, op. cit., p. 44).

wider as one approached the parodi. This was no doubt a convenient arrangement as facilitating the entrance and exit of the spectators; an explanation of its origin will be proposed in connection with the discussion of the earlier theater (p. 35).

But the problems that concern the orchestra and the auditorium are simple indeed in comparison with those which confront us when we undertake to restore the scene-building. Many factors essential to its reconstruction have been lost beyond recovery. Extensive portions of the foundation walls and a few scattered bits of the superstructure alone have been preserved; the remainder can be restored only by conjecture. It was a large

FIG. 8. GROUND PLAN OF THE FIFTH-CENTURY Škene OF THE THEATER AT

ATHENS AS CONJECTURALLY RESTORED BY FIECHTER.

rectangular structure one hundred fifty-two feet in length and twenty-one feet deep at the center. At the ends of this shallower portion two wings, each about sixteen and one-half feet in depth and twenty-three feet wide, and known as paraskenia, projected toward the auditorium. The front of each of the paraskenia was adorned with six small Doric columns and a simple Doric frieze (Fig. 7), from the fragments of which Dörpfeld was able to calculate with approximate accuracy the height of these projecting wings and therefore the height of the first story of the entire scene-building. This was about thirteen feet.

The reconstruction, however, of these paraskenia is involved in difficulties. The massiveness of the foundations is puzzling, and would seem to have been intended for a more substantial superstructure than a colonnade. Possibly, as Fiechter sug

gests, 18 this had been at first a solid wall (Fig. 8). The nature of the sides also is in doubt. From the appearance of a cornerpiece of the architrave Dörpfeld concluded 19 that the sides as well as the front were adorned with columns (Fig. 9). But Fiechter 20 denies the validity of this conclusion and restores the sides rather as walls terminating in antae (Fig. 10). Dörpfeld further conjectured that a colonnade extended also along the front of the skene between the columnated paraskenia (Fig. 9), but this proposal also has been repeatedly and vigorously attacked, and no longer has the support even of Dörpfeld himself." What

FIG. 9. GROUND PLAN OF THE FOURTH-CENTURY Skene OF THE THEATER AT ATHENS AS RESTORED BY DÖRPFELD.

then was the appearance of this central portion of the skene? No one can say with certainty. The foundations furnish no clue. Instead of the three doors conjecturally restored by Dörpfeld (Fig. 9) on the analogy of the scene-building at Eretria, there may have been actually but one door; while Fiechter has recently proposed an entirely different arrangement.22 The front of the upper story of the Hellenistic theater at Oropus consisted of five large openings with four intervening piers (Fig. 11). The Hellenistic reconstruction of the theater at Ephesus had seven such 18 Op. cit., p. 10.

19 Das griechische Theater, p. 65 and fig. 21.

20 Op. cit., pp. 100, 101. Compare also Puchstein, op. cit., pp. 100 ff., 131 ff. 21 Jahrb. d. arch. Inst., Anzieger, XXVIII (1913), 38.

22 Op. cit., pp. 34 ff., 66 ff.

openings, and traces of a similar construction are said to have been found also at Priene. From these facts Fiechter makes the precarious deduction that the façade of the scene-building in the fourth century consisted in its central portion of a series of open spaces and massive piers. In conformity with this theory he explains the Hellenistic proskenion as an extraneous addition imported from southern Italy. A glance at his restoration of the Lycurgean skene (Fig. 12), however, is sufficient to insure its

FIG. 10.

- GROUND PLAN OF THE FOURTH-CENTURY Skene OF THE THEATER AT ATHENS AS RESTORED BY FIECHter.

rejection, while the hypothesis by which he eliminates the embarrassing proskenion is merely an adroit subterfuge (see further p. 109).

The space inclosed by the façade of the scene-building and the two paraskenia, it is generally assumed, was occupied during the dramatic performances by a temporary erection of wood. According to certain scholars this was a stage (cf. Fig. 12); in the judgment of others, a variable background. Both views are based solely on conjecture; not a trace of either of the assumed constructions remains to dispel uncertainty. But the advocates of the second theory have the stronger case. The assumption of a stage in the fourth century, as also in the fifth, is supported only by a series of unconvincing hypotheses and will not, I believe, be able much longer to weather the storm of criticism which it has provoked.23 The alternative theory, like the first, appears

23 For an admirable presentation of the arguments on which this conclusion is based, together with a brief bibliography of the controversy, see Flickinger, op. cit., pp. 78-103 and also pp. 59, 60. As will be seen below, however (p. 36),