appears for disputing this testimony, but we know nothing more concerning the matter, not even the location of the market place itself. We are told, however, by the late lexicographer Suidas that about the year 499 B.C., on the occasion of a contest between the poets Aeschylus, Pratinas, and Choerilus, the wooden seats (ixpia) upon which the audience was sitting collapsed and that as a result of this accident "a theater was constructed."9 The precise meaning of this statement cannot be recovered. Very likely Suidas himself could not with certainty have elucidated it. But the inference is perhaps justifiable that until this mishap occurred the Athenians had been content to hold their choral and dramatic festivals in the market place, but that now they decided to construct an auditorium in a more favorable location. If this conjecture, which is adopted by a number of scholars, be sound, the theater in the precinct of Dionysus Eleuthereus dates from about the year 500 B.C. It may be, however, as others believe, that this site had been selected as early as the days of Pisistratus and Thespis (about 534 B.C.) and that the collapse of the bleachers mentioned by Suidas occurred here rather than in the market place. Be this as it may the correct interpretation will perhaps never be known- the theater of Dionysus Eleuthereus became in course of time the only theater at Athens. It was here that Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, not to mention the host of other tragic and comic poets of the fifth century, presented most, if not all, of their plays. And it continued in use for dramatic and other performances and spectacles and for various public functions for at least a thousand years. Moreover this theater on the southeastern slope of the Acropolis was the first Greek theater to be developed and became the pattern after and Hesychius, s.v. èπl Anvaly dywv. This old orchestra may have been the same as the orchestra in the Lenaeum. See the preceding note and Judeich, op. cit., pp. 303, 304. Suidas, s. v., IIparivas. which, though with infinite variety of detail, all subsequent Greek and Roman theaters were modeled. Thus the fifth-century theater at Athens occupies a position of striking importance in the history of architecture; but more than this, because of its dramatic and other religious and secular associations, its appeal to the imagination far surpasses that of any other structure of its kind. The reconstruction of this ancient building is therefore a most fascinating problem. But it is a dark problem. Some of the factors necessary for its solution are entirely lacking; others again are shrouded in the obscurity of conflicting testimony and fragmentary evidence. In comparison the difficulties that pertain to the Elizabethan theater, perplexing as these are, are simple and easily solved. There are here no contemporaneous pictures corresponding to the rude sketch of the Swan or to the frontispiece of Messalina. Stage directions too, which are so useful to the Shakespearean scholar, are few and inconclusive; while even the evidence afforded by the theaters and plays of the succeeding period is incomplete and uncertain. The portion of the problem that still presents the greatest difficulty centers about the skene or scene-building, which was constructed of wood and of other perishable materials, and of which therefore no fragment or trace remains. The points at issue concern not only its size, shape, appearance, and the like, but even its location, and have been the occasion of a protracted controversy. A complete solution of the difficulties involved is no doubt impossible of attainment. But a study of the ruins of the fourth-century skene and of the few surviving fragments of the fifth-century theater, supplemented by evidence derived from other kindred structures and from an examination of the dramatic literature of the fifth century, makes the recovery of some of the essential factors reasonably possible. This is the problem and these the questions with which this treatise is chiefly concerned. As a convenient point of departure C |