The first and most considerable was more particularly called the orchestra, from a Greek word[210] that signifies to dance. It was appropriated to the pantomimes and dancers, and to all such subaltern actors as played between the acts, and at the end of the representations.

The second was named θυλέλη, from its being square, in the form of an altar. Here the chorus was generally placed.

And in the third the Greeks disposed their band of music. They called it ὑποσκήνιον, from its being situate at the bottom of the principal part of the theatre, to which they gave the general name of the scene.

I shall describe here this third part of the theatre, called the scene; which was also subdivided into three different parts.

The first and most considerable was properly called the scene, and gave its name to this whole division. It occupied the whole front of the building from side to side, and was the place allotted for the decorations. This front had two small wings at its extremity, from which hung a large curtain, that was let down to open the scene, and drawn up between the acts, when any thing in the representation made it necessary.

The second, called by the Greeks indifferently προσκήνιον, and λοτεῖον and by the Romans proscenium, and pulpitum, was a large open space in front of the scene, in which the actors performed their parts, and which, by the help of the decorations, represented either a public square or forum, a common street, or the country; but the place so represented was always in the open air.

The third division was a part reserved behind the scenes, and called by the Greeks παρασκήνιον. Here the actors dressed themselves, and the decorations were locked up. In the same place were also kept the machines, of which the ancients had abundance in their theatres.

As only the porticoes and the building of the scene were roofed, it was necessary to draw sails, fastened with cords to masts, over the rest of the theatre, to screen the audience from the heat of the sun. But as this contrivance did not prevent the heat, occasioned by the perspiration and breath of so numerous an assembly, the ancients took care to allay it by a kind of rain; conveying the water for that use above the porticoes, [pg xcix] which falling again in form of dew through an infinity of small pores concealed in the statues, with which the theatre abounded, did not only diffuse a grateful coolness all around, but the most fragrant exhalations along with it; for this dew was always perfumed. Whenever the representations were interrupted by storms, the spectators retired into the porticoes behind the seats of the theatre.

The fondness of the Athenians for representations of this kind cannot be expressed. Their eyes, their ears, their imagination, their understanding, all shared in the satisfaction. Nothing gave them so sensible a pleasure in dramatic performances, either tragic or comic, as the strokes which were aimed at the affairs of the public; whether pure chance occasioned the application, or the address of the poets, who knew how to reconcile the most remote subjects with the transactions of the republic. They entered by that means into the interests of the people, took occasion to soothe their passions, authorize their pretensions, justify, and sometimes condemn, their conduct, entertain them with agreeable hopes, instruct them in their duty in certain nice conjunctures; in consequence of which they often not only acquired the applauses of the spectators, but credit and influence in the public affairs and counsels: hence the theatre became so grateful and so interesting to the people. It was in this manner, according to some authors, that Euripides artfully adapted his tragedy of Palamedes[211] to the sentence passed against Socrates; and pointed out, by an illustrious example of antiquity, the innocence of a philosopher, oppressed by malignity supported by power and faction.

Accident was often the occasion of sudden and unforeseen applications, which from their appositeness were very agreeable to the people. Upon this verse of Æschylus, in praise of Amphiaraus,