Behind it rises the grand mass of the eastern end of the Acropolis rock; along the southern front of the Acropolis walls are seen the two votive columns which bore votive tripods, similar to the one for which the “Monument of Lysicrates” served as a support.
producing a play was generally undertaken by some rich man who was called the choregus, it being his duty to provide the chorus and furnish its members with suitable dresses. In the event of the play being successful in the competition, the choregus received a prize in the form of a tripod, which it was customary for him to set up in the precincts of Dionysus’ temple, or in an adjoining street. Fortunately one such monument has been preserved, which had been erected (as the inscription tells) by Lysicrates in 335 B.C.—surmounted by a bronze tripod, which has disappeared. Apart from its historical interest the monument has considerable value from an architectural point of view, as it is one of the earliest and finest specimens of the Corinthian order. It is in the form of a small circular temple of Pentelic marble, fully 20 feet high, standing on a high square pediment of Piræic limestone 13 feet high, with a cornice of Hymettus marble. It is beautifully decorated in a chaste and delicate style, the roof consisting of a single leaf-shaped block of marble, and the frieze being ornamented with scenes in the mythological history of Dionysus. For many years it served as the library of a Capuchin convent which was built round it. The convent was a favourite residence for Englishmen at Athens, and Lord Byron is said to have used the interior of the monument for a study.
The theatre was often used for public meetings. It was there that it was proposed to honour Demosthenes with a golden wreath in acknowledgment of the signal service he had rendered to his countrymen in reviving their courage and persuading the Thebans to join with them in resisting the victorious advance of Philip. It was a great contrast to the treatment he had experienced in the same place many years before, when a wealthy Hipparch named Meidias attacked him with his fists at the very time he was acting as choregus for his tribe Pandionis. In general, great decorum was observed in the theatre. It was not even permitted to the officials who were responsible for maintaining order to inflict a blow on any disorderly person, though it might be their duty to remove him by force. That same year Demosthenes and some other leading Athenians paid a visit to the court of Philip at Pella. Among other entertainments which the king provided for them, his son Alexander, then a boy of ten years of age, recited a dialogue, along with a companion, from one of the great tragic poets of Athens. The taste for this kind of literature never left the great prince, though his interest in natural science was also shown by a grant of 800 talents to his former tutor, Aristotle, for the purpose of carrying on zoological researches. When he asked Harpalus to send him something to read during his stay in Upper Asia, the works of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were among the few books selected. Again, when he returned from the conquest of Egypt to Phœnicia, after he had been saluted as the son of Zeus by the priest of Jupiter-Ammon in the Libyan desert, dramatic representations formed an important part of the festivals which were got up in his honour; and the princes of Cyprus were conspicuous for the zeal and liberality with which they acted the part of choregi in competitions modelled on those of Athens. Of the popularity of the tragic poets with Greek soldiers we have a remarkable evidence in the fact that when, a century before, the Athenian army which had been sent for the invasion of Sicily was utterly destroyed, a number of men who escaped capture and wandered about the country, and also some of those who had been reduced to slavery, won the hearts of their conquerors by reciting passages of Euripides which they happened to know by heart. In this connection it may be mentioned that all free-born children in Athens were taught to read and write, while the recitation of selected passages from great authors, and the practice of music on the lyre or flute, along with gymnastics for the training of the body, were always included in a liberal education.
Another great educative influence in democratic Athens was the practice and the love of oratory. In the beginning of the sixth century B.C. we find Solon employing verses on political subjects for the persuasion of his countrymen, while at the same time condemning the incipient drama of Thespis, when he saw him acting, as tending to falsehood—emphasising his opinion, we are told, by striking his stick on the ground. It was not till nearly a century later that the cultivation of prose rhetoric became common in Greece. The Ionic philosophers of Asia Minor, and their successors in Magna Græcia, who had tried to grapple with the problems of the universe, gave place to the sophists who abandoned the quest for abstract truth and devoted themselves to studies which had a direct bearing on the practical interests of life. They naturally gravitated to Athens as the intellectual capital of Greece, and found many young men who were eager to acquire the arts and accomplishments they professed to impart. Socrates has been called the greatest of the sophists, but, apart from deeper points of difference, he was distinguished from them by the facts that he gave no instruction in public speaking (for which he had no taste), and that he accepted no fee from his disciples. On the latter point, however, the sophists do not seem to have been so mercenary as is sometimes alleged, if we may judge from the example of Protagoras, who is represented by Plato as stating that he made no bargain with his pupils beforehand, and that if they thought on leaving that he was asking too much he allowed them to name a smaller figure, on condition that they went into a temple and declared on oath that they considered it a more just remuneration.
The fact that every citizen who had a case in the law courts of Athens was obliged to plead his cause in person before a court consisting of about 500 jurors, gave a great impetus to the cultivation of oratory. Not only was the preparation of the speeches often entrusted to professional rhetoricians, but their services as teachers of elocution were also called into requisition by those who were anxious to do justice to their cause by means of an effective delivery. The general Assembly offered a still larger field for the practice of