We return by the Rue de Byron (to the S.) to Amalia Street, in line with which the Dionysios Areopagites Street (Pl. D, C, 7) ascends to the Acropolis.
The *Theatre of Dionysos (Pl. D, 7), whose entrance we soon reach, was once the centre of the dramatic art of Greece, the spot in which the masterpieces of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes first excited delight and admiration. From the early 5th cent, this site was occupied by a round enclosed orchestra (‘dancing place’), while for each performance a stage had to be specially erected, the audience being seated in a levelled hollow in the Acropolis hill-side. In the 4th cent., mainly in the time of Lykourgos (p. [507]), tiers of stone seats and a permanent stage were erected for the first time. The present semicircular orchestra, paved with marble, and the remains of the stage-building belong to Roman restorations. The Roman raised stage rested on a wall adorned with good sculptures of the time of Nero. During the Greek age the actors and the chorus, the former wearing the raised cothurnus, performed on the level space in the orchestra, while the skēnē or stage served them as a kind of booth. The proskēnion, or wooden front of the stage, formed the background of the play, and was only superseded by a stone wall with columns at the close of the late Hellenistic period. Between the rectangular wings of the stage (paraskēnia) and the lowest seats for the spectators opened the entrances for the chorus (párodoi). The auditorium was divided by narrow flights of steps into 13 ‘wedges’ (kerkides) and by two cross passages (diazomata) into three main sections. The seats, originally for 14–17,000 spectators, are only partly preserved. In the front row were marble seats for the priests and state officials; that in the centre, set apart for the priest of Dionysos, is adorned with reliefs. The pedestal to the right, behind it, bore the throne of Hadrian.
Adjoining the theatre was the Sacred Precinct of Dionysos Eleuthereus, the wine-dispensing god, with whose festivals the dramatic performances were connected. The walls of his temple (5th or early 4th cent.) are still partly preserved between the stage of the theatre and the modern street. Behind the stage ran a colonnade offering shelter in rainy weather; at its S.W. end once stood an older temple, the N.W. corner of which has been discovered.
The ancient buildings to the W. of the theatre of Dionysos skirt the hill-side in two terraces. The E. half of the upper terrace, on the steep slope of the castle-hill, above the conspicuous arched wall, is the site of the famous Asklepieion, or sacred precinct of Asklepios (Æsculapius), Hygieia, and kindred deities, with which institutions for the treatment of the sick were connected. Of the temple, founded in 420, the foundations only are left. The perpendicular side of the Acropolis is here faced with masonry, in which is the entrance to a round well-house converted into a chapel. In front of it ran a colonnade towards the W., leading to a round pit, once roofed over, which is supposed to have been used for sacrificial purposes or as the abode of the sacred serpents.
On the lower terrace, from the theatre to the Odeion, ran the Stoa of King Eumenes II. of Pergamon (B.C. 197–159), 180 yds. long, with its back to the masonry supporting the upper terrace.
The *Odeion of Herodes Atticus (Pl. C, 7; keys kept by a pensioner, in the red hut at the W. entrance; 25–50 l.), founded by a rich citizen (p. [507]; about 160 A.D.), dominates all the other ruins at the foot of the castle-hill. Unlike the usual odeon or theatre for musical entertainments, this building was constructed with a view to dramatic performances. The yellowish-brown façade is constructed in the Roman round-arched style and consisted of three stories. The usual entrance is by the westmost of the three doors. A niche here contains the statue of a Roman official.
The Interior affords a good example of a Roman theatre (comp. p. [510]). The stage (logeion), raised 3½ ft. above the orchestra, is 38½ yds. in breadth, but only 6 yds. deep. At the back of the stage is a massive wall, broken by the usual three stage-doors and relieved by niches and a row of columns. The orchestra, 20 yds. wide, was paved with particoloured squares of marble. The auditorium, 83 yds. in diameter, could hold 5000 spectators. The tiers of seats rise in a semicircle, one above the other, on the rocky slope of the Acropolis. The lower 19 tiers were divided by steps into five, the upper (probably 13), above the transverse passage (see p. [510] and above), into ten sections. The seats, like the whole of the masonry, were coated with Pentelic marble; the lowest tier had backs. The whole edifice was covered with a superb roof of cedar-wood.
From the Dionysios Areopagites Street (p. [510]), where it passes the Odeion, there diverges to the W. the avenue leading to the Acropolis, immediately to the right of which a steep path ascends on the W. side of the Odeion to the Acropolis gate.
Halfway up we diverge to the left to visit the summit of a rocky plateau (377 ft.) separated from the Acropolis by a depression, and descending abruptly to the N.E., still called as in ancient times the Areopagus (Pl. B, C, 6). A narrow flight of steps in the rock, partly destroyed, ascends to the site of some ancient altars, for which platforms were hewn in the rock. Here met the time-honoured court of justice, composed of noble and aged citizens who wielded supreme criminal jurisdiction. The cleft in the rock below the N.E. corner was probably connected with the cult of the avenging Erinyes (Furies), or Eumenides (the benevolent), as they were euphemistically called. This was the scene of Æschylus’s famous tragedy of that name.
To the S.W. of the Areopagus rock, and below (to the E. of) the modern road from the Theseion (p. [521]) to the Acropolis, the Oldest Quarter of the Lower Town has been partly excavated (comp. Pl. B, 7, and p. [524]). Descending at the W. point of the Areopagus rock from the modern to the ancient road, we reach, on the left, the Dionysion en Limnais (Pl. B, 7), a triangular space enclosed by an antique polygonal wall of limestone. This was the sacred precinct of Dionysos Lenæos, the inventor of the wine-press, and once contained a temple of the 7th or 6th cent. B.C., a wine-press (in the N.W. angle), and a large hall of the Roman period (in the N.E. half).