A large peristyle with adjoining and almost uniform chambers abuts on the stage at the south. The southern row of these chambers is very largely destroyed, but of the peristyle sufficient of the brick rubble foundations remain to enable us to judge of the main part. The peristyle had a double nave at the south side, as is often the case with palaestra-peristyles. Fairly numerous remains still exist of the columns that stood on these foundations; they are of burnt brick cut into circular forms, and some of them that were roughly shaped were undoubtedly covered with a fine whitewash that gave them a clearly cut outline.
Fig. 253.—Plan of Greek theatre, restored.
On the east, by the side of the peristyle hall, there opened out a long narrow exedra, which was also columned. Both stage and peristyle stand on ancient ruined dwellings, of which the mud-brick walls were brought to light in a cross-cut we made through the central axis.
The plan, therefore, represents on the whole a combination of a theatre and of a palaestra. In any case the Greek population of Babylon found here an indispensable centre for those amusements and intellectual interests which they would have been most unwilling to abandon in that remote metropolis of the East, on the development of which Alexander the Great had founded such far-seeing plans.
Fig. 254.—Gypsum decorations of Greek theatre.
The building, as it was first constructed, may well date back to the time of Alexander himself, even though the foundation inscription found here, which appears to refer to a restoration, belongs to a later period.
XLIX
THE NORTHERN MOUND OF HOMERA
