There remains for discussion a passage in Plutarch. It concerns an episode in the career of Demetrius Poliorcetes (337-283 B.C.) and has been thought to refer to the theater of his day. But a study has been made of Plutarch’s practice in such matters and it has been found that many times he deliberately sought vividness of presentation by modernizing his accounts and picturing his scenes amid the familiar surroundings of contemporaneous life; in other words, the references to the theater in connection with his anecdotes never presuppose any other type of building than the stage-equipped buildings of his own day, and in several instances this method resulted in patent anachronisms. One example will suffice.[204] Plutarch declares that Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver of about the ninth century B.C., believed that the minds of assemblymen were distracted by “statues and paintings or the proscenia of theaters or the extravagantly wrought roofs of council chambers,” and so caused the Spartans to hold their assemblies in an open space. The author has here modernized his account in two particulars: he speaks as if Lycurgus were familiar with a fully developed theater building and as if it had already come to be used, elsewhere in Greece, as a place of meeting for the popular assembly. Of course, Lycurgus antedated the Greek drama and all but the crudest forms of choral performances by centuries, and this fact was as well known to Plutarch as it is to us.
Fig. 46.—Plan of the Theater at Epidaurus in Argolis
Now Plutarch says[205] that “Demetrius came into the city (Athens) and ordered the entire population to be assembled into the theater and hedged in the scene-building (σκηνήν) on every side with troops and surrounded the stage (λογεῖον) with guards, and himself descending (καταβάς), like the tragic actors, through the upper parodi (διὰ τῶν ἄνω παρόδων) he ended their fears with his very first words.” In my opinion, the word καταβάς (“descending”) clearly shows that λογεῖον means “stage.” The “upper parodi,” then, must be the passages opening upon the logium from the parascenia. As Plutarch visualized the scene and wished his readers to do so, Demetrius came out upon the stage from one of the side entrances but did not address the people from there, as an orator of Plutarch’s own day would have done.[206] Instead, in his desire to show the Athenians his good-will he passed on down the central steps, as Plutarch had often seen the actors do in that theater (see [p. 99], above), and addressed the assemblage from the orchestra. Since he could have passed through only one side entrance, the plural (παρόδων) must be due to a sort of zeugma, to imply that he came through one upper parodus and one upper entrance, viz., the central steps. The pro-stage writers who seek to apply Plutarch’s words to the Lycurgus theater in which the incident really happened, and who use them as an argument for a stage at that period, are forced to ignore the word καταβάς, for they cannot allow that “tragic actors” regularly descended from the Lycurgus proscenium into the orchestra. If we go back of Plutarch’s words and inquire what Demetrius actually did in the Lycurgus theater, the answer is plain: he simply advanced from the scene-building into the orchestra, and expressions consistent with this must have appeared in the source from which Plutarch derived his account. In fact, in describing a similar scene at Corinth, Plutarch retained words which are vague enough to be applicable to either type of theater.[207] He has simply modernized one account and brought over the other unchanged.
The zenith of Attic drama had passed by, entirely for tragedy and almost so for comedy, before the remains of theaters outside of Athens become frequent.[208] Nevertheless, these sometimes aid materially in reconstructing or interpreting the Athenian theater, and it will be necessary to dwell briefly upon a few of them. Perhaps the earliest and most primitive is found at Thoricus in southern Attica (Figs. [70 f.]). This was built in the fifth or fourth century B.C. and was subsequently enlarged somewhat. The orchestra is oblong rather than circular, being bounded at one side by a temple, at the other side by a greenroom or storage chamber, and at the rear by a retaining wall. There is no reason to believe that a permanent scene-building was ever erected behind the orchestra. It is apparent that this structure has several points of resemblance to the Athenian theater of the period between ca. 499 B.C. and ca. 465 B.C. (see [pp. 65 f.], above).
The most symmetrical of all the Greek theaters and one of the best preserved is that at Epidaurus (Figs. [46-52] and [72, 2]).[209] Its architect was the younger Polyclitus, and it was built toward the close of the fourth century B.C. If we are right in believing that the proscenium was not used as a stage, then the Epidaurus theater never had a stage. At any rate, it was not rebuilt and provided with one in Roman times. In the center of the orchestra stands a block of stone with a circular cavity, doubtless the foundation of the thymele. There is not only space for the full circle of the orchestra (in the narrowest sense; see [p. 83, n. 2]) but the bounding stones are actually continued for the full distance. The stone proscenium, containing half-columns ([Fig. 72, 2]) of the Ionic order and once eleven feet seven inches or about twelve Roman feet in height, was erected in the second or third century B.C. and replaced a wooden proscenium. The parascenia were rebuilt at the same time and seem originally to have been broader and to have projected farther from the scene-building. In either parodus stood a handsome double gateway (Figs. [49] and [51 f.]), one door of which led into the orchestra and the other opened upon a ramp, somewhat sharply inclined, which debouched on the top of the proscenium. Ramps are found also in the Sicyon theater.
THE THEATER AT EPIDAURUS
