+COLONNADES, STOÆ.+ These were built to connect public monuments (as the Dionysiac theatre and Odeon at Athens); or along the sides of great public squares, as at Assos and Olympia (the so-called +Echo Hall+); or as independent open public halls, as the +Stoa Diple+ at Thoricus. They afforded shelter from sun and rain, places for promenading, meetings with friends, public gatherings, and similar purposes. They were rarely of great size, and most of them are of rather late date, though the archaic structure at Pæstum, known as the +Basilica+, was probably in reality an open hall of this kind. [Illustration: FIG. 40.--PLAN OF GREEK THEATRE. o, _Orchestra_; l, _Logeion_; p, _Paraskenai_; _s, s_, _Stoa_.] +THEATRES, ODEONS.+ These were invariably cut out of the rocky hillsides, though in a few cases (Mantinæa, Myra, Antiphellus) a part of the seats were sustained by a built-up substructure and walls to eke out the deficiency of the hill-slope under them. The front of the excavation was enclosed by a stage and a set scene or background, built up so as to leave somewhat over a semicircle for the _orchestra_ or space enclosed by the lower tier of seats (Fig. 40). An altar to Dionysus (Bacchus) was the essential feature in the foreground of the orchestra, where the Dionysiac choral dance was performed. The seats formed successive steps of stone or marble sweeping around the sloping excavation, with carved marble thrones for the priests, archons, and other dignitaries. The only architectural decoration of the theatre was that of the set scene or _skene_, which with its wing-walls (_paraskenai_) enclosing the stage (_logeion_) was a permanent structure of stone or marble adorned with doors, cornices, pilasters, etc. This has perished in nearly every case; but at Aspendus, in Asia Minor, there is one still fairly well preserved, with a rich architectural decoration on its inner face. The extreme diameter of the theatres varied greatly; thus at Aizanoi it is 187 feet, and at Syracuse 495 feet. The theatre of Dionysus at Athens (finished 325 B.C.) could accommodate thirty thousand spectators. The odeon differed from the theatre principally in being smaller and entirely covered in by a wooden roof. The +Odeon of Regilla+, built by Herodes Atticus in Athens (143 A.D.), is a well-preserved specimen of this class, but all traces of its cedar ceiling and of its intermediate supports have disappeared.