The dramas of Æschylus certainly, and perhaps also those of Sophocles and Euripides, were played not upon the stage, and not in the _theatre_, but, strange though it sounds to us, in the _orchestra_. The _theatre_ to the Greeks was simply "the place of seeing," the place where the spectators sat; what they called the skēnē or _scene_, was the tent or hut in which the actors dressed. But the kernel and centre of the whole was the _orchestra_, the circular _dancing-place_ of the chorus; and, as the orchestra was the kernel and centre of the theatre, so the chorus, the band of dancing and singing men--this chorus that seems to us so odd and even superfluous--was the centre and kernel and starting-point of the drama. The chorus danced and sang that Dithyramb we know so well, and from the leaders of that Dithyramb we remember tragedy arose, and the chorus were at first, as an ancient writer tells us, just men and boys, tillers of the earth, who danced when they rested from sowing and ploughing. Now it is in the relation between the _orchestra_ or dancing-place of the chorus, and the _theatre_ or place of the spectators, a relation that shifted as time went on, that we see mirrored the whole development from ritual to art--from _dromenon_ to drama. * * * * * The orchestra on which the Dithyramb was danced was just a circular dancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and sometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle. This circular orchestra is very well seen in the theatre of Epidaurus, of which a sketch is given in Fig. 1. The orchestra here is surrounded by a splendid _theatron_, or spectator place, with seats rising tier above tier. If we want to realize the primitive Greek orchestra or dancing-place, we must think these stone seats away. Threshing-floors are used in Greece to-day as convenient dancing-places. The dance tends to be circular because it is round some sacred thing, at first a maypole, or the reaped corn, later the figure of a god or his altar. On this dancing-place the whole body of worshippers would gather, just as now-a-days the whole community will assemble on a village green. There is no division at first between actors and spectators; all are actors, all are doing the thing done, dancing the dance danced. Thus at initiation ceremonies the whole tribe assembles, the only spectators are the uninitiated, the women and children. No one at this early stage thinks of building a _theatre_, a spectator place. It is in the common act, the common or collective emotion, that ritual starts. This must never be forgotten. [Illustration: Fig. 1. Theatre of Epidaurus Showing Circular Orchestra.]