producing a play was generally undertaken by some rich man who was called the _choregus_, it being his duty to provide the chorus and furnish its members with suitable dresses. In the event of the play being successful in the competition, the _choregus_ received a prize in the form of a tripod, which it was customary for him to set up in the precincts of Dionysus’ temple, or in an adjoining street. Fortunately one such monument has been preserved, which had been erected (as the inscription tells) by Lysicrates in 335 B.C.--surmounted by a bronze tripod, which has disappeared. Apart from its historical interest the monument has considerable value from an architectural point of view, as it is one of the earliest and finest specimens of the Corinthian order. It is in the form of a small circular temple of Pentelic marble, fully 20 feet high, standing on a high square pediment of Piræic limestone 13 feet high, with a cornice of Hymettus marble. It is beautifully decorated in a chaste and delicate style, the roof consisting of a single leaf-shaped block of marble, and the frieze being ornamented with scenes in the mythological history of Dionysus. For many years it served as the library of a Capuchin convent which was built round it. The convent was a favourite residence for Englishmen at Athens, and Lord Byron is said to have used the interior of the monument for a study. The theatre was often used for public meetings. It was there that it was proposed to honour Demosthenes with a golden wreath in acknowledgment of the signal service he had rendered to his countrymen in reviving their courage and persuading the Thebans to join with them in resisting the victorious advance of Philip. It was a great contrast to the treatment he had experienced in the same place many years before, when a wealthy Hipparch named Meidias attacked him with his fists at the very time he was acting as _choregus_ for his tribe Pandionis. In general, great decorum was observed in the theatre. It was not even permitted to the officials who were responsible for maintaining order to inflict a blow on any disorderly person, though it might be their duty to remove him by force. That same year Demosthenes and some other leading Athenians paid a visit to the court of Philip at Pella. Among other entertainments which the king provided for them, his son Alexander, then a boy of ten years of age, recited a dialogue, along with a companion, from one of the great tragic poets of Athens. The taste for this kind of literature never left the great prince, though his interest in natural science was also shown by a grant of 800 talents to his former tutor, Aristotle, for the purpose of carrying on zoological researches. When he asked Harpalus to send him something to read during his stay in Upper Asia, the works of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were among the few books selected. Again, when he returned from the conquest of Egypt to Phœnicia, after