But we have reason to content ourselves with the plain matter of fact, and need not enter into a dispute, whether necessity or choice determined the Romans here to use the present materials, or whether the entrance was originally of the manner we see it: it is certain, that in all the places where I have seen these amphitheatres, the Roman walls that incompassed the towns are still left, built with ranges of brick, stone, flint, and indissoluble mortar; so that ignorance of building cannot be laid to their charge. Nor is this practice wholly confined to our island, and without parallel; for there is now in France an amphitheatre, not improperly to be reckoned of this sort, whereof Lipsius gives us a large account: it is at a place called Doveon, near Pont du sey, upon the river Loire, as you go from Anjou to Poictou; a place where the Druids are said to have had a seat: this is cut out of a mountain of stone, but of a very soft kind, and, I suppose, not much better than our chalk: it is not near so big as ours, and much inferior in beauty and convenience: here are chambers hewn out of the rock for the caves; and the _area_ is but very small. The seats of the theatre of Bacchus at Athens are still visible, cut out of the natural rock. It is not much to be doubted, that in many places in France, and other provinces of the Roman empire, where the same chalk is the soil, there are such as ours, though as little regarded: and we may reasonably think, in the beginning of the commonwealth, before art, luxury, and magnificence had got to its highest pitch, that the Romans themselves were contented with such of grassy turf. The people of Rome originally stood at the games. Cicero, _de Amicit._ c. 7. says, _stantes plaudebant in re ficta_. So Tac. _Annal._ XIV. 20. “If you look back to customs of antiquity, the people stood at the shows; for if they had been accommodated with seats, they would have idled the whole day away at the theatre.” Valer. Max. XI. 4. says, “it was ordered by the senate, that no one should set benches for shows in the city, nor within a mile of it, or should see the games sitting, that the manly posture of standing, the peculiar note of the Roman nation, should be observed even at diversions.” If any one had rather think, that ours never had any seats, but that the people stood upon the plain grassy declivity, I shall not be averse to it, and the rather because it is your lordship’s opinion: yet it seemed to me, viewing the sides very curiously, when the sun shone upon them with a proper light and shade, that I could see the very marks of the poles that lay upon the slopes, whereon the benches were fastened. Ovid, _de arte amandi_, speaking of theatres, says the seats were turf. _In gradibus sedet populus de cespite factis, Qualibet hirsutas fronde tegente comas._ On grassy seats of turf the people sate, And leaves of trees Thessalic caps supply.