In describing the Theatre it will be best to take up in order the three main divisions common to Greek and Roman buildings of this class: the _cavea_, the large outer part shaped somewhat like half a funnel, containing seats for spectators; the orchestra, the small semicircular portion enclosed by the cavea, with an entrance, _parodos_, on either side; and the stage, facing the orchestra and the cavea. The accompanying illustrations give a plan (Fig. 64), and a view of the ruins in their present condition (Fig. 65); the exterior as seen from the south is shown in Fig. 61. The cavea afforded seats for about five thousand persons. The greater part of it, from the orchestra to the vaulted corridor under the summa cavea (Fig. 64, 6), lies on the slope of the hill; the floor of the corridor is on a level with the Forum Triangulare. The seats are arranged in three semicircular sections. The lowest, _ima cavea_ (4), next to the orchestra, contains four broad ledges on which, as well as in the orchestra itself, the members of the city council, the decurions, could place their chairs, the 'seats of double width.' [Illustration: Fig. 64.--Plan of the Large Theatre. 1. Dressing room. 2. Stage. 3. Orchestra. 4. Ima cavea. 5. Media cavea. 6. Summa cavea. 7. Tribunalia. 8. Tank for saffron water.] The middle section, _media cavea_ (5), was much deeper, extending from the ima cavea to the vaulted corridor. It contained twenty rows of marble seats arranged like steps, of which only a small portion is preserved. On a part of one of these, individual places, a little less than 16 inches wide, are marked off by vertical lines in front, and numbered; they probably belonged to some corporation which found it necessary, in order to avoid confusion, to assign places to its members by number. In Rome the fourteen rows nearest the bottom were reserved for the knights. Whether a similar arrangement prevailed in the municipalities and the colonies is not known, but if so the number reserved here must have been smaller. The upper section, _summa cavea_ (6), supported by the vault over the corridor, was too narrow to have contained more than four rows of seats. The ima cavea was entered from the orchestra. The media cavea could be entered on the lower side from the passage (_diazoma_, _praecinctio_) between it and the ima cavea, which at the ends was connected by short flights of steps with the parodoi leading outside; on the upper side six doors opened into the media cavea from the corridor, from which flights of steps descended dividing the seats into five wedgelike blocks, _cunei_, with a small oblong block in addition on either side near the end of the stage.