This may properly be called fine comedy, and is that of Menander. Of one hundred and eighty, or rather eighty plays, according to Suidas, composed by him, all of which Terence is said to have translated, there remain only a few fragments. We may form a judgment of the merit of the originals from the excellence of the copy. Quintilian, in speaking of Menander, is not afraid to say,(206) that with the beauty of his works, and the height of his reputation, he obscured, or rather obliterated, the fame of all other writers in the same way. He observes in another passage,(207) that his own times were not so just to his merit as they ought to have been, which has been the fate of many others; but that he was sufficiently made amends by the favourable opinion of posterity. And indeed Philemon, a comic poet, who flourished about the same period, though older than Menander, was preferred before him. The Theatre of the Ancients described. I have already observed, that Æschylus was the first founder of a fixed and durable theatre adorned with suitable decorations. It was at first, as well as the amphitheatres, composed of wooden planks, the seats in which rose one above another; but those having one day broke down, by having too great a weight upon them, the Athenians, excessively enamoured of dramatic representations, were induced by that accident to erect those superb structures, which were imitated afterwards with so much splendour by the Roman magnificence. What I shall say of them, has almost as much relation to the Roman as the Athenian theatres; and is extracted entirely from M. Boindin’s learned dissertation upon the theatre of the ancients,(208) who has treated the subject in its fullest extent. The theatre of the ancients was divided into three principal parts; each of which had its peculiar appellation. The division for the actors was called in general the scene, or stage; that for the spectators was particularly termed the theatre, which must have been of vast extent,(209) as at Athens it was capable of containing above thirty thousand persons; and the orchestra, which amongst the Greeks was the place assigned for the pantomimes and dancers, though at Rome it was appropriated to the senators and vestal virgins. The theatre was of a semicircular form on one side, and square on the other. The space contained within the semicircle was allotted to the spectators, and had seats placed one above another to the top of the building. The square part in the front of it was appropriated to the actors; and in the interval, between both, was the orchestra. The great theatres had three rows of porticoes, raised one upon another, which formed the body of the edifice, and at the same time three different stories for the seats. From the highest of those porticoes the women saw the representation, sheltered from the weather. The rest of the theatre was uncovered, and all the business of the stage was performed in the open air.