From the numerous remains of these later stone proscenia which have been excavated during the last few years it is possible to obtain a fairly accurate conception of their general character. The upper surface, or stage proper, was made of wood. The front seems to have consisted in every case of a series of stone columns supporting an entablature. The spaces between the columns were filled in with painted boards or ‘pinakes’, these, like the stage, being made of wood for acoustic reasons.[406] The columns themselves were adapted sometimes more and sometimes less carefully, to the purpose for which they were required.[407] In some cases, as at Athens and Sicyon, they consisted simply of entire columns. In others, the columns were provided with rims running down the centre of each side, to hold the pinakes, as at Megalopolis and Eretria. In others, the place of the columns was taken by half-columns resting against pillars, as more convenient for holding the pinakes. These pillars were in some cases without grooves or projections for the pinakes, as at Epidaurus; in others, as at Priene, New Pleuron, and Delos, they were regularly provided with them.[408] A diagram is here given (Fig. 8 A, after Puchstein) representing the shapes of these supports. The row of pillars would not only serve as a support to the stage, but would serve as a background for the choral performances in the orchestra so far as one was needed.[409] Dörpfeld, who believes that the dramatic performances also took place entirely in the orchestra, supposes that the pinakes were painted in scenic fashion so as to serve as a background to the actors. There is not a particle of evidence to support this view.[410] Not only would a back-scene interrupted by columns be peculiar; but the accounts of the theatre of Delos in the third century B.C. appear to demonstrate that the pinakes were not used for this purpose. We find there that the joiner who made a single pinax received 30 drachmae, while the painter who painted two only received 3 drachmae 1 obol.[411] The smallness of the latter sum seems a clear proof that the painting was not of the artistic kind we should expect in a back-scene, but a very simple affair, suitable to the supporting wall of a stage. It is very probable that the pinakes were painted in imitation of folding-doors, or of wood-work divided into panels. Puchstein conjectures that the stone structures found at Priene and Termessos, made to resemble such doors or panelled work, are reminiscences of the earlier pinakes, and similar instances of vacant spaces made to imitate doors are common on Lycian grave[412] monuments and Pompeian wall-paintings. This architectural front was called the ‘hyposkenion’, from its position beneath the ‘skene’ or stage. Pollux says it was adorned with ‘columns and small statues’.[413] Statues, however, were not used as a decoration during the pre-Roman period. In Roman times they appear to have been