and actors who had competed there, with the number of their victories appended to each name. An account of these various records has already been given at the end of the first chapter. Before concluding this description of the theatre of Dionysus it may be interesting to give some account of the various other purposes for which it was used at different times, in addition to its primary object as a place for dramatic representations and contests of dithyrambic choruses. The recitations of the rhapsodists, and the competitions between the harp-players, were also transferred to the same place from the Odeion, in which they had been held previously.[555] Besides this, various ceremonies unconnected with art took place in the theatre during the festivals of Dionysus. Those which took place at the commencement of the City Dionysia have already been mentioned.[556] The annual cock-fight in commemoration of the Persian invasion was also held in the theatre.[557] But the most important of the non-dramatic purposes for which the theatre came to be used was that of a meeting-place for the assemblies of the people. In the fifth and fourth centuries the regular place of assembly was the Pnyx. But already at a very early period special assemblies used to be held in the theatre after each festival of Dionysus, to discuss matters connected with the festival.[558] These semi-religious meetings probably paved the way for the later practice of holding ordinary meetings there. As early as the year 411, on the occasion of the overthrow of the Four Hundred, Thucydides mentions that an assembly of the people was held in the theatre.[559] It was in the theatre that the meeting was convened which condemned Phocion and his friends to death in 317 B.C.[560] In 295 Demetrius, after capturing the city, summoned a gathering of the people in the theatre.[561] These meetings were all of a special character, and were not regular assemblies of the people; but they served as precedents for the use of the theatre for political, as opposed to religious and artistic, purposes. Similarly, we are told on the authority of Aristotle that the Ephebi received their shields and spears from the state at assemblies of the people in the theatre.[562] After the middle of the third century the theatre became the regular meeting-place. The Pnyx henceforward was only used for assemblies for the election of magistrates.[563] In this later period the theatre was also used for various exhibitions which seemed unworthy of its character as a temple of Dionysus. Sword-swallowers, conjurors, and exhibitors of puppet-shows are mentioned among the entertainers who occupied the stage which had formerly been dignified by Euripides.[564] But the greatest degradation which the theatre at Athens ever suffered was when, under the influence of Roman custom, it was given up to gladiatorial combats. This was a pollution which called forth indignant