The stone theatre, which we have now to describe, is ascribed by Dörpfeld to about the middle of the fourth century. His reasons for assigning this date to it are as follows.[321] In all the older portions of the building, which belong to the original plan, there is a certain similarity in the style of the workmanship, and in the nature of the materials employed, which points to the fourth century as the date of erection. We have seen, too, that the upper foundations of the auditorium are proved to be not earlier than the fourth century by the fragments of pottery which they contain. Further than this, various minute pieces of evidence, leading to the same conclusion, have been discovered in different parts of the building. One of the stones used in the western wing of the auditorium bears, as a mason’s mark, the Ionic letter Omega—a letter which was not introduced into Athens before the year 403 B.C. (It must, however, be admitted that the argument drawn from this stone is not quite conclusive, as it is probable that the Ionic alphabet was in private use before the archonship of Euclides in 403.[322]) Another stone in the same wing contains an inscription, and has been built into the wall with the inscription inverted.[323] As the inscription itself is not earlier than the middle or end of the fifth century, the wall for which the stone was employed must obviously belong to a later period. Again, part of the basis of a statue has been found in the theatre, inscribed with the first half of the name ‘Astydamas’. The basis is shown by its shape to have fitted on to the inside corner of the west wing of the auditorium. As it is known that a statue of Astydamas was erected in the theatre about the year 340, it follows that this portion of the auditorium must have been finished at that date.[324] These archaeological indications are supported by literary evidence. A decree of the people has been preserved, belonging to the year 330 B.C., in which a vote of thanks is passed to a certain Eudemus of Plataea for lending a thousand yoke of oxen for ‘the construction of the Panathenaic race-course and the theatre’.[325] There is also the series of decrees and notices, referring to the finance administration of the orator Lycurgus, and ascribing to him, among other things, the ‘completion of the theatre’.[326] Lycurgus was finance minister between 338 and 326, and died about 325. The evidence shows beyond doubt that Lycurgus did important work in connexion with the theatre, and that the theatre was considerably changed, in the third quarter of the fourth century B.C.[327] But it has been recently argued by Puchstein that there are traces of a stone theatre of earlier date, which he assigns to the last years of the fifth century. He would throw back to this date a great part of the work generally termed Lycurgean, and would ascribe to Lycurgus the construction of the stage-buildings generally termed Hellenistic and