Similar semi-columns stand on both sides of the door leading to the orchestra. They led through two-chambered parodoi into the open air. Of these chambers the one to the west, especially long and narrow, must have served as a waiting-room for the public or the chorus. [Illustration: FIG. 252.—View of the proscenium pillars. ] Of the back wall of the _logeion_, the “scaenae frons,” only the foundation walls of brick rubble remain _in situ_. This was as usual liberally decorated; many of the reliefs in gypsum plaster with which it was adorned have been found (Fig. 254). The two lengthy halls behind the _scaenae frons_ must have been connected with each other in the upper floors by arched openings, as is taken for granted in our reconstructed plan. In the foundation—above which the building is in large measure ruined—the doorways are not arranged for, whereas in Babylonian houses, such as in those of Merkes, the door openings are almost without exception carried right down to the lowest course. A large peristyle with adjoining and almost uniform chambers abuts on the stage at the south. The southern row of these chambers is very largely destroyed, but of the peristyle sufficient of the brick rubble foundations remain to enable us to judge of the main part. The peristyle had a double nave at the south side, as is often the case with palaestra-peristyles. Fairly numerous remains still exist of the columns that stood on these foundations; they are of burnt brick cut into circular forms, and some of them that were roughly shaped were undoubtedly covered with a fine whitewash that gave them a clearly cut outline. [Illustration: FIG. 253.—Plan of Greek theatre, restored. ] On the east, by the side of the peristyle hall, there opened out a long narrow _exedra_, which was also columned. Both stage and peristyle stand on ancient ruined dwellings, of which the mud-brick walls were brought to light in a cross-cut we made through the central axis. The plan, therefore, represents on the whole a combination of a theatre and of a palaestra. In any case the Greek population of Babylon found here an indispensable centre for those amusements and intellectual interests which they would have been most unwilling to abandon in that remote metropolis of the East, on the development of which Alexander the Great had founded such far-seeing plans. [Illustration: FIG. 254.—Gypsum decorations of Greek theatre. ] The building, as it was first constructed, may well date back to the time of Alexander himself, even though the foundation inscription found here, which appears to refer to a restoration, belongs to a later period. XLIX THE NORTHERN MOUND OF HOMERA [Illustration: FIG. 255.—Section through the northern mound of Homera. ]