Ludovico Castelvetro (1570) alleged that the high and narrow stage of the Greek theater was too cramped for the dignified representation of violence. Whatever plausibility this suggestion may previously have enjoyed has been lost since Dörpfeld has shown that the fifth-century theater at Athens had no raised platform for the exclusive use of actors and that actors and chorus stood alike in the broad expanse of the orchestra (see pp. 79 and 117, above) (Figs. 22 f.). It is customary to explain the Greek avoidance of violence upon aesthetic grounds; to assert that the susceptibilities of the Greeks were so refined as to have been offended by scenes of bloodshed. That which would be disagreeable or painful to see in real life should never be presented to an audience. This is the French position. In the first place the French took over the Greek practice on faith. It was only when they were called upon to explain it that they proceeded to evolve this justification. Then the logic of their argument carried them beyond their models. “A character in <French> tragedy could be permitted to kill himself, whether he did it by poison or steel: what he was not suffered to do was to kill someone else. And while nothing was to be shown on the stage which could offend the feelings through the medium of the eyes, _equally was nothing to be narrated with the accompaniment of any adjuncts that could possibly arouse disagreeable sensations in the mind_.”[238] They were therefore under the necessity of attempting to paint the lily—“they took exception to the way in which Philoctetes speaks of the plasters and rags which he applied to his sores; and equally so to the description which Tiresias gives in the _Antigone_ of the filth of the ill-omened birds which had fed on the carcass of Polynices.”[239] I would not be understood as altogether rejecting this aesthetic explanation; doubtless the practice of the Greek playwrights created, if it did not find ready made, such taste concerning these matters. It certainly applies to cases of blinding, which, whether self-imposed (Sophocles’ _Oedipus the King_) or wrought by others (Euripides’ _Hecabe_), always take place off-scene—the later sight of the bloody masks and ghastly eyes is harrowing enough and to spare. Nevertheless, however strong a case may be made out for it, the aesthetic interpretation cannot, because of one cogent objection, provide the real, ultimate reason for the convention. Is suicide so much less revolting than homicide that the same taste can consistently shrink from the sight of one but tolerate the other?