Terence’s Latin plays and which has partially been restored to us by the recent discovery of large fragments of Menander’s comedies; and in the second place this fourth-century structure probably reproduced in stone the main outlines of the earlier theater in which the later tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides and all the plays of Aristophanes were performed. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that the extant fifth-century dramas could readily be “staged” in the Lycurgus theater. Further alterations were made in the Athenian theater during the first or second century B.C. (Fig. 38).[151] So far as can now be established, this Hellenistic theater differed from its immediate predecessor only in two particulars. The front of the parascenia was moved back about six and a quarter feet,[152] the parodi being thereby enlarged to the same extent. What advantage was gained by this alteration has not yet been discovered. The other change consisted in the erection, at last, of a stone proscenium, about thirteen feet in height, between the parascenia and about six and a half feet in front of the central fore wall of the scene-building. At Epidaurus, Eretria, Delos, etc., the supports of the proscenium were only half-columns, and sometimes they had grooves or rims running vertically along their sides or had the rear half of the column cut into an oblong for the purpose of providing a firmer fastening for the painted panels (πίνακες) in the intercolumniations (Fig. 72). But at Athens the proscenium columns were whole and were not equipped with any of these devices. [Illustration: FIG. 38.—Ground Plan of the Hellenistic Theater in Athens According to Dörpfeld. See p. 70, n. 2] We have already passed far beyond the time when masterpieces of Greek drama were receiving their premier performances in the Athenian theater; after the third century the dramatic productions in Attica were no longer of consequence. Yet for the sake of completeness it will be necessary to record briefly two later periods in the history of this structure.