Even a provincial theatre is compared by the rustic in Dion Chrysostom to a large hollow valley, i. 229; what then could the Abbé Dubos be thinking of when he wrote, “Il étoit impossible que les altérations du visage que le masque cache furent aperçûes distinctment des spectateurs, dont plusieurs étoient éloignes _de plus de douze toises_ du comédien qui récitoit!”—Reflex. Crit. i. 609. Footnote 868: Scalig. Poet. i. 21. Footnote 869: Colonel Leake, Topog. of Ath. p. 59. Cf. Wordsworth’s Athens and Attica, p. 29. The conjecture of Hemsterhuis on the passage of Dicæarchos cannot be adopted. The words must apply to the theatre; for he says the Parthenon charmed the spectators. But this could not apply to the Odeion, which was roofed. ----- To determine accurately the various parts of the theatre, and thus affix a distinct meaning to every term connected with it, has exercised the ingenuity of critics and architects for the last three hundred years, still leaving many difficulties to be overcome. I can scarcely hope in every case to succeed where they have failed. But the following explanation may, perhaps, convey of its interior an idea sufficiently exact for all practical purposes. Supposing ourselves to be standing at the foot of the Katatomè,[870] a smooth wall of rock, rising perpendicularly from the back of the theatre to the superimpending fortifications of the Acropolis, we behold on either hand, surmounted by porticoes, lofty piers of masonry projecting like horns down the rocky slope into the plain and united at their extremities by a wall of equal height, running in a straight line from one point of the horseshoe to the other. The space thus enclosed is divided into three principal parts,—the amphitheatre for the spectators, the orchestra,[871] filling all the space occupied by the modern pit, for the chorus, and the stage, properly so called, for the actors. Each of these parts was again subdivided. Looking down still from the Katatomè, we behold the benches of white marble, sweeping round the whole semicircle of the theatre, descend like steps to the level of the orchestra, and intersected at intervals by narrow straight passages converging towards a point below.[872] A number of the upper seats, cut off, by an open space extending round the whole semicircle, from the rest, was set apart for the women. Other divisions were appropriated to other classes of the population, as the tier of seats immediately overlooking the orchestra to the senators, or dicasts, another portion to the youth, another to foreigners and the guests of the state, while the remainder was occupied by the dense mass of citizens of all ages,[873] with crowns of flowers on their heads. ----- Footnote 870: Poll. iv. 123. Footnote 871: Tim. Lex. Platon. in v. ὀρχήστρα. p. 104. Poll. iv. 123. Footnote 872: