Footnote 906: Poll. iv. 130. ----- Though by turning the Periactoi three changes of scene could be produced, many more were sometimes required, and, when this was the case, new landscapes were dropped, like hangings, or slided in frames in front of those painted columns. These usually represented views of the sea, or mountain scenery, or the course of some river winding along through solitary vales, or other prospects of similar character, according to the spirit of the drama. The position of the Hemicycle is more difficult to comprehend. It appears to have been a retreating semicircular scene, placed facing the orchestra, and masking the marble buildings at the back of the stage, when a view was to be opened up into some distant part of the city, or shipwrecked mariners were to be exhibited buffeting with the waves. Not very dissimilar was the Stropheion,[907] which brought to view heroes translated to Olympos, or on the ocean, or in battle slain, where change of position with respect to the spectator was produced by the rotatory motion of the machine. ----- Footnote 907: Poll. iv. 131. ----- The position of the Charonian staircase,[908] by which spectres and apparitions ascended from the nether world, is exceedingly difficult to be determined; but that it was somewhere on the stage appears to me certain, notwithstanding the seeming testimony of Pollux to the contrary. The hypothesis which makes the ghosts issue from a door immediately beneath the seats of the spectators, and rush along the whole depth of the orchestra, among the chorus and musicians, is, at any rate, absurd. It must have been somewhere towards the back of the stage, near the altar of Loxios, the table of shew-bread and those sacred and antique images which in certain dramas were there exhibited. Here, likewise, was the trap-door, through which river-gods issued from the earth, while the other trap-door, appropriated to the Furies, seems to have been situated in the boards of the Logeion, near one of the flights of steps leading down into the orchestra. ----- Footnote 908: Id. iv. 132. -----