house of Herod ruled in Palestine with this | new Athenian theatre was built on a very

title.

In the later period of the republic and under the empire, the Romans seem to have used the title (as also those of ethnarch and phylarch) to designate those tributary princes who were not of sufficient importance to be called kings.

THARGE'LIA (Oapynλta), a festival celebrated at Athens on the 6th and 7th of Thargelion, in honour of Apollo and Diana.

The real festival, or the Thargelia in a narrower sense of the word, appears to have taken place on the 7th; and on the preceding day, the city of Athens, or rather its inhabitants, were purified. The manner in which this purification was effected is very extraordinary, and is certainly a remnant of very ancient rites, for two persons were put to death on that day, and the one died on behalf of the men, and the other on behalf of the women of Athens. The name by which these victims were designated was pharmaci (papuaKoí). It appears probable, however, that this sacrifice did not take place annually, but only in case of a heavy calamity having befallen the city, such as the plague, a famine, &c. The victims appear to have been criminals sentenced to death.

The second day of the thargelia was solemnized with a procession and an agon, which consisted of a cyclic chorus, performed by men at the expense of a choragus. The prize of the victor in this agon was a tripod, which he had to dedicate in the temple of Apollo which had been built by Pisistratus. On this day it was customary for persons who were adopted into a family to be solemnly registered and received into the genos and the phratria of the adoptive parents. This solemnity was the same as that of registering one's own children at the Apaturia.

large scale, and appears to have been constructed with great skill in regard to its acoustic and perspective arrangements. Subsequently theatres were erected in all parts of Greece and Asia Minor, although Athens was the centre of the Greek drama, and the only place which produced great masterworks in this department of literature. All the theatres however which were constructed in Greece were probably built after the model of that of Athens, and with slight deviations and modifications they all resembled one another in the main points, as is seen in the numerous ruins of theatres in various parts of Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily. The Attic theatre was, like all the Greek theatres, placed in such a manner that the place for the spectators formed the upper or northwestern, and the stage with all that belonged to it the south-eastern part, and between these two parts lay the orchestra. The annexed plan has been made from the remains of Greek theatres still extant, and from a careful examination of the passages in ancient writers which describe the whole or parts of a theatre.

1. The place for the spectators was in a narrower sense of the word called theatrum. The seats for the spectators, which were in most cases cut out of the rock, consisted of rows of benches rising one above another; the rows themselves (a) formed parts (nearly three-fourths) of concentric circles, and were at intervals divided into compartments by one or more broad passages (b) running between them, and parallel with the benches. These passages were called διαζώματα, or κατατομαί, Lat. praecinctiones, and when the concourse of people was very great in a theatre, many persons might stand in them. Across the rows of benches ran stairs, by which persons might THEA TRUM (Otarpov), a theatre. The ascend from the lowest to the highest. But Athenians before the time of Aeschylus had these stairs ran in straight lines only from one only a wooden scaffolding on which their praecinctio to another; and the stairs in the dramas were performed. Such a wooden next series of rows were just between the two theatre was only erected for the time of the stairs of the lower series of benches. By this Dionysiac festivals, and was afterwards pull-course of the stairs the seats were divided into ed down. The first drama that Aeschylus brought upon the stage was performed upon such a wooden scaffold, and it is recorded as a singular and ominous coincidence that on that occasion (500 B. C.) the scaffolding broke down. To prevent the recurrence of such an accident, the building of a stone theatre was forthwith commenced on the south-eastern descent of the Acropolis, in the Lenaea; for it should be observed, that throughout Greece theatres were always built upon eminences, or on the sloping side of a hill. The

a number of compartments, resembling cones from which the tops are cut off; hence, they were termed kƐрKidƐg, and in Latin cunei. The whole of the place for the spectators (0ɛárpov) was sometimes designated by the name kotlov, Latin cavea, it being in most cases a real excavation of the rock. Above the highest row of benches there rose a covered portico (c), which of course far exceeded in height the opposite buildings by which the stage was surrounded, and appears to have also contributed to increase the acoustic

effect.

S E

the different plays, such as a funeral monument, an altar, &c. It was made of boards, and surrounded on all sides with steps. It thus stood upon a raised platform, which was sometimes occupied by the leader of the chorus, the flute-player, and the rhabdophori. The orchestra, as well as the theatrum, lay under the open sky; a roof is nowhere mentioned.

The entrances to the seats of the the projecting wings of the stage and the spectators were partly underground, and led seats of the spectators, through which the to the lowest rows of benches, while the chorus entered the orchestra. The chorus upper rows must have been accessible from generally arranged itself in the space between above. the thymele and the stage. The thymele 2. The orchestra (opxnoтpa) was a circular itself was of a square form, and was used for level space extending in front of the specta-various purposes, according to the nature of tors, and somewhat below the lowest row of benches. But it was not a complete circle, one segment of it being appropriated to the stage. The orchestra was the place for the chorus, where it performed its evolutions and dances, for which purpose it was covered with boards. As the chorus was the element out of which the drama arose, so the orchestra was originally the most important part of a theatre: it formed the centre around which all the other parts of the building were grouped. In the centre of the circle of the orchestra was the thymele (Ovuéλn), that is, the altar of Bacchus (d), which was of course nearer to the stage than to the seats of the spectators, the distance from which was precisely the length of a radius of the circle. In a wider sense the orchestra also comprised the broad passages (πápodot, e) on each side, between

3. The stage. Steps led from each side of the orchestra to the stage, and by them the chorus probably ascended the stage whenever it took a real part in the action itself. The back side of the stage was closed by a wall called the scena (okηvý), from which on each side a wing projected which was called the parascenium (Tapaσкývιov). The whole depth of the stage was not very great, as it only comprised a segment of the circle of the or

The whole of the cavea in the Attic theatre must have contained about 50,000 spectators. The places for generals, the archons, priests, foreign ambassadors, and other distinguished persons, were in the lowest rows of benches, and nearest to the orchestra, and they appear to have been sometimes covered with a sort of canopy. The rows of benches above these were occupied by the senate of 500, those next in succession by the ephebi, and the rest by the people of Athens. But it would seem that they did not sit indiscriminately, but that the better places were let at a higher price than the others, and that no one had a right to take a place for which he had not paid. The usual fee for a place was two obols, which was subsequently given to the poorer classes by a law of Pericles. [THEORICA.] Women were allowed to be present during the performance of tragedies, but not of comedies.

chestra. The whole space from the scena | appears to have always represented a woody to the orchestra was termed the proscenium district with hills and grottos; in comedy the (πроσkýνiov), and was what we would call scena represented, at least in later times, the the real stage. That part of it which was fronts of private dwellings or the habitations nearest to the orchestra, and where the actors of slaves. The art of scene-painting must stood when they spoke, was the logeium (20- have been applied long before the time of yelov), also called ocribas (okpíẞßas), in Latin Sophocles, although Aristotle ascribes its inpulpitum, which was of course raised above troduction to him. the orchestra and probably on a level with the thymele. The scena was, as we have already stated, the wall which closed the stage (proscenium and logeium) from behind. It represented a suitable background, or the locality in which the action was going on. Before the play began it was covered with a curtain (napanÉтаσμа, проσKÝνιov, avλatai), Latin aulaea or siparium. When the play began this curtain was let down, and was rolled up on a roller underneath the stage. The proscenium and logeium were never concealed from the spectators. As regards the scenery represented on the scena, it was different for tragedy, comedy, and the satyric drama, and for each of these kinds of poetry the scenery must have been capable of various modifications, according to the character of each individual play; at least that this was the case with the various tragedies, is evident from the scenes described in the tragedies still extant. In the latter however the back-ground (scena) in most cases represented the front of a palace with a door in the centre (i) which was called the royal door. This palace generally consisted of two stories, and upon its flat roof there appears to have been some elevated place from which persons might observe what was going on at a distance. The palace presented on each side a projecting wing, each of which had its separate entrance. These wings generally represented the habitations of guests and visitors. All the three doors must have been visible to the spectators. The protagonistes always entered the stage through the middle or royal door, the deuteragonistes and tritagonistes through those on the right and left wings. In tragedies like the Prometheus, the Persians, Philoctetes, Oedipus in Colonus, and others, the back-ground did not represent a palace. There are other pieces again in which the scena must have been changed in the course of the performance, as in the Eumenides of Aeschylus and the Ajax of Sophocles. The dramas of Euripides required a great variety of scenery; and if in addition to this we recollect that several pieces were played in one day, it is manifest that the mechanical parts of stage performance, at least in the days of Euripides, must have been brought to great perfection. The scena in the satyric drama

The Romans must have become acquainted with the theatres of the Italian Greeks at an early period, whence they erected their own theatres in similar positions upon the sides of hills. This is still clear from the ruins of very ancient theatres at Tusculum and Faesulae. The Romans themselves, however, did not possess a regular stone theatre until a very late period; and although dramatic representations were very popular in earlier times, it appears that a wooden stage was erected when necessary, and was afterwards pulled down again, and the plays of Plautus and Terence were performed on such temporary scaffoldings. In the mean while, many of the neighbouring towns of Rome had their stone theatres, as the introduction of Greek customs and manners was less strongly opposed in them than in the city of Rome itself. Wooden theatres, adorned with the most profuse magnificence, were erected at Rome even during the last period of the republic. In B. c. 55 Cn. Pompey built the first stone theatre at Rome, near the Campus Martius. It was of great beauty, and is said to have been built after the model of that of Mytilene; it contained 40,000 spectators.

The construction of a Roman theatre resembled, on the whole, that of a Greek one. The principal differences are, that the seats of the spectators, which rose in the form of

the driver took the reins in his left hand, it was necessary to recommence the procession, and for one of the attendant boys to let go the thong, or to stumble, was profanation.

The only gods distinctly named as carried in tensae are Jupiter and Minerva, though others appear to have had the same honour paid them.

THENSAE or TENSAE, highly ornamented sacred vehicles, which, in the solemn pomp of the Circensian games, conveyed the statues of certain deities with all their decorations to the pulvinaria, and after the sports were over bore them back to their shrines. We are ignorant of their precise form. We know that they were drawn by horses, and escorted (deducere) by the chief senators in robes of state, who, along with pueri patrimi [PATRIMI], laid hold of the bridles and traces, or perhaps assisted to drag the carriage by means of thongs attached for the purpose (and hence the proposed derivation from tendo). So sacred was this duty considered, that Augustus, when labouring under sickness, deem- THEO'RICA (Oewpikú). Under this name ed it necessary to accompany the tensae in a at Athens were comprised the moneys expendlitter. If one of the horses knocked up, ored on festivals, sacrifices, and public enter

THEOPHA'NIA (0copávia), a festival celebrated at Delphi, on the occasion of which the Delphians filled the huge silver crater which had been presented to the Delphic god by Croesus.

THEO'RIA. [THEORI.]