page_title: Theatre of Dionysus
section_title: Periclean Theatre
hierarchical_section_title: Theatre of Dionysus / Periclean Theatre
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Cratere a volute, Gruppo del Pittore di Sisifo/Pittore delle Carnee
context_page_description: The Theatre of Dionysus is an ancient theatre in Athens on the south slope of the Akropolis hill, built as part of the sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus. The first orchestra terrace was constructed on the site around the mid- to late-sixth century BC, where it hosted the City Dionysia. The theatre reached its fullest extent in the fourth century BC under the epistates of Lycurgus when it would have had a capacity of up to 17,000, and was in continuous use down to the Roman period. The theatre then fell into decay in the Byzantine era and was not identified, excavated and restored to its current condition until the nineteenth century.
context_section_description: The substantial changes to the theatre in the late fifth century are conventionally called Periclean since they coincide with the completion of the Odeon of Pericles immediately adjacent and the wider Periclean building programme. However, there is no strong evidence to say the theatre’s reconstruction was of the same group as the other works or from Pericles’ lifetime. The new plan of the theatre consisted of a slight displacement of the performance area northward, a banking up of the auditorium, the addition of retaining walls to the west, east and north, a long hall south of the skene and abutting the Older Temple and a New Temple which was said to have contained a chryselephantine sculpture of Dionysus by Alkamenes.  The seating during this phase was probably still in the form of ikria  but it may be the case that some stone seating had been installed. Inscribed blocks, displaced but preserved in the retaining walls, with fifth century epigraphy on them might indicate dedicated or numbered stone seats. The use of breccia in the foundations of the west wall and the long hall gives a terminus ante quem of the early fifth century, and a likely date of the last half of that century when its use was becoming common. Also the last recorded statue of Alkamenes was 404 BC, again placing the works in the late 400s. Pickard-Cambridge argues that the reconstruction was piecemeal over the last half of the century into the period of Kleophon.
  From the evidence of the plays there is a larger corpus to draw upon during this most vital period of Greek drama. Sophocles,  Aristophanes and Euripides were all performed at the Theatre of Dionysus. From these we can deduce that stock sets may have been in use to meet the requirements of the plays such that the Periclean reconstruction included post-holes built into the terrace wall to provide sockets for movable scenery. The skene itself was likely unchanged from the theatre’s earlier phase, with a wooden structure of at most two floors and a roof. It is also possible that the stage building would have had three doors, with two in the projecting side-wings or paraskenia.  Mechane or geranos were used for the introduction of divine beings or flights through the air as in Medea or Aristophanes' Birds.
  One point of contention has been the existence or otherwise of the prothyron or columned portico on a skene that represents the interior spaces of temples or palaces. It is a supposition partly supported by the texts, but also from vase painting believed to be depictions of plays. Aeschylus Choēphóroi 966 and Aristophanes' Wasps 800-4 both refer directly to a prothyron, while the parodos-chant in Euripides’ Ion makes indirect reference to one. The mourning Niobe loutrophoros in Naples and the Boston volute krater, for example, both depict a prothyron. Pickard-Cambridge questions if this was permanent structure since interior scenes were rare in tragedy. The evidence from the plays for the use of an ekkyklema in this period is ambiguous; passages such as Acharnians 407 ff or Hippolytus 170-1 suggest but don't require the device. The argument for its use depends largely on reference to the ekkyklema in later lexographers and scholiasts.
caption: Apulian volute-krater, close to the Sisyphus Painter, c. 400 BC. Possibly related to Euripides’ lost play Andromeda,[21] and is suggestive of the kind of stage props that might have been used.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 200D", "Image Orientation": "Rotated 90 CW", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2019:09:29 17:34:40", "Image Artist": "", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "360", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "10884", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "12772", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "13668", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1600", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "1600", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2019:09:29 17:34:40", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2019:09:29 17:34:40", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "6", "EXIF ApertureValue": "35/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "26", "EXIF SubSecTime": "27", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "27", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "27", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2400", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1600", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "10656", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "800000/307", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "800000/297", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF CameraOwnerName": "", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "108071022584", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[18, 55, 0, 0]", "EXIF LensModel": "EF-S18-55mm f/4-5.6 IS STM", "EXIF LensSerialNumber": "0000038ec0"}