cavea
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: Learned borrowing from Latin cavea. Doublet of cage.
Inflected forms:
form: caveae
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: caveas
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: The seating section of a Greek or Roman theatre or amphitheatre.
pos: noun
examples: Vitruvius, in writing that colonnades are desirable above theatres, is thinking of late Asiatic and Roman caveas; […]
Between (1) and the foot of the Cavea (7), there was built a rectangular Podium (5), situated right in the middle of the orchestra, which effectively rules out any possibility that the Hellenistic and Roman caveas could have been used for theatrical performances.
I have for a long time thought that a symbolic approach, tackling the issue of the correlation between the spatial composition of Greek caveae and the social structure of their communities would yield interesting and, it is hoped, fruitful results.
No rib foundation appears ever to have been designed for subterranean vaulting like that commonly found elsewhere in Roman caveas to support seating.
The theatre, which is located parallel to the short, northern wall of the hippodrome, faces south. This at first seems surprising since in our area virtually all caveae face either north or northwest, but as the excavator of the site has pointed out, Jericho served as a winter resort—with its cavea facing southward, the theatre could offer spectators a welcome exposure to the rays of the winter sun.
As the entrances near the caveas provide access to the theatres, such an additional arrangement seems to have been superfluous.
From the later fourth century onward the construction of large koila, or caveae, required much more time and money than did that of the skene, which in Greek theatres always remained relatively modest in scale. Thus the term ‘theatre’ (theatron), which had originally denoted only the spectator area, came to be used of the whole complex of koilon (or cavea), orchestra, and skene.
In some cases, it should be noted, that structures with definite caveae described by excavators and visitors as odeia, for example, at Selinus and Nephelis, could have functioned in the dual capacity as theatres, and equally possible that they served as bouleuteria.
Such a drastic measure as the desecration of a functioning temple and conversion to profane use are almost unimaginable. It does not help to point out parallels with the well-known terrace sanctuaries of Latium in the Late Republic (Praeneste, Gabii, Tivoli, Terracina). There the caveas are employed in a different manner. They represent subordinate elements of the complexes and are positioned in front of the cella, on the axis of the entrance. A cavea on the inside would have been a sacrilegious infringement on the space of the divinity, besides lacking an obvious function, since, as is well known, congregations of ancient cults met and celebrated in the open around the altar in the courtyard.
And they claimed in the caveas of their theatres that we (the Greeks, I mean) are supposedly no one’s subjugated slaves.
The cavea of the extant theatre is dated to the fourth century by Isler (TGR II, 268) and, with some hesitation, by Moretti (2014a, 109); but to the third century by Arias (1934, 83) and others.
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