| Transcript |
WITH THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA MINOR. 17
THE RUINS OF HIERAPOLIS, FROM THE THEATRE.
ASIA MINOR.
Nothing marks so strongly the genius and propensities of the ancient Greeks, as their
theatres. As these edifices were the most interesting and most attractive, so they seemed
to have engaged their greatest attention, and to have called forth all their skill, to render them the most permanent and beautiful of the buildings they erected. We have
already remarked, that every town, inhabited by Greeks, or the descendants of Greeks,
seems to have had one, as essential to its well-being ; and they were not erected with
the fragile and perishable materials with which the modern edifices of the same kind
were constructed. Their seats were not wooden benches enclosed with slight walls and
covered with slender roofs, or their decorations flimsy painted paper and canvass; they
were built with solid blocks of marble, roofed with the canopy of heaven, adorned with
statuary and sculptured ornaments of imperishable materials ; and their remains, at the
present day, are as durable as the rock on which they were generally erected. When
every other vestige of an ancient city is obliterated, its theatre is the only building that
remains, to determine its site; and when ruins had concealed it, or the lapse of time had
covered it with soil, accident or design has detected it under the mass, as perfect in
some of its parts as when it was frequented by a crowded audience. The beautiful
theatre in the small and comparatively obscure Island of Milo had disappeared for ages,
till unexpectedly discovered by agricultural labourers, in a solitary spot, where no other
evidence existed but itself, of the city to which it had belonged. Its materials were solid
blocks of beautifully sculptured marble; the angular mouldings seemed as sharp, and the
workmanship as recent, as when the chisel had first struck them; and though probably
not less than 2,000 years erected, looked as fresh, said a traveller, "as if the masons
had just gone home to their dinner, and you expected them to return every moment,
and put the last hand to their work."
As these characteristic structures form so prominent a feature in ancient Greek cities,
and at this day are generally the most striking objects emerging from their ruins, a brief
notice of their structure will be the best accompaniment to our illustration. The inventor
of dramatic entertainments was Thespis, who lived about 550 years before the Christian
era. His theatre was as simple as his exhibition was rude; it was an ambulatory
machine, moving from place to place, like the booth of an English fair. On the cart,
a stage was erected; the dramatic representation was confined to two performers, whose
faces were smeared with lees of wine, and who entertained the audience with a dialogue
of coarse and rustic humour. This movable edifice was improved by being fixed, and
the spectators accommodated with wooden benches, raised one above the other; but
the fondness of the Greeks for such exhibitions was so great, and the throng so pressing,
that frequent accidents occurred from the breaking down of these frail structures, and |
