The story is told in the Lexicon of Suidas that during the performance of a play by Pratinas, about 500 b.c., the wooden benches upon which the auditors sat gave way, injuring some, and causing such alarm that the Athenians built, on the southern slope of the Acropolis, a theater of stone, which they dedicated to the god Dionysus. [This was not the Theater of Dionysus that tourists see today; the surviving structure was built order the direction of the Finance Minister Lycurgus about 338. Some parts of it are conjeaurally traced back to 421; some others appear to have been added in the first and third centpies after Christ.] In the next two centuries similar theaters rose at Eretria, Epidaurus, Argos, Mantinea, Delphi, Tauromenium (Taormina), Syracuse, and elsewhere in the scattered Greek world. But it was on the Dionysian stage that the major tragedies and comedies were first played, and fought out the bitterest phase of that war, between the old theology and the new philosophy, which binds into one vast process of thought and change the mental history of the Periclean age.

The great theater is, of course, open to the sky. The fifteen thousand seats, rising in a fanlike semicircle of tiers toward the Parthenon, face Mt. Hyrr.ettus and the sea; when the persons of the drama invoke the earth and the sky, the sun and the stars and the ocean, they are addressing realities which most of the audience, as it listens to the speech or chant, can directly see and feel. The seats, originally of wood, later of stone, have no backs; many people bring cushions; but they sit through five plays in a day with no other known support for their spines than the unaccommodating knees of the auditors behind them. In the front rows are a few marble seats with backs for the local high priests of Dionysus and the officials of the city. [This and the remarks about the stage presume that the theater built by Lycurgus followed the general plan of the structure that a replaced.] At the foot of the auditorium is an orchestra, or dancing space, for the chorus. At the rear of this is a small wooden building known as the skene, or scene, which serves to represent now a palace, now a temple, now a private dwelling, and probably also to house the players while off stage. [Whether the action took place on the roof of the rkene, or upon the prorkenion, or proscnium, before it, is uncertain; perhaps the action moved from one level to the other as the ration of the story changed.] There are such simple "properties" – altars, furniture, etc. – as the story may rcqure; in the case of Aristophanes' Birds there are important adjuncts of scentry and costume; and Agatharchus of Samos paints backgrounds in such a way as to produce the illusion of distance. Several mechanical devices help to vary the action or the place. [Adrop curtain was used in the Roman period, being lowered into a crevice at the beginning of a scene, and raised at the end; but our extant plays from the fifth century give no evidence of this, and apparently rely on choral interludes to serve the purpose of a curtain between the "acts."] To show an action that has trart:pired within the skene, a wooden platform (ekkyklema) may be wheeled out, and have human figures arranged on it in a tableau suggestive of what has occurred; so a corpse may be on it, with the murderers holding bloody weapons in their hands; it is against the traditions of the Greek drama to represent violence directly on the stage. At either side of the proscenium is a large, triangular, upright prism that turns on a pivot; each fact of the prism has a different scene painted on it; and by revolving these periaktoi the background can be altered in a moment. A still stranger apparatus is the mechane, or machine, a crane with pulley and weights; it is placed upon the skene at the left, and is used to lower gods or heroes from heaven down to the stage, or to raise them back to heaven, or even to exhibit them suspended in the air. Euripides in particular is fond of using this mechanism to let down a god – a deus ex machina, as the Romans put it – who piously unties the knot of his agnostic plays.

The tragic drama at Athens is not a secular or perennial affair, but part of the annual celebration of the feast of Dionysus. [Plays were also presented during the lesser Dionysia, or Lenaea, usually at the Piraeus; and at various times in the local theaters of the Attic towns.] From among many plays offered to the archon a few are selected for performance. Each of the ten tribes or demes of Attica chooses one of its rich citizens to serve as choragus, i.e., director of the chorus; it is his privilege to pay the cost of training the singers, dancers, and actors, and to meet the outer expenses of presenting one of the compositions. Sometimes a choragus spends a fortune upon scenery, costumes, and "talent" – in this way every play financed by Nicias obtains a prize; some other choragi economize by hiring secondhand robes from dealers in theatrical costumes. The actual training of the chorus is usually undertaken by the dramatist himself.

The chorus usually in many ways the most important as well as the most costly part of the spectacle. Often it gives its name to the drama; and through it, for the most part, the poet expresses his views on religion and philosophy. The history of the Greek theater is a losing struggle of the chorus to dominate the play: at first the chorus is everything; in Thespis and Aeschylus its role diminishes as the number of actors increase; in the drama of the third century it disappears. Usually the chorus is composed not of professional sinkers but of amateurs chosen from the civic raster of the tribe. They are all men, and number, after Aeschylus, fifteen. They dance as well as sing, and move in dignified procession across the long and narrow stage, interpreting through the poetry of motion the words and moods of the play.

Music holds in the Greek drama a place second only to the action and the poetry. Usually the dramatist composes the music as well as the words." Most of the dialogue is spoken or declaimed; some of it is chanted in recitative; but the leading roles contain lyrical passages that must be sung as solos, duets, trios, or in unison or alternation with the chorus. The singing is simple, without "parts" or harmony. The accompaniment is usually given by a single flute, and accords with the voices note for note; in this way the words can be followed by the audience, and the poem is not drowned out in the song. These plays cannot be judged by reading them silently; to the Greeks the words are but a part of a complex art form that weaves poetry, music, acting, and the dance into a profound and moving unity. [Music continued to play a central role in the culture of the classic period (480-323). The great name among the fifth-century composers was Timotheus of Miletus; he wrote nomes to which the music dominated the poetry, and represented a story and an action. His extension of the Greek lyre to eleven strings, and his experiments in complex and elaborate styles; provoked the conservatives of Athens to such denunciation that Timotheus, we are told, as about to take his own life when Euripides comforted him, collaborated with him, and correctly prophesied that all Greece would soon be at his feet.]

Nevertheless the play is the thing, and the prize is awarded less for the music than for the drama, and less for the drama than for the acting; a good actor can make a success of a middling play. The actor – who is always a male – is not disdained as in Rome, but is much honored; he is exempt from military, service, and is allowed safe passage through the lines in time of war. He is called hypokrites, but this word means answerer – i.e., to the chorus; only later will the actor's role as an impersonator lead to the use of the word as meaning hypocrite. Actors are organized in a strong union, or guild called the Dionysian Artists, which has members throughout Creece. Troupes of players wander from city to city, composing their own plays and music, making their own costumes, and setting up their owls stage. As in all times, the incomes of leading actors are very high, that of secordary actors precariously low; and the morals of both are what might be expected of men moving from place to place, fluctuating between luxury and poverty, and too high-strung to be capable of a stable and normal life.

In both tragedy and comedy the actor wears a mask, fitted with a resonant mouthpiece of brass. The acoustics of the Greek theater, and the visibility of the stage from every seat, are remarkable; but even so it is found advisabe to reinforce the voice of the actor, and help the eye of the distant spec-3tor to distinguish readily the various characters portrayed. All subtle play of vocal or facial expression is sacrificed to these needs. When real individuals are represented on the stage, like the Euripides of the Ecclesiazusae and the Socrates of the Clouds, the masks imitate, and largely caricature, their actual features. The masks have come down into the drama from religious performances, in which they were often instruments of terror or humor; in comedy they continue this tradition, and are as grotesque and extravagant as Greek fancy can make them. Just as the actor's voice is strengthened and his countenance enlarged by the mask, so his dimensions are extended with padding, and his height is enhanced by an onkos, or projection on his head, and by kothornoi, or thick-soled shoes, on his feet. All in all, as Lucian puts it, the ancient actor makes a "hideous and appalling spectacle."

The audience is as interesting as the play. Men and women of all ranks are admitted, and after 420 all citizens who need it receive from the state the two obols required for entrance. Women sit apart from men, and courtesans have a place to themselves; custom keeps all but the looser ladies away from comedy. It is a lively audience, not less or more mannerly than such assemblages in other lands. It eats nuts and fruit and drinks wine as it listens; Aristotle proposes to measure the failure of a play by the amount of food eaten during the presentation. It quarrels about seats, claps and shouts for its favorites, hisses and groans when it is displeased; when moved to more vigorous protest it kicks the benches beneath it; if it becomes angry it may frighten an actor off the stage with olives, figs, or stones. Aeschines is almost stoned to death for an offensive play; Aeschylus is nearly killed because the audience believes that he has revealed some secrets of the Eleusinian Mysteries. A musician who has borrowed a supply of stones to build a house promises to repay it with those that he expects to collect from his next performance. Actors sometimes hire a claque to drown out with applause the hisses they fear, and comic actors may throw nuts to the crowd as a bribe to peace. If it wishes, the audience can by deliberate noise prevent a drama from continuing, and compel the performance of the next play; in this way a long program may be shortened within bearing.

There are three days of drama at the city Dionysia; on each day five plays are presented – three tragedies and a satyr play by one poet, and a comedy by another. The performance begins early in the morning and continues till dusk. Only in exceptional cases is a play performed twice in the Theater of Dionysus; those who have missed it there may see it in the theaters of other Greek cities, or with less splendor on some rural stage in Attica. Between 480 and 380 some two thousand new dramas are performed at Athens. In early times the prize for the best tragic trilogy was a goat, for the best comedy a basket of figs and a jug of wine; but in the Golden Age the three prizes for tragedy and the single prize for comedy take the form of grants of money by the state. The ten judges are chosen by lot in the theater itself on the first morning of the competition, out of a large list of candidates nominated by the Council. At the end of the last play each of the judges writes his selections for first, second, and third prizes upon a tablet; the tablets are placed in an urn, and an archon draws out five tablets at random. These five judgments, summed up, constitute the final award, and the other five are destroyed unread; no one, therefore, can know in advance who the judges are to be, or which of them will really judge. Despite these precautions there is some corruption or intimidation of judges. Plato complains that the judges, through fear of the crowd, almost always decide according to the applause, and argues that this "theatrocracy" is debasing both the dramatists and the audience. When the contest is over the victorious poet and his choragus are crowned with ivy, and sometimes the victors set up a monument, like the choragic monument of Lysicrates, to commemorate their triumph. Even kings compete for this crown.

The size of the theater and the traditions of the festival determine in large measure the nature of the Greek drama. Since nuances cannot be conveyed by facial expression or vocal inflection, subtle character portraits are rare in the Dionysian theater. The Greek drama is a study of fate, or of man in conflict with the gods; the Elizabethan drama is a study of action, or of man in conflict with man; the modern drama is a study of character, or of man in conflict with himself. The Athenian audience knows in advance the destiny of each person represented, and the issue of each action; for religious custom is still strong enough in the fifth century to limit the theme of the Dionysian drama to some story from the accepted my the and legends of the early Greeks. [There were a few dramas about later history; of these the only extant example is Aeschylus' Persian Women. About 493 Phrynichus presented The Fall of Miletus; but the Athenians were so moved to grief by contemplating the capture of their daughter city by the Persians that they fined Phrynichus a thousand drachmas for his innovation, and forbade any repetition of the play. There are some indications that Themistocles had secretly arranged for the performance as a means of stirring up the Athenians to active war against Persia.] There is no suspense and no surprise, but, instead, the pleasures of anticipation and recognition. Dramatist after dramatist tells the same tale to the same audience; what differs is the poetry, the music, the interpretation, and the philosophy. Even the philosophy, before Euripides, is determined in large measure by tradition: throughout Aeschylus and Sophocles the prevailing theme is the nemesis of punishment, by jealous gods or impersonal fate, for insolent presumption and irreverent pride (hybris); and the recurring moral is the wisdom of conscience, honor, and a modest moderation (aidos). It is this combination of philosophy with poetry, action, music, song, and dance that makes the Greek drama not only a new form in the history of literature, but one that almost at the outset achieves a grandeur never equaled again.