Architecture
In architecture, as in sculpture and painting, the Late Classical pe-
riod was a time of innovation and experimentation.
THEATER OF EPIDAUROSIn ancient Greece, plays were
not performed repeatedly over months or years as they are today but
only during sacred festivals. Greek drama was closely associated with
religious rites and was not pure entertainment. At Athens in the fifth
centuryBCE, for example, the great tragedies of Aeschylus, Sopho-
cles, and Euripides were performed at the Dionysos festival in the
theater dedicated to the god on the southern slope of the Acropolis.
The finest theater in Greece, however, constructed shortly after
Alexander the Great was born, is located at Epidauros in the Pelo-
ponnesos. The architect was Polykleitos the Younger,possibly a
nephew of the great fifth-century sculptor. His theater (FIG. 5-71) is
still used for performances of ancient Greek dramas.
The precursor of the formal Greek theater was a place where an-
cient rites, songs, and dances were performed. This circular piece of
earth with a hard, level surface later became the orchestra of the the-
ater.Orchestra literally means “dancing place.” The actors and the
chorus performed there, and at Epidauros an altar to Dionysos stood
at the center of the circle. The spectators sat on a slope overlooking
the orchestra—the theatron,or “place for seeing.” When the Greek
theater took architectural shape, the auditorium (cavea,Latin for
“hollow place, cavity”) was always situated on a hillside. The cavea at
Epidauros, composed of wedge-shaped sections (cunei,singular
cuneus) of stone benches separated by stairs, is somewhat greater
than a semicircle in plan. The auditorium is 387 feet in diameter, and
its 55 rows of seats accommodated about 12,000 spectators. They
entered the theater via a passageway between the seating area and
the scene building (skene), which housed dressing rooms for the ac-
tors and also formed a backdrop for the plays. The design is simple
but perfectly suited to its function. Even in antiquity the Epidauros
theater won renown for the harmony of its proportions. Although
spectators sitting in some of the seats would have had a poor view
of the skene, all had unobstructed views of the orchestra. Because
of the open-air cavea’s excellent acoustics, everyone could hear the
actors and chorus.CORINTHIAN CAPITALSThe theater at Epidauros is situ-
ated some 500 yards southeast of the sanctuary of Asklepios, and
Polykleitos the Younger worked there as well. He was the architect of
the tholos,the circular shrine that probably housed the sacred snakes
of the healing god. That building lies in ruins today, its architectural
fragments removed to the local museum, but an approximate idea of
its original appearance can be gleaned from the somewhat earlier
and partially reconstructed tholos (FIG. 5-72) at Delphi that
Theodoros of Phokaiadesigned. Both tholoi had an exterior
colonnade of Doric columns. Inside, however, the columns had5-71Polykleitos the Younger,
Theater, Epidauros, Greece,
ca. 350 bce.
The Greeks always situated their
theaters on hillsides, which sup-
ported the cavea of stone seats
overlooking the circular orchestra.
The Epidauros theater is the finest
in Greece. It accommodated 12,000
spectators.5-72Theodoros of Phokaia,Tholos, Delphi, Greece, ca. 375 bce.
Theodoros of Phokaia’s tholos at Delphi, although in ruins, is the best-
preserved example of a round temple of the Classical period. It had
Doric columns on the exterior and Corinthian columns inside.Late Classical Period 1435-71AModel of
the Mausoleum,
Halikarnassos,
ca. 353–340 BCE.