Professor White's Lecture.

Professor White lectured in the Jefferson Physical Laboratory yesterday afternoon on the Greek theatre. He said that the site of the theatre of Dionysus at Athens remained unknown until a recent date, and the excavations which have given us most of our present knowledge of it were made by German archaeologists. The theatre is now known to have been just south of the Acropolis and the slope of this eminence made a natural amphitheatre.

The theatre consists of three main parts: the auditorium, the orchestra, and the stage buildings. The seats for the spectators covered the slope of the hill, in semicircular rows. Aisles divided the auditorium into thirteen wedges and two-thirds of the distance to the top was a semi-circular passageway or "Diazoma." The upper rows of seats were hewn from the stone of the hillside, the lower were of limestone from the Peiraeus. The front row consisted of sixty-seven "thronoi," heavy stone seats with backs, the middle one being used by the chief priest of Dionysus. The orchestra was the open place for the acting. There was probably no raised stage, but actors and chorus stood on the same level. The stage buildings were at first merely rough structures in which the actors could change their dress, but they were much elaborated later, and a screen was put up before them called the "Proscenion," on which was painted the scene appropriate to the play.

The Greek theatre furnishes contrasts, not parallels, to that of modern times. The Greeks produced an audience of thirty thousand to our possible three thousand, they sat in the open air, they went to theatre much as we go to church, and the actors wore masks, and had no harmony in singing. Greek theatre-going was for only three days, at the Dionysiac festival. The people at this time creased in holiday attire; the taverns were thrown open, bowls of free wine were everywhere and it was considered a solemn duty to get intoxicated. The streets were filled with mountebanks and jugglers and the whole population completely abandoned themselves to pleasure. One man who was found drinking water at this time was dragged by the mob into the street and made to put on woman's dress and dance and sing.

There has been abundant doubt and consequent discussion as to the date when the theatre was built. The archaeologist, Dorpfeld, recently aroused much controversy by asserting that the great theatre was not erected until the decline of the drama, after the fifth century B. C., but all his arguments have been so satisfactorily answered that the subject is almost as obscure as it ever was.