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WHERE WAS THE ALTAR? After centuries of study, there is general agreement that the City Dionysia offifth-century Athens involved an animal sacrifice to the god Dionysos and that this event took place in the theatre before the beginning of the play competition. The usual assumption has been that this sacrifice was offered upon an altar situated at the center of a circular orchestra. This placement fits well with the theory that tragedy grew from a dithyrambic chorus dancing in a circle around the altar of Dionysos. But now that the dogma of the originally circular orchestra has been questioned, some attention must also be given to the location of the altar, a supposedly standard piece of theatre furniture. This chapter discusses the origin of the concept of a centrally located altar; examines the literary, artistic, and architectural evidence which relates to altar placement; and suggests that an altar placement on the perimeter of the orchestra makes better theatrical sense arid is more in accord with the evidence. ORIGINS OF THE CONCEPT The concept of a central altar grew out of readings of "the Ancients," mainly Greek or Roman writers ofthe Christian era - although playscripts, writings of Aristotle, inscriptions, and scraps of information from Classic sources were also studied. As early as 1827, at a time when archaeology was still the exclusive property of the Society of Dilettanti, Philip Wentworth Buckham wrote: In front of the orchestra, opposite the middle of the scene, there stood a high place with steps like an altar of the same height as the stage, called Thymele. This was the place where the chorus assembled when it was not singing, but was a spectator of the action and a participator in it.... The Thymele was in the centre of the whole building; all distances were measured from it, and the semicircle ofthe amphitheatre was described about this point. It was therefore pregnant with meaning that the chorus, which was in fact the ideal representative of the spectators, had its place exactly in the spot where all the radii drawn from their seat converged to a point.1 This belief gained support from two discoveries made at the end of the nineteenth century: one is a round stone located in the middle of the circular orchestra at Epidauros, and the other a round hole at the center ofthe orchestra at Athens' Theatre of Dionysos. Because of the predisposition toward a central location, these seemingly opposite pieces ofevidence, a stone and a hole, were both construed as confirmation of a central altar. A. E. Haigh in The Attic Theatre, published in 1889, stated the orthodox opinion: "The altar probably stood in the very centre of the orchestra. This was the arrangement in the earliest times, when the drama was still a purely lyrical performance; and it is not likely that any alteration was made afterwards ." He based his conclusion on two pieces of misinformation. The evidence supplied by the theatres ofEpidaurus and the Peiraeeus [sic] is distinctly in favour of the same view. In each of these theatres there is a circular hole in the centre of the orchestra. The only plausible explanation of the holes is that they were intended for the reception of small stone altars. On the above grounds therefore it seems reasonable to conclude that the position of the altar was in the centre.2 Haigh is in error: the theatre at Epidauros has a small stone rather than a hole in the center of the orchestra, while the second-century theatre at the harbor of Athens has neither hole nor stone. Pickard-Cambridge corrected these errors in his 1907 revision of Haigh's work.3 w. D6rpfeld and E. Reisch confirmed the central placement of the altar in 1896 with the publication of Das Griechische Theater.4 Since they lacked evidence of an actual altar from the Theatre of Dionysos, they "borrowed" a second-century rectangular altar from the Agora area, an imposing structure with multiple dedications to Aphrodite Hegemone, the Demos, and the Graces.5 Sitting on a bema (platform) measuring 5.4 feet by 5.1 feet, it had a chopping surface of 4.5 feet by 3.2 feet.6 This interpolated altar, although lacking any connection with a theatre, provided a model for many later theatre reconstructions. Questions were raised about the central location of the altar in the year W HER E WAS THE A l TAR? 43 [18.188.44.223] Project MUSE (2024-04-19...

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