THE THEATRE OF THORICUS.

31

ever was found on the orchestra floor which could have come from
the temple, except a thumb of life size in Pentelic marble.

In a joint of the -cella wall was found a bronze coin of Athens.
If, as seems probable, it was deposited there during the construction
of the wall, an important clue is thus furnished for determining the
date of the edifice. Bronze coins were first struck at Athens in the
archonship of Kallias (406 b.c.), but these were soon demonetized,
probably in 394 b.c. In 350-322 b.c. bronze money began for the
first time to be reissued in larger quantities.1 The latter period cor-
responds with the conjectured age of the main wall of the theatre
(page 28), to which time also belongs the only inscription discovered
by the excavations, AIONYSOI, on the head of a broken stele. (See
Plate II. Fig. 8.)

The Rock Chamber. — (See Plates III. and IV.) It is not pos-
sible to prove that this rectangular cut in the natural rock served any
purpose connected with the performances of the theatre. On the
contrary, the magnitude of the labor involved in hewing out the solid
rock so as to form a smooth wall fifty feet long and ten feet high
— a work out of all proportion to the general character of the theatre
proper — opposes such a theory. The remains of another " chamber"
of the same kind are seen at the base of the military tower. Both
resemble the artificial workings in the rock city at Athens.

Theories as to the Construction of the Theatre. — As one
approaches the theatre from Laurium, the spot is seen, at some
distance up the valley on the left, where, in the early part of this
century, the British Society of Dilettanti excavated a Doric stoa.
Here, half buried in alluvium, are numerous unfinished drums; these
are without (lutings, except in the case of those which formed the top
or bottom of a column, where the flutings are merely begun as guide
marks. Not far from the stoa, on two low foot-hills, nide remains of
an ancient civilization are visible, — roughly hewn stone blocks, and
traces of a circular wall of upright slabs. Directly from the plain at
this point rises on the northeast a conical hill, the west slope of
which is covered with a confusion of walls, mostly of rude and weak
construction. The southern slope is thickly strewn with chips of white

Head, Ilistoria Numorum, page 315.