DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0176
154 THE ISLES AND SHRINES OF GREECE
One does not need to go from Athens to Rome to
see how the Roman theatre was developed from the
Greek. He may see it partially in this theatre of
Dionysus, but more fully in the Odeion of Herodes
Atticus, a little further around on the same slope of
the Acropolis —a theatre built about 60 A. D., by a
wealthy public-spirited Athenian.
Ideas have a vitality and a power of growth inde-
pendent of the material in which they are expressed.
Written on paper, chiselled in stone, spoken on the
air or uttered in the poetry of gesture and pose, they
may live in architecture, literature or tradition. The
germinal idea of the Greek theatre survives in them
all. Megara, Eleusis and Athens preserve the tradi-
tion in the rhythm of the dance. The material form
chronicled so beautifully in stone at Epidaurus is
an example of Greek architecture which has found
a more perfect fulfilment in our own age. But the
building was only the shell. The formative soul was
the drama. yEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aris-
tophanes, were the real architects, and posterity, with
its just sense of value, has more carefully preserved
their works than the theatre in which they were first
given to the world.
One does not need to go from Athens to Rome to
see how the Roman theatre was developed from the
Greek. He may see it partially in this theatre of
Dionysus, but more fully in the Odeion of Herodes
Atticus, a little further around on the same slope of
the Acropolis —a theatre built about 60 A. D., by a
wealthy public-spirited Athenian.
Ideas have a vitality and a power of growth inde-
pendent of the material in which they are expressed.
Written on paper, chiselled in stone, spoken on the
air or uttered in the poetry of gesture and pose, they
may live in architecture, literature or tradition. The
germinal idea of the Greek theatre survives in them
all. Megara, Eleusis and Athens preserve the tradi-
tion in the rhythm of the dance. The material form
chronicled so beautifully in stone at Epidaurus is
an example of Greek architecture which has found
a more perfect fulfilment in our own age. But the
building was only the shell. The formative soul was
the drama. yEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aris-
tophanes, were the real architects, and posterity, with
its just sense of value, has more carefully preserved
their works than the theatre in which they were first
given to the world.