men of mark and dignity, for the judges who would award the prizes, for sage, grave members of the Areopagus, for archons in office, or for those who had already held office, for soldiers "famoused in fight," for ambassadors from Greek or foreign lands, for all who had some claim to precedence from their rank or their services to the commonwealth. Women were admitted to the tragedies at least, boys as well as men to all performances; even slaves were permitted to be present. The women, by Greek usage secluded at home, were probably assigned a particular apartment in the playhouse; the boys were perhaps of use, as often as an unpopular competitor for the crown tried his fortune once more; and possibly Euripides may have occasionally regretted the presence of these youthful censors. No registered citizen could plead poverty as a reason for not witnessing these theatrical contests; if he had not money in his purse, the state paid for his ticket of admission. To foreigners were commonly allotted the back seats; but so many mechanical devices were employed for the conveyance of sound, that unless a sitter in the gallery were hard of hearing, he could probably catch every line of the choral chant or the recitative of the dialogue. Nor might short-sighted people be quite forlorn; he was pitiable indeed who could not discern, vast as was the space between himself and the stage, the colossal actors mounted on their high boots, and raised by their tall head-dress above ordinary mortal stature. A purblind stranger might perchance regret that he could not distinguish in the stalls bald-headed Nicias from the long-haired Alci

biades; and that although Socrates was certainly in the house he could not identify him among a batch of ugly fellows, with whom, he was told, the celebrated street-preacher was sitting.

The gallery in which foreigners sat is perhaps the most interesting feature of the audience to English readers—interesting, because it represented the various members of the Athenian empire, as well as of the Hellenic race. A merchant whose warehouse was near the Pillars of Hercules, would find himself seated beside one who had brought a cargo of wheat from Sinope, on the Euxine Sea. A hybrid-half-Greek, half-Egyptian of Canopus, would have on his right hand a tent-maker from Tarsus, on his left a Thessalian bullock-drover. The "broad Scotch" of the Greeks— the Dorian patois-would be spoken by a group of spectators in front of him; while a softer dialect than even the Attic, pure Ionic, was used by a party of islanders behind him. "What gorgeously - attired personage is that on your left?" "A Tyrian merchant, rich enough to buy up any street in Athens-a prince in his own city, a suitor here. He has come on law business; and although at home he struts like any peacock, here he is obliged to salute any ragged rascal in the streets who may be a juror when his cause is heard. To my certain knowledge, the great emerald column in the temple of Melcarth, at Tyre, is mortgaged to him." "And who is that queerly-dressed man a little beyond the Tyrian? By his garb and short petticoat I should take him for a Scythian policeman,* but he has not the * Scythian bowmen were the gendarmes of Athens. A. C. vol. xii.

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yellow hair and blue eyes of those gentry." "That, sir, is a Gaul from Massilia; he is on his road to Bithynia, where the satrap Pharnabazus, I think his name is, is offering good pay to western soldiers-and where there is gold there also is sure to be a Gaul. The fellow speaks Greek fairly well, for he was for some time in a Massilian counting-house, his mother being a Greek woman." We should tire our readers' patience long before we exhausted the portraits of sitters in the strangers' gallery in the Dionysiac theatre ; and it is only due to the Athenian portion of the audience to turn for a few moments to them.

Samuel Johnson could not conceive there could be "livers out of" London; or that a people ignorant of printing could be other than barbarous. Had he been as well acquainted with Greek as he was with some portions of Latin literature, he might have found cause for altering his opinion. The Athenians were not in general book-learned, but such knowledge as can be obtained by the eye and the ear they possessed abundantly; and the thirty thousand registered citizens, to say nothing of resident aliens, were better informed than an equal number of average Londoners are at the present time. In the rows of the theatre, as on the benches of the Pnyx,* might be seen men who, if judged by their apparel, would have been set down for paupers, if not street-Arabs; and yet these shabby folk were able to correct orators who mis

*The Pnyx was the place where the people of Athens assembled to hear political debates-in fact, their House of Parliament.

pronounced a word, singers when out of tune, and actors who tripped in their delivery of dialogue. Their moral sense, indeed, was not on a level with their taste and shrewd understandings: yet we shall have to record more than one instance of their calling Euripides to account for opinions which they deemed unwholesome, or for innovations which they regarded as needless departures from established custom. It may be doubted whether they were a very patient audience. They seem to have had little scruple in expressing their approbation or disapprobation, as well of the poet as the actor; and their mode of doing so was sometimes very rough, inasmuch as, besides hissing and hooting at them strenuously, they pelted bad or unpopular actors with stones.

The varied appearance of the spectators on the higher benches did not extend to the lower ones, which the citizens proper occupied. Fops and dandies there were in the wealthy classes, and especially among the immediate followers of Alcibiades, or those who aped their extravagances. But generally no democrat brooked in a brother democrat display or singularity. A house better than ordinary, or fine raiment, were considered marks of an oligarchic disposition; and the owner of such gauds, if he aspired to public office, was pretty sure to have them cast in his teeth at the hustings. But sobriety in raiment, in dwelling, or equipage, did not abate the vivacious spirit of the Ionians of the west. When offended or wearied by a play, they employed all the artillery of displeasure against the spectators as well as the per

formers. Sometimes an unpopular citizen attracted notice; and then the wit at his expense flowed fast and furious, as it occasionally does now from a Dublin gallery. Were there a hole in his coat, it was likely to be mentioned with "additional particulars : if he had ever gone through the bankruptcy court, it was not forgotten: swindling or perjury were joyfully commemorated: still more so any current rumours about poisoning a wife, a rich uncle, troublesome stepsons, wards, mothers-in-law, and other family incon

veniences.

Such were the audiences who sat in judgment on the great drama of the ancient world. It may be probably conjectured that Euripides found more favour with the resident aliens and the visitors from foreign parts than with the born citizens. To these, his somewhat arbitrary treatment of old legends-his familiar dealing with, or perhaps humanising of, the Hellenic deities, his softening of the terrors of destiny, his modification of the songs and functions of the Chorus, and other deviations from the ancient severity of dramatic art-would give little, if any, offence. For such spectators the dooms hanging over Argive or Theban royal houses would have but little interest. Their forefathers had taken no part in the quarrel between Eteocles and Polynices, cared little for the authority of the Areopagus, had local deities and myths of their own, among whom were not reckoned Pallas Athene, Apollo, or the Virgin Huntress. Το the foreigner, that triumphal song, the "Persians of Eschylus, and his "Prometheus," were perhaps