Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/318

292 ON THE REPRESENTATION OF CERTAIN up into the two hemiclioria, in which they reappear in the second act, leave the orchestra by both parodi. The stage being cleared, the scenery is completely changed. And we have now an unfrequented spot partially covered with trees, which ren- ders the search for the body of Ajax more difficult. Tecmessa stumbles upon it (v. 891) immediately on her re-entrance, and it may be presumed therefore that Ajax falls before the centre door, probably behind a tree which masked that entrance. The other persons who enter in the second act, Teucer, Menelaus, Agamem- non, and Ulysses, come and return by the left-hand side-door. It is clear from v. 1115 that Menelaus is accompanied by at least one herald, and this functionary attends Agamemnon, whom he goes to fetch. This appears from vv. 1116 and 1319, and justifies Martin's conjectures of aov rovS^ ofMalfJiovo^i for rov crov 0" 6[xaiiJbovo<^, in V. 1312. With regard to the only change of the left-hand ^erz- actos, of which Sophocles furnishes an example, and which occurs in the (Edij^us Tyrannus, it is obvious that in the first part of the play the left-hand entrance must indicate the road to Delphi, and probably the left-hand periactos gave a distant view of Parnassus, to which the chorus alludes (vv. 463 sqq.). But as the messenger from Corinth enters by the same door on the left (v. 924), it is clear that the periactos must be turned, so as to exhibit a view of Cithjeron or some other indications of the road to the Isthmus. It has been already mentioned that, in the extant plays of Euripides, there is no instance of a complete change of scene, and it would almost seem as though he had wished to make up for that complication of incident, that succession of plots, to which reference has been made in a former chapter, by a more rigid adherence to the unity of place than his gxeat contemporaries had thought neces- sary. There are, how^ever, several examples of a change of the left-hand jperiactos^ which indicated the region from which the actor, coming from a distance, was supposed to enter the stage. For instance, in the Orestes, the left-hand j^eriactos must, in the first instance, represent generally the road to foreign parts by which Menelaus enters on his return from Troy (v. 356) ; but it must be turned so as to exhibit a view of part of the city, when Pylades enters (v. 729), for he says: Odacou 7J jx ixPW TrpojSatVwj' iK6fj.T]v 5t' acrreus. In the Andromache the left-hand periactos must have represented