3-011-520 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Seat found in the Dionysiac Theatre, Athens, 1862. Engraving from a sketch by Mr. A. Bingham Wright, of one of two seats, '...which appear by the inscriptions on them to have belonged, one to the High Priest and the other to the General...Some Prussian men of science, having been excavating there, came upon the tier of seats next the arena, which remain in such perfect order as to lead to the belief that the mass of earth, fragments of marble, and rubbish by which the theatre was covered must have been deposited...during a siege, or perhaps by an earthquake...Respecting the excavations of Professor Strack...they have been carried on in what is to us in modern days even holier ground than the Temple of Minerva - the spot where the dramas of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were represented is the holiest temple of mere human intelligence on our earth. Yet antiquaries and archaeologists had hitherto neglected this sacred spot, and it was reserved to Professor Strack to discover the plan of the theatre of Athens. He has proved that all previous plans were erroneous, and that all our ideas of classic symmetry in architecture are delusions caused by the quadrangular nature of our own faculties'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.