256 .ATHENS. 
The actors must have appeared like our modern 
mountebanks upon a waggon. But so little is 
known of the plan of an antient theatre, parti- 
cularly of the Proscenion, and the manner in 
which the Dramas were represented, that the 
most perfect remains which we have of such 
structures leave us still in the dark respecting 
the parts necessary to compose the entire build- 
ing. There is no traveller who has better com- 
pressed what antient and modern writers have 
said upon the subject, or in a more perspicuous 
manner, than Guilletiere; who piqued himself 
upon the value of his observations 1 , although 
no one since has ever noticed them. It is 
observed by him 8 , that among all the subjects 
of which antient authors have treated, that of 
the construction of their theatres is the most 
obscure, the most mutilated, and delivered with 
the most contradiction. Vitrumus, says he, 
conducts his readers only half way 3 : he gives 
neither the dimensions, nor the situation, nor 
the number of the principal parts ; believing 
them to be sufficiently well known, and never 
(1) " Je vous avoue franchement que c'est icy que je prctens bien 
vous faire valoir la peine cle ines voyages, et le fruit de mes observa- 
tions." Voyage tTdthenes, p. 306. a Paris, 1675. 
(2) Ibid. 
(3) ..." a moitie chemin." Ibid. 
