in front to a level with
the colonnade which crowned and surrounded the auditorium, made at once
the outer facade and the rear wall of the stage.[5] The dominant
characteristic of the building--a great parallelogram jutting out from
the hill-side into the very heart of the town--is its powerful mass. The
enormous facade, built of great blocks of stone, is severely simple: a
stony height--the present bareness of which formerly was a little
relieved by the vast wooden portico that extended along the entire
front--based upon a cornice surmounting open Tuscan arches and broken
only by a few strong lines. The essential principle of the whole is
stability. It is the Roman style with all its good qualities
exaggerated. Elegance is replaced by a heavy grandeur; purity by
strength.

The auditorium as originally constructed--save for the graceful
colonnade which surmounted its enclosing wall, and for the ornamentation
which certainly was bestowed upon the rear wall of the stage and
probably upon the facing-wall of the first tier of seats--was as severe
as the facade: simply bare tiers of stone benches, divided into three
distinct stages, rising steplike one above another in a great
semi-circle. But when the theatre was filled with an eager multitude its
bareness disappeared; and its brilliant lowest division--where sat the
nobles clad in purple-bordered white robes: a long sweep of white dashed
with strong colour--fitly brought the auditorium into harmony with the
splendour of the permanent setting of the stage.

It was there, on the wall rising at the back of the stage and on the
walls rising at its sides, that decoration mainly was bestowed; and
there it was bestowed lavishly. Following the Grecian tradition (though
in the Grecian theatre the sides of the stage were open gratings) that
permanent set represented very magnificently--being, indeed, a
reality--a royal palace, or, on occasion, a temple: a facade broken by
richly carved marble cornices supported by marble columns and pilasters;
its flat surfaces covered with brilliantly coloured mosaics, and having
above its five portals[6] arched alcoves in which were statues: that
over the royal portal, the _aula regia_, being a great statue of the
Emperor or of a god.

Extending across the whole front of this wall, entirely filling the
space between the wings, was the stage. Ninety feet above it, also
filling the space between the wings, was a wooden roof (long since
destroyed