stage. This elevation was named the 'thymele', ([Greek (transliterated):
thumelae]) and served to recall the origin and original purpose of the
chorus, as an altar-song in honour of the presiding deity. Here, and on
these steps, the persons of the chorus sate collectively, when they were
not singing; attending to the dialogue as spectators, and acting as
(what in truth they were) the ideal representatives of the real
audience, and of the poet himself in his own character, assuming the
supposed impressions made by the drama, in order to direct and rule
them. But when the chorus itself formed part of the dialogue, then the
leader of the band, the foreman or 'coryphaeus', ascended, as some
think, the level summit of the 'thymele' in order to command the stage,
or, perhaps, the whole chorus advanced to the front of the orchestra,
and thus put themselves in ideal connection, as it were, with the
'dramatis personae' there acting. This 'thymele' was in the centre of the
whole edifice, all the measurements were calculated, and the semi-circle
of the amphitheatre was drawn, from this point. It had a double use, a
twofold purpose; it constantly reminded the spectators of the origin of
tragedy as a religious service, and declared itself as the ideal
representative of the audience by having its place exactly in the point,
to which all the radii from the different seats or benches converged. In
this double character, as constituent parts, and yet at the same time as
spectators, of the drama, the chorus could not but tend to enforce the
unity of place;--not on the score of any supposed improbability, which
the understanding or common sense might detect in a change of
place;--but because the senses themselves put it out of the power of any
imagination to conceive a place coming to, and going away from the
persons, instead of the persons changing their place. Yet there are
instances, in which, during the silence of the chorus, the poets have
hazarded this by a change in that part of the scenery which represented
the more distant objects to the eye of the spectator--a demonstrative