|
The graceful and balanced cavea of the theatre at Epidauros rises up from a perfectly round, stone, central orchestra. Its theatron is slightly larger than the 180 degrees of a conventional half circle and is thus slightly flared, giving a shell-like structure with a diameter of 120 metres at its widest point. There is a 24 metre drop from the topmost tier of seating (in the upper cavea) down to ground level.
The theatron is divided into two seating sections (the upper and lower cavea) by a walkway that forms what is known as a diazoma. In the lower part of the theatron (or seeing place), the hemicycle of stone seating is divided into twelve smaller cunei (or wedge-like sections), each one consisting of some thirty rows; while in the upper section, there are twenty cunei, each with some twenty tiers of seats.
The tight organisation and strictly geometric architectural design behind the structure of Epidaurus seems, at first, to be governed by purely arithmetical laws such as the Golden Section or Fibonacci Sequence and the evidence of such principles apparently demonstrates the subtle understanding of structural aesthetics that the architect Polycleitus the Younger evidently had.
On closer inspection however, some small (yet clearly deliberate) symmetrical variations become apparent in the width of the theatre's cunei - together with slight disparities in the curvature of its arcs, showing that they gradually (almost imperceptibly) open outwards towards the extreme edges of the cavea.
These irregularities are possibly due to a deliberately rhythmical pursuit (akin to the structural variations that are now referred to as 'optical corrections'), but whatever the motivation behind these irregularities, such small mathematical anomalies, far from destroying the symmetry of the structure, actually make it more appealing to the naked eye because they render the entire theatre more 'human' and less 'geometric' or 'mathematical'.
Consequently, what comes through in looking at the structure of the theatre as a whole is a general impression of complete harmonious perfection - quite some feat in what is a colossal, yet serene and well-proportioned auditorium.
Modern visitors can thus still observe the manner in which Vitruvius' structural accounts of classical proportion (and even his formulae for the composition of ancient monuments) are well adhered to in the cavea at Epidaurus. Using this theatre as a model it is even possible for the student of ancient architecture to get a good idea of the principal rules and regulations governing the construction of all classical auditoria.
On the contrary however, between the tiers that were designated for the seating of the general public in the auditorium (the cavea), and the stage-structure itself (the proscenium) there is a none-too-pleasing solution to the problem of structural continuity and this is a feature that is, unfortunately, common to all ancient Greek theatres.
A link between the circular and concentric elements of the theatre (the orchestra and the cavea) on the one hand, and the rectangular stage buildings (the skene) on the other, can only be made by crossing the passages that lead to either side of the orchestra and form the parados.
This is not a very integrated design, since it is a model that fundamentally depends upon crossing a 'no man’s land' between the stage buildings and the orchestra. Moreover such a configuration gives particularly poor sightlines of the stage from the extreme edges of the upper cavea, and it can therefore have no plausible architectural motivation.
This particular problem of ancient theatre design was not adequately solved until the early Roman period.
|
