As we stood in the theater practising our lines, we witnessed the slow destruction of the city. When the Molossians sided with Perseus, the last Antigonid king of Macedonia, against the Roman legions of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, they sealed their fate. Their loss at the battle of Pydna resulted in the enslavement of 150,000 Epirots, the removal of countless works of art, and the destruction of 70 towns. Whoever remained eventually moved to Nicopolis, so now the local shepherds take away stones from the theater and the city to build sheep sheds, while vine growers use them for artificial terraces. The giant boulders among the seats prove that even the mountain wishes to punish the theater.