The curtain falls
The theater of Nicopolis
The theater of Nicopolis hosted the citizens during theatrical and musical competitions that formed part of the Actian Games. The spectators, among them women, children, and slaves, sat in the cavea (auditorium). They were able to see everything that happened in the orchestra, the semicircular level space in front of the two-storey scene. The actors performed in the proscenium, the elevated section between the orchestra and the facade of the scene. The theater also had an auleum, a curtain that disappeared in a gap behind the proscenium facade, only to be raised when the performance was over. When the Latin poet Horace says “aulea prementur” (the curtain falls), he means the exact opposite of what we do when we use this expression today.
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