Each trilogy was the work of one author. Other
trilogies were presented on succeeding days, so that the spectacle was
a competition between poets, the public determining the victor. The
most celebrated of these competitors were AEschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides. There were also contests in comedy, but there remain to us
only the works of one comic poet, Aristophanes.
THE ARTS
=Greek Temples.=--In Greece the most beautiful edifices were
constructed to the honor of the gods, and when we speak of Greek
architecture it is their temples that we have in mind.
A Greek temple is not, like a Christian church, designed to receive
the faithful who come thither to pray. It is the palace[86] where the
god lives, represented by his idol, a palace which men feel under
compulsion to make splendid. The mass of the faithful do not enter the
interior of the temple; they remain without, surrounding the altar in
the open air.
At the centre of the temple is the "chamber" of the god, a mysterious
sanctuary without windows, dimly lighted from above.[87] On the
pavement rises the idol of wood, of marble, or of ivory, clad in gold
and adorned with garments and jewels.
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