The theatre of the ancients is, like their dramas, huge, pontifical, epic.  It is capable of holding thirty thousand spectators; the plays are given in the open air, in bright sunlight; the performances last all day.  The actors disguise their voices, wear masks, increase their stature; they make themselves gigantic, like their roles.  The stage is immense.  It may represent at the same moment both the interior and the exterior of a temple, a palace, a camp, a city.  Upon it, vast spectacles are displayed.  There is—­we cite only from memory—­Prometheus on his mountain; there is Antigone, at the top of a tower, seeking her brother Polynices in the hostile army (The Phoenicians); there is Evadne hurling herself from a cliff into the flames where the body of Capaneus is burning (The Suppliants of Euripides); there is a ship sailing into port and landing fifty princesses with their retinues (The Suppliants of AEschylus).  Architecture, poetry, everything assumes a monumental character.  In all antiquity there is nothing more solemn, more majestic.  Its history and its religion are mingled on its stage.  Its first actors are priests; its scenic performances are religious ceremonies, national festivals.

One last observation, which completes our demonstration of the epic character of this epoch:  in the subjects which it treats, no less than in the forms it adopts, tragedy simply re-echoes the epic.  All the ancient tragic authors derive their plots from Homer.  The same fabulous exploits, the same catastrophes, the same heroes.  One and all drink from the Homeric stream.  The Iliad and Odyssey are always in evidence.  Like Achilles dragging Hector at his chariot-wheel, the Greek tragedy circles about Troy.

But the age of the epic draws near its end.  Like the society that it represents, this form of poetry wears itself out revolving upon itself.  Rome reproduces Greece, Virgil copies Homer, and, as if to make a becoming end, epic poetry expires in the last parturition.

It was time.  Another era is about to begin, for the world and for poetry.

A spiritual religion, supplanting the material and external paganism, makes its way to the heart of the ancient society, kills it, and deposits, in that corpse of a decrepit civilization, the germ of modern civilization.  This religion as complete, because it is true; between its dogma and its cult, it embraces a deep-rooted moral.  Arid first of all, as a fundamental truth, it teaches man that he has two lives to live, one ephemeral, the other immortal; one on earth, the other in heaven.  It shows him that he, like his destiny, is twofold:  that there is in him an animal and an intellect, a body and a soul; in a word, that he is the point of intersection, the common link of the two chains of beings which embrace all creation—­of the chain of material beings and the chain of incorporeal beings; the first starting from the rock to arrive at man, the second starting from man to end at God.