Two out of five people attending the ancient world’s first indoor theatre had to crane their necks to get a glimpse of the stage. Richard Beacham’s team in the School of Theatre Studies at the University of Warwick designed a virtual reconstruction of the 2400-year-old Odeon of Pericles in Athens.
They found many in the 3000-strong audience would have been hard pushed to see round the 81 hefty pillars holding up the roof. The pillars were particularly chunky as they were made from the masts of Persian ships defeated in war. “It was a kind of trophy room,”…
