IF THE INVENTION AND development of Athenian democracy required a reconstruction of the self-representation of the city and citizens of Athens, a reconstruction that inevitably involved words and images, perhaps no site of the polis focuses this concern more sharply than the theatron, the place for viewing where logoi were on display. Indeed, to work through all the interrelations of what the editors of this volume have termed ‘image(ry) and the stage’ could lead in very many different and potentially fascinating directions.

‘The stage’, to begin with, is not a self-evident term. At one level, of course, it implies the skênê of the fifth- and fourth-century tragic, comic and satyric drama, and that I take to be its primary reference here – a place not to put your daughter on. But when an English word is used for a Greek institution, it is always worth asking what is being included and what is being excluded by such a translation. First, we should note the physical versus the institutional sense of the term (though the overlap is perhaps the most important here). So one relevant subject in this discussion could be the construction of stage sets, the invention of the skênê and skênographia, the development of the ekkuklêma and crane, the presence or absence of rocks in the orchestra. The physical conditions of the skênê and its accoutrements construct a frame for tragedy, and inform a repertoire of images and imagery. Indeed, we could move beyond a rather narrow archaeological or historical account of the physical properties of the theatre to see how such elements affect and are affected by the wordy arts of drama and by the projects of contemporary optical science, say. So, on the one hand, the impact of theatrical space on the conceptualisations of drama could be explored within the political écarts of democracy. On the other hand, tragedy's treatment of such a physical arena could be investigated – from the famous fragment of Aeschylus’ satyr-play Theoroi, where satyrs see images of themselves on a temple and comically reflect on the topoi of verisimilitude and mimêsis, to Euripides’ Ion, where a chorus of female tourists are depicted viewing the temple doors at Delphi (Zeitlin 1994; 1996b). The changes in theatrical practice and theory could be mapped on to the rapidly developing sophistic work on vision and art.