<!doctype html public «-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en»> http-equiv=content-type> Past scholarship described the fourth century BC as an age of theatrical decline. This book, the first to explore all aspects of fourth-century theatre, reveals it to be an epoch of unparalleled expansion and innovation. 19 leading scholars evaluate the evidence for fourth-century drama to become the pre-eminent cultural institution of the ancient world.