Art & MusicGreek → English
Ekkyklema
/ˌɛkɪˈkliːmə/noun
A wheeled platform used in Greek theatre to roll an interior scene out through the stage doors.
The Greek roots
ἐκ
ek
out of
κύκλος
kýklos
wheel, circle
Literally: “the thing wheeled out”
The story of the word
Greek convention kept killing offstage, which left a practical problem, because the audience still had to see the result. The ekkyklema solved it: a low platform rolled out through the doors of the skene carrying the tableau of what had happened inside, usually a body and whoever was standing over it. Aristophanes gets a joke out of the machine in the Acharnians, wheeling Euripides into view mid-sentence and refusing to let him go back in.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
cycleencyclopediacyclonebicycle
In a sentence
The staging replaces the ekkyklema with a slow lighting change.
Clytemnestra appears on the ekkyklema with the bodies at her feet.