Art & MusicGreek → English
Skene
/ˈskiːni/noun
The building behind the acting area of an ancient Greek theatre, used for changes of costume and as a backdrop.
The Greek roots
σκηνή
skēnḗ
tent, hut
Literally: “tent”
Follow a root:σκηνή5 words
The story of the word
It began as an actual tent where the actors swapped masks out of sight, and only later became a stone building with doors that the plays could use. Painting its front to suggest a palace or a cave is where σκηνογραφία, scene painting, comes from, and the ancients treated it as the beginning of perspective. Latin took the word as scaena, so the tent behind the stage is also the ancestor of scene, scenery and scenario.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → English
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
scenesceneryscenographyproscenium
In a sentence
Agamemnon comes out through the central door of the skene.
Only the foundations of the skene survive at Epidaurus.