For Lefebvre, the most important dimension of ‘absolute space’ is the vertical. Although different cultures have different practices, it is normal that ‘horizontal space symbolizes submission, vertical space power, and subterranean space death’. This tripartite schema is of obvious application to classical Greece, where the Olympian gods were deemed to live on Olympus above and the dead in Hades below, a world also inhabited by ‘chthonic’ deities, more ancient and less anthropomorphic than Olympians. For the worship of the gods above, sacrifices were burnt on raised altars so that the fumes could pass upwards, but for the worship of chthonic gods and the reverencing of buried heroes, hollows were cut in, and libations were poured into, the earth. In tragedy the antithesis of light and dark is ever-present. To die is to leave the light for ever. In a performance lit by the light of the sun, a performance to which many would have travelled in darkness, such imagery has a meaning that cannot be replicated in a modern indoor theatre.

The idea that ‘horizontal space symbolizes submission’ is ill phrased in relation to democratic fifth-century society. Whilst the archaic city was centred upon the towering Acropolis, site of royal power, the democratic city was centred on the level plane of the Agora. Within democratic society, the relationship of centre and periphery was more important than vertical, hierarchical structuring. The Parthenon may be regarded as paradigmatic. At the highest points of the building, the rising lines of the pediments are overtly hierarchical: on the west, crouched Athenian heroes frame the giant figures of Athens' divine patrons, and in the east the birth of Athene is set amidst the sky.