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Tavus, 'shining, from 'tava' in Sanscrit, as well as Scythian, 'to burn' or 'shine, is Divus, dies, Zeus, e??, Deva, and I know not how much more; and Taviti, the bright and burnt, fire, the place of fire, the hearth, the centre of the family, becomes the family itself, just as our word family, the Latin familia, is from thymele, the sacred centre of fire. The hearth comes to mean home.
This was the station of the chorus when it did not sing, but merely looked on as an interested spectator of the action. At such times the choragus, or leader of the chorus, took his station on the top of the thymele, to see what was passing on the stage, and to converse with the characters there present.
Tragedy and comedy were again reviving, though their patrons seem to have preferred recitation to acting; mimes still flourished, though they had taken the form of pantomime. We hear of celebrated actors of them in Juvenal, as Paris, Latinus, and Thymele. On the Similes of Virgil, Lucan, and Statius.
For though the choral song was common to the whole, yet when it took part in the dialogue, one usually spoke for all the rest; and hence we may account for the shifting from thou to ye in addressing them. The thymele was situated in the very centre of the building; all the measurements were made from it, and the semicircle of the amphitheatre was described round it as the centre.
Servius calls her a Mima, or one who danced in the Pantomimic dances, and which seems more probable, as she is mentioned by Cicero, who says the part of Andromache was played by a male performer on the very day Arbuscula also performed. The principal Roman Mimas were: Arbuscula, Thymele, Licilia, Dionysia, Cytheris, Valeria, and Cloppia.
The entrances of the chorus were beneath in the orchestra, in which it generally remained, and in which also it performed its solemn dance, moving backwards and forwards during the choral songs. In the front of the orchestra, opposite to the middle of the scene, there was an elevation with steps, resembling an altar, as high as the stage, which was called the Thymele.
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