We may rather believe that before the usual route was closed the processions themselves had been given up. They were still in vogue, however, when the Small Theatre was built; otherwise the purpose of the wide entrances at the ends of the stage and of the room back of it is not clear. Moreover the sidewalk in front of the Small Theatre, on Stabian Street, is of an altogether unusual width, and was apparently covered by a portico. We infer that the procession to this theatre entered at the west end of the stage, and passed out at the east end; since it could not disperse on the street, it would turn where the sidewalk was broadest, go back through the room at the rear of the stage into the court, and there disband.
The discontinuance of the processions must then be assigned to the period between the building of the Small Theatre and the changing over of the Theatre Colonnade into barracks, which, to judge from the masonry and the remains of the decoration, did not take place before the time of Nero. The processions were abandoned either in the troubled period of the Civil Wars, or in the early years of the Empire; if in the latter period, their discontinuance may have been due to legislation connected with the reorganization of the Empire under Augustus, or to the overshadowing of them by more imposing ceremonies introduced in connection with the religious festivals.
Our information in regard to the later use of the Theatre Colonnade is indeed meagre; not a single inscription bearing upon it has been found. Yet when we take into account the changes that were made in it, and the objects found there, the supposition that it was turned into barracks for gladiators in the time of the Early Empire, and so used till the destruction of the city, is seen to harmonize with almost all the facts.
First, rooms were built on all sides behind the colonnade; on the north side they took the place of the south arm of the colonnade in the area back of the stage. They were in two series, one above the other; the upper rooms were entered from a low wooden gallery accessible by three stairways. They could not have been intended for shops; they were too small, measuring on the average hardly more than twelve feet square, and the doors were too narrow. There were no doors opening from one room into the other. Both lower and upper rooms, we may conclude, were used for men's quarters.