Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/319

297 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREFXE. 297 garments* of purple or some other brilliant colour, with all sorts of gay trimmings and gold ornaments ; the ordinary dress at Bacchic festal processions and choral dances. f Nor was the Hercules of the stage represented as the sturdy athletic hero whose huge limbs were only concealed by a lion's hide; he appeared in the rich and gaudy dress we have described, to which his distinctive attributes, the club and the bow, were merely added. The choruses, also, which were furnished by wealthy citizens under the appellation of choregi, in the names of the tribes of Athens, vied with each other in the splendour of their dress and ornaments, as well as in the excellence of their singing and dancing. § 2. The chorus, which came from among the people at large, and which always bore a subordinate part in the action of the tragedy, was in no respect distinguished from the stature and appearance of ordinary men. 4 On the other hand, the actor who represented the god or hero, in whose fate the chorus was interested, needed to be raised, even to the outward sense, above the usual dimensions of mortals. A tragic actor was a very strange, and, according to the taste of the ancients themselves at a later period, a very monstrous being.§ His person was lengthened out considerably beyond the ordinary proportions of the human figure; in the first place by the very high soles of the tragic shoe, the cothurnus, and secondly by the length of the tragic mask, called onkos ; and the chest and body, arms and legs, were stuffed and padded to a corre- sponding size. It was impossible that the body should not lose much of its natural flexibility, and that many of those slighter movements which, though barely perceptible, are very significant to the attentive observer, should not be suppressed. It followed that tragic gesticulation (which was regarded by the ancients themselves as one of the most im- portant parts of the art) necessarily consisted of stiff, angular move- ments, in which little was left to the emotion or the inspiration of the moment. The Greeks, prone to vehement and lively gesticulation, had constructed a system of expressive gesture, founded on their tem- perament and manners. On the tragic stage this seemed raised to its highest pitch, corresponding always with the powerful emotions of the actors. Masks, also, which originated in the taste for mumming and dis- guises of all sorts, prevalent at the Bacchic festivals, had become an works of ancient ait, representing scenes of tragedies, especially the mosaic* in the Vatican, edited by Millin. See Description d'une Mosaique antique du Mus6ePio- f This is evident from the detailed accounts of Pollux IV. c. 18, as well as from wi Vi Clementin a Rome, reprfeentant des scenes de tragedies, par A. L. Millin, Paris, lsiy. The opposition of the chorus and the scenic actors is generally that of the Homeric a.o) and cIvukt-.;. § 'ii; ijSt£#i v.at fofiiQM 0'tafice, is the remark of Lucian de Saltat. c. 27. upon a tiagic actor.
 * 'i/j,u.tiu and x,"ha.[/.vbi;.