monument--one of the most graceful
relics of ancient Athens--still stands in the place where it was
erected, and recalls to posterity the victory of Lysicrates, achieved in
the same year as that of Alexander on the Granicus. The dramatic
exhibitions being a matter of religion and state, the entrance money
(_theoricum_), which had been introduced to prevent overcrowding, was
from the time of Pericles provided out of the public treasury. The whole
population had a right to its Bacchic holiday; neither women, nor boys,
nor slaves were excluded from theatrical spectacles at Athens.

Costume and scenery.

The religious character of dramatic performances at Athens, and the
circumstances under which they accordingly took place, likewise
determined their externals of costume and scenery. The actor's dress was
originally the festive Dionysian attire, of which it always retained the
gay and variegated hues. The use of the mask, surmounted, high over the
forehead, by an ample wig, was due to the actor's appearing in the open
air and at a distance from most of the spectators; the several species
of mask were elaborated with great care, and adapted to the different
types of theatrical character. The _cothurnus_, or thick-soled boot,
which further raised the height of the tragic actor (while the comedian
wore a thin-soled boot), was likewise a relic of Bacchic costume. The
scenery was, in the simplicity of its original conception, suited to
open-air performances; but in course of time the art of scene-painting
came to be highly cultivated, and movable scenes were contrived,
together with machinery of the ambitious kind required by the Attic
drama, whether for bringing gods down from heaven, or for raising
mortals aloft.

Actors.

On a stage and among surroundings thus conventional, it might seem as if
little scope could have been left for the actor's art. But, though the
demands made upon the Attic actor differed in kind even from those made
upon his Roman successor, and still more from those which the histrionic
art has to meet in modern times, they were not the less rigorous. Mask
and buskin might increase his stature, and the former might at once lend
the appropriate expression to his appearance and the necessary resonance
to his voice. But in declamation, dialogue and lyric passage, in
gesticulation and movement, he had to avoid the least violation of the
general harmony of the performance. Yet it is clear that the r