we could easily find it on
the electoral programmes by collecting the names usually affixed
thereon. But Holconius is the one most conspicuous of them all; so, hats
off to Holconius!

I return to the theatre. Two large side windows illuminated the stage,
which, being covered, had need of light. The back scene was not carved,
but painted and pierced for five doors instead of three; those at the
ends, which were masked by movable side scenes served, perhaps, as
entrances to the lobbies of the priestesses.

Would you like to go behind the scenes? Passing by the barracks of the
gladiators, we enter an apartment adorned with columns, which was, very
likely, the common hall and dressing-room of the actors. A celebrated
mosaic in the house of the poet (or jeweller), shows us a scenic
representation: in it we observe the _choragus_, surrounded by masks and
other accessories (the choragus was the manager and director); he is
making two actors, got up as satyrs, rehearse their parts; behind them,
another comedian, assisted by a costumer of some kind, is trying to put
on a yellow garment which is too small for him. Thus we can re-people
the antechamber of the stage. We see already those comic masks that were
the principal resource in the wardrobe of the ancient players. Some of
them were typical; for instance, that of the young virgin, with her hair
parted on her forehead and carefully combed; that of the slave-driver
(or _hegemonus_), recognized by his raised eyelids, his wrinkled brows
and his twists of hair done up in a wig; that of the wizard, with
immense eyes starting from their sockets, seamed skin covered with
pimples, with enormous ears, and short hair frizzed in snaky ringlets;
that of the bearded, furious, staring, and sinister old man; and above
all, those of the Atellan low comedians, who, born in Campania, dwell
there still, and must assuredly have amused the little city through
which we are passing. Atella, the country of Maccus was only some seven
or eight leagues distant from Pompeii, and numerous interests and
business connections united the inhabitants of the two places. I have
frequently stated that the Oscan language, in which the Atellan farces
were written, had once been the only tongue, and had continued to be the
popular dialect of the Pompeians. The Latin gradually intermingled with
these pieces, and the confusion of the two idioms was an exhaustless
source of witticisms, puns, and bulls of all kinds, t