| Fig. 161. | Fig. 162. |
the tragic cothurnus was especially distinguished by very high cork soles, which considerably increased the height of the wearer. As may here be seen, the foot with the actual cothurnus is hidden under the dress, only the high soles are visible beneath it. When the height of the actor was thus increased by the superficies and cothurnus, it was necessary to give a larger appearance to the rest of the figure; for this purpose they stuffed themselves out with cushions, and wore gloves with long fingers, which seem to have been fastened to the sleeves, etc. The whole produced an effect that would hardly have suited our taste, but in reality was not nearly so strange as the costume of the heroes of Corneille and Racine, to whose court dress and long wigs the seventeenth century seems to have taken no exception. Of course, there were various necessary additions to this costume: arms for the warriors, a sceptre for the kings, a lion’s skin and club for Hercules, and a fawn skin for Artemis, etc. In comedy the women probably appeared in the costume of ordinary life. For the male characters, except the fantastic parts, the short chiton seems to have been commonest, especially for persons of the lower classes; and the slaves, who were never absent from the newer comedy, wore the “exomis,” the common workman’s dress. The skin garments of the country people were also worn, and knapsacks and knotty sticks completed their equipment. In later comedy special characters were marked out by the colour of the dresses: thus, the parasites wore black or green dresses; others, again, coloured dresses with cloaks; slaves, the white exomis; youths, the white chiton with purple border; cooks, unfulled garments, etc. Similarly the feminine characters were marked out; there was the old woman, the daughters of citizens, the rich heiresses, hetaerae, etc. In the comedy of Southern Italy, the costume of which is represented on many vase paintings, the actors of male parts usually wear a closely-fitting dress,
Fig. 163.
T. II PL XCIV.
covering the legs as far as the ankles, and the arms down to the hand, and over this a tight-fitting tunic, leaving arms and legs free (compare Fig. [163]). Here it is evident that the lower garment takes the place of our tricot; the arms and legs are supposed to be bare. If the object was to represent absolute nudity, the tunic was replaced by a close-fitting vest, usually provided with a false stuffing, on which the breasts and navel were marked. To this was sometimes added the comic phallus, a remnant of the old coarse popular jokes, in which the Older Comedy frequently indulged. But in the New Comedy it fell gradually into disuse, and was entirely absent from the representations of ordinary life, though introduced into farces which burlesqued the myths and tales of the heroes.
We give here several examples of pictures from ancient comedy. In Fig. [163], the meaning of which is not clear, the stage has on its left side a scaffolding covered in with a roof, to which a staircase leads; on the floor of this erection lie a bundle of beds or carpets, a cap, and a litter. Chiron, whose name appears on the plate, is climbing up the staircase with difficulty, and bending down leaning on his rough knotty stick; a slave is pushing him up from behind, while Xanthias, standing on the top of the stairs, seizes hold of his head as though to draw him up. In the background we see two not specially attractive nymphs, of whom only the upper part is visible; these again are designated in the inscription; the youth on the right, in the himation, and without a mask, is not one of the actors. Possibly this is a representation of the sick Chiron seeking healing at a sanctuary of the nymphs. The costume and the tricots, as well as the grotesque masks, are worthy of notice. The vase painting in Fig. [164] has not been satisfactorily