My violets, roses, where are they?
My parsley, roses, violets fair,
are my flowers? Tell me where.
The Athenians, however, seem to have imagined that there was nothing in nature which might not be imitated in the dance, by the turns and mazes of which they accordingly sought to represent the movements of the stars.[[1010]] A similar fancy, if Lucian may be credited, possessed the Indian Yoghis, who every morning and evening before their doors saluted the sun, at his rising and setting, with a dance resembling his own,[[1011]] which, as that luminary no otherwise dances than by turning on its axis, must have been a performance resembling that of the whirling derwishes, whose broad symbolical petticoats are meant, I presume, to represent the disk of the sun. But the dance most difficult of comprehension is that upon which they bestowed the name of κόσμου εκπύρωσις,[[1012]] or the “Conflagration of the World.” Of the figure and character of this performance antiquity, I believe, has left us no account, though it probably represented, by a train of allegorical personages and movements, the principal events which, according to the Stoics, are to precede the delivering up of the Universe to fire.[[1013]] Scaliger,[[1014]] who does not attempt to explain this strange exhibition, observes, however, pertinently, that it was a dance in which Nero might have figured, his burning of Rome deserving in some sort to be regarded as a rehearsal of this piece.
There existed among the Spartans[[1015]] an elegant dance denominated Hormos, or the Necklace, performed by a chorus of youths and virgins who moved through the requisite evolutions in a row. The line was headed by a young man who executed his part in the firm and vigorous steps proper to his age, and which he would afterwards be expected to preserve in the field of battle. A maiden immediately followed, but, instead of imitating his masculine manner, confined herself to the modest graceful paces and gestures of her sex, and this alternation and interweaving, as it were, of force and beauty, suggesting the idea of a necklace composed of many coloured gems, gave rise to the appellation.
The dance of the Crane,[[1016]] among the Athenians, in some respects resembled the above. It was, according to tradition, first invented by Theseus, who landing at Delos on his return from Crete, offered sacrifice to Apollo and dedicated the statue of Aphrodite which he had received from Ariadne, after which he joined the young men and women whom he had delivered, in performing a joyous dance[[1017]] about the altar of Horns erected by Apollo, from the spoils of his sister’s bow. The Choreutæ, engaged in executing the Geranos, or Crane, formed themselves into one long line with a leader in van and rear, and then, guided by the design on the floor of the orchestra, described by their movements the various mazes and involutions of the Cretan labyrinth, until, having traversed all its intricate passages, they emerged at once, like their great countryman and his companions, into light and safety. Other dances there were, which, however curious they may have been, cannot now be described from the scanty materials left us: such were the dance of Heralds, or Messengers, the dance of the Lily,[[1018]] the Chitonea, the Pinakides, the dance of the Graces,[[1019]] and that of the Hours, in which the performers floated about with a circle of light drapery held over the head by both hands.[[1020]]
If from the dances we now pass to the Choreutæ,[[1021]] by whom they were performed, we shall find that they generally made their appearance in the orchestra with golden crowns upon their heads, and habited in gorgeous raiment, frequently interwoven or embroidered with gold.[[1022]] The Chorus, however, like the actors, must have constantly varied its costume, to suit the exigencies of the drama; sometimes to perform the part of senators, sometimes of Nereids, sometimes of female suppliants, sometimes of urn-bearers, sometimes of clouds, or wasps, or birds. When in the tragedy of Æschylus they were required to personate the Furies, their exterior was the most frightful that can well be imagined,—their long but scanty robes consisting, as has been conjectured, of black lamb-skins, slit up below and exposing their tawny withered limbs to sight, while their blood-stained eyes, livid tongue hanging out, and hair like a mass of knotted serpents, easily accredited the belief of their being infernal existences. Thus habited, with fingers terminating in black claws,[[1023]] and grasping a burning torch, they burst upon the view of the spectators, like so many hideous phantoms conjured up by an imagination diseased with terror.
The costume of the actors,[[1024]] which some modern writers suppose to have been extremely monotonous,[[1025]] was in reality, however, as rich, varied, and characteristic as the masks of which we shall presently have to speak. Gods, heroes, kings, chiefs, soothsayers, heralds, rustics, the hetairæ, and their mothers; gay youths, flatterers, libertines, procurers, cooks, satyrs, slaves, &c., had each and all their appropriate dresses and ornaments, modified, no doubt, from time to time by the change in public taste, and the fancy of the poets. The divinities had almost to be wholly framed by the Dionysiac artificers. Conceived to be of superhuman stature, it was necessary that the actors who represented them should, in the first place, be lifted up on Cothurni,[[1026]] or half-boots, the soles of which were many inches high,[[1027]] their limbs and bodies were enlarged by padding, their arms lengthened by gloves, while their countenances, which might be ignoble or even ugly, were concealed by masks of exquisite ideal beauty, rising above the stately forehead in a mass of curls, which at once corresponded with the nobleness of their features and augmented their colossal height: add to all this robes of purple, or scarlet, or azure, or saffron, or cloth of gold, floating about the person in graceful folds, and training along the floor, and we have some faint idea of the celestial personages who with gemmed sceptres and glittering crowns made their appearance on the Grecian stage.
The queens and heroes,[[1028]] who were constantly beheld grouped in converse, or in action, with these sublime dwellers of Olympos, were clad in a costume scarcely less majestic; the former, for example, in times of prosperity, issued forth from their palaces in white garments, with loose sleeves reaching to the elbow, and closed on the upper part of the arm by a succession of jewelled agraffes,[[1029]] their tresses confined in front by a golden sphendone, or fillet, crusted with gems, while their robes terminated below in long sweeping trains of purple.[[1030]] But when their houses were visited by misfortune, the milk-white pelisse was exchanged for one quince-coloured or blue, while the purple train was converted into black. The costume of the kings,[[1031]] likewise varied by circumstances, consisted usually of an ample robe of purple, or scarlet, or dark green, descending to the feet, a rich cloak of cloth of gold, or of some delicate colour, adorned with gold embroidery, and a lofty mitre on the head.[[1032]] When any of these characters, as Tydeus or Meleager, was engaged in hunting or war, he wore the scarlet or purple mantle called Ephaptis,[[1033]] which in action was wrapped about the left arm. Athenæus, in describing the horsemen of Antiochos, observes, that these Ephaptides[[1034]] were embroidered with gold and adorned with the figures of animals. Bacchanals and soothsayers, like Teiresias, generally appeared upon the stage in an extraordinary garment, denominated Agrenon,[[1035]] formed of a reticular fabric of wool of various colours. Dionysos himself,[[1036]] in whose honour the theatre with all its shows was created, descended from Olympos in a saffron-coloured robe compressed below the bosom by a broad flowered belt, and bearing a thyrsus in his hand.[[1037]] This girdle, in the case of other gods, or heroes, was sometimes replaced by one of gold.[[1038]] Persons overtaken by calamity, especially exiles, wore garments dirty-white, or sad-coloured, or black, or quince-coloured, or bluish. The costume of Philoctetes, Telephos, Œneus, Phœnix, Bellerophontes, was ragged. The Seileni appeared in a shaggy Chiton, and the other personages of the Satyric drama in the skins of fawns, or goats, or sheep, or pards, and, sometimes, in the Theraion or Dionysiac garment, and a flowered cloak and a scarlet Himation. Old men were distinguished by the Exomis,[[1039]] a white Chiton of mean appearance, having no seam or arm-hole on the left side—young men by the Campulè,[[1040]] a scarlet or deep purple Himation,—the parasites by bearing the Stlengis and flask (as country people by the Lagobalon) and by black or sad-coloured robes, except in the play of the Sicyonians, where a person of this class, being about to be married, sported a white garment,—the cook by an Himation double and unfulled,—priestesses by white robes,—comic old women by such as were quince-coloured or dusky, like a cloudy morning sky in autumn,—the mothers of the hetairæ wore a purple fillet about the head,—the dresses of young women were white and delicate,—of heiresses the same with fringes. Pornoboski wore garments of various colours, with flowered cloaks, and carried a straight wand, called ἀρéσκος.[[1041]] There were, likewise, female characters which wore the Parapechu and the Symmetria, a chiton reaching to the feet, with a border of marine purple.
We now come to the masks,[[1042]] a subject upon which much has been written, though very little has been explained. The primary difficulty connected with them is, to determine whether they were so constructed as to resemble a speaking-trumpet,[[1043]] which, by narrowing the stream, and compressing, as it were, the particles of the voice, cast it forth condensed and corroborated upon the theatre,[[1044]] which it was thus enabled to penetrate and fill, even to its utmost extremities. My own opinion, after bestowing much attention upon the subject, is, that the mask was in reality so constructed as to communicate additional force and intensity to the voice; but whether by roofing or encircling the artificial mouth by metallic plates, or thin laminæ of the stone called Chalcophonos,[[1045]] it is now scarcely possible to determine. Be this, however, as it may, there existed in some theatres other contrivances for conveying and augmenting the volume of the actor’s voice; these were the Echeia,[[1046]] vases generally of metal, finely toned, and arranged according to the musical scale, in a succession of domed cells,[[1047]] running in diverging lines up the hollow face of the theatre. They rested with one edge upon a smooth and polished pavement, the mouth outward, and the external edge reposing on the summit of a small, blunt obelisk,[[1048]] while a low opening in each cell enabled the resonances, or echoes, thus created, to issue forth, and fill the air with sound,[[1049]] which, however the fact may be accounted for, produced no isolated reverberations, no confusion.