PĔRISCĔLIS (περισκελίς), an anklet or bangle, worn by the Orientals, the Greeks, and the Roman ladies also. It decorated the leg in the same manner as the bracelet adorns the wrist and the necklace the throat. The word, however, is sometimes used in the same sense as the Latin feminalia, that is, drawers reaching from the navel to the knees.
Periscelis, Anklet, worn by a Nereid. (Museo Borbonico, vol. VI. tav. 34.)
PĔRISTRŌMA, a coverlet large enough to hang round the sides of the bed or couch.
PĔRISTȲLĬUM. [[Domus].]
PĒRO (ἀρβύλη), a low boot of untanned hide worn by ploughmen (peronatus arator), shepherds, and others employed in rural occupations. The term ἀρβύλη is applied to an appendage to the Greek chariot. It seems to have been a shoe fastened to the bottom of the chariot, into which the driver inserted his foot, to assist him in driving, and to prevent him from being thrown out.
Masks. (From a Tomb at Sidyma in Lycia.)
PERSŌNA (larva, πρόσωπον or προσωπεῖον), a mask. Masks were worn by Greek and Roman actors in nearly all dramatic representations. This custom arose undoubtedly from the practice of smearing the face with certain juices and colours, and of appearing in disguise, at the festivals of Dionysus. [[Dionysia].] Now, as the Greek drama arose out of these festivals, it is highly probable that some mode of disguising the face was as old as the drama itself. Choerilus of Samos, however, (about B.C. 500) is said to have been the first who introduced regular masks. Other writers attribute the invention of masks to Thespis or Aeschylus, though the latter had probably only the merit of perfecting and completing the whole theatrical apparatus and costume. Some masks covered, like the masks of modern times, only the face, but they appear more generally to have covered the whole head down to the shoulders, for we always find the hair belonging to a mask described as being a part of it; and this must have been the case in tragedy more especially, as it was necessary to make the head correspond to the stature of an actor, which was heightened by the cothurnus.
