Lucian in his “_De saltatione_,” ridicules the tragic actor’s equipment. He says: “What a ridiculous thing it is, to see a fellow stalking around upon a pair of high heeled boots, with a terrible mask on, and a wide gaping mouth, as if he intended to swallow the audience,[49] not to mention the unseemly thickness of breast and body, all of which is done to hide the disproportion between his extravagant height, and his meagre body. Bawling aloud, and writhing his body in a thousand odd gestures;” and then he alludes to the better singing and acting of previous time, “but all sense of fitness is lost,” he concludes, “when Hercules enters singing a mournful ditty, without either lion’s skin or club.” With regard to the immovable mask, Ottfried Müller supposes that the picture is overdrawn, for facial expression had far less to do with the action of the drama of that day than we imagine; the character had not so many changing emotions to depict, as in modern plays; he says[50] “we can imagine an Orestes, or a Medea, with a set countenance, but never a Hamlet or Tasso.” We must also remember that the vast extent of the Athenian Theatre, made it next to impossible to distinguish much play of feature, and that the same masks were not worn throughout the play, but changed at any great change of emotion. Oedipus in the tragedy by Sophocles, after misfortunes came upon him, wore a different mask from the one worn in his days of prosperity. The first plays represented were relative to the history of the gods, and demi-gods, but Phrynicus made a bold innovation by representing contemporaneous events upon the stage. He once ventured to represent the conquest of Miletus, from the Athenians; the effect, according to Herodotus, was startling, the whole audience burst into tears, and the Athenian government forbade any further plays on that subject, prohibited the piece from ever being represented again, and fined the poet heavily. The contests between rival writers, by simultaneous production of their pieces was a fruitful source of jealousy. Æchylus upon being vanquished in one of these by Sophocles, took his defeat so much to heart, that he left Athens for some years, and took up his residence in Sicily. In the plays of Thespis and Phrynicus, one actor only was employed; Æchylus enriched his works by adding a second performer, called the _Deuteragonist_. Sophocles went beyond by adding the third, or _Tritagonist_, and desired even more, for in his Oedipus in Colonus, he found that four players were a necessity, and wrote the tragedy for that number, but dared not publicly make the innovation, and therefore this great work remained unperformed until after his death.