The Bacchic festal costume, which the actors wore, consisted of long striped garments reaching to the ground, over which were thrown upper garments of some brilliant color, with gay trimmings and gold ornaments. The choruses also vied with each other in the splendor of their dress, as well as in the excellence of their singing and dancing. The chorus, which always bore a subordinate part in the action of the tragedy, was in no respect distinguished from the stature and appearance of ordinary men, while the actor, who represented the god or hero, required to be raised above the usual dimensions of mortals. A tragic actor was a strange, and, according to the taste of the ancients themselves at a later period, a very monstrous being. His person was lengthened out considerably beyond the proportions of the human figure by the very high soles of the tragic shoe, and by the length of the tragic mask, and the chest, body, legs, and arms were stuffed and padded to a corresponding size; the body thus lost much of its natural flexibility, and the gesticulation consisted of stiff, angular movements, in which little was left to the emotion or the inspiration of the moment. Masks, which had originated in the taste for mumming and disguises of all sorts, prevalent at the Bacchic festivals, were an indispensable accompaniment to tragedy. They not only concealed the individual features of well-known actors, and enabled the spectators entirely to forget the performer in his part, but gave to his whole aspect that ideal character which the tragedy of antiquity demanded. The tragic mask was not intentionally ugly and caricatured like the comic, but the half-open mouth, the large eye-sockets, and sharply-defined features, in which every characteristic was presented in its utmost strength, and the bright and hard coloring were calculated to make the impression of a being agitated by the emotions and passions of human nature in a degree far above the standard of common life. The masks could, however, be changed between the acts, so as to represent the necessary changes in the state or emotions of the persons. The ancient theatres were stone buildings of enormous size, calculated to accommodate the whole free and adult population of a great city at the spectacles and festal games. These theatres were not designed exclusively for dramatic poetry; choral dances, processions, revels, and all sorts of representations were held in them. We find theatres in every part of Greece, though dramatic poetry was the peculiar growth of Athens.