Originally, and in the time of L. Andronicus, the actors on the Roman stage used only caps or beavers(631), and their faces were daubed and disguised with the lees of wine, as at the commencement of the dramatic art in Greece. The increased size, however, of the theatres, and consequent distance of the spectators from the stage, at length compelled the Roman players to borrow from art the expression of those passions which could no longer be distinguished on the living countenance of the actor. Most of the Roman masks covered not merely the face, but the greater part of the head(632), so that the beard and hair were delineated, as well as the features. This indeed is implied in one of the fables of Phædrus, where a fox, after having examined a tragic mask, which he found lying in his way, exclaims, “What a vast shape without brains(633)!”—An observation obviously absurd, if applied to a mere vizard for the face, which was not made, and could not have been expected, to contain any brains. Addison, in his _Travels in Italy_, mentions, that, in that country, he had seen statues of actors, with the _larva_ or mask. One of these was not merely a vizard for the face; it had false hair, and came over the whole head like an helmet. He also mentions, however, that he has seen figures of Thalia, sometimes with an entire head-piece in her hand, and a friz running round the edges of the face; but at others, with a mask merely for the countenance, like the modern vizards of a masquerade.