As we have said, the early Roman dramatists did not use masks and in fact employed the most simple make-up in quickly adjusted garments and wigs. With the extensive doubling and trebling of rôles there must have been an uncomfortable amount of recognizing of the actors. The late scholiasts like Donatus, who discuss these matters, wrote when masks were again unusual but when actors were more plentiful. They are therefore somewhat obscure about the earlier custom. Their guess that Roscius introduced the mask[17] to hide an ineffectual countenance may be true, but it is very likely that the Greek masks were introduced on the Roman stage—this happened about the Gracchan time—in order to facilitate the doubling of rôles and to remove the confusion that arose from the easy recognition of the actors. By that time Rome was so large and the theater crowd so extensive that the play of features would at any rate be missed by a large part of the audience, and the well-marked masks served the useful purpose of distinguishing the characters at a distance. Opera glasses have now removed that necessity. There seems to be some misunderstanding about the social status of the Roman actors because our sources of information are late and do not always distinguish between the various periods. The facts now available seem to warrant the statement that slaves were not employed as actors during the first hundred years of the drama when most of the great comedies were written and produced. At that time the authors usually acted themselves, and authors and actors were united in a common guild, honored by the state in the Alexandrian manner by being assigned an official meeting place at Minerva’s temple. Livius and Terence were freedmen, to be sure, but out of respect for their art both were highly honored by the foremost men of the senate. The day when slaves had stigmatized the professions by their participation was still far off. Even in Sulla’s time the great rôles of legitimate comedy and tragedy were assumed by distinguished men like Roscius and Aesopus,[18] men whom Cicero was pleased to number among his friends. Actors gradually lost their position in society only by the deterioration of the drama—of which we shall speak later. It was apparently when the standard plays had to give way to farces and mimes that slaves had to be trained to take rôles which self-respecting citizens refused to play. Then the social brand was marked on the few who demeaned themselves by playing with the slaves. And thus in the late Republic we hear not a little of the cheapness of the actor’s profession. However, that stigma did not even then apply to the great actors who confined themselves to the parts of the good old plays. The exact story of the fall of the profession is lost to us. Cicero is quoted as having said in his _De Republica_ that at Rome actors and others who took part in a profession of entertainment were