If from the dances we now pass to the Choreutæ,[1021] by whom they were performed, we shall find that they generally made their appearance in the orchestra with golden crowns upon their heads, and habited in gorgeous raiment, frequently interwoven or embroidered with gold.[1022] The Chorus, however, like the actors, must have constantly varied its costume, to suit the exigencies of the drama; sometimes to perform the part of senators, sometimes of Nereids, sometimes of female suppliants, sometimes of urn-bearers, sometimes of clouds, or wasps, or birds. When in the tragedy of Æschylus they were required to personate the Furies, their exterior was the most frightful that can well be imagined,—their long but scanty robes consisting, as has been conjectured, of black lamb-skins, slit up below and exposing their tawny withered limbs to sight, while their blood-stained eyes, livid tongue hanging out, and hair like a mass of knotted serpents, easily accredited the belief of their being infernal existences. Thus habited, with fingers terminating in black claws,[1023] and grasping a burning torch, they burst upon the view of the spectators, like so many hideous phantoms conjured up by an imagination diseased with terror. ----- Footnote 1021: Cf. Buleng. de Theat. c. 55. Footnote 1022: Dem. cont. Mid. § 7, seq. Athen. iii. 62. Animadv. t. vii. p. 215. Footnote 1023: Bœttiger, Furies, p. 28, sqq. and pl. ii. Casaub. ad Athen. xii. 2. Aristoph. Plut. 423. ----- The costume of the actors,[1024] which some modern writers suppose to have been extremely monotonous,[1025] was in reality, however, as rich, varied, and characteristic as the masks of which we shall presently have to speak. Gods, heroes, kings, chiefs, soothsayers, heralds, rustics, the hetairæ, and their mothers; gay youths, flatterers, libertines, procurers, cooks, satyrs, slaves, &c., had each and all their appropriate dresses and ornaments, modified, no doubt, from time to time by the change in public taste, and the fancy of the poets. The divinities had almost to be wholly framed by the Dionysiac artificers. Conceived to be of superhuman stature, it was necessary that the actors who represented them should, in the first place, be lifted up on Cothurni,[1026] or half-boots, the soles of which were many inches high,[1027] their limbs and bodies were enlarged by padding, their arms lengthened by gloves, while their countenances, which might be ignoble or even ugly, were concealed by masks of exquisite ideal beauty, rising above the stately forehead in a mass of curls, which at once corresponded with the nobleness of their features and augmented their colossal height: add to all this robes of purple, or scarlet, or azure, or saffron, or cloth of gold, floating about the person in graceful folds, and training along the floor, and we have some faint idea of the celestial personages who with gemmed sceptres and glittering crowns made their appearance on the Grecian stage. -----