2 shioned and coloured according to the age, habits, and complexion of the wearer. In some cases it was gathered together and piled up on the forehead, in a triangular figure, adding many inches to the actor's stature; at other times it was combed smoothly downwards, from the crown, twisted round a fillet and disposed like a wreath about the head as we sometimes find it in the figures of Asclepios and the philosopher Archytas. Some characters were represented wholly bald, with a garland of vineleaves or ivy wreathed about the brow, others were simply bald in front, while a third class exhibited a bushy fell of hair, something like a lion's mane. Young ladies displayed a profusion of pendant curls, kept in order by the fillet or sphendone, or gathered up in nets, or twisted about the head in braided tresses. In representing certain characters the eyesockets were left open, so that the actor's eyes could be seen moving and flashing within; but on other occasions, when the part of a squinter was to be acted by a performer who did not squint or vice versa, as in the case of Roscius Gallus, the mask-maker must have represented the eyes by glass or some other transparent substance, through which the actor could see his way. This was ne 1 Cf. Thucyd. i. 6, et Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 147, 224. This Elian. Var. Hist. iv. 22. 2 See a beautiful head of Aphrodite with a pole of curls. (öykoç) Mus. Chiaramont. tav. 27. Cf. a tragic female mask, with the hair bound by a fillet, in the Cabinet d' Orleans. pl. 52. 3 It may be remarked that persons ridiculed upon the stage were introduced with masks exactly resembling their countenances. They seized, however, upon the ludicrous features, which any one happened to possess, as the eyebrows of Chærephon, and the baldness of Socrates. Sch. applies to living characters. The dead were protected from ridicule by the laws. Sch. Pac. 631. The Comic mask was said to have been invented by Mason. Athen. xiv. 77. The Comte de Caylus, however, attributes the invention of masks to the Etruscans. Recueil d' Antiq. i. 147, seq. 4 Cic. de Orat. ii. 46. See in Agostini Gemme Antiche, pl. 17, a representation of one of these masks. For examples of hideous masks see Mus. Florent. t. i. pp. 45-51. cessarily the case in the part of the poet Thamyris,' who, like our own Chatterton, had eyes of different colours, one blue, the other black, which, as Aristotle informs us, was common among the horses of Greece. 3 2 The time of acting, as is well-known, was during the Dionysiac and Lenæan festivals, in the spring and autumn. The theatres being national establishments, in the proper sense of the word, were therefore open, free of expense, to all the citizens, who were not called together as with us by playbills, but for the most part knew nothing of what they were going to see till they were seated in the theatre, and the herald commanded the chorus of such and such a poet to advance. Previously to the commencement of the performance the theatre was purified by the sacrifice of a young hog, the blood of which was sprinkled on the earth.5 1 Poll. iv. 141. Dubos, Reflex. Crit. sur la Poes. et sur la Peint. i. 603. 2 Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 545. Acharn. 336. Cf. Dem. cont. Mid. § 4, et annot. Plut. Vit. x. Rhet. Lycurg. 3 Winkelmann, however, supposes they had a kind of play bill, Monum. Ined. iii. p. 86, 269 BOOK V. RURAL LIFE. CHAPTER I. THE VILLA AND THE FARMYARD. If we now, for a moment, quit the city and its amusements, and observe the tone and character of Hellenic rural life, we shall find, perhaps, that there existed in antiquity a still greater contrast between town and country than in modern times. From the poetry of Athens, rife with sylvan imagery, we, no less than from its history, discover how deeply they loved the sunshine and calm and quiet of their fields. The rustic population confined to the city during the Peleponnesian war almost perished of nostalgia within sight of their village homes. Half the metaphors in their language are of country growth. The bee murmurs, the partridge whirrs, the lark, the nightingale, the thrush, pour their music through the channels of verse and prose. The odours of ripe fruit, of new wine "pur 66 ple and gushing," the fresh invigorating morning breeze from harvest fields, from clover meadows dotted with kine, the scent of milk-pails, of honey, and the honey-comb, still breathe sweetly over the Attic page, and prove how smitten with home delights the Athenian people were, With plesaunce of the breathing fields yfed." This their manly and healthful taste, however, exposed them to the For the valleys and being thickly covered constantly, in time of war, malice of their enemies. grassy uplands of Attica, with villas and farmhouses,' the first act of an invading army was to lay all those beautiful homesteads in ashes. Thus the Persians, in their two invasions, destroyed the whole with fire and sword. But the gentlemen, immediately on their return, rebuilt their dwellings with greater taste and magnificence, so that, before the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, it is probable that, as a scene of unambitious affluence, taste, high cultivation, and rustic contentment, nothing was ever beheld to compare with Attica. Here and there, throughout the land, perched on rocks, or shaded by trees, were small rustic chapels dedicated to the nymphs, or rural gods.3 On the mountains, and in solitary glens, and wherever springs gushed from the cliffs, caverns were scooped out by the hands of the leisurely shepherds, and consecrated by association with mythology. Fountains, also, and water-courses, altars, statues, and sacred groves, protected at once by religion and the laws, imprinted on the landscape features of poetry and elegance. Another cause which, in the eyes of the Athenians, imparted sanctity to their lands, was the practice of burying in them their dead. The spot selected for this sacred purpose seems usually to have been the orchard, where, amid fig-trees and trailing vines, often near the boundaries of the estate, might be seen the ancient and venerable monuments of the dead. All Attica, therefore, in their eyes, ap 1 Demosth. in Ev. et Mnes. § 15. 2 Thucyd. ii. 65. 3 In the neighbourhood of the Isthmus the shepherds of the present day often pass the winter months in mountain caverns.Chandler, ii. p. 261. 4 Theocrit. i. 143, seq. 5 Cf. Iliad. 6. 305, seq. 6 On the wild olive and other trees, of which these groves were composed, the eye of the passenger usually beheld suspended a number of votive offerings.-Sch. Aristoph. Ran. 943. 7 Cf Plat. Phæd. t. i. p. 9. 8 Eurip. Bacch. 10, seq. Cf. Kirch. de Funer. Rom. iii. 17. peared holy as a sepulchre; and, as every one guarded his own ancestral ashes, to sell a farm cost a man's feelings more than in countries where people inter those they love in public cemeteries; and this circumstance with many would operate like a law of entail.1 But it is easy thus to present to the imagination a general picture of the country. What we want is to thrust aside the impediments, to dissipate the obscurity of two thousand years, and lift the latch of a Greek farmhouse, such as it existed in the days of Pericles. 3 In the first place it was common in Attica to erect country-houses in the midst of a grove of silver firs, which in winter protect from cold, and in summer attract the breezes that imitate in their branches the sound of trickling runnels, or the distant murmur of the sea. Towards the centre of the grove, with a spacious court in front and a garden behind, stood the house, sometimes with flat, sometimes with pointed roof, ornamented with a picturesque porch, and surrounded with verandahs or colonnades. Occasionally opulent persons had on the south front of their houses large citron trees, growing in pots, on either side the door, where they were well watered and carefully covered during winter.5 In the plainer class of dwellings, numerous outhouses, as stables, sheds for cattle, henroosts, pigstyes, &c., extended round the court, while the 1 Demosth. in Callicl. § 4. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 406. On the music of the pine-groves, the Schol. on Theocritus, i. 1, has an amusing passage : ἡ πίτυς ἐκεί νη, ἡδὺ τι μελουργεῖ, κατὰ τὸ ψιθύρισμα. κ. τ. λ. 3 Called in Latin pagus from nyn, a fountain. Serv. ad Virg. Georg. 182. See also the note of Gibbon, t. iii. p. 410. * Geop. x. 7. 11. These pots, 4 like those in which the palm-tree was cultivated, were pierced at the bottom like our own. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 4. 3. 5 As the orange-tree is still in Lemnos. Walp. Mem. i. 280. 6 The stalls for cattle were built as often as convenient, near the kitchen and facing the east, because when exposed to light and heat they became smooth-coated. Vitruv. vi. 9. Cf. Varro. i. 13. |