Musical Instruments.— The musical instru ment was something like our clarionet, and was soft in tone, sustaining rather than inter fering with the voice. The Athenians were exceedingly fastidious in matters of pronun ciation. The voice had to be loud, but also clear and full' of feeling and expression, and the articulation distinct. There were no prompters: The movements of the body were very expressive. The leader of the chorus (coryphaeus) recited the anapests of the paro dos and exodus, and the anapaestic verse in general, declaimed the iambic trimeter of or dinary dialogue, and sang the kommoi (odes of wild lament). All the szasima (choral songs in the orchestra) were danced. In the strophe the chorus danced to the right, in the antis trophe to the left; but in the epodos they stood still. The groups of scenes between two stasima were called episodes. The dance con sisted merely in graceful movements of the body, though each kind of drama had its peculiar style: in the satyric after-piece the dance was rapid, tumultuous, farcical.
Costumes.—The costumes of the actors were as characteristic of the Greek drama as the shape and arrangement of the theatre itself. In tragedy the dress was conventional, but in comedy that of ordinary life. The tunic was long, loose and full, with sleeves to the waist and richly embroidered with vertical and hor izontal stripes. Around the tunic a high girdle richly ornamented was worn. The colors were usually bright, but also grey, green, blue and black. the tunic was some kind of pad ding to increase the size of the actor. The outer garment was called kimono's, which was of two varieties, rectangular and semicircular. They were splendidly embroidered in gold. Weapons *ere carried and garlands worn. The staff is frequently mentioned. Under the actor's shoes (cothurni) were high square painted soles, though this is now disputed in some quarters. The musicians wore long robes Drama.— A Greek drama differed in many ways from a modern play. In the first place, it was oratorical, rather than conversa tional, statuesque rather than picturesque. To
day a play presents a scene in a drawing-room; the characters talk as in ordinary life and seem to be oblivious of the presence of the audience and in their endeavor to become realistic they lower their voices to such an extent that they are frequently not heard by the audience. In Athens the actor spoke in a louder voice and an toward the audience. Facial expressions, which mean so much in a modern theatre, were out of the question (even if masks were not worn), for the actor was so far removed from the majority of the spectators; yet there was some compensation in the clearness with which the voice airried in an auditorium of such splendid acoustic properties, in the expressive movements of the body, and in the ideal beauty and heroic solemnity which were impressed on the characters and on the play as a whole. The color and cut of the hair was always significant; auburn hair meant beauty; hair, strength; black hair, sorrow; and red hair, rascality.
The Greeks were southerners, and southern ers are more highly endowed with dramatic talent than northern nations. The Greek was nearer nature than we; he did not try to sup press his emotions; his bank of imagination was almost inexhaustible; he felt the same agony, the same ecstasy that children feel, and he had the same plenitude of belief. Tears would start unbidden to his eyes, as he listened to the portrayal of the grief of Demeter separated from her daughter, or of Antigone dragged away to be entombed in a living grave. So the theatre exercised a great influence in forming the lives and characters of the people. The literary quality of the Greek dramas was so high that it has never been excelled, and so they formed in the hearers a power of acute observation and of sane literary judgment, and i coming at such long intervals, in an age when the attention was not distracted by the hasty reading of newspapers, they left an extraor dinarily deep and lasting impression. See GaxaK DRAMA. Josue' E. HARRY.