[Illustration: FIGURE 133. SCENE FROM A COMEDY]
§324. Staging the Play.--The play, as well as the other sports, was under the supervision of the officials in charge of the games at which it was given. They contracted for the production of the play with some recognized manager (_dominus gregis_), who was usually an actor of acknowledged ability and had associated with him a troupe (_grex_) of others only inferior to himself. The actors were all slaves (§143), and men took the parts of women. There was no limit fixed to the number of actors, but motives of economy would lead the _dominus_ to produce each play with the smallest number possible, and two or even more parts were often assigned to one actor. The characters in the comedies wore the ordinary Greek dress of daily life and the costumes (Fig. 133) were, therefore, not expensive. The only make-up required was paint for the face, especially for the actors who took women's parts, and the wigs that were used conventionally to represent different characters, gray for old men, black for young men, red for slaves, etc. These and the few properties (_ornamenta_) necessary were furnished by the _dominus_. It seems to have been customary also for him to feast the actors at his expense if their efforts to entertain were unusually successful.
§325. The Early Theater.--The theater itself deserved no such name until very late in the Republic. During the period when the best plays were being written (200-160 B.C.) almost nothing was done for the accommodation of the actors or the audience. The stage was merely a temporary platform, rather wide than deep, built at the foot of a hill or a grass-covered slope. There were almost none of the things that we are accustomed to associate with a stage, no curtains, no flies, no scenery that could be changed, not even a sounding-board to aid the actor's voice. There was no way either to represent the interior of a house, and the dramatist was limited, therefore, to such situations as might be supposed to take place upon a public street. This street the stage represented; at the back of it were shown the fronts of two or three houses with windows and doors that could be opened, and sometimes there was an alley or passageway between two of the houses. An altar stood on the stage, we are told, to remind the people of the religious origin of the games. No better provision was made for the audience than for the actors. The people took their places on the slope before the stage, some reclining on the grass, some standing, some perhaps sitting on stools they had brought from home. There was always din and confusion to try the actor's voice, pushing and crowding, disputing and quarreling, wailing of children, and in the very midst of the play the report of something livelier to be seen elsewhere might draw the whole audience away.