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Ancient Greek Costume

There is little known about ancient Greek theatrical costumes due to the perishable materials they were made from. Early actors used body painting and animal skins, gradually incorporating more elaborate costumes that imitated everyday clothing of the time, including tunics, cloaks, and boots. Costumes helped denote character types and gave clues about gender, age, social status, and occupation. Masks were a key part of costumes and helped actors take on different roles by hiding their true identities behind expressionless masks that could be understood through bodily movement alone.

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580 views2 pages

Ancient Greek Costume

There is little known about ancient Greek theatrical costumes due to the perishable materials they were made from. Early actors used body painting and animal skins, gradually incorporating more elaborate costumes that imitated everyday clothing of the time, including tunics, cloaks, and boots. Costumes helped denote character types and gave clues about gender, age, social status, and occupation. Masks were a key part of costumes and helped actors take on different roles by hiding their true identities behind expressionless masks that could be understood through bodily movement alone.

Uploaded by

lisamarie_evans
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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There are little information on theatrical costumes.

This is due to the perishable materials they have been made of. Still we have some information drawn from depictions on ancient pottery In the early productions actors have been using body painting. Little by little they started using animal skins, ears, even feathers; ARISTOPHANES The Birds The tragic actors were certainly heavily disguised. This had a religious purpose, for the actor was supposed to give up his identity in order to let another speak and act through him. Indeed, the dramas were performed in honour of Dionysus, the God of Ecstasy, which means standing outside oneself.[2] Actors therefore had to renounce their individuality. The actors thought that the mask itself contained the character and are said to have prayed before putting on their masks. The costume was probably an elaborately-decorated version of everyday clothing worn in the 5th Century BCE. The garments included:

chiton (robe or tunic) chlaina (overgarment) chlamys (short cloak) kothurnus (short lace-up boots) himation (overgarment) peplos (cloak).[3]

When the poets introduced real costumes, they imitated the contemporary dressing : the chiton and the hemateon. The chiton was made of linen or silk and it was worn long. The hemateon was an exterior cloth, worn over the shoulders. It was usually made of wool. Both chiton and hemateon were decorated depending on the occasion. For theatrical use the clothes have been more decorated than usually. In order to play female roles, since the actors were always men, they were wearing a prosterneda (in front of the chest, to imitate female breasts) and progastreda in front of the belly. The chiton worn by the actors differed from that worn in everyday life because it incorporated sleeves, which were coloured and patterned. The sleeves may in fact have been part of an undergarment. Long white sleeves were worn by the (male) actors for female roles, and indeed, in vase paintings females are usually painted with lighter skin. The costumes worn gave the audience an immediate sense of character-type, gender, age, social status and class.[5] Around the time of Aeschylus, the boots or buskins worn by the actors were flat. The actors had the same status as the chorus. In the 3rd Century BCE, the actors were raised to the status of heroes and platform soles began to be used, together with a head-dress called an onkos. The raised soles may have induced a stylised way of walking, suited to the rhythm of tragic verse, and the onkos made the actors taller, enhancing visibility. Their bodies were padded so that they did not look too slim.[6]

However, some authors believe that this happened later than the 3rd Century BCE. It is also thought that the teetering gait is a misapprehension.[7] The masks were the most striking feature of the costume worn by the Athenian actors. Facial expression was lost anyway due to the huge size of the Greek theatres, but the masks were also a means of blotting out expression, so visual meaning was expressed by the entire body. The actors were seen as silhouettes, or integral bodies, rather than faces. The masks themselves were made of stiffened linen, thin clay, cork or wood, and covered the whole head and had hair.

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