Note 1061 — Chapter VIII · THEATRE (continued).

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. Aristoph. Nub. 147, 224. This 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.