Pollux informs us, that there were trap-doors for ghosts, furies, and the infernal deities.  Some under the doors, on one side, introduced the rural deities, and on the other the marine.  The ascents or descents were managed by cords, wheels, and counter-weights.  Of these machines none were more common than those which descended from heaven in the end of the play, in which the gods came to extricate the poet in the denouement.  The kinds were chiefly three; some conveyed the performer across the theatre in the air; by others, the gods descended on the stage; and a third contrivance, elevated, or supported in the air, persons who seemed to fly, from which accidents often happened. (It is from this that the well-known phrase “Deus ex machina” has its origin.) As the ancient theatres were larger than ours, and unroofed, there was no wheel-work aloft, but the performer was elevated by a sort of crane, of which the beam was above the stage; and turning upon itself, whilst the counter-weight made the actor descend or ascend, caused him to describe curves, jointly composed of the circular motion of the crane, and the vertical ascent.  The anapesmata were cords for the sudden appearance of furies, when fastened to the lowest steps; and to the ascension of rivers, when attached to the stage.  The ceraunoscopium was a kind of moveable tower, whence Jupiter darted lightning, supposed to be the Greek fire, as in Ajax Oielus.  The machine for thunder (bronton) was a brazen vase, concealed under the stage, in which they rolled stones.  Festus calls it the Claudian thunder, from Claudius Pulcher, the inventor.  The most dreadful machines were, however, the pegmata (a general term also for all the machines), which first consisted of scaffolds in stories, &c.  These first exhibited criminals fighting at the top, and then, dropping to pieces, precipitated them to the lower story, to be torn to pieces by wild beasts.  Sometimes they were for vomiting flames, &c.  The theologium was a place more elevated than the stage, where the gods stood and spoke, and the machines which held them rested.

The seats of the spectators were divided into stories, each containing seven rows of seats, with two passages (praecinctiones) around them above and below.  Small staircases divided the seats into sections, called cunei, and ended in a gate at the top, which communicated with passages (the vomitoriae) for admission.

CHAPTER VI.

Roman Theatres—­Description—­“Deadheads”—­Pantomime in Italy—­Livius Andronicus—­Fabulae Atellanae—­Extemporal Comedy—­Origin of the Masque, Opera, and Vaudeville—­Origin of the term Histrionic—­Etruscans—­Popularity of Pantomime in Italy—­Pantomimists banished by Trajan—­Nero as a Mime—­Pylades and Bathyllus—­Subjects chosen for the Roman Pantomimes—­The Ballet—­The Mimi and Pantomimi—­Archimimus—­Ves
pasian—­Harlequin—­“Mr. Punch”—­Zany, how the word originated—­Ancient Masks—­Lucian, Cassiodorus, and Demetrius in praise of Pantomime—­A celebrated Mima—­Pantomimes denounced by early writers—­The purity of the English stage contrasted with that of the Grecian and Roman—­Female parts on the Grecian and Roman stages—­The principal Roman Mimas—­The origin of the Clown of the early English Drama.