The Costume of the Actors in Aristophanic Comedy

It is generally believed that the actors of Aristophanic comedy wore phallic dress. For example Mr. James Laver ( Oxford Companion to the Theatre , p. 158) tells us that ‘in Old Comedy the actors all wore clothes grotesquely padded, and each was provided with an enormous phallus of red leather. The female characters too were padded, and over the padding wore the long chiton if they belonged to the upper classes, and the short one if they belonged to the lower.‘ Similarly Haigh ( Attic Theatre , 3rd edition by A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, pp. 258-g) says that ‘the Old Comedy was the direct descendant of the boisterous phallic performances at the festival of Dionysus. ... The actors therefore regularly wore the phallus

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