At the Panathenaic festival, held once every four years, the Athenians held a procession to display the robe that had taken four years to make, then dressed the statue of Athena, carved from olive wood, in it.
Unlike ordinary Greek stone sculptures, this wooden statue's face was blurred, as though covered by a veil.
The dance forms of Ancient Greece were directly inherited from primitive tribal dances, but by the fifth century BC, they were no longer simple imitations of animals, nor were they dances around an object as their ancestors had done.
Besides the local Bacchanals, ceremonies were also held on the Acropolis of Athens, supposedly in honor of Dionysus's plays. All sorts of productions were staged in the theater on the Acropolis, including tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. The different plays competed against one another, and the winning playwrights, sponsors, and actors could all receive prizes.
Not all of these plays had anything to do with Dionysus, but every actor and chorus member had to wear masks, with changes in mood expressed through exaggerated movements.
Take Medea, for instance. Not all the characters in the play were Athenians, yet all the actors were free Athenian citizens, even though they occasionally had to portray slaves.
The judges were chosen by Athenians and awarded prizes in the name of all the Athenians who watched the plays, even though not all audience members were Athenians.
This gave rise to a form of drama known as "pantomime," or mimic drama. Ancient Rome inherited the theater of Ancient Greece, but actors had to keep changing masks to convey and shape their characters' emotions. If someone wearing a smiling mask rolled about on the floor, he was most likely expressing ecstatic joy. If someone in a crying mask could not stand up, he was