in general, signifies a person who acts or performs something.

Actor, among civilians, the proctor or advocate in civil courts or causes; as, Actor ecclesiae has been sometimes used for the advocate of the church; actor dominicus for the lord's attorney; actor ville, the steward or head bailiff of a village.

the drama, is a person who represents some part or character in the theatre. The drama consisted originally of nothing more than a simple chorus, who sung hymns in honour of Bacchus; so that the primitive actors were only singers and musicians. Thespis was the first that, in order to ease this uniformed chorus, introduced a declaimer, who repeated some heroic or comic adventure. Æschylus, finding a single person tiresome, attempted to introduce a second, and changed the ancient recitals into dialogues. He also dressed his actors in a more majestic manner, and introduced the cothurnus or buckler. Sophocles added a third, in order to represent the various incidents in a more natural manner: and here the Greeks stopped, at least we do not find in any of their tragedies above three persons in the same scene. Perhaps they looked upon it as a rule of the dramatic poem never to admit more than three speakers at a time on the stage; a rule which Horace has expressed in the following verse:

Nec quarta loqui perfona laboret.

This, however, did not prevent their increasing the number of actors in comedy. Before the opening of a play, they named their actors in full theatre, together with the parts they were to perform. The ancient actors were masked, and obliged to raise their voice extremely, in order to make themselves heard by the innumerable crowd of people who filled the amphitheatres: they were accompanied with a player on the flute, who played a prelude, gave them the tone, and played while they declaimed. Horace speaks of a kind of secondary actors in his time, whose business was to imitate the first; and lessen themselves, to become better foils to their principals.

The moderns have introduced an infinite number of actors upon the stage. This heightens the trouble and distress that should reign there, and makes a diversity, in which the spectator is sure to be interested.

Actors were highly honoured at Athens. At Rome they were despised, and not only denied all rank among the citizens, but even when any citizen appeared upon the stage, he was expelled his tribe, and deprived of the right of suffrage by censors. Cicero, indeed, esteems the talents of Roelius: but he values his virtues still more; virtues which distinguished him so remarkably above all others of his profession, that they seemed to have excluded him from the theatre. The French have, in this respect, adopted the ideas of the Romans; and the English those of the Greeks.

name of several persons in fabulous history. One Actor among the Aurunci is described by Virgil as a hero of the first rank. Aen. xii.

ACTORUM tabulæ, in antiquity, were tables instituted by Servius Tullius, in which the births of children were registered. They were kept in the treasury of Saturn.