Since only male actors graced the Greek amphitheater stages, costumes had to indicate which gender an actor was playing. Men wore short chitons in the ionic style, a long rectangle wrapped around the wearer and pinned along one arm to connect the front and back of the garment. Actors playing women dressed up in the typical doric chitons, fabric rectangles folded and pinned over the body to form a draped dress, typically with a pin clasped at one or both shoulders.
Greek comedies often used costume elements for comedic effect. Chitons were worn much too short for comic effect, and male characters wore progastrida, a phallus, exaggerating the male anatomy. The comic actor wore the phallus with a goatskin loincloth and tail in back. Actors playing female characters wore prosternaid, unrealistic, large fake chests. Slaves and old men also wore exaggerated costumes. Costumes tended to be less realistic as well, with actors portraying birds or animals.
Greek tragedies called for costuming notably different from the comic costumes. Tragic actors wore thick-soled boots called cothurnus and had padding throughout the costume to make the body and limbs appear larger to an audience member sitting far from the stage. Long robes covered all but the soles of their thick boots. Costumes were bold in color, with plenty of embellishments, not to give clues about a character's personality, but in honor of the festival where the play was being performed. Playwright Euripides went against this convention, putting his heroes in rags, which his contemporaries criticized.
Greek theater relied heavily on masks to illustrate a character's features and emotion. Large masks covered the entire face. The only openings in the mask were a small square or round mouthpieces, perhaps for amplifying the actor's voice, and small holes for the eyes. Each actor wore several masks during a performance to play different characters. Comic actors also wore masks with exaggerated elements and less realistic faces. Birds and animals were typical.