Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Cothurnus

or more correctly Coturnus (κόθορνος). The Greek name for a high shoe or buskin with several soles. It covered the whole foot, and rose as high as the middle of the leg. It was made so as to fit either foot, and was generally fastened in front with red straps. The cothurnus was properly a hunting-boot, but Aeschylus made it part of the costume of his tragic actors to give them a stature above the average. At the same time the hair was dressed high in order to maintain the proportion of the figure. The cothurnus was also used in the Roman tragedy. (See Soccus.) It must be remembered that though the name κόθορνος is Greek, the Greeks do not use it of the tragic boot, which they call ὀκρίβας, or more usually ἐμβάτης.