Person

"The word person, in its primitive and natural sense, signifies the mask with which actors, who played dramatic pieces in Rome and Greece, covered their heads.  These pieces were played in public places, and afterward in such vast amphitheaters, that it was impossible for a man to make himself heard by all the spectators.  Recourse was had to art; the head of each actor was enveloped with a mask, the figure of which represented the part he was to play, and it was so contrived that the opening for the emission of his voice, made the sounds clearer, and more resounding, vox personabat: whence the name persona was given to the instrument or mask which facilitated the resounding of his voice.  The name persona was afterward applied to the part itself, which the actor had undertaken to play, because the face of the mask was adapted to the age, and to the character of him who was considered as speaking, and sometimes it was his own portrait. In this last sense of personage, or of the part which an individual plays, that the word person is employed in jurisprudence, in opposition to the word man, homo. When we speak of a person, we only consider the state of a man, the part he plays in society, abstractly, without considering the individual." Toull. Dr. Civ. Francais, Liv. 1 n. 168; 1 Institutes of America Law, 57, John Bouvier.