VERBALIZING/VISUALIZING: THEATRICAL MASKS AND THE GREEK EPIGRAM*

摘要

Within the larger category of epigrams referring to the theatre and the even widernfamily of epigrams focussing on literature and its practitioners, five epigrams turn tonthe mask: Asclepiades 27 Gow–Page = AP 6.308; Callimachus 26 G–P = AP 6.310nand 27 G–P = AP 6.311; and Dioscurides 22 G–P = AP 7.37 and 23 G–P = AP 7.707.nMarco Fantuzzi has recently discussed the ‘theatrical’ epigrams as a subset of ‘annentire Hellenistic vogue for epigrams on great literary figures of the past’.1 This voguenwas certainly akin to ‘contemporary projects of literary classification’,2 whichnstemmed from an impulse to celebrate, but more importantly to master, control andneventually assert oneself over the daunting achievements of the past.nThe focus of the present paper is more specific: the five epigrams catalogued abovenwill be considered expressly in reference to the presence of the mask. I shall attemptn(a) to account for this presence in literary terms, i.e. to show what the mention of thenmask does for the epigram in question; and (b) to demonstrate the degree of familiaritynwith the conventions of post-classical theatre that the epigrammatists take forngranted. Finally, focussing more specifically on Dioscurides, I shall examine possiblenpoints of intersection between the epigram as verbal and the mask as visual monument.n3 This will usher in the broader historical question: why was the mask attractivento the epigrammatist?nLet us begin with the Callimachus and Asclepiades epigrams. All three of thesenepigrams, obviously literary, refer to dedications of masks. In all cases, though, I shallnargue, the dedication seems to have gone awry and the mask is used in order tonpromote a whimsical programme of debunking. It is only fitting for such a widelynpopular feature of theatre to take centre stage in what I understand to be a triplet ofnintricately connected, wonderfully playful epigrams. Ironically, it is precisely thenmask’s positive value as one of the commonest metonymies of theatre in the