Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy

Author(s): P. G. McC. Brown

Source: Hermes , 2nd Qtr., 1987, 115. Bd., H. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1987), pp. 181-202
Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4476561

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Hermes

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 P. G. McC. BROWN: Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 181

that the Poet. is influenced by his ethical philosophy25. But I would like to
say that the process of reducing the various aspects of a person's character as
found in Rhet. II to a central one and the concentration on ethical
characteristics reflects a general attitude of Aristotle according to which the
>>ethical? qualities of men - which have to be understood in a broader sense
than modern >>moral< or >>ethicah< 26 - are regarded as the most important
characteristics of men's personality. Of course, the theoretical life of the
philosopher is superior27, but it is attainable only for a few exceptional men.
The next, inferior form of life is one lived according to ethical qualities28
which then are used to describe the majority of men. I do not believe, however,
that Aristotle was influenced by these concepts as expressed in the Ethics when
he was setting down the characteristics of the dramatic agents in terms of
ethical qualities; in the Poet., however, when reducing the broad range of
qualities as displayed in the Rhet. and concentrating on a definite attitude of
the dramatic agents, he took the same direction as in the Ethics.

University of Cape Town ECKART SCHUJTRUMPF

25 Not even ipoaipEan; in Poet. can be traced with certainty to the Et

125 n. 3.
26 ibid. 39ff.

27 E.N. X 7, 1177a 12ff.

28 ibid. 8, 1178a 9ff.

MASKS, NAMES AND CHARACTERS IN NEW COMEDY'

1. Introduction

In this paper I consider the part played by masks and names in the presen-
tation of characters in New Comedy. In particular, I examine the thesis that
certain character names were attached to particular masks and associated with
a particular personality. I ask how many such names there are likely to have

I Versions of this paper were read at the VIllth Congress of the International Federation of
the Societies of Classical Studies in Dublin in August 1984 and at the Philologisches Seminar of
the University of Bonn in October 1984. I am very grateful for comments made by members of
the audience on each occasion and also for helpful correspondence and discussion with Dr. A. S.
GRATWICK and Dr. D. WILES.

Section 3 discusses questions of character identity which arise in other areas of ancient
literature such as Virgil's 'Eclogues' (see T. E. S. FLINTOFF, Characterisation in Virgil's Eclogues,
Proc. Virg. Soc. 15 (1975-6), 16-26) and the Latin elegists' portrayal of their mistresses. Each area
requires separate discussion, and this paper limits itself to New Comedy.
References to 'G.S.' in the notes below are to A. W. GOMME and F. H. SANDBACH, Menander:
a Commentary (Oxford 1973).

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182 P. G. McC. BROWN

been and what is meant by 'personality' in this context. Some names cannot
have been attached to a particular mask; and characters of the same name in
different plays sometimes behave quite differently from each other. But there
are other cases where it is more tempting to talk of 'consistency of
characterization by name' and to claim that 'one would expect the same mask
to have been assigned to the same character for each appearance'. These
quotations are taken from an influential article by Professor W. T. MACCARY
which argues that 'Menander's characters were not only utyped? but were in-
deed, to a degree, identical in play after play' and that Menander introduced
'immediately recognizable characters whose behavior, in broad outline, could
be predicted2.' The expressions 'to a degree' and 'in broad outline' call for
closer scrutiny: what is meant by claiming that characters in different plays are
'identical', and what kinds of similarity in their behaviour serve to establish
this identity? The final paragraph of MACCARY'S article starts 'Thus, when
actors stepped upon the scene in the Theatre of Dionysos the spectators knew
from their masks what to expect from them, i. e., what their names were, what
romantic inclinations they had (harp-girls or free girls), moral shortcomings,
if any (miserliness, weakness), and whether or not they would play a leading
role in the play'. Does this mean the same as the expression 'total personality'
in the following quotation from Professor W. G. ARNOTT: 'It has indeed been
plausibly suggested that common character names like Daos, Demeas, and
Moschion were already attached to particular masks. Accordingly, knowledge
of a character's name and mask would enable an experienced member of the
audience to predict the total personality of that character, provided the
playwright had made it conform to type3'?
The proviso at the end of the last quotation introduces a further complica-
tion. MACCARY, on the last page of his article, insists that Menander was 'not
bound by the types he used'; his audience 'could appreciate the subtle varia-
tions that are Menander's mark of genius: Smikrines is always a miser but his
motives and feelings are never the same'. Similarly Dr. A. S. GRATWICK, who
speaks of 'the traditional stock of named masks', writes: 'Daos appears in at
least eight of sixteen better-known Menander plays. No doubt he looked the

2 W. T. MACCARY, Menander's Characters: their Names, Roles and Masks, T.A.P.A. 101
(1970), 277-90; the quotations come from the first two pages and the last page of this article. Also
by MACCARY are Menander's Slaves: their Names, Roles and Masks, T.A.P.A. 100 (1969),
277-294; Menander's Old Men, T.A.P.A. 102 (1971), 303-325; and Menander's Soldiers: their
Names, Roles and Masks, Am.J.Phil. 93 (1972), 279-298. MACCARY'S thesis is accepted by H. J.
METTE, Lustrum 16 (1971-2), 56; and A. ALONI, 11 Ruolo dello Schiavo come Personaggio nella
Commedia di Menandro, C.R.D.A.C. Atti 8 (1976-7), 25-41 advocates a similar view, though he
regards the portrayal of slaves in Menander as an exception to it (cf. n. 76).
3 W. G. ARNOTT, Menander, Plautus, Terence (Greece & Rome 1975) 24; cf. p. 27 n. 48:
>>MACCARY ... is basic here ...<<.

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 183

same in each and the Athenian audience knew who he was without being told
and how he differed in physiognomy from his fellow-slaves Parmenon, Getas
and Tibeios. This, however, did not determine his ethos, at least in the hands
of a master like Menander' 4. Two difficulties arise here. First, the only plays
of Greek New Comedy which we have available for any kind of detailed study
are by Menander5. If he is allowed to be an exception to the general rule,
from what evidence are we to construct the rule in the first place? Secondly,
if the ethos of a character can change from play to play, what do we gain by
regarding him as one character making eight appearances rather than as eight
different characters who happen to have the same name? We must allow the
theoretical possibility that names and masks went together without being
associated with any particular personality; but it then becomes unclear how
helpful it is to say that the audience on seeing a character 'knew who he was'.
I shall argue that, as far as the evidence of Menander goes, masks and
names normally conveyed very little6. A character's external appearance (his
costume and equipment as well as his mask) told the audience his age, sex,
status and (sometimes) profession; and certain stock characters were thus in-
stantly recognizable. But this did not necessarily reveal much about the part
to be played by that character in the action of the comedy. Any fuller
characterisation was conveyed by the words and actions of the play itself, and
the mask was doubtless appropriate to the character thus established. Some of
the above quotations suggest that masks could serve to introduce a character
to the audience on his first appearance; but in fact a character had sometimes
been quite fully introduced in the words of other characters before the spec-
tators ever saw his mask. As to names, the names of characters in New Comedy
were subject to certain artificial conventions; but these too were of limited
scope.
This negative conclusion has its positive side. For, if I am right, the texts
which we have got provide us with all the essential clues for understanding the

I A. S. GRATWICK, The Cambridge History of Classical Literature II. Latin Literature (Cam-
bridge 1982), 105.
s I shall say little in what follows about the adaptations of Greek New Comedy by Plautus
and Terence. Although both of them used names from Greek Comedy, Plautus invented a number
of his own, and Terence sometimes changed the names which he found in his Greek originals.
6 I am essentially in agreement with T. B. L. WEBSrER, An Introduction to Menander (Man-
chester 1974), 89-99 (e. g. p. 97: >)it is clear that no link except age unites the old men called
Demeas in the Samia, Misoumenos and Adelphoi B<<). As far as the name Smikrines is concerned,
I do not go quite as far as C. QUESTA, M.D. 8 (1982), 31 = C. QUESTA - R. RAFAELLI, Maschere
Prologhi Naufragi nella commedia plautina (Bari 1984), 25: >)Nessuno saprebbe dire, insomma,
perche mai il vecchio protagonista del Dyskolos si chiami Cnemone e quello che e personaggio
centrale dell' Aspis Smicrine: in effetti la ragione non c'e.<< But in principle QUESTA and I are in
agreement.

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184 P. G. McC. BROWN

plays. We do not need to know exactly what sort of mask was worn by each
character; and we do not need to know much about what the audience would
have expected when they saw a particular mask or heard a particular name.
This is welcome, because we do not in fact know about these things and can
only rely on guesswork.

2. The Lipari terracottas

This is a good time to think about comic masks, because of the important
excavations which have been taking place in recent years on the island of
Lipari. Among the objects discovered in the ancient necropolis there, are over
1,000 theatrical terracottas (some statuettes, but mostly masks - imitations of
real masks), from the fourth and third centuries B.C. These have been
published in a sumptuous volume by L. B. BREA7. There are some tragic
masks from the early fourth century, unusually early evidence for tragedy; but
the most substantial and exciting groups are the comic terracottas, in particular
over 300 masked statuettes from the 4th century and over 300 masks from the
early 3rd century. In terms both of their number and of their early date, these
discoveries represent a very important addition to our evidence for the masks
and costumes worn in Greek theatres at that time.
It is now possible to trace more confidently the development of comic
masks during the fourth century, a crucial phase in the history of Greek com-
edy but one for which we have too little evidence to write a detailed account.
The masks become less grotesque and more realistic; and BREA argues that,
at about the time of the death of Menander in the early third century, a stand-
ard collection of masks comes to be accepted which is then reproduced for
several centuries throughout the Greek world: we find it first at Lipari, and
then in the other masks and illustrations which were already known to us from
elsewhere. BREA suggests that Menander himself was responsible for
establishing this standard collection. He also argues that it corresponds with
the 44 masks of New Comedy which are listed in a catalogue by Julius
Pollux8 in the second century A.D. BREA thinks we now have representatives
of 43 of Pollux's masks; there is one that he has so far been unable to identify
to his own satisfaction.
I have examined some of BREA'S claims in a review of his book9. They
rest ultimately on an assumption that the imitation masks which we have from
all over the Greek world are an accurate reproduction of the actual masks worn

I L. B. BREA, Menandro e il teatro greco nelle terracotte liparesi (Genova 1981).

8 Onomasticon iv. 143-154.
9 L.C.M. 9,7 (July, 1984), 108-112.

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 185

on the Athenian stage in Menander's lifetime. It would be perverse to deny that

our masks must bear some relationship to actual Athenian masks, but I fear
we are in no position to define that relationship more closely. Similarly,
Pollux's catalogue must bear some relationship to the practice of the
Hellenistic stage; and some of his descriptions seem to suit very well some of
the objects which have been found. But I myself believe that we find more
variety in the surviving masks and illustrations than in Pollux's list. Several of
the surviving masks have striking features which are not mentioned anywhere
in Pollux's descriptions, and several of his descriptions are sketchy and inade-
quate. I suspect that it would be sensible to classify the surviving material into
more than 44 types. And I suspect that the evolution of the 'standard collec-
tion' was a gradual one in which it would be hard to define the contribution
of any one person, whether Menander or someone else. But I am not compe-
tent to discuss these questions, and I shall say no more about them.
There is another kind of identification which I find very difficult, and that
is the identification of the particular mask worn by a particular character in
a particular play of Menander. As I have already said, I think that we can only
guess about this. We can sometimes make reasonable guesses, but in the end
they are only guesses. So the Lipari masks help us to visualise the staging of
Menander's comedies in a general way, but perhaps they do not help us to
visualise more precisely the staging of a particular comedy.
Nonetheless (as I have said) the publication of this new material does pro-
vide an appropriate opportunity to consider the function of masks on the
Athenian comic stage in Menander's day.

3. Identical characters: P G. Wodehouse and the Commedia dell' Arte

Bertie Wooster is established as a character who reappears in story after

story by Wodehouse, partly through constant association with other characters
such as his valet Jeeves and his aunt Agatha, partly through his having a sur-
name as well as a first name (a combination of names which helps to
distinguish him clearly from other characters). There are also often reference
in one story to the events of another story. In New Comedy we do not find
crossreferences of this kind from one play to another 10, and characters do not
have surnames. Nor do we find characters of the same name regularly

10 The references to other plays thought likely by R. L. HUNTER, The New Comedy of Gree
and Rome (Cambridge 1985), 76-7 are of a different kind and do not imply identity of characters
in different plays, except to the extent that we might be prepared to regard the cook in Aspis as
'the comic cook, the character who appears year in year out in plays put on by various comic
poets' (D. BAIN, Actors and Audience, Oxford 1977, 221).

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186 P. G. MCC. BROWN

associated with each other. Daos in Menander's 'Aspis' is the paedagogus of

Kleostratos, in 'Epitrepontes' he is a shepherd; in 'Dyskolos' he is the slave of
Gorgias, in 'Perikeiromene' of Moschion. Moschion in 'Perikeiromene' has
been brought up by Myrrhine, in 'Samia' he has been brought up by Demeas;
in 'Sikyonios' he is the son of Smikrines (if that name has been correctly
restored "), in 'Fabula Incerta' he is the son of Laches. Demeas in 'Samia' is
a bachelor who lives in Athens with his mistress Chrysis and his adopted son
Moschion, in 'Misoumenos' he lives abroad (probably in Cyprus 12) and is the
father of Krateia. Characters whose circumstances are so different are clearly
not identical in the sense that Bertie Wooster is identical in every story.
The Commedia dell' Arte, however, establishes the identity of its characters
in different ways. Pantalone, for instance, 'retains his name, costume and
essential basic characteristics in successive plays, but he is made to appear in
diverse circumstances and in diverse relationships with his companions 13'. In
one play Isabella is his wife, in another his daughter; Orazio is in one play Pan-
talone's son, in another a Turkish gentleman turned Christian who is in love
with Pantalone's daughter Flaminia (who is herself in yet another play Pan-
talone's widowed sister-in-law); Pedrolino is in different plays the servant of
Pantalone, of Capitano Spavento and of Orazio, and in yet another play he is
an innkeeper; Burattino can be a market gardener, an innkeeper, the head of
a household (with Flaminia as his daughter) or a servant; Arlecchino can be
the servant of Flavio, Graziano, Isabella or Capitano Spavento 14; Graziano
can be a lawyer, a physician, an innkeeper, a schoolmaster, and a number of
other things 15.
In the Commedia, an actor normally played the same character throughout
his career; his company presented the same 10-12 characters in a bewildering
variety of combinations and situations. It is not always easy to say what it was
that established the character as identical in all its manifestations, particularly
when it appears that the same character went by different names in different
companies and in different regions; and the personality of a character could
be subtly transformed by successive generations of actors. The Neapolitans, it
seems, played so much for laughs that it is impossible to give a coherent ac-
count of their characters 16. But elsewhere, at least when the Commedia was
in its prime, it is possible to see elements of continuity which make certain cen-

" See G.S. on Sik. 156.

12 See G.S. p. 438.
13 Allardyce NICOLL, The World of Harlequin (Cambridge 1963), 21.
'4 These examples are taken from the cast lists in NICOLL (see n. 13) pp. 9-12, 42-3.
IS NICOLL pp. 59-60.
16 NICOLL pp. 61-5. My knowledge of the Commedia is largely derived from NICOLL's book,
which discusses the presentation of characters at pp. 19ff.

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 187

tral characters recognisably the same. These include masks (which were not
worn by all characters) and costume; but also dialect (Pantalone speaks Vene-
tian, Graziano Bolognese, Arlecchino the dialect of Bergamo) and other in-
dividuating qualities: Graziano has characteristic patterns of speech, Arlec-
chino has some movements which are peculiar to him as well as a tendency to
land himself in difficulty by acting on ideas the moment they occur to him.
Similarly in Wodehouse Jeeves quotes Shakespeare and has views on Spinoza,
and Gussie Fink-Nottle is interested in newts.
It is immediately tempting to see an anology between the Commedia and
New Comedy, another form of masked drama in which recurrent names are
found in varying combinations17. But we are woefully short of material to
support the analogy. For the Commedia we have a wealth of evidence and can
trace the development of a character from one generation to another; for New
Comedy our prime evidence is Menander, whose plays are (as far as we can
tell) far more subtly characterised than the improvised scenarios of the Com-
media. We do not find characters of the same name in different Menandrian
plays linked by distinctive traits of the kind mentioned at the end of the
previous paragraph. If there was a tradition that assigned particular masks to
Daos, Demeas and Moschion, Pollux (see n. 8) shows no awareness of it.
If characters in Menander cannot be shown to be identical, can they
perhaps be shown to be similar? It is argued that characters of the same name
in different plays shared certain features of personality or behaviour (less
distinctive features than an interest in newts), and that the audience expected
a character with a certain name to behave in a certain way. Sostratos and
Moschion were both young men who fell in love, but the behaviour of
Sostratos in love was (it is claimed) recognisably different from that of
Moschion. This need not imply that all young men called Sostratos in New
Comedy were identical, but simply that they behaved in the same way as each
other. This is a thesis which can be tested against the evidence of Menander,
and I shall test it in section 5, having first examined Menander's treatment of
more broadly defined stock characters in section 4.

4. Stock characters

There are cooks in Menander's 'Aspis' and 'Dyskolos'. In each case the
cook enters unannounced on his first appearance, and complaining about his
ill fortune. In 'Aspis' (216ff.) he laments the fact that he has just lost the first
job that he had been offered for ten days; in 'Dyskolos' (393 ff.) he complains
that he is unable to control the sheep which he is bringing to be sacrificed. In

17 The comparison with the Commedia is made by MACCARY, T.A.P.A. 101 (1970), 290 and
by GRATWICK (cited in n. 4).

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 188 P. G. McC. BROWN

both cases Menander is probably entertaining his audience by playing with

their knowledge that the conventional comic cook is a very boastful
character 18. It is not difficult to work out from the content of their speeches
that they are cooks; and they are very soon identified as gaiyetpot (cooks) in
the texts of the plays 19. But it was presumably in each case clear to the au-
dience immediately the character appeared that he was a cook. There must
have been something about his mask, his costume and his equipment which
identified him for the audience. Menander relied on his audience's knowledge
of standard visual clues and did not need to announce these characters on ar-
rival as cooks. He also relied on his audience's knowledge of the normal por-
trayal of cooks in comedy for their appreciation of the originality of his por-
trayal of these particular cooks.
The resulting effect for the audience was a short term one. The appearance
of the character allowed the author to play a little game with his audience when
they first saw that character. If the author chose not to play such a game, but
to portray the character simply as a stock character, it was still true that as a
stock character he needed no special introduction. In fact the cooks in 'Aspis'
and 'Dyskolos' turn out to perform a standard comic function; it cannot be
said that their personalities are explored in any depth. The surprising effect of
their first appearance is not sustained in what follows.
Some of Menander's soldiers are more complex; and now that we have the
opening of 'Misoumenos'20 we can see a similar surprise effect at work. At
the beginning of this play we see a young man complaining that he is the most
wretched of all lovers and that he has (paradoxically) shut himself out of his
own house. The following dialogue soon makes it clear that this young man
is a soldier. But again this was presumably clear to the audience immediately
at the start of the play from his mask and costume. His appearance doubtless
led them to expect a certain stock type, a boastful buffoon; and their curiosity
was immediately aroused by the fact that Menander had chosen to portray this
soldier with unexpected sympathy and complexity21.
In this case the complexity is sustained throughout the play. But it is the
words and actions of the play which achieve this. Once again Menander has
exploited his character's appearance to create a short term effect of initial sur-
prise. When we have recovered from this surprise, we have to accept that the
character's appearance is inadequate as a guide to his personality. The most
that it can do is remind us that he is less straightforward than he might look.

18 cf. HANDLEY on Dysk. 393, G.S. on Aspis 216-49.

'9 Aspis 221; Dysk. 399.
20 P.Oxy. 3368-70, in: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 48 (London 1981).
21 For a similar surprise effect at the beginning of P1. 'Persa', where a slave utters the stand-
ard complaints of an adulescens in love, see Woytek on Persa 6.

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 189

We could be further reminded of this by the words of other characters in the

play if they see the soldier as nothing more than a stock soldier. I cannot point
to an example of this in the surviving remains of 'Misoumenos'; but it can be
illustrated from 'Perikeiromene', another play which offers a complex and
sympathetic portrayal of a soldier in love. At 185-7 of this play the maid Doris
expresses her sympathy for her mistress who has suffered ill treatment at the
hands of the soldier; and she expresses it in a generalisation about soldiers: 'I
am sorry for any woman who sets up house with a soldier: they're all thugs;
you can't trust them an inch' 22. And at 294 the young man Moschion, who
is the soldier's rival in love, sees him simply as 'the plumed captain, hateful
to the gods' 23. We could say that Doris and Moschion see the soldier in their
play simply as a stock character, just as the audience would if they judged him
only by his appearance. But in fact the audience know from what they are told
during the play that this particular soldier is not so simple.
Similarly in Terence's 'Eunuchus' (based on a play by Menander) the
meretrix Thais is described by other characters in the play in unsympathetic
terms as if she were a stock grasping, demanding prostitute, a mala meretrix
(to use the term which Terence himself uses of the stock type in line 37 of the
prologue of that play); but the audience knows that there is more to her than
this24. 'Epitrepontes' is another play by Menander with a complex presenta-
tion of a prostitute (Habrotonon); and fragment 7 (now confirmed as a frag-
ment of 'Epitrepontes' by its occurrence in P. Oxy. 3532-3 25) shows her being
discussed in hostile terms more applicable to the stock type26. In treating of
Menander's prostitutes (Ctalpat) some modern scholars have labelled them as
'good' (Greek 'xplNa-uci', Latin 'bonae'), in contrast to the stock 'bad' ones.
I do not find this a very helpful label, because it seems to imply another sim-
ple, stock character, whereas the whole interest of the portrayal of Thais and
Habrotonon is precisely that they cannot be summed up in one epithet. I hope
to deal more fully with this topic on another occasion.
It would be interesting to know whether the external appearance of a
tTaipa gave the audience any clues to the dramatist's presentation of her

22 81)GoTUX'i
i-tt4 otpartLTUfv 9Xa5ev dv5px. n
&t7aVTr, 006SV MITOv.

23 OF1t; ?XOPCII iapo0p6pat XtX6pXc).

24 See, e. g., H. HAUSCHILD, Die Gestalt der Hetare in der griechischen Komodie, Diss. Leip-
zig 1933, 34-40; W. STEIDLE, Rh.M. 116, 1973, 326-347.
25 In The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 50 (London 1983).
26 XaXeitOV, HIQ(PiXi,
t?Eu0Epa yuvax 7tp64 7t6pvrnv g6aX11
n?siova xaxoupysi, 7rXeiov' o16', aioQXvsVCtt
os58v, xoxaxsirl gakov.

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190 P. G. McC. BROWN

character, whether a straightforwardly grasping Ftaipa was conventionally

given a particular mask to wear, while a more complex ETatpa appeared in a
different mask. But there is no reason to believe that this was the case. Pollux
lists five different masks for ftalpa4 distinguished by their hairstyle or by
varying amounts of adornment. He does not tell us what (if anything) these
different masks were supposed to convey about the different rTalpac, and he
certainly does not suggest that they marked any differences in
characterisation27. It seems most likely that here, as with the soldier and the
cook, the appearance of the character told the audience something about her
status and profession (and perhaps thereby led them to expect a certain stock
type), and only the words and actions of the play made it clear whether they
were going to get a simple or a complex presentation, a standard type or
something unexpected.

5. Masks and names

I have so far suggested that Menander's audience could tell at a glance if

a character was a cook, a soldier, or a prostitute, but that they could not tell
at a glance anything more than this about the personality of the character. I
have also suggested that the portrayal of stock characters is an area where we
can see Menander playing with audience expectations which were based on the
use by other authors28 of a crude repertoire of familiar types. But the au-
dience's familiarity with these types did not depend on the use of recurrent
names each associated with its own mask: 'Of the eleven appearances of
soldiers in the fragments [of Menander], no two bear the same name' 29.
We now move on to consider those central characters in a play of Menander
who are not easily identifiable as stock types by reason of their profession,
above all fathers, sons and slaves. These characters are defined as young or old,
citizen or slave; but beyond that it is the differences in their personality which
distinguish them from each other as individuals. It is generally accepted that
in Menander's days masks did convey something about personality by means
of the facial expression which they gave the character30. But I suggest that
what was thereby conveyed was rather crude and general.

27 Cf. T. B. L. WEBSTER (cited in n. 6), p. 94.

28 And by Menander himself, if his 'Thais' portrayed a grasping prostitute and his Kolax a
boastful soldier.
29 MACCARY Am.J.Phil. 93 (1972), 281.
30 See, e.g., L. B. BREA, cited in n. 7. As J. R. GREEN remarks (R.A. 1982, 246-7), it must
be significant that the proportion of masks to whole figures found on terracottas and vases in-
creases greatly in the late 4th century. The development of increasingly realistic masks goes hand
in hand with a growth in the importance of characterisation in Comedy. BREA (as others have

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 191

The young hero of 'Dyskolos' has been characterised in the title of a recent
article3' as 'over-active and impatient'. We might add that he tends to turn to
other people for help32, that he fails to grasp a golden opportunity for pro-
moting his love affair when it is presented to him33, but that he is rather at-
tractively ironic at his own expense in describing his shortcomings 34. These
are all central aspects of the personality of this particular young man. They
were surely not conveyed to the audience immediately on his first appearance
by means either of his mask or of his name. MACCARY35 does not explicitly
claim that Sostratos' name and mask told us all these things about him; but
I think he comes close to making this claim (at least for some names) by im-
plication. It had already been asserted by WEBSTER36 that Menander wrote
each part with a specific mask in mind. MACCARY develops the implication
of this assertion, that the masks functioned as an agreed code between
Menander and his audience: 'Menander was freed from tiresome explica-
tion'37 which presumably means that there were some aspects of character
which Menander did not need to portray in detail in his text because they were
adequately conveyed to the audience by the mask 38. If this view were correct,
it would become vitally important for us to identify the mask worn by each
of Menander's characters and to discover what that mask would have conveyed
to the audience; for otherwise we should be missing an essential part of the
presentation of the character in the play. I have said in the Introduction that
I believe that such identifications can only be guesses. But I do not think that
we are in fact missing anything essential for the interpretation of the comedies
if we work simply from the texts. In any case Menander (as we have seen) has
been praised for introducing subtle variations into his portrayals of character.
WEBSTER, in the article referred to above (n. 36), hailed it as a mark of
Menander's greatness that he 'knew that appearance and character sometimes
conflict'. We have found this claim to be confirmed by Menander's portrayal

done) sees links between late 4th/early 3rd century masks and physiognomic theory; but the review
of his book by M. M. SASSI, Q.S. 10, no. 19 (1984), 275-280 draws attention to some problems
about this.

3' N. ZAGAGI, Sostratos as a comic, over-active and impatient lover, Z.P.E. 36 (1979), 39-48.
32 Dysk. 55-7, 70ff., 181-5, 362.
33 678ff.
34 525ff., 675ff.; cf. P. FWRY, Liebe und Liebessprache bei Menander, Plautus und Terenz
(Heidelberg 1968), 42-3.
3S See n. 2.
36 T. B. L. WEBSTER, The Poet and the Mask, in: Classical Drama and its Influence (Essays
presented to H. D. F. Kitto, London 1965), 5-13.
37 T.A.P.A. 101 (1970), 290.
38 Cf. also Am.J.Phil. 93 (1972), 283 n. 14: >>t was not, however, essential for Menander to
introduce his characters since they wore readily recognizable masks.<

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 192 P. G. McC. BROWN

of soldiers. In such cases we must conclude that the mask, and the rest of the
character's appearance, were a misleading guide to his personality. If this was
true for a broadly definable stock character, how likely is it that Menander
allowed himself to be bound by conventions of appearance in his presentation
of more subtly differentiated figures? And, if we cannot construct an extensive
code of visual conventions from the remains of Menander, where else are we
to look for the evidence of such a code?
MACCARY'S thesis is essentially a thesis about names. As far as masks go,
he says (as we saw at the beginning) that, if his thesis is right, 'one would ex-
pect the same mask to have been assigned to the same character for each ap-
pearance'; and I think that is reasonable. It is also a striking feature of New
Comedy that it does appear to employ some artificial naming conventions. In
real life, if there were old men in Athens called Demeas, there were also young
men called Demeas; a man called Moschion did not abandon his name on
ceasing to be young and acquire instead the name Laches. The names of
Menander's characters are almost all known Athenian names; but for the most
part they appear to be artificially grouped into names appropriate for a certain
age-range or class: Moschion is always a young citizen, Laches always an old
one. In real life, slaves could have the same names as citizens: we know of
slaves called Sostratos, Moschion and Demeas. In Menander's comedies these
names are reserved for free men 39. The existence of such conventions
presumably implies that the audience has certain expectations that a character
with a particular name will be of a certain age, sex and status. But did the au-
dience's conventional expectations go further than this? And how extensive,
and how strict, were the conventions? Although we still possess only a minute
proportion of the plays of New Comedy, perhaps we already have enough to
cast doubt on MACCARY'S thesis. For the sake of clarity I shall number my
points in the following discussion.
(i) Clearly not every name in New Comedy was traditionally associated
with a particular personality or a particular mask. There are too many names
for that to be plausible. This is not the place to provide full documentation40.
But if we limit ourselves (for the purposes of this section) to the names of fic-

39 Cf. K. TREU, Zu den Sklavennamen bei Menander, Eirene 20 (1983), 39-42.

40 K. GATZERT, De nova comoedia quaestiones onomatologicae (Diss. Giel3en 1913) is still
useful, though not entirely reliable. But so much Greek Comedy has been rediscovered since 1913
that the work now needs to be done again from the start. For the purposes of this paper I have
added to GATZERT'S material the further names now known from Menander and from COLIN
AUSTIN'S Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta in Papyris Reperta (Berlin 1973). J. N. TRUESDALE,
A Comic Prosopographia Graeca (Diss. Duke University 1940) is of no help for our purposes,
since it is >)not a dictionary of all the proper names that occur in comedy, but rather a collection
of the personal names in Greek literature that were used for the purpose of raising a laugh or at
least provoking a smile< (p. 1).

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 193

tional male citizens who are not stock characters - i. e. essentially the names
of fathers and sons - we can compile a list of 35 names from plays agreed
to be by Menander4', and 14 from other fragments of Greek New Comedy42
(several of which may well also be Menandrian). It would be reasonable to add
a number of names which are found in Roman Comedy or in later Greek
authors influenced by New Comedy such as Lucian and Alciphron43. But the
49 names explicitly attested for Greek New Comedy should be enough to make
the point.
(ii) By no means every name can be shown to have recurred. Of the 49
names listed above, 27 have so far turned up only once each in Greek Comedy;
and some of these are the names of central characters in their plays, such as
Knemon in 'Dyskolos', Pataikos in 'Perikeiromene', and Charisios in

" Blepes (Sik.), Gorgias (Georg., Dysk., Heros), Demeas (Dis Exap., Imbrioi, ?Misogyn
Misoum., Sam.), Derkippos (Ench.), Theophilos (mentioned in Naukleros, fr. 286 K.-T.), Kallip-
pides (Dysk.), Kichesias (Sik.), Kleainetos (Georg., Fab.Inc.), Kleinias (Theoph., Misoum.),
Kleitophon (fr. 598 K.-T.), Kleostratos (Aspis), Knemon (Dysk.), Kraton (Androgynos, Theoph.),
Lamprias (frr. 8, 307 K.-T.), Laches (Heros, Kith., Perinthia, Plokion, Fab.Inc., frr. 572, 663 K.-
T.), Lysias (Theoph.), Mnesippos (fr. 639 K.-T.), Moschion (Kith., Perik., Plokion, Sam., Sik.,
Fab.Inc., Hypobol., fr.inc. 951 K.-T.), Moschos (Dis Exap.), Nikeratos (Sam.), Pamphilos (frr. 521,
683 K.-T.), Pataikos (Perik.), Simylos (?Misogynes), Simon (Eun.), Smikrines (Aspis, Epitr., ?Sik.;
also the play referred to by Choricius 32, 73, below, n. 69), Sostratos (Dis Exap., Dysk.), Straton
(Ench., Naukleros), Phanias (Kith.), Pheidias (Heros, Kolax, Phasma), Philon (fr. 215 K.-T.),
Chaireas (Aspis, Dysk., Fab.Inc., Koneiaz., ?Phasma fr. 195.57 AUsTIN), Chairestratos (Aspis,
Epitr., Eun.), Chairippos (Hypobol. fr. 425 K.-T.), Charinos (Messenia), Charisios (Epitr.).
I have excluded Theotimos, the priest at Ephesus mentioned in Dis Exap. 55-6, and Kallikles
and Euphranor, the ship-builder and steersman (if that is what they are) of fr. 286.7-8 K.-T. I have
also not included the evidence for the above names outside Menander. This is not entirely satisfac-
tory, but the alternative was to swamp this section of the paper with an excessive amount of discus-
sion of details.

42 Antiphon (mentioned in adesp.nov. 273.6 AUSTIN), Bion (mentioned in excerpt. 292.7

AusTIN), Demylos (Sosipater fr. 1 K), Kratinos (adesp.nov. 240 AUSTIN), Kriton (Alexis fr. 226 K,
Diodorus fr. 1 K), Lysippos (adesp.nov. 240 AUSTIN), Mix [(adesp.nov. 250 AUSTIN), Nikomachos
(adesp. 125 K), Nikophemos (mentioned in adesp.nov. 244.251 AUSTIN), Nikophon (Apollodorus
fr. 14 K, Philemon frr. 39, 104 K, adesp. 247 K), Sosthenes (adesp.nov. 252.16 AuSTIN), Phaidimos
(adesp.nov. 257 AusTIN, Diphilus fr. 38 K; adesp. 130 K), Pheidylos (Philippides fr. 6 K), Philinos
(Strato 219.13 AUSTIN, adesp.nov. 240 AUSTIN, Apollodorus fr. 7 K, adesp. 131 K; also mentioned
at Men. Perik. 1026).
There is room for dispute over details, and I have included only those names which I think
most probably belonged to fictional male citizens who appeared on stage. I have not included
Elpidas and Chryseras from P. Berol. 18115 (A.P.F. 29 (1983), 7-8), since we cannot be at all sure
that these are the names of characters from New Comedy.
43 The following list of 28 likely names in this category is taken largely from GATZERT:
Aeschinus, Archidemides, Archonides, Gniphon, Demaenetus, Demarchus, Demetrius, Demipho,
Diphilos, Eutychus, Hegio, Callidemides, Callipho, Ctesipho, Lysidamus, Menedemus, Micio,
Simus, Phaidrias, Phaedromus, Phaedrus, Phanocrates, Phidippus, Pheidon, Philokrates,
Chaeribulus, Charmides, Chremes.

13

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 194 P. G. McC. BROWN

'Epitrepontes'. But it is always possible that future papyrus finds will change
this picture.
(iii) I have already referred to the artificial restriction of some names to a
certain age-range. In this section I have so far not distinguished young men
from old men44; and there is scope for uncertainty in many cases. But it is at
least reasonably clear that 5 names (Demeas, Kleainetos, Laches, Smikrines,
Straton) were more than once given to old men in Greek New Comedy45 and
6 names (Gorgias, Moschion, Pamphilos, Sostratos, Pheidias, Chaireas 46)
more than once to young men47.
But some names are given to both old and young men. The clearest case
is that of Chairestratos. We know48 that this was the name of the young lover
in Menander's 'Eunuchus', the young man who is called Phaedria in Terence's
version of that play. It is also the name of a young man in 'Epitrepontes'49
and in adesp. nov. 257 AUSTIN. But in 'Aspis' Chairestratos belongs to the
older generation. The Chairestratos of this play must surely have worn a dif-
ferent mask from his younger namesakes in other plays. In this case the name
cannot have been associated with one particular mask. MACCARY himself
regards it as 'doubtful' 50 whether all these characters called Chairestratos
wore the same mask. He does, however, attempt to minimise the difficulty by

I In the world of Greek and Latin Comedy a man is old if he is old enough to have a mar-
riageable son or daughter. If he is old enough to consider marrying, or recently married, he
belongs to the younger generation. Married men with young children do not exist.
45 Demeas is old in Men. lmbrioi, Misoum., Sam., as well as adesp.nov. 252 and 258 AuSTIN;
Kleainetos in Men. Georg. and Fab.Inc.; Laches in Men. Heros, Perinthia, Plokion, Fab.Inc., and
adesp.nov. 255 (and perhaps 250) AUSTIN; Smikrines in Men. Aspis, Epitr., the play referred to
by Choricius 32, 73, and perhaps Sik.; Straton in Men. Ench. and probably Naukleros.
Some of these characters appear in other plays where I see no way of determining their age.
They may well be old in those plays as well.
I Gorgias is young in Men. Georg., Dysk., Heros; Moschion in all his appearances listed in
n. 41, and perhaps also adesp.nov. 255 AUSTIN; Pamphilos in Apollodorus fr. I Dem., Philippides
fr. 26 K, and perhaps Men. fr. 683 K.-T.; Sostratos in Men. Dis Exap. and Dysk.; Pheidias in Men.
Heros, Phasma and (probably) Kolax; Chaireas in Men. Aspis, Fab.Inc. and (probably) Dysk., and
perhaps adesp.nov. 251 AUSTIN (which may be from Fab.Inc.).
Some of these characters may well also be young in other plays where I see no way of determin-
ing their age.
47 Of the other 11 names which are known to have recurred, 3 (Kraton, Lamprias, Simon) are
given to old men in one appearance (in Men.Theoph., fr. 8 K.-T. and Eun. respectively) and to
characters of uncertain age in others (though Simon may well be old at adesp.nov. 254.43 ff. and
excerpt. 289.2-3 AUSTIN); 2 names (Kleinias, Phaidimos) belong to young men at least once (in
Men.Theoph. and adesp.nov. 257 AUSTIN respectively); Kleitophon (in Philemon fr. 228 K as well
as Menander) and Kriton are each of uncertain age in two appearances, and Nikophon in four.
Chairestratos, Nikeratos and Philinos are discussed in the next two paragraphs.
48 From the Scholiast to Persius, sat. v. 161.
49 See D. BAIN, Actors and Audience (Oxford 1977), 199 n. 3.
so T.A.P.A. 101 (1970), 285.

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 195

suggesting that Chairestratos in 'Aspis' could count as an adulescens on the

grounds that he is younger than his brother Smikrines5'. But this will not do:
by the conventions of Comedy (cf. n. 44) Chairestratos as the father of a mar-
riageable daughter is clearly 'old'.
A similar case is Nikeratos, who is an old man in Menander's 'Samia' but
young in adesp. nov. 257 AUSTIN52. Less significant is Philinos: he is young
in Apollodorus fr. 7 K. and of uncertain age in three other texts53; he is old
at Men. 'Perik.' 1026. But he is there only mentioned quite incidentally as the
father of a girl; he is not himself a character in the play. If we extend our list
to include the evidence of Latin Comedy, then we find that Antipho is the
name of an old man in Plautus' 'Stichus' but of young men in Terence's
'Eunuchus' and 'Phormio'. Finally there is Chremes. His name is not found
in the surviving remains of New Comedy. But it is the name of an old man
in the 'Ecclesiazousae' of Aristophanes; and Antiphanes, a poet of the so-
called Middle Comedy, refers to Chremes as one of the typical names of
characters in Comedy54. So it is reasonable to suppose that it continued to be
used in the period of New Comedy, particularly as it is found in Roman Come-
dies which are based on originals from New Comedy. But in Roman Comedy
we find that Terence three times gives the name of Chremes to an old man and
once to a young man55. It is always possible that Plautus and Terence were
less strict about observing certain conventions than the authors of their Greek
originals had been. But we do at least have clear evidence in the cases of
Chairestratos and Nikeratos that the conventions were not altogether strict in
Greek Comedy either.
(iv) I hope I have shown that there was a large number of names available
to Menander, that many of them may not have been used very often, and that
he was not always strict about limiting a name to a particular category of
people in his plays. Not all names in Menander, then, were associated with a
particular mask and a particular personality. But it is still possible that there
were some such names. It may be that the hard core of the cast was formed
by a group of recognisable central characters, but that any number of further
characters could be added to a play who were not so immediately familiar to
the audience.

sI ib. 284-5; cf. WEBSTER (cited in n. 6), 98. ALONI (cf. n. 2), 29 does not argue in detail for
his view that Chairestratos is characterised in all his appearances as 'l'amico sorgenvoll' which
seems an odd account of his part in Eun. In any case this view sidesteps the difficulty of the age
of his mask.

52 See D. BAIN, cited in n. 49. Nikeratos is of uncertain age at Strato 219.13 AUSrIN.
53 Strato 219.13 AusrIN, adesp.nov. 240 AUSTIN, adesp. 131 K.
54 Antiphanes fr. 191.21 K.
ss Old: An., H.T., Ph.; young in Eun.

13

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196 P. G. McC. BROWN

It is particularly tempting on our present evidence to see Gorgias as such

a central character. We know of four plays in which a Gorgias appeared, and
in three of them ('Georg', 'Dysk.', 'Heros') we know that he was a young man
who worked in the countryside 56. In the first two of these plays these
characters called Gorgias are very similar to each other in behaviour; they both
have an upright and helpful disposition. (About the other two plays we do not
know enough to say more.) Perhaps this was a case in which a character's name
suggested something about his personality, though our evidence for Gorgias
is not very extensive and it must be confessed that he is not an upright rustic
in Lucian or Alciphron, both authors influenced by New Comedy"7.
Another candidate is the old man Smikrines. But in his case we perhaps
have enough evidence to begin to see the limitations of the thesis. The name
is used in at least three plays of Menander58 in which he shows some obses-
sion with money; and in Alciphron and Julian59 it is the name of someone
disagreeable. Perhaps his character is even conveyed by the etymology of his
name, which is presumably derived from oGuxpo;, 'small': perhaps the name
itself suggests small-mindedness, an obsession with petty details, and things
like that60.
But the obsession with money of Smikrines in 'Epitrepontes' manifests
itself in quite a different way from the obsession of Smikrines in 'Aspis'. The
latter is far more of a self-seeking schemer, and he is described in the prologue
in terms which make this clear61: 'In wickedness he beats all men altogether;
he recognises neither relative nor friend, and doesn't care in the slightest about
the disgraceful actions he commits. He wants to own everything; that is all he
knows. He lives on his own, with an old woman as his servant'. If I may an-
ticipate a point to be made in my concluding section, it would be unnecessary

56 The fourth is adesp.nov. 240 AUSTIN, where we cannot tell his age or his part in the play.
On Gorgias see T. WILLIAMS, On the History and Origin of the Name Gorgias, Mnemos. 1965,
269-278; G.S. p. 132.
57 Lucian, dial.mer., 8; Alciphron iii.2.1 Sch.
58 Aspis, Epitr., and the play referred to by Choricius 32, 73 (below, n. 69).
59 Alciphron iii.7.3 Sch.; Julian, Misop. 349c. Cf. Them. or. 34.17, which seems to be based
on Menander.
60 But G.S. are wrong to say (on Sik. 156) that the name is >>not yet known from real life<<.
Athenaeus mentions two men of this name, one (vi.242b) the father of the well-known jokester
Eukleides, the other (xiii. 592b) the former lover of Archippe, who became the mistress of
Sophocles in his old age.

61 Aspis 116-121: nov1pia &? n6vTaq Mv0p6nou4 RXwq

U7E6p7E67t(X?_V- OUTOC, OUTS GU-Y?YVII
OOTF (piXOV oi&V o68t TrV ?V T4 IMC
aioXpcv 1rpp6VT1X' OV6?V, &U& POOXETaR
?XF?1V d7waVTr TOOTO yIv6a&Xi j6vov-
xali (,it iov6Tpotoq,ypa6v Xov &tdxovov.

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 197

for the prologue to spell this out if it were all conveyed by Smikrines' name
and mask alone. It could be suggested that 'Aspis' was the first play in which
a Smikrines of this type appeared and that a full introduction was therefore
necessary in this case. But the suggestion cannot be confirmed, and we do not
know how Smikrines was introduced to the audience in 'Epitrepontes'. We
cannot in fact give a full account of his part in 'Epitrepontes', since so much
of that play is lost; but there is no reason to think that it was characterised
by wickedness and disgraceful actions. The name was perhaps reserved for
tight-fisted old men in Comedy (see below on Choricius), and it perhaps had
a special mask to go with it (though Pollux does not include this character trait
in his descriptions of old men's masks). But this was not enough to convey the
entire personality of a particular Smikrines to the audience or to tell them in
any detail what part he would play in the action of the comedy62.
I am not convinced that any other characters of the same name in different
plays can be shown to have markedly similar personalities. MACCARY in his
article on Old Men63 does not establish anything distinctive about either
Demeas or Laches, the two names most commonly used for fathers, nor any
significant differences between them. He suggests that Kleainetos is a farmer
in both his plays64, but this cannot be shown for 'Fab. Inc.'. Of Straton (the
fifth recurrent name in n. 45) we can say nothing.
Among the young men, WEBSTER65 has drawn attention to the case of
Chaireas. He is described as a parasite in the cast list to 'Dyskolos', and the
description is at least appropriate for the speech in which he boasts of his skill
in helping young men in love66. He is clearly quite a different character from
the young lover of the same name in 'Aspis'. If he is correctly described as a
parasite, and if Pollux is right that parasites wore a special mask and
costume67, then this must be another case in which a name cannot have been
associated with a particular mask. If this is not so, then the name and mask
clearly told the audience nothing about the character of Chaireas. As to other
names, there is no distinctive similarity between Sostratos in 'Dis Exap.', who
is involved in a plot to trick his father out of money so that he can carry on
his affair with a tTaipa, and Sostratos in 'Dyskolos', who wishes to marry a
citizen girl brought up in the country. Moschion I discuss below (on
Choricius); with Pamphilos and Pheidias (the remaining names in n. 46) we
can do nothing.

62 MACCARY well brings out the differences between Smikrines in 'Aspis' and in 'Epitr.' at
T.A.P.A. 102 (1971), 307-310.
63 See n. 2.

64 ib. 313-4.
65 Cited in n. 6, pp. 97-8.
66 Dysk. 57ff.; see HANDLEY ad lOc.
67 Mask: iv. 148; costume: iv. 119.

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198 P. G. McC. BROWN

MACCARY begins his article on Menander's Characters68 with a passage

where Choricius (6th Century A.D.) asks indignantly whether we are cor-
rupted by reading the comedies of Menander69: 'Is it really the case that, of
the characters created by Menander, Moschion has taught us to rape virgins,
Chairestratos to fall in love with harp-girls; that Knemon has made us an-
tisocial and Smikrines has turned us into misers - Smikrines who is afraid
that the smoke may have stolen something from inside his house and made its
getaway?' MACCARY believes that Choricius is not referring to a particular
Moschion or a particular Chairestratos in particular plays, but to characters
with these names in several plays. He believes that they preserve a constant per-
sonality in each appearance.
In fact the passage from Choricius is a strange place to have started from
for this purpose, since (as I have already said) Knemon is known to us from
only one play and Chairestratos belongs to a different generation in different
plays. He does seem to be 'in love with a harp-girl' in 'Epitrepontes', but there
is no reason to think that this is the case in 'Aspis'. As for Moschion, he is
certainly in 'Samia' and 'Fab. Inc.', and perhaps also in 'Kith.' and 'Plokion',
a young man who has raped or seduced a virgin. But this does not serve to
distinguish young men called Moschion from young men with other names,
since Charisios in 'Epitrepontes' and Pheidias in 'Heros' have both done the
same thing. Nor do all young men called Moschion rape virgins, since the
Moschions of 'Perikeiromene' and 'Sikyonios' do not do so. On Moschion's
part in other plays (cf. nn. 41 and 46) we can only speculate. The raping of
virgins is in any case (in the world of Greek New Comedy) a superficial
character trait. The character of Moschion in 'Samia' is far more importantly
defined in terms of his relationship with his adoptive father Demeas. This rela-
tionship is central to the action of 'Samia', and it distinguishes this Moschion
significantly from his namesakes in other plays.
Smikrines I have discussed above and am prepared to accept (with reserva-
tions) as a name suggestive of miserliness. I also accept that (on our present
very limited evidence) the name Gorgias may have been reserved for upright
young rustics. But one old man and one young man are not enough to establish
a general thesis about names and masks in New Comedy. It is more significant
that the names of male citizens for which we have most evidence (Demeas,
Laches and Moschion) do not support the thesis. It would be difficult to argue

68 See n. 2.

69 ... i1 Xai TOv M&v6v6tpou ncnorqjLivwv npoa6itcov Moo^Xiov p?v I'IjCt; 7rt
7rapOgVOoG ldrhaOal, XalPtOTPaTO; &? yaXpTpia ?pav, Kv1wv &) 8? 6uox6Xou;
?1at, Y-1%PXpi"V 8 (PtXapPYIPOI)q 6 &6861; "u Tt TOV ?V6oV O Xantv64 OIXOtTO (P?
(Choricius 32, 73 FORSTER-RICHTSTEIG ).

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 199

that Gorgias and Smikrines were central characters in a way that these others
were not70.
The commonest name for a slave in surviving Menander is Daos. In his ar-
ticle on Menander's Slaves"7 MACCARY tries to show that all slaves in
Menander called Daos are significantly similar72, and that they are different
from slaves called Parmenon. But I do not see the similarity between Daos the
loyal slave of 'Aspis' ('Menander's most attractive slave' 73) and Daos the
shepherd of 'Epitrepontes' who is the loser in the arbitration scene ('the
surliest and least attractive of all Menander's characters of this name' 74).
MACCARY argues that a character called Daos always 'intrigues to no
avail' 5. But we cannot say that the intrigue in 'Aspis' is unavailing simply
because it turns out to be unnecessary, and it is misleading to describe Daos
in 'Epitrepontes' as an intriguer at all76. Parmenon's role is too uncertain in
plays other than 'Samia' for us to make any general remarks about it.

6. Conclusion

It could be argued, in support of the thesis which I am attacking, that a

masked drama is unlikely to have developed a system of recurrent names
without attaching particular names to particular masks. If we do not accept
this, there seems to be no point in the artificial restrictions on the use of names
which certainly applied to at least some central characters. If the thesis sheds
no light on the comedies of Menander, that may be because Menander was
unusual in his concern to establish the separate individuality of the main
characters in each of his plays.

70 It is also worth noting that in New Comedy (unlike the Commedia dell' Arte; see section 3) all
speaking characters wore masks. (For possible unmasked, non-speaking extras see G. M. SIFAKIS,
Boy Actors in New Comedy, in: Arktouros (Hellenic Studies presented to Bernard M. W. KNOX, edd.
G. W. BOWERSOCK, W. BURKERT, M. C. J. PUTNAM, Berlin and New York 1979), 199-208.
7 See n. 2.
72 At the end of this article MACCARY qualifies his argument: >>Daos is not the same in the
Aspis as he is in the Perinthia; superficially the two characters are quite similar, but the ways in
which they are developed and the attitudes they are given differ vastly.< Remarks like this (and
his suggestion on p. 289 that slaves called Parmenon and Onesimos may have worn the same mask)
leave me unclear what significance he attaches to his thesis.
73 ib. p. 282.
74 ib. p. 285.
75 ib. p. 288.
76 ALONI (see n. 2) also argues that there is no link between a slave's name and behaviour in
Menander.

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 200 P. G. MCC. BROWN

Also in favour of the thesis are two epigrams of the third century B.C.77
in which named comic masks are dedicated78. In Callimachus 27 G.-P. (xlix
Pf., A.P. 6,311)79 many details are obscure, but it seems that an actor is dedi-
cating a mask with the name of Pamphilos in commemoration of his victory.
It is, however, possible that the name is given because it happens to be the
name of the part which the actor was playing on this occasion, not because
it was always associated with this particular mask80. More solid is the evi-
dence of Asclepiades 27 G.-P. (A.P. 6,308)81, in which a schoolboy dedicates
to the Muses a mask (or portrait, or statue) of 'the comic old man Chares'.
This does suggest that the old man of this name was recognisable from his
appearance82. But it is not impossible that the mask was simply that of an
old man, and the name (whatever it was: see n. 82) was simply a recognisable
old man's name which was not associated with any particular mask. There
may also be some background to this epigram which is now lost to us, since
it is not immediately clear why a comic mask of an old man was thought an
appropriate object to be dedicated by a schoolboy who had won a prize for
good writing (as appears to be the case).
Against this evidence is the fact that there is nothing in the surviving comic
remains to support it. The thesis has been claimed to apply to Menander, who
is the only author of Greek New Comedy whose plays we can study. I have
tried to show that it does not apply to Menander's plays; and we have no way
of testing it for the other playwrights. The artificial naming conventions
perhaps show simply that names were a matter of indifference to the authors:

77 Or perhaps even, in the case of Asclepiades, of the late fourth century: see The Greek An-
thology: Hellenistic Epigrams, ed. A. S. F. Gow and D. L. PAGE (Cambridge 1965), vol.ii, p. 115.
78 Cited by P. GHIRON-BISTAGNE, Recherches sur les Acteurs dans la Grece antique (Paris
1976), 103 and 108. I am grateful to DAVID WILES for this reference.
79 Tiq 'AyoP6VaXTO6 pF, XiY'y,&Ev, XcO)tX6V 6VTO)o
&yXaoOcat ViXTIr gdPTUPa TOU3 'POIOU,
ldptlXov OUX tv Ep(0TI 66aygivov fijuo 6' 6iTPI
ioaX6 xai X6Xvotq Iot8o; ei86gsvov.
80 If Gow and PAGE (cited in n. 77) ii, 185 were right that Pamphilos was on this occasion the
name given to an old man, this epigram would constitute further evidence that the same name
could be assigned to members of different generations. For Pamphilos as a young man elsewhere
see n. 46 and R. L. HUNTER, Eubulus: the Fragments (Cambridge 1983), 172.
81 Ntxuoa4 Trol)4 ral6a4 trEi xaXcE yp64~IaaT' Eypa4iEv
K6vvapo4 &6Y&XoVT' 4oTpayaXou4 UaOEV,
X&lpt %aPptV Mos)oa1t T6v Xw-itX6V d& XdPTTa
lrpe60ihrrV 0OP613q OXf' tvi nalc6aPiwV.
82 Theopompus fr. 97 K. consists of the vocative Xapn, and Theopompus wrote a play called
Hedychares. The Chares mentioned by Heracleides (K. 1I p. 435) was not fictional. The name is
otherwise found in Comedy only as the possible name of a father at PI. Trin. 922 (cf.
K. SCHMIDT, Hermes 37, 1902, 182). There is something to be said for BERGK's replacement of
this name by that of Chremes (XpjtnTa) at the end of line 3.

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 Masks, Names and Characters in New Comedy 201

any old man could be called Demeas or Laches, any young man Moschion or
Sostratos, any slave Daos or Parmenon. But many other names were available,
and we need not suppose that each of these required a recognisably different
mask. It would be interesting to know how and why the naming conventions
evolved; this is certainly something which calls for explanation. But we have
not yet found the answer to it.
My main reason for doubting whether masks and names can have been
significant bearers of coded messages, whether they can have been an
economical device in the way that has been claimed, is that Menander does not
seem to exploit the device in his actual presentation of some of his main
characters. As far as masks go, it is enough to point out that many characters
are introduced to us in the words of other characters some time before they
themselves appear on stage. Perhaps the most extreme case comes in
'Epitrepontes': the action of this play centres on Charisios and his wife Pam-
phile; and a lot is said particularly about the behaviour of Charisios in the
course of the play. We do not have all of the play; but it is widely believed that
neither Charisios nor Pamphile appeared on stage until Act IV. By this point
in the play, our picture of Charisios has been built up from the remarks of
other characters. It is not easy to see how the appearance of Charisios in his
mask could have added anything to the audience's understanding of his per-
sonality.
The same point can be made about Demeas in 'Samia'. He is presented to
the audience by his adopted son Moschion in his monologue which opens the
play, and we learn things from this monologue that are very important for the
character of Demeas which is going to be revealed in the subsequent action of
the play. For instance, we learn that Demeas had once tried to conceal from
Moschion his love for the woman from Samos who has since become his
mistress83: Demeas' tendency to conceal his true feelings from Moschion
comes to play a crucial part in the plot when Demeas decides to throw his
mistress out of the house without revealing his true reason. Shortly after the
opening monologue, we see Moschion and the Samian woman discussing the
likelihood that Demeas will be angry84: Demeas' anger also has a part to play
in the subsequent plot. I am not suggesting that we learn everything there is
to know about Demeas before he actually appears; but I am suggesting that
the essential introduction of Demeas to the audience has taken place before
his mask is seen. And I also believe that when he does himself appear it is his
words and behaviour which help to fill out our picture of his character.
There is also Knemon, the central character of 'Dyskolos', which is the one
complete play by Menander that we have. He seems to be a stock figure, not

83 Sam. 23.
84 Sam. 80ff.

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202 WILHELM KIERDORF

because of his status or profession, but because of his character and behaviour.
He conforms to the type of the solitary misanthrope, the misanthropos or
monotropos. Here it would have been particularly interesting if it could have
been shown that this type of stock figure was immediately recognisable from
his appearance. But in fact what we discover is that Knemon is introduced to
us before we see him, by the god Pan in the prologue and by the slave Pyrrhias
in the following scene. By the time he appears we have quite a full picture of
him, and once again it is hard to see what the mask could possibly have added.
As to names, in the present state of the text we cannot tell when the au-
dience first heard the names of Charisios and Demeas, or of Moschion
himself. Menander does not normally refer to characters by name in his
prologues85, but he often has a scene before the prologue. The audience hear
the names of Kleostratos, Daos and Smikrines in the first 20 lines of 'Aspis',
but Chairestratos' name is first given at v. 250. The prologue describes both
Smikrines and Chairestratos, without naming them, at vv. 114ff. (cf. section
5 (iv) above for the description of Smikrines). It is hard to believe that the au-
dience's ignorance of Chairestratos' name at this stage of the play made a
significant difference to the way they received his description; and it is worth
noting that the prologue does not make any use of their knowledge of
Smikrines' name in describing him. In 'Dyskolos', where the prologue opens
the play, Knemon is named (in v. 6) and then described at some length (much
as Smikrines, who has already been named, is described in the 'Aspis' pro-
logue). Gorgias is briefly introduced in the prologue but does not appear until
v. 233 and is first named at v. 247. None of this evidence (sketchy though it
is) suggests that Menander expected his audience to attach significance to par-
ticular names. 'Samia' would be exactly the same play if Demeas and
Moschion were called Laches and Sostratos.

Trinity College, Oxford P. G. McC. BROWN

85 See C. QUESTA (cited in n. 6), M.D. pp. 24-5 = QUESTA-RAFA

KRITISCHE UND EXEGETISCHE BEITRAGE ZU SENECAS

TROSTSCHRIFT AN MARCIA (DIAL. 6)

Die Ausgabe von REYNOLDSI hat die Recensio von Senecas )?Dialogi<<
erstmals auf ein wirklich verlal3liches Fundament gestellt. Der Ambrosianus
(A) hat seine Vorrangstellung im Prinzip behalten, aber durch die umfassen-

I L. Annaei Senecae dialogorum libri duodecim, rec.... L. D. REYNOLDS, Oxford 1977; vor-
bereitet durch den Aufsatz 'The Medieval Tradition of Seneca's Dialogues', Cl. Qu. N. S. 18, 1968,
355-372.

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