The Mask of the "Pseudokore" GILULA, DWORA Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Fall 1977; 18, 3; Periodicals Archive Online pg. 247 The Mask of the Pseudokore Dwora Gilula ~ONG THE NEW COMEDY MASKS listed by Pollux, two which belong to the group classed as 'young women' are named pseudokore and hetera pseudokore and are described by him (4.152) as follows: "The pseudokore is paler and her hair is bound round the front part of the head, and she resembles a newly-wedded bride. The second pseudokore is distinguished from the first only by not having her hair parted." If Pollux is describing masks that were actually used by actors in theatrical performances, the pseudokore masks pose a difficulty since such a stock-type does not appear in Greek comedy. In an attempt to find a female dramatic character that could be an appropriate candi­ date for donning this mask, Carl Robert was the first to interpret the term pseudokore as referring to a young woman who has been raped before her marriage and therefore is not a kore, a 'virgin', but rather a pseudokore, namely a 'pseudo-virgin'.! Robert's interpretation is questionable in two respects. If EOtKE vEoyafLcp means, as Robert understands it, 'a young married woman? then the term pseudokore is otiose, for we assume that, in the natural course of events, all women once married, are not virgins any more; therefore, if we follow Robert's reasoning, all of them, regardless of their premarital history, should be considered pseudokorai and don that mask. Moreover, the combining element pseudo- denotes pretension, deception, falsehood. Accordingly we should expect the pseudokore to pretend that she is a virgin. Yet none of the female characters mentioned by Robert, or, 1 C. Roben, Die Masken der neueren attischen Komoedie (Halle 1911) 41 n.2, 74; Roben's interpretation is adopted by M. Bieber, Die Denkmiiler z:um Theaterwesen im Altenum (Berlin and Leipzig 1920) 167 (no.158); 170 (no.17S); idem, RE 14 (1930) 2102,7; 2013,8; idem, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater 2 (Princeton 1961) 97. 2 According to Robert (supra n.l) the description £OLK£ J.'£Oyap.cp applies only to pseudokore and not to hetera pseudokore; see below. 247 248 THE MASK OF THE PSEUDOKORE for that matter, any other female character in comedy, ever pretends to be a virgin when she is not. Thus, if we were to accept Robert's interpretation, we would have to assume that the combining element pseudo-, if prefixed to the noun kore, conveys the idea of simple negation, while in all other compound words in which it is found it denotes pretension and deception. Simon accepts Robert's interpretation that the pseudokore is a pseudo-virgin, but she challenges his assertion that the pseudokore is a married woman raped before her marriage, like Pamphile in the Epitrepontes, and that the hetera pseudokore is a wronged girl not yet married, like Phaedria in the Aulularia and Glycerium in the Andria.3 As Robert himself admitted and as Simon correctly emphasizes, such girls do not appear on stage, and there is no need to have a mask for them. Therefore Simon proposes to construe the term pseudokore as referring to a girl who lives in concubinage with her lover but whose respectable father will be found in the course of the play, whereupon she will be recognized as a kore, i.e., a puella honesta, and a legitimate marriage with her lover would become possible. The term pseudokore applies only to a concubine who may be lifted from the status of concubinage to legitimate marriage and who EOLKE VEOyaftCt>, which­ according to Simon-does not mean 'newly-wedded bride' but is a description of the relationship between the girl and her lover; he loves her as if she were his legitimate wife, and she does not simulate her affection, as a hetaera does, but loves him truly in return. Although the motif of the long-lost girl-separated from her family by unfortunate incidents and ultimately found to be the daughter of a respectable citizen who lives next door to her lover's family-is a stock theme of New Comedy, it is highly unlikely that she can be identified as pseudokore. The difficulty lies again (a) in the notion of deception implied in the combining element pseudo-, which is not accounted for by Simon's interpretation, and (b) in the description of the mask as resembling a 'newly wedded bride'. Simon's claim (p.103) that these words pertain to "die Situation und das Gehaben der Pseudokoren, nicht aber auf eine Besonderheit an der Maske" is untenable, for Pollux throughout his catalogue describes only peculiarities of masks and not the behaviour of the stock-type that 3 A. K. H. Simon, Comicae Tabellae (Emsdetten 1938) lOoff; Simon's interpretation is accepted by T. B. L. Webster, Greek Theatre Production (London 1956) 86ff, and by A. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens2 (Oxford 1968) 228. DWORA GILULA 249 dons it or the situation in which he is involved. Moreover, it is quite difficult to believe that the words 'resembles a newly wedded bride' can carry the burden of Simon's explanation, viZ., a girl in a state of concubinage who is truly loved by her lover and loves him in return. To sum up: the hitherto accepted interpretation of pseudokore as a pseudo-virgin does not satisfactorily explain the words EOLK€ v€oyaJ1-CfJ and does not account for the notion of deception implied in that term. These two difficulties would find their explanation if we assume that the pseudokore is not a kore at all but a male dressed as a bride and substituted for her on the wedding day. The substitution of another person for the one who is the subject of passion is a popular narrative topic. It "belongs to the most wide­ spread folk-lore traditions."4 Frazer describes it as a marriage custom known under the name of 'False Bride': " ... when the bridegroom or his representative comes to fetch the bride from her home, a false bride is substituted for the real one ... or even a man being palmed off as the bride."5 In the extant Greek and Roman comedies we have only one example of such a substitution, in the mock-wedding cere­ mony at the end of Plautus' Casina, when Chalinus is dressed up as a bride and wed to Olympio. Skutsch, however, found a parallel for the dressing up of Chalinus as Casina in the story of Hercules and Omphale told by Ovid (Fasti 2.303ff), where Hercules dressed as Omphale re­ ceives her lover Faunus.6 A number of plays on the Hercules-Omphale theme are known in the Greek comic tradition,7 and they suggest that the "transvestite motif, as it is developed in Plautus' Casina," was known in Greek drama.8 Moreover, titles of plays (such as Maccus Virgo) from literary Atellan farce, which was influenced by the themes of Greek New Comedy, suggest dressing of males in female clothes.9 4 S. Trenkner, The Greek Novella in the Classical Period (Cambridge 1958) 138. S J. G. Frazer, The Fasti of Ovid III (London 1929) 125. 6 F. SkUlsch, "Ein Prolog des Diphilos und eine Komodie des plautus," RhM 55 (1900) 272ff; cf also F. Bomer, P. Ovidius Naso, Die Fasten II (Heidelberg 1958) 104; E. C. Suhr, "Heracles and Omphale," AJA 57 (1953) 251ft·. 7 The titles of the plays are collected by W. T. MacCary, "The Comic Tradition and Comic Structures in Diphilos' 'Kleroumenoi'," Hermes 101 (1973) I 97ff. 8 MacCary, op.cit. (supra n.7) 197ff; cf also J. M. Cody, "The senex amator in Plautus' Casina," Hermes 104 (1976) 473ff; see also T. B. L. Webster, Studies in Later Greek Comedy (Manchester 1953) 161; W. R. Halliday, The Greek Questions of Plutarch (Oxford 1928) 188, 212ff. 9 P. Frassinetti, Atellanae Fabulae (Roma 1967) 37, and 103 note on Kalendae Martiae; Cody, op.cit. (supra n.S) 475: " ... the later Atellan literary farce was influenced by the themes of 250 THE MASK OF THE PSEUDOKORE All female parts in Greek comedy were played by male actors dressed in female costumes and masks. An actor playing the part of a male dressed as a bride needs a special mask which would indicate that the actor donning it is a male disguised as a female. Such a special mask is that of the pseudokore. The features of the mask have to be different from those of a kore-mask, and the difference has to be easily discernible, so that the audience on seeing the mask would be aware of the impersonation. Chalinus, dressed up as a bride, would have to be recognizable as a false-bride-among other means, also by the mask of the pseudokore that indicated the deception.10 If this interpretation of the pseudokore mask is correct, it may add an argument in favour of the Greek origin of the false-bride scene in Plautus' Casina. HEBREW UNIVERSITY, JERUSALEM July, 1977 Greek New Comedy"; O. Szemerenyi, "The Origins of Roman Drama and Greek Tragedy," Hermes 103 (1975) 319: "Greek drama seems ... to be the sole fountain-head of European st age-era ft. " 10 For identifications ofpseudokore masks, cj: T. B. L. Webster, Monuments Illustrating New Comedy (London 1969) 22ft". As an almost certain identification of mask no.34, Webster cites terracotta C.309 in H. B. Walters, Catalogue of the Terracottas in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum (London 1903), a photograph of which appears in Pickard­ Cambridge, op.cit. (supra n.3) fig. 133. The terracotta statuette of a pregnant woman pro­ posed as an identification by Bieber, Theater (supra n.l) 97, fig. 355, does not fit Pollux's description. She has her hair "bound on the upper head," whereas Pollux describes the hair as "bound round the front part of the head." The difficulty presented by Pollux's distinnion of two pseudokore masks is treated by Webster, op.cit. (supra n.3) 86, who rightly rejects Simon's theory of slightly distinn character types only to invent a similar theory of his own. We should nare that the masks did not come into being all at once (cf Pickard­ Cambridge, op.cit. [supra n.3] 229, "There was no clear break at the beginning of New Comedy, and some [masks] have origins in Middle Comedy and earlier"). Perhaps one of the masks of the pseudokore that Pollux .describes was used in Middle Comedy and the second added in New Comedy. Such a chronological divergence would account for the difference in hair-style, which tends to follow trends of fashion. Pollux describes a 'stock' of masks used by a theatrical troup. There may very well have been a choice of several masks for each stock charaner, used alternatively in different performances.