Maschere e lingue ‘barbare’ nell’iconografia e nei testi della commedia attica antica

The so-called ‘New York Goose Vase’ is a red-figure calyx krater produced in Southern Italy around the end of the fifth or the beginning of the fourth century BC, and now in the Metropolitan Museum. It shows a theatrical scene, evidently related to Attic comedy, as is apparent from the presence of a stage and three ‘comic’ characters: an old woman, on the stage, stretching out her right hand; an old man in the center standing on tip-toe with his hands above his head; and a young, unbearded man hold- ing his rod in a seemingly threatening manner. All of them have words coming out of their mouths, in a convention not unlike that of modern cartoon bubbles. They are speaking Attic Greek, except that the young man is saying something unintelligible (noraretteblo). This paper aims to offer an in-depth, up-dated analysis of the vase, which represents important evidence for actors in fifth/fourth-century Attic comedy playing foreign characters and speaking ‘barbarian’ languages (like the Persian Pseudartabas in Aristophanes’ Acharnians and the Triballian god in Aristophanes’ Birds; the Skythian archer in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae speaks a garbled pidgin Greek, not exam- ined in this paper [see now the excellent book of Di Bari 2013]).