Le maschere di Demo e di Paflagone nei Cavalieri di Aristofane: storia, politica e iconografia

Still debated is the question of the use of portrait-masks in the Attic drama, especially referring to the mask of Paphlagon, the comic stand-in for the Athenian demagogue Cleon, in Aristophanes' Knights. Instead, the issue of the possible features of the mask of Demos, personification of the Athenian people, scenically active in the same comedy, has never been examinated: this paper will investigate the hypothetical connections between this mask and the lost portrait of Demos painted by Parrhasius in the last quarter of the fifth century B.C.