Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/203

Rh sented by persons wearing masks. In ancient Rome they were so represented on various occasions by persons wearing imagines (waxen masks); as the writer in Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities says, "The imagines used in funerals were masks which were fitted on to the faces of the actors who represented "the deceased ancestors," on the occasion of the death of a member of the household, when the imagines of the ancestors formed a part of the funeral procession."

I admit candidly I have no evidence to produce that at Sicyon masks of deceased ancestors were preserved. I can only point to the fact that in Greece, in the period of the Aegean culture, death-masks were buried—at Mycenae for instance—with the deceased, as at Rome also they were buried. Whether in Greece, as in Rome, one mask was buried and another mask was preserved for use in subsequent funeral processions we do not know. It is conjecture only—if a plausible conjecture—that at Sicyon, in the rites, the, which commemorated the story of the deceased hero Adrastus, the performers wore masks. But it is in the highest degree unlikely that these performances would have been recognised as "tragic choruses" or performances had no masks been worn.

There, however, is the conjecture that the origin of tragedy goes back to the custom of wearing the death-masks of deceased ancestors and of enacting, at first in gesture-dancing and dumb-show, some scene in which the deceased ancestors make their appearance.

I now turn to the satyric drama, and my suggestion is that, as tragedy had its origin in masking and the acting of such tragic choruses as those of Sicyon, so the satyric drama had its origin in the chorus of satyrs. But whereas tragedy, as I suggest, had its origin in the death-masks of the nobility—for the nobles alone, in Rome at any rate, had the right to such masks, the jus imaginum—the satyric chorus, I am going to suggest, had its origin in