Maschere teatrali dalla necropoli ellenistica della contrada diana di Lipari? Criticità metodologiche e ipotesi di lavoro.

The first part provides an overview of the historical context of the discovery of miniature theatre masks in the Diana necropolis of Lipari between 1950 and 2000, their classification and their organisation in museums by archaeologists Luigi Bernabò Brea and Madeleine Cavalier. All this took place in parallel with the first editions of the recently discovered papyrus texts by Menander, for which Pollux's Onomasticon IV.133-154 immediately established itself as a guide for their classification, offering a method. The interpretations of the miniatures defined as ‘theatre-centric’ and ‘Dionysus-centric’ have been partly refuted by Agnes Schwarzmaier's monograph and much of the subsequent bibliography, which instead emphasises their symbolic value in funeral rituals. In the second part, the question of the method for recognising the value of small theatre masks is reopened. While, on the one hand, the connection between these finds and the theatrical life of the 4th-3rd centuries BC is undeniable, when considered in relation to the numerous Apulian, Lucanian, Sicilian and Pestane vase paintings that reveal the popularity of theatrical imagery in that same period, even in funerary contexts, on the other hand, there is a desire to critically re-examine the classification method by analysing a case study represented by five masks of elderly men attributed to the ‘Pappos Protos’ type from the Commedia Nuova by Bernabò Brea. The conclusion reached is that these miniatures represent a type of expressive mask of the tragic genre, also attested in other areas of Greece, even outside funerary contexts.