Terentianus Maurus, sonus tragicus and the masks

This paper aims at explaining a puzzling passage found in some Sotadic verses of the De litteris by Terentianus Maurus (end of the 2nd century CE - beginning of the 3rd century CE). The African author hints at a difference in the articulation and in the related acoustic effect in the velar pair, hence /o/ vs /o:/, of Late Latin. Terentianus says that the long phoneme /o:/ was characterised by the “intensification” of the sonus tragicus, but, albeit the acoustic referent of such phrase is out of question (a flat sound), the precise meaning is still an unsolved issue in the scientific literature. A new interpretation of a testimonium in Gellius’ Noctes Atticae (5, 7), together with relevant archaeological evidences, point out to an unexpected semantic value of sonus tragicus. The phrase indicates the typical timbre produced by the actors who wore tragic masks. The masks functioned as a sort of full face helmet for the actor and, thus, as proper filters, allowing the reinforcement of some bands of the laryngeal frequency, with an effect similar to that of lip protrusion. According to this new interpretation, the “sound pertaining to tragedy” was a sound made more powerful, grave and cavern-like: these, actually, are the typical features of a closed [o], which emerge also from the metalinguistic descriptions of other Roman grammarians.