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Whose Laughter does Pentheus Fear? (EUR. BA. 842)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Matt Neuburg, in CQ 37 (1987), 227–30, rightly objects that it does not make sense that Pentheus should be afraid of being laughed at by the Bacchants when he is disguised as a woman,1 and proposes a new emendation. Apart from possible objections to this, I do not believe that any change is necessary if the line is properly interpreted. The main point is that γγɛλν does not refer to laughter at Pentheus' appearance by the Bacchants or by anybody else. There is also something to be said about the implication of ν κρɛῖσσον.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1988
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1 Much the same point was made by Oranje, Hans, Euripides' Bacchae: the Play and its Audience (Leiden, 1984), pp. 85–8Google Scholar: ’P. is after all apprehensive of the ridicule of the men in the city, not that of the women on the mountain’. Here, too, γγɛλν is taken to denote laughter at Pentheus' appearance.
2 This last point was suggested by the anonymous referee.
3 In S. El. 807 λλ' γγɛλῷσα ɸροδος Jebb translates ‘She left us with a laugh’. Clytemnestra's pretence of grief at the report of Orestes' death is no doubt hypocritical, but I feel some doubt about whether she would be described as literally ‘laughing’. Perhaps the sense is rather ‘triumphant’, ‘exulting’. Cf. in the same play 277 γγɛλῷσα τος ποιονμνοις, which Kells, in his note ad loc., translates ‘exulting in her deeds’.