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THE ‘SMILING MASK’ OF BACCHAE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2017

Joshua Billings
Joshua Billings*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
*
jhbillings@princeton.edu
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Extract

In his commentary on Bacchae 439, lemma γελῶν, E.R. Dodds writes: ‘the actor who plays the Stranger no doubt wore a smiling mask throughout’. In addition to this passage, Dodds cites Bacch. 380 (γελάσαι) and Hymn. Hom. Bacch. 14 (μειδιάων). Referring to Bacch. 1021 (προσώπῳ γελῶντι), he expands: ‘it is an ambiguous smile—here the smile of a martyr, afterwards the smile of the destroyer.’ The idea seems to originate either from Dodds himself (whose commentary was first published in 1944) or from R.P. Winnington-Ingram, whose Euripides and Dionysus (published in 1948) cites the smile as well. Winnington-Ingram's book, according to the Preface, was substantially complete by 1938, and he and Dodds were in close contact at the time of writing, so the idea could have come from either one or the other, or from their conversations. Whatever its source, the smiling mask is taken as fact by both, and through their works entered the mainstream of post-war scholarship on Bacchae.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , May 2017 , pp. 19 - 26
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

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References

1 Dodds, E.R., Euripides Bacchae (Oxford, 1960 2), 131 Google Scholar. The note is unchanged from the first edition of 1944.

2 Winnington-Ingram, R.P., Euripides and Dionysus: An Interpretation of the Bacchae (Cambridge, 1948), 19 Google Scholar.

3 None more interesting than Foley, H.P., ‘The masque of Dionysus’, TAPhA 110 (1980), 107–33Google Scholar; Vernant, J.-P., ‘The masked Dionysus of Euripides’ Bacchae ’, in id. and Vidal-Naquet, P., Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (New York, 1990), 381–412 Google Scholar. More recently, much of a chapter has been devoted to Bacchae and the mask: Chaston, C., Tragic Props and Cognitive Function: Aspects of the Function of Images in Thinking (Leiden, 2010), 179–233 Google Scholar. More incidental mentions of the smiling mask are found in important books by Jones, J., On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (New York, 1962), 270 Google Scholar; Goldhill, S., Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1986), 260 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Segal, C., Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae (rev. ed.) (Princeton, 1997), 249 Google Scholar.

4 Seaford, R., Euripides Bacchae (Warminster, 1996), 186 Google Scholar; Roux, J., Euripide Les Bacchantes (Paris, 1970/1972)Google Scholar, 2.399.

5 Radke, G., Tragik und Metatragik: Euripides’ Bakchen und die moderne Literaturwissenschaft (Berlin, 2003), 174–80Google Scholar. Although my argument accords with hers on the validity of the smiling mask, it diverges strongly on what we should take away from the discussion.

6 A more persuasive criticism of contemporary approaches to Bacchae is Richard Seaford's, which focusses on the embeddedness of the play in Dionysiac ritual, and so constructs the case against ambiguity contextually: Seaford, R.S., Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Oxford, 1994), 363–7Google Scholar; Seaford (n. 4), 46–52. See further the exchanges with Charles Segal in BMCR 1998.3.10, 1998.05.26 and 1998.07.01, and with Rainer Friedrich in Arion vols. 7–9.

7 Wiles, D., Mask and Performance in Greek Tragedy: From Ancient Festival to Modern Experimentation (Cambridge, 2007), 221–2Google Scholar.

8 Halliwell, S., Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity (Cambridge, 2008), 136–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, relying in part on Radke (n. 5).

9 Noted also by Seaford (n. 4), 186.

10 I can find no evidence that Guy Fawkes masks were conventionally smiling before they gained their present counter-cultural resonance from the novel V for Vendetta and the Anonymous movement. The association, though, of Dionysus with an anti-capitalist swarm of hackers is appealing.

11 This also speaks to the other piece of evidence cited by Dodds on Bacch. 439, a fragment of Accius’ Bacchae (11 R3 ) that reads praesens praesto irridens—again, laughing rather than smiling.

12 Excepting perhaps πόθου πλέως (456), which grammatically refers to the Stranger's hair, but could indicate something about his expression—though again, there is no sign of a smile or a laugh.

13 The evidence is collected in LIMC III.1 414–514. See further Isler-Kerényi, C., Dionysos in Classical Athens: An Understanding through Images (Leiden, 2015), 184–210 Google Scholar. Isler-Kerényi attributes the change in imagery in large part to the newly built Parthenon's iconographic programme.

14 Noted by Radke (n. 5), 177–8.

15 See Henrichs, A., ‘“Why should I dance?” Choral self-referentiality in Greek tragedy’, Arion 3 (1994/1995), 45–111 Google Scholar.

16 See Halliwell (n. 8), 137–9.

17 There is a suggestive echo of the Servant's description of the Stranger as θήρ, which ties into the hunting imagery that pervades the play. See further Thumiger, C., ‘Animal world, animal representation, and the “hunting-model”: between literal and figurative in Euripides’ “Bacchae”’, Phoenix 60 (2006), 191–210 Google Scholar.

18 Segal (n. 3), 248–9. Hall, E., The Theatrical Cast of Athens: Interactions Between Ancient Greek Drama and Society (Oxford, 2006), 108–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Seaford (n. 4), on 439 gives other, much later, examples, but it is hard not to suspect that these have been influenced by transformations of the figure of Dionysus over time.

20 Halliwell (n. 8), 137.

21 Radke (n. 5), 180 argues that this duality should be read not as a characterization of Dionysus himself within Bacchae (whose portrayal she reads as unambiguous) but as an expression of the chorus’ view of the god as ambiguous. This distinction, though, overlooks the pervasive portrayals of a polar Dionysus in Greek culture generally.

22 Marshall, C.W., ‘Some fifth-century masking conventions’, G&R 46 (1999), 188–202 Google Scholar, at 190–2. Especially illuminating is Halliwell, S., ‘The function and aesthetics of the Greek tragic mask’, in Slater, N.W. and Zimmermann, B. (edd.), Intertextualität in der griechisch-römischen Komödie (Stuttgart, 1993), 195–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 202–6. Halliwell accepts the smiling mask of Bacchae here, but rejects it in later writings (see n. 8).

23 Wiles (n. 7), 41–3. See further Rehm, R., Greek Tragic Theatre (London, 1992), 39–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCart, G., ‘Masks in Greek and Roman theatre’, in McDonald, M. and Walton, M. (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre (Cambridge, 2007), 247–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 It is often thought that Oedipus’ mask after his blinding in Soph. OT (or Polymestor's in Eur. Hec.) must portray his gauged eyes. There is no evidence for this, but it is at least reflected in other characters’ reactions to Oedipus (unlike the smiling mask of the Stranger). Nevertheless, we do not know whether this would have been represented at all visually or, if so, whether it would have been accomplished with makeup or a different mask. See Halliwell (n. 22), 206.

25 Though he is undecided about the accuracy of the idea: Marshall (n. 22), 196.

26 Pace Foley (n. 3), 130, who makes an interesting argument based on similarity in the two costumes, Pentheus is wearing a πέπλος (935) with girdle—that is, a female garment, and so unsuitable for the Stranger. There is no evidence for the Stranger wearing a krokotos, as Dionysus is in Frogs (46). On the krokotos, see Carpenter, T.H., Dionysian Imagery in Fifth-Century Athens (Oxford, 1997), 107 Google Scholar.

27 See the evidence in Wiles (n. 7), 15–43; Halliwell (n. 8), 541–6.

28 Seaford (n. 4), on 439 cites ABV 275.8, but this is disputed convincingly by Halliwell (n. 8), 546 n. 60. For the Dionysus mask as ritual object, see Frontisi-Ducroux, F., Le Dieu-Masque: Une Figure du Dionysos d'Athènes (Paris, 1991)Google Scholar; Peirce, S., ‘Visual language and concepts of cult on the “Lenaia vases”’, CA 17 (1998), 59–95 Google Scholar. Halliwell (n. 22), 188–9 is suspicious of any essential link between Dionysiac ritual and theatrical masking.

29 See above, n. 6.

30 Goldhill (n. 3), 260.

31 See further Henrichs, A., ‘Loss of self, suffering, violence: the modern view of Dionysus from Nietzsche to Girard’, HSPh 88 (1984), 205–40Google Scholar.

32 Dodds (n. 1), xliv.

33 Foley (n. 3), 127. The evidence for this speculation, as far as I can tell, is no stronger than the evidence for Dionysus’ smiling mask.

34 Henrichs, A., ‘“He has a god in him”: human and divine in the modern perception of Dionysus’, in Carpenter, T.H. and Faraone, C.A. (edd.), Masks of Dionysus (Ithaca, NY, 1993), 13–43 Google Scholar. The most eloquent case for the absolute reality of Dionysus is Otto, W.F., Dionysus: Myth and Cult (Bloomington, IN, 1965)Google Scholar.

35 Vernant (n. 3), 382–3.

36 For a corrective to this view, see Henrichs, A., ‘Between country and city: cultic dimensions of Dionysus in Athens and Attica’, in Griffith, M. and Mastronarde, D.J. (edd.), Cabinet of the Muses: Essays on Classical and Comparative Literature in Honor of Thomas G. Rosenmeyer (Atlanta, 1990), 257–77Google Scholar.

37 I am grateful to Melissa Mueller for perceptive and insightful suggestions, and to the CQ referee, whose comments strengthened the argument.