From: Chet Creider (creider@csd.uwo.ca)
Date: Thu Sep 20 2001 - 19:57:50 EDT
> At 8:00 PM -0300 9/7/01, Brent Hudson wrote:
> >I am teaching an Introductory Greek class this year for the first time. My
> >next class is on accents and while I'm not expecting them to master the
> >rules, I do want them to have a little understanding of their importance in
> >some situations. Before I tell and old tale, I was wondering if the story
> >of the actor Hegelochus mispronouncing GALHN hORW is found in a source
> >somewhere or is it an apocryphal tale kept alive by desparate Greek
> >teachers?
Carl wrote:
> I taught Greek for 40 years and never heard this one; I've referred to
> Heraclitus' BIO/S (bow) and BI/OS (life). Your story sounds like the sort
> of thing that might appear in one of Plutarch's Lives or in Athenaeus'
> Deipnosophistae.
I've taught this story for years ever since a student told me about it,
but also have never known the details. I asked a colleague in the classics
department at my university with a photographic memory and less than a
minute later his reply came back (by email). Here it is (with my questions):
>(1) in which play does the famous EK KUMATWN GAR AUQIS AU GALHN hORW
>line occur?
>(where the actor pronounced a circumflex instead of an acute and the audience
>not only smelled but heard a rat instead of a calm?)
[added for B-Greek: with an acute, the line means `after the storm, I see
again calm'; with a circumflex, `after the storm, I see again a weasel']
Eur. Orestes 279. For discussion of the issue of pronunciation, see
S. G. Daitz, CQ 33 (1983) 294-295. There is also an excellent Oxford
commentary on the play by Willink.
A GALH is actually a weasel or ferret.
>(2) in which other plays did Euripides mention this along with the actor's
>name?
Euripides nevers mentions it or the actor, but the comic poets had a
ball with it: Aristophanes, Frogs 303 ff., Sannyrion fr. 8, Strattis
fr. 63 (the fr. numbers are from Kassel & Austin, Poetae Comici
Graeci).
>(3) what was the actor's name?
Hegelochus (also mentioned as playing Orestes by Strattis fr. 1).
His slip made him the best-known actor in antiquity.
[It would appear then that the slip of the tongue in question really
did take place -- Chet Creider]
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