The ‘Smiling Mask’ of Bacchae

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

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