See also
mu 274,
mu 275.
Several different notes on the practice of
masxalismo/s, as referred to by classical and Hellenistic poets, were handed down in the lexicographical tradition; the present note appears first in
Pausanias the Atticist (epsilon34 Erbse) and also in
Photius (
Lexicon epsilon681) and several other lexica. The headword is quoted either from
Aeschylus,
Choephoroi 439 or from
Sophokles,
Elektra 445 (both referring to the treatment of Agamemnon's corpse by Klytaimestra); the note itself does not appear in the surviving
scholia to either passage, though it could well once have stood in the
Choephoroi scholia (which in this part of the play are mostly very terse). Other poetic passages referring to
masxalismo/s are
Sophokles frr. 528, 623 (of Troilos, by Achilles) and
Apollonios Rhodios,
Argonautica 4.477 (of Apsyrtos son of Aietes, by Jason). The practice was evidently well enough known to fifth-century Athenians to need no explanation, but whether they knew it in real life or only in myth we cannot tell.
1Other sources say "treacherous murder" (Etymologicum Magnum 118.23-25) or "murder of kindred" (e.g. schol. Sophokles, Elektra 445) -- though this last does not work for Troilos or Apsyrtos. ↩2Not a very satisfactory explanation. The scholia on Sophokles, Elektra 445, doubtless by intelligent guesswork, offer something much more plausible: "as if to take away their [the victims'] power, for fear of afterwards suffering something fearful at their hands". ↩3"From every part of the body" (schol. Sophokles, Elektra 445), i.e. nose, ears, genitals, fingers and toes. ↩4Sophokles fr. 623. Harpokration (eta8 Keaney) says the practice was also mentioned in Sophokles' Polyxene (fr. 528); this has been thought (e.g. by W.M. Calder III, GRBS 7 [1966] 50) to be a mere error, but Troilos' sister Polyxene, who in archaic art is normally with Troilos when he is ambushed by Achilles and brings the news to Troy↗, may very well have mentioned her brother's murder and mutilation in the course of a play at whose end she is herself sacrificed at the demand of Achilles' ghost. ↩5Greek to\n masxalismo/n; but this must surely be corrupt. It has been variously emended, the neatest solution being perhaps to\n memasxalisme/non "the armpitted man" (Welcker); but since the transmitted reading might result from a mere slip of a copyist's eye or mind from the word he was to write next to a word he had just written, the true reading might be something completely dissimilar, e.g. to\n o(rmaqo/n "the 'necklace'". ↩6Sophokles, Elektra 445.