ABSTRACT
There are only three occurrences of the word παλλακή in what survives of the Menandrian corpus, but even without external evidence (which is not lacking) they would be enough to establish, contrary to what is sometimes asserted (e.g. Dedoussi 2006:234–5), that the word was a recognized part of the Attic lexicon of Menander’s time with a fairly well-defined meaning. If it is not used very much, this is not because it is ‘archaic and technical’ (Fantham 1975:65, n.47) but because it is a word that is only suitable for certain contexts. It appears once as the title of a play; 1 once in a prologue narrating a past family history (fr. 411); 2 and once on the lips of the fiery-tempered Nikeratos in Samia (508), telling Demeas what he would have done with his pallake (sold her as a slave—illegally, by the way) if she had cuckolded him as Chrysis is believed to have cuckolded Demeas. Chrysis is not present at that moment, and even in her absence, the word is not applied directly to her in addressing her partner. Doubtless this is because an important function of the word, in most of its contexts, is to draw attention to the fact that the woman’s position is inferior to that of a wedded wife. In the days when the English word ‘mistress’ was in common use to refer to a woman in a very roughly comparable position, it would likewise not have been used in addressing the woman herself or her partner, unless with the deliberate intention of insulting them.
