Hegelochus Weasel Stage Blunder

In 408 BC in Athens, the actor Hegelochus performed in a play named Orestes. He mispronounced a key word and turned “after the storm I see again a calm sea” into “after the storm I see again a weasel,” a blunder that audiences seized on immediately. Comic poets such as Sannyrion mocked him, and the mistake stuck so firmly with people then that his name survives today as a punchline for stage errors.

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