by Mary Beard
Much the same was true in ancient Rome. Admittedly, there are no ancient narrative accounts of the history of Roman laughter. But the contrast between the controlled, sophisticated, or mild laughter of now and the earthy, fearless, or crude laughter of the past is a striking theme in Roman writing. The details differ from author to author, the precise argument (and moral) of some of the passages concerned is hard to follow, not to say deeply controversial, and the idea of a chronological development correlates in sometimes complicated and contradictory ways with ideas of foreign influence. But the basic message that ancient writers tried to convey is clear: if you go back far enough in Roman time, you find a culture of ribald, jocular laughter that has—for better or worse—been lost or is on the point of being so.
Cicero, for example, could write nostalgically in a letter of 46 BCE of his affection for “native witticisms,” now so overlaid by foreign traditions “that there is hardly a trace of old-style wit to be seen.” It is only in his friend Paetus (to whom the letter is flatteringly addressed) that he can now “spot any likeness of the ancient native jocularity [festivitas].”63 Both Livy and Horace refer back to the rough, caustic traditions of rustic Latin jesting and to the abusive, ribald—and frankly mysterious—“Fescennine verses,” or Fescennina licentia, much enjoyed, Horace claims, by “farmers of yore” (agricolae prisci).64 In fact, as Emily Gowers suggests, Horace’s famous “Journey to Brundisium” in Satires 1.5 can be read not simply as the travelogue of an uncomfortable trip south from Rome or a pointed commentary on the politics of the 30s BCE but as a journey into the history of Roman laughter and satire: the central episode takes us back to its deepest roots, staging a comic duel between a pair of scurrilous, grotesque, jesting clowns, Sarmentus and Messius Cicirrus. Horace’s own style of laughter is much more up-to-date and refined than that: the poet, as Ellen Oliensis rightly insists, “takes care to locate himself very definitely in the audience, far above the satiric boxing ring.”65
The idea of a native Italic tradition of jocularity—“la causticité des vieux Latins”66—has been appealing to modern scholars. It has been seen as a powerful factor in the development of the distinctive tradition of Latin satire, and the lingering traces of the “Fescennine” spirit have been sought out in all kinds of places where they sometimes do, and sometimes do not, belong.67 But whether this Roman reconstruction accurately reflects the historical reality of the shifts and developments of Roman laughter (whatever exactly we mean by the term) is as hard to disentangle as any narrative of any history of laughter anywhere or at any time. In part it presumably does; in part it cannot. But which parts?
In exploring the case studies that are the focus of the second half of this book, I shall be alert to signs of historical change and shall keep an eye out for the perspective of ancient authors themselves on the history of Roman laughter. But for what are now—I trust—obvious reasons, I shall not set out to tell a diachronic story of how laughter changed at Rome over the centuries. I have no doubt that there were all kinds of differences in the “laughterhood” of Rome between the campfire world of the small, early settlement by the Tiber in (say) the seventh century BCE and the multicultural metropolis of Augustan Rome in the first century. And again, I am sure that the culture of laughter in the “pagan” empire was different, in crucial respects, from that of its Christian successor. I am, however, far from sure how confidently we can describe (still less account for) those changes or whether we have sufficient evidence, particularly for the earlier period, to make a useful attempt. My focus in what follows is broadly, and intentionally, synchronic, concentrating for the most part on the Roman world from the second century BCE to the second century CE.68
But first we need to ask what exactly the culture of Roman laughter might mean, what its basic coordinates are, and how far it can be distinguished from Greek laughter.
CHAPTER 4
Roman Laughter in Latin and Greek
LAUGHING IN LATIN
The study of Roman laughter is in some ways an impossible project. That is partly what makes it so intriguing, so special, so enlightening, and so worthwhile. As I hope I have made clear already (perhaps too clear for the tastes of some readers), the laughter of the past is always likely to frustrate our most determined efforts to systematize and control it. Anyone who—with a straight face—claims to be able to offer a clear account of why or how or when Romans laughed is bound to be oversimplifying. But in the inevitable confusion (in the mess left in laughter’s wake), we still learn a lot about ancient Rome and about how laughter in the past might have operated differently. This is a subject (like many, to be honest, in ancient history) in which the process of trying to understand can be as important and illuminating as the end result.
But process isn’t everything, and we should not entirely accept defeat before we begin. Whatever the tricky problems that I have been enjoying so far, there are also some striking and relatively straightforward observations to be made about how laughter works in the Latin language and in Latin literature. In fact, to investigate Roman laughter is to engage with some of the most basic and familiar words in Latin (those that even the rawest beginner is likely to have encountered), as well as some rather more recondite vocabulary. It also involves exploring some of the less-trodden byways of Latin literature, as well as throwing fresh light on some of the most canonical Latin texts we have.
One of most important of these observations concerns the Latin vocabulary of laughter. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that there is just one word in Latin for “laughing.” In modern English, we are used to a range of subtly nuanced (even if elusive) terms for laugh: from chuckle and chortle through giggle, titter, and snigger to howl and guffaw—not to mention such related words as grin, beam, smile, and smirk. Ancient Greek too has a wide range of laughter vocabulary, from the standard gelan and its compounds through variants such as kanchazein (a more robust form) and sairein (e.g., Commodus’ grin; see p. 6) to the delightfully onomatopoeic kichlizein (not far from our giggle) or meidian (often translated as “smile”). In Latin we are dealing, for the most part, with just the word ridere, its compounds (adridere, deridere, irridere, and so on), and its various cognates as adjectives and nouns (risus, “laughter”; ridiculus, “laughable”). All of these signal some form of audible, physical reaction or gesture broadly and recognizably akin to laughter as we know it. Dictionary definitions and some modern critics try to calibrate these variants precisely, from deridere, for example, signaling derision to irridere ridicule or laughing at. Yet the terms are almost certainly much less fixed, referentially, than such definitions imply.1
The confidence with which it is often assumed, for example, that adridere always refers to supportive laughter or, pejoratively, flattery, is quite misplaced. True, sometimes it does: Ovid tells his learner lover to make a good impression by joining in the laughter (adride) whenever his would-be girlfriend laughs; the hallmark of comic toadies is “to offend no one and be a total yes-man” (adridere omnibus); and Horace uses the word in the context of sympathetic laughter.2 But it is certainly not always so supportive, as phrases such as “laughing savagely” (saevum adridens) make absolutely clear.3 In fact, in another passage of Terence’s Eunuch, Gnatho exploits the potential double entendre of the word when he reflects on his life as a scrounger and his relationship with the (rather dim) guys who are his meal tickets: “I don’t set out to make them laugh at me, but actually eis adrideo and compliment their wit at the same time.” The joke here turns on the possible slippage in the phrase eis adrideo between “I flatter them” and “I laugh at them.” Is Gnatho merely toeing the subservient line, or is he hinting to the audience that he has the upper hand in dealing with the likes of Thraso? Who, in other words, is laughing at whom? The ambivalence is half-seen and half-missed by one late antique commentator, who wrote simply that Terence had used “arrideo instead of irrideo.”4
Some modern critics have been even more confident than this in suggesting which Latin w
ord should be used where, even inserting the “correct” term where necessary. One glaring case concerns the text of an epigram of Martial. The poem is a squib addressed to one Calliodorus, who fancies himself a great jester and so dinner party guest, and according to the manuscript tradition includes the phrase omnibus adrides. The most recent editor, with staggering self-confidence, has simply replaced this with omnis irrides. Why? Because, he explains, “adrides must mean either ‘you smile at approvingly’ . . . or ‘you please.’ . . . Neither fits Calliodorus. . . . The word for his activity can only be irrides.”5 Such rewriting is the price you have to pay if you want to preserve neat linguistic boundaries.
Beyond ridere and its linguistic family, there are few Latin alternatives. Occasionally, words such as renidere (shine out) do metaphorical duty for some shades of laughter or facial expression (renidere is, more or less, “to beam”).6 Rictus can refer (unflatteringly) to the open mouth or gaping jaws that are inevitably part of the laughing process, as well as to the bared teeth of an animal.7 Elsewhere, cachinnare or (more commonly) the noun cachinnus can be used for a particularly raucous form of laughter or for what we might call “(a) cackle.” As one late Roman grammarian, Nonius Marcellus, put it, it had been used to signify “not just laughter [risus] but a stronger sound.”8 The words have a catchy onomatopoeic ring but again are harder to pin down than dictionary definitions imply and prove resistant to the very precise classification that we might like to impose on them.
It is true that a contrast between cachinnare and (mere) ridere is sometimes more or less spelled out. Cicero, for example, at one point in his broadside against Verres, the infamous governor of Sicily, turns to attack Verres’ nasty sidekick Apronius, for humiliating a supposedly upstanding member of the Sicilian elite; Cicero pictures a banquet at which “his fellow guests laughed [ridere], Apronius himself cackled [cachinnare].”9 Likewise, in what was effectively his manifesto poem, the satirist Persius was clearly trying to outdo his predecessor Horace in describing his own reaction to the folly of the world as cachinnare, not Horace’s gentler ridere.10
However, the word is not always so loaded, so aggressive, or so loud. It is the pleasant sound of laughter (cachinni), along with wine, wit, and a pretty girl, that sums up the atmosphere of a friendly party at the poet Catullus’ house; it is the laughter of disbelief (cachinnasse) with which, in Suetonius’ biography, Vespasian’s grandmother reacts to the unlikely omen that her grandson will become emperor; and it is the furtive giggles of servant girls (furtim cachinnant) laughing at their mistress behind her back.11 What is more, metaphorical usage too reflects that range. Cachinnare and cachinni, both verb and noun, are used to evoke the sound of water—from the pounding of the ocean to the gentle rippling of Lake Garda.12 Cackles or giggles or ripples? We should always hesitate before assigning too rigid or precise a value to Latin terms for “laughing” or “laughter.”
LATIN SMILES?
So far I have not pointed to a word that corresponds to our own smile. I mean that curving of the lips that may, or may not, be a preliminary to a fully vocalized laugh—but is independently one of the most powerful signifying gestures in the modern Western world. From “Smile, please” to smiley faces, it underpins for us all kinds of human interaction, signaling warmth, greeting, wry amusement, disdain, affection, confidence, ambivalence, and much more. It is hard for us to imagine social life happening without it, yet it is hard to find a Latin equivalent.
In ancient Greek the position appears somewhat simpler. The word meidiaō may be much more distant from our smile than that standard translation implies. In Homer and other early writers, meidiaō can also be a sign of hostility, aggression, or superiority, and in general it seems to be treated as a gesture of the face as a whole rather than just the lips.13 But as Halliwell shows, it does overlap in part with our usage, notably because unlike laughter, and like our “smiling,” it makes no noise (or as he more carefully puts it, “It is impossible . . . to show that meid- terms ever imply vocalisation”).14 In Latin there is no specific term of that sort. When Virgil evoked the “smiling” gods of Homer, he often fell back on another compound of ridere, that is subridere, which technically means a “suppressed or muffled laugh,” even a “little laugh.”15
Renidere (to beam) can also, metaphorically, signal a silent facial expression that seems akin to a smile. This is how the poet Catullus has Egnatius famously reveal his urine-cleaned teeth: “Egnatius . . . renidet.” And Robert Kaster, in exploring the world and the text of Macrobius’ Saturnalia, has not only translated the word as “smile” but also suggested that these “smiles” play a particular role in articulating the learned discussion that is staged in the dialogue. Phrases such as “Praetextatus smiled” (Praetextatus renidens) tend to greet an ignorant, out-of-place comment by some (usually inferior) participant in the discussion, and they invariably herald a pronouncement by an expert “which admits no contradiction.” Kaster is an acute observer of the structure of this late antique debate and of the hierarchies within it. But it is far less clear than he suggests that this “beaming” is a close match for our own category of grandly supercilious smiling—those “gestures of magnificent condescension,” as he puts it.16
Other, more discursive, metaphorical uses of the word outside Macrobius—admittedly often centuries earlier than the Saturnalia—are varied but revealing. Catullus certainly likens the expression (renidet) to laughing, but Egnatius’ determined display of his white teeth is an absurd form of laughter (risus ineptus) and so is itself laughable. In Ovid, renidens is (twice) the expression of foolish optimism on the face of young Icarus, in Livy it is that of the boastful trickster, and Quintilian also uses it of a misplaced sign of pleasure (intempestive renidentis).17 Repeatedly, as with the Greek meidiaō, the emphasis is on the facial expression as a whole (hilaro vultu renidens, renidenti vultu, renidens vultu18), not specifically the lips—as is also once made explicit in Macrobius: vultu renidens.19 For the most part, the common defining feature of this gesture seems to be the facial “glow” (of confidence, whether well-placed or misplaced) rather than the oscular curve, or “smile” as we know it.20
So did the Romans smile? At the risk of falling into the trap of overconfident classification that I have been criticizing, my working hypothesis is “by and large, in our terms, no.” But that is not (simply) for linguistic reasons, and it needs to be argued rather carefully. The cultural significance of smiling may be reflected in, but is not wholly circumscribed by, language. Several modern European languages (English and Danish, for example—like ancient Greek) have separate word groups, from separate linguistic roots, that distinguish “smile” from “laugh.” Others (notably the Romance descendants of Latin) do not. Reflecting those Latin roots, modern French uses sourire for “smile,” just as Italian uses sorridere (both derived directly from subridere; respectively cognate with the French rire and the Italian ridere). Yet both of these modern cultures have an investment in the social significance of smiling, as distinct from laughter, no less intense than that of (for example) their modern Anglo-American counterparts.
Nonetheless, the linguistic patterns of Latin do seem to accord with other negative hints which suggest that smiling was not a major part (if a part at all) of Roman social semiotics. Only the most hard-line ethologists, neuroscientists, and their followers hold to the human universality of such facial gestures—whether in form, type, or meaning.21 Crucially important for me is that we find in Roman literature none of those distinctions between smiling and laughing drawn by the likes of Lord Chesterfield (for whom a silent smile was a sign of decorum, in contrast to “loud peals of laughter”),22 and—whatever is going on in Macrobius—we see no clear evidence that smiling as such was a significant player in Roman social interactions in general. “Keep smiling!” and the like were sentiments unheard of in Rome, so far as I can tell, and as Christopher Jones has shown, two Romans meeting in the street were likely to greet each other with a kiss, where we would smile.23
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Of course, arguments from silence are always perilous, especially when the process of spotting the smile is necessarily an interpretative one. But it is hard to resist the suggestion of Jacques Le Goff that (in the Latin West at least) smiling as we understand it was an invention of the Middle Ages.24 This is not to say that the Romans never curled up the edges of their mouths in a formation that would look to us much like a smile; of course they did. But such curling did not mean very much in the range of significant social and cultural gestures at Rome. Conversely, other gestures, which would mean little to us, were much more heavily freighted with significance: Caesar scratching his head with one finger, which would now indicate no more than an annoying itch, could give Cicero the hint that Caesar posed no danger to the Roman Republic.25
There is an important lesson in this. It has become standard practice when translating not only subridere but also ridere itself and its other cognates into English to use the word smile where it seems more natural to us than laugh (even some famous lines of Virgil have been the victim of this tendency; see pp. 84–85). This has a doubly misleading effect. It tends to give smiling a much bigger presence in Roman cultural language than it deserves—or ever had. And in offering an apparently “better” translation, it tends to erode the potential foreignness of Roman patterns of laughter, to make them look increasingly like our own. To be sure, we cannot absolutely prove that there was no strong and meaningful Roman tradition of smiling that lurked underneath the general rubric of ridere. We need to remain alert to that possibility. But we should also resist the easy temptation to reconstruct the Romans in our own image. So even where laugh may seem awkward, I shall use it as the first option in translating ridere and its compounds and cognates: that is not to say that even the English word laugh captures exactly what the Romans meant by ridere, but it is certainly less misleading than smile. And that awkwardness is, after all, part of the historical point.
