by Mary Beard
25. Hunter 1985 is a sane introduction; Marshall 2006 includes an up-to-date discussion of masks (126–58); with Manuwald 2011, 79–80. For masks, or not, in mime, see above, p. 168.
26. We rely here on the possibly unreliable account of Suetonius, Poet., Terence 2 (and we must assume that the “repeat performance” refers to the first production).
27. Barsby 1999 and Brothers 2000 are helpful discussions of the play as a whole.
28. Another manuscript version of the didascalia ascribes the first performance to the Ludi Romani (Barsby 1999, 78)—which would (sadly) rule out any direct connection between the representation of the eunuch in the play and the original performance context. The cult of Magna Mater was a complex amalgam, parading both Roman and disconcertingly foreign elements (such as castration); on these representational and other complexities, see Beard 1996.
29. Gnatho himself had already paraded that insincerity a couple of hundred lines earlier (249–50), in a double entendre on his life as a sponger, discussed on pp. 71–72.
30. My translation of this line (“Dolet dictum inprudenti adulescenti et libero,” 430) follows Donatus’ commentary and those more recent critics and translators (such as Barsby [1999, 164]) who see Gnatho flattering Thraso, by offering (mock) sympathy for the young Rhodian.
31. TH. una in convivio / erat hic, quem dico, Rhodius adulescentulus. / forte habui scortum: coepit ad id adludere / et me inridere. “quid ais” inquam homini “inpudens? / lepu’ tute’s, pulpamentum quaeris?” GN. hahahae. TH. quid est? GN. facete lepide laute nil supra. / tuomne, obsecro te, hoc dictum erat? vetu’ credidi. TH. audieras? GN. saepe, et fertur in primis. TH. meumst. GN. dolet dictum inprudenti adulescenti et libero. PA. at te di perdant! GN. quid ille quaeso? TH. perditus: / risu omnes qui aderant emoriri. denique / metuebant omnes iam me. GN. haud iniuria.
32. TH. ego hinc abeo: tu istanc opperire. PA. haud convenit / una ire cum amica imperatorem in via. TH. quid tibi ego multa dicam? domini similis es. GN. hahahae. TH. quid rides? GN. istuc quod dixti modo; / et illud de Rhodio dictum quom in mentem venit.
33. Donatus on Eun. 426; see also Eugraphius on Eun. 497.
34. GLK 6.447.7 (Marius Plotius Sacerdos); see also 1.419.7 (Diomedes, “hahahe”), 3.91.3–4 (Priscian, “ha ha hae”), 4.255.31 ([Probus], “hahahae”), 6.204.23 (Maximus Victorinus, “haha”). The minor textual variants in the manuscript tradition do not alter the main point (or sound). The recognition of laughter sounds in Greek texts is complicated by the fact that the simple substitution of a smooth for a rough, aspirated breathing turns a ha ha ha into an ah ah ah! Possible instances of laughter scripted in Greek comedy are discussed (and largely rejected) by Kidd 2011, with full reference to earlier bibliography, back to late antique and medieval critics who saw the problems that the presence or absence of aspiration caused.
35. One enterprising seventeenth-century systematizer, “un astrologue Italien, nommé l’Abbé Damascene,” attempted to classify the variants in these sounds and relate them to the different temperaments, hi hi hi indicating melancholics, he he he cholerics, ha ha ha phlegmatics, and ho ho ho hotheads; cited in Dictionnaire universel françois et latin, vol. 5 (Paris, 1743), 1081. Kidd 2011, while acknowledging some version of ha ha ha as a possible means of representing laughter in Greek, points also to such variants as αἰβοιβοῖ and ἰηῦ.
36. From Johnson’s Life of Cowley, first published in a collected edition of 1779–81 (see now, conveniently, Lonsdale 2009, 33); it is an exaggeration because Johnson is referring to not only the sound but also the cause of laughter (a universalizing claim that this book will dispute).
37. Fraenkel 1922, 43–45 (2007, 32–35) offers the most significant variant interpretation—“You are a hare: you go after tasty food” (or in its weaker form “Du suchst dir pulpamentum wie ein Hase,” “You look for pulpamentum like a hare”)—which Fantham 1972, 80, follows but Wright 1974, 25–27, convincingly rejects.
38. Barsby 1999, 163. I stress “Donatus’ text,” as the version of his commentary that has come down to us is a very mixed tradition, including Donatus’ own discussion and his compendium of earlier scholarship on the play as well as later additions and glosses incorporated in the process of transmission (Barsby 2000; Victor 2013, 353–58).
39. “Vel quod a physicis dicatur incerti sexus esse,” Donatus, Eun. 426. Frangoulidis 1994 shows more generally how the themes of the exchanges between Thraso and Gnatho look forward to later scenes in the play.
40. Cicero, De or. 2.217; see p. 28.
41. Freud 1960 [1905]; his analysis in terms of “displacement” (86–93) seems particularly relevant here. The idea of incongruity is characteristic of (among others) the “General Theory of Verbal Humor” (GTVH), as developed in Attardo and Raskin 1991 and Attardo 1994. They stress, in a much more nuanced way than my crude summary suggests, how the sequence of interpretative dilemmas and their resolution construct a joke.
42. On Freud and the physicality of laughter, see pp. 38–39, 40.
43. SHA, Carus, Carinus, Numerianus 13.3–5.
44. For possibly older Greek antecedents, see pp. 90–91.
45. See p. 4.
46. Festus, p. 228L; Diogenes Laertius 7.185. See pp. 176–78 for further examples and discussion.
47. Interestingly, Donatus (Eun. 497) sees Thraso’s question (“What are you laughing at?”) and the whole exchange in terms of the soldier’s desire to elicit flattery for his wit from the sponger (as at 427). Although the commentary reflects on the point of Parmeno’s joke and its exaggeration of Thraso’s status (495), it does not canvas this as a possible prompt for Gnatho’s hahahae.
48. Goldhill 2006 discusses these issues well; Bakhtin 1986, 135, by contrast, claims (at least in relation to carnival laughter) that “laughter only unites” (see further pp. 60–62). Billig’s stress on laughter and “unlaughter” (2005, 175–99) is also useful here.
49. Sharrock 2009, 163–249, discusses other aspects of “tired old jokes” (with a nice analysis of this particular exchange at 164–65). In general, recent discussions of laughter, ancient or modern, have tended to underplay its learned, practiced, or habitual aspects.
50. This idea of the self-reflexivity of laughter is a major theme throughout Halliwell 2008.
51. I have taken all these examples from good recent translations of The Eunuch: Radice 1976, Brothers 2000, and Barsby 2001. A particularly rich selection of laughter insertions (from with a smile to digging him in the ribs) can be found in the Loeb translation of Plautus, Nixon 1916–38.
52. A vague “dozen or so” because emendation can add to the total: Plautus, Poen. 768, Pseud. 946, 1052, Truculentus 209, and conjectured at Mil. 1073; Terence, An. 754, Haut. 886, Hec. 862, Phorm. 411, as well as Eun. 426, 497. The fragment of Ennius is quoted by Varro, Ling. 7.93 (= Ennius, frag. 370 Jocelyn; ROL1, Ennius, unassigned fragments 399); the mention of a shield has encouraged the (unnecessary) assumption that the original context was tragic. I have not included in my total here nine instances of scripted laughter (hahahe) in the Querolus, an anonymous version of Plautus’ Aulularia probably composed in the early fifth century CE, nor the glosses of grammarians. But they would not point to any significantly different conclusion.
53. Other instances imply other emotions: for example, disbelief at Plautus, Pseud. 946, or relief at Truculentus 209—which, together with Pseud. 1052, encouraged Enk (1953, vol. 2, 57–58) and others to reinterpret the (ha)hahae as merely an exhalation, the Latin equivalent of “phew,” a classic scholarly attempt to normalize Roman laughter.
54. This was widely reported in the British media: e.g., the Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1085403/Jim-Bowen-brings-worlds-oldest-jokebook-London-stage—reveals-ancestor-Monty-Pythons-Dead-Parrot.html) and the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7725079.stm).
2. QUESTIONS OF LAUGHTER, ANCIENT AND MODERN
1. De or. 2.235; the words are put in the mouth of the lead character in this part of the dialogue, Julius
Caesar Strabo. I am lightly paraphrasing “Strabo” ’s list of questions: “Quid sit ipse risus, quo pacto concitetur, ubi sit, quo modo exsistat atque ita repente erumpat, ut eum cupientes tenere nequeamus, et quo modo simul latera, os, venas, oculos, vultum occupet?” (The text is uncertain: did Cicero imagine laughter taking over the blood vessels, venas, or cheeks, genas? See p. 116.) Quintilian (Inst. 6.3.7) follows Cicero’s disavowal: “I do not think the origin of laughter has been satisfactorily explained by anyone—though many have tried” (“Neque enim ab ullo satis explicari puto, licet multi temptaverint, unde risus”). For Cicero the jokester, see pp. 100–105.
2. De motibus dubiis 4 (erections), 10.4–5 (laughter), with Nutton 2011, 349.
3. Pliny, HN, praef. 17, proclaims the array of facts; for his encyclopedic project in general, see Murphy 2004; Doody 2010.
4. 7.2, 7.72. See pp. 35, 83–84.
5. 11.198.
6. 11.205 (“sunt qui putent adimi simul risum homini intemperantiamque eius constare lienis magnitudine”). Pliny may be referring to removal (as he notes here that an animal can continue to live if its spleen is removed because of a wound), but elsewhere (23.27) he refers to drugs that reduce the size of the spleen. Serenus Sammonicus (PLM 21.426–30) and Isidore (Etym. 11.1.127) agreed with, or followed, Pliny in stressing the role of the spleen in laughter.
7. 7.79–80.
8. 24.164. For the identification with cannabis, see André 1972, 150: “Très certainement le chanvre indien (Cannabis indica, variété de C. sativa L)”; “crowfoot” is the suggestion of L&S, the OLD being more guarded with “a plant yielding a hallucinatory drug.”
9. 31.19; Ramsay 1897, 407–8. For the springs on the Fortunate Islands, see Pomponius Mela 3.102.
10. 11.198. For the Greek tradition of such laughter, see Aristotle, Part. an. 3.10, 673a10–12, and Hippocrates, Epid. 5.95. How far this was clearly or systematically distinguished from the tradition, attested even earlier, of the “sardonic smile” or grimace of pain is a moot point; see Halliwell 2008, 93n100, 315.
11. Praef. 17; the first book of the HN consists entirely of a list of contents of books 2 to 37, with the authorities consulted for each.
12. 31.19 (“Theophrastus Marsyae fontem in Phrygia ad Celaenarum oppidum saxa egerere”). Usually assumed to be derived from Theophrastus’ lost work De aquis; see Fortenbaugh et al. 1992, 394–95 (= Physics, no. 219).
13. Aristotle, Part. an. 3.10, 673a1–12.
14. De usu part. 1.22 (Helmreich) = 1, pp. 80–81 (Kuhn); discussed further above, pp. 165–67. For issues of Galen’s dissection and his views on the homology between animal and human, see Hankinson 1997.
15. Mor. 634a–b (= Quaest. conviv. 2.1.11–12).
16. De or. 2.236 (“Haec enim ridentur vel sola vel maxime, quae notant et designant turpitudinem aliquam non turpiter”); Quintilian, Inst. 6.3.7.
17. De or. 2.242 (mimicry), 2.252 (“pulling faces,” oris depravatio), 2.255 (the unexpected), 2.281 (“incongruous”); for further discussion of Cicero and incongruity, see p. 117. See also Quintilian, Inst. 6.3.6–112; like Cicero, Quintilian (6.3.7) stresses the different ways that laughter is stimulated, from words to action and touch.
18. De or. 2.217: “‘Ego vero’ inquit ‘omni de re facilius puto esse ab homine non inurbano, quam de ipsis facetiis disputari.’” It is even closer to the modern cliché if we emend the text (as many have) to read facetius for facilius (“more wittily than wit itself”).
19. Though, conceivably, in opting for “crowfoot” L&S had in mind Ranunculus sardous (the “Sardinian buttercup” or “laughing parsley”), a member of the crowfoot family that is said (by, e.g., Pausanias 10.17.13, though not by Pliny, HN 25.172–74) to produce a sardonic grin.
20. Fried et al. 1998.
21. Plato (Resp. 5.452d–e, and Phlb. 49b–50e) expresses a view of laughter as derisory; in general, as Halliwell 2008, 276–302, makes clear, Plato has much more to say about laughter than is usually recognized.
22. One influential recent source of this is Skinner 2004, which, as its title hints, explicitly equates Aristotle with “the classical theory of laughter” and has telling references throughout to “Aristotle’s theory” (141) or even “Aristotelian theory in its most blinkered form” (153). See also Skinner 2001 and 2002 for similar, though not identical, versions of the argument. Other references to Aristotle as a systematic theorist, or to one or both of his two main laughter “theories,” include Morreall 1983, 5; Le Goff 1997, 43; Critchley 2002, 25; Taylor 2005, 1. Billig 2005, 38–39, is a rare discordant view, describing Plato and Aristotle as offering “scattered observations” rather than “theories.”
23. The classic attempt to find the Greek sources of Cicero’s account of laughter in De or. 2 is Arndt 1904, esp. 25–40, identifying Demetrius of Phaleron as the principal influence. Greek sources also play a major part in the discussion of Cicero in Grant 1924, 71–158. More recently, along similar lines, Freudenburg claimed, “It is quite clear that the Hellenistic handbook writers on rhetoric, followed by Cicero, made no significant advance upon Aristotle’s theory of the liberal jest” (1993, 58). “The liberal jest” is the hallmark of the witty gentleman (eutrapelos); see above, p. 32.
24. To parody Whitehead 1979 [1929], 39, with its famous claim that the “European philosophical tradition . . . consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
25. For example, McMahon 1917; Cantarella 1975.
26. Eco 1983. Not all critics have admired The Name of the Rose. For Žižek (1989, 27–28), “there is something wrong with this book” (“spaghetti structuralism” as he nastily calls it) and its views on laughter. Laughter, in Žižek’s worldview, is not simply “liberating” or “anti-totalitarian” (his words) at all, but often “part of the game” of totalitarianism.
27. Skinner 2008 (my italics). Classicists have been known to write in similar, if slightly less confident, terms; see, for example, Freudenburg 1993, 56.
28. Janko 1984, revisited by Janko 2001. Now in the de Coislin collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale (hence its modern name), the Tractatus was once part of a monastery library on Mount Athos. The sections most directly concerned with laughter are 5–6; some of their observations are very close to those found in a preface to manuscripts of Aristophanes and clearly belong to the same tradition—whatever that is.
29. Eloquent are, for example, Arnott 1985 (nicely summarizing, at 305, the much earlier conclusion of Bernays 1853, to the effect that the Tractatus was “a miserable compilation by a pedantic ignoramus”); Silk 2000, 44 (“Janko’s rewarding study . . . tends to evade its striking mediocrity”). Nesselrath (1990, 102–61) carefully argues against a direct Aristotelian connection but produces Theophrastus out of his hat. Halliwell 2013 (reviewing Watson 2012) is a succinct denunciation of the Tractatus.
30. Silk 2000, 44.
31. I owe much here to the view of Aristotle’s theory of tragedy in Silk 2001. Note especially 176: “Aristotle’s theory (indeed, his treatise [Poetics] as a whole), nevertheless, enjoys the reputation of a coherent argument, and not merely a series of brilliant, but loosely connected, aperçus. What is responsible for this? The answer, I suggest, is not the findings of Aristotle’s scholarly interpreters (whose very public disagreements about this, that and the other point of doctrine tell their own story), but rather the constructive—or constructional—use made of Aristotle in post-Aristotelian theories of tragedy (and/or other serious drama), for which Aristotle’s theory of tragedy is a given, and for which it is characteristically constructed as a coherent given.” Although I would probably lay more responsibility at the door of Aristotle’s modern “scholarly interpreters” (as Silk himself does in the footnote to this passage), the role of Renaissance historians and modern “laughter theorists” (from the Renaissance on) seems to me crucial in the retrospective construction of “the Aristotelian theory of laughter” too. For an even more trenchant view of the general incoherence of the Poetics, see Steiner 1996: “As I l
isten, endlessly, to debates on the Poetics . . . I am prepared to wager that the young man who took notes at Aristotle’s lecture was sitting very near the door on a very noisy day” (545n5).
32. A “theory of laughter” would also imply the definition of laughter as an independent field of inquiry. Despite a range of (lost) treatises “on the laughable” (περὶ τοῦ γελοίου) and despite intense ancient speculation on many aspects of laughter, it is not clear that laughter was ever so defined in antiquity; see Billig 2005, 38–39. The distinction drawn here between “ideas (or even theories) about” and a “theory of” is a crucial one, and my choice of expression throughout this book will reflect that importance.
33. Eth. Nic. 4.8, 1127b34–1128b9, a passage that has prompted very different reactions from critics: subtle and sophisticated for Halliwell 2008, esp. 307–22; muddled (“it slides from tautology to tautology”) for Goldhill 1995, 19. Halliwell 2008, 307–31, provides a useful point of departure, with bibliography, for all the passages I discuss here.
34. Part. an. 3.10, 673a6–8: τοῦ δὲ γαργαλίζεσθαι μόνον ἄνθρωπον αἴτιον ἥ τε λεπτότης τοῦ δέρματος καὶ τὸ μόνον γελᾶν τῶν ζῴων ἄνθρωπον (not De Anima 3.10 as Bakhtin 1968, 68, has it). See further Labarrière 2000 (which does not, for me, rescue the passage from the charge of circularity).
35. Eth. Nic. 4.8, 1128a30; earlier in the passage (1128a4–7), Aristotle characterizes “buffoons” as those who do not avoid giving pain to the butts of their jokes (τὸν σκωπτόμενον). Much modern criticism of Aristotle’s view on comedy has focused on his attitude to Aristophanic Old Comedy and the personal attacks on individuals it contains (see, for example, Halliwell 1986, 266–276, esp. 273, which critiques that focus; M. Heath 1989); this may not be unrelated to his views on laughter, but it is not my concern here.
36. Poet. 5, 1449a32–37: μίμησις φαυλοτέρων μέν, οὐ μέντοι κατὰ πᾶσαν κακίαν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ αἰσχροῦ ἐστι τὸ γελοῖον μόριον. τὸ γὰρ γελοῖόν ἐστιν ἁμάρτημά τι καὶ αἶσχος ἀνώδυνον καὶ οὐ φθαρτικόν, οἷον εὐθὺς τὸ γελοῖον πρόσωπον αἰσχρόν τι καὶ διεστραμμένον ἄνευ ὀδύνης.
