by Mary Beard
69. Inst. 6.3.18–19: “Salsum in consuetudine pro ridiculo tantum accipimus: natura non utique hoc est, quamquam et ridicula esse oporteat salsa. Nam et Cicero omne quod salsum sit ait esse Atticorum non quia sunt maxime ad risum compositi, et Catullus, cum dicit, ‘Nulla est in corpore mica salis,’ non hoc dicit, nihil in corpore eius esse ridiculum. Salsum igitur erit quod non erit insulsum.” This passage reveals some of the acute difficulties in translating, let alone in making precise sense of, Roman discussions of wit and its terminology. In the first sentence, is Quintilian saying that salsa ought also to be ridicula, or that ridicula ought also to be salsa? The position of the et strongly suggests the former, but the explanations that follow (after nam) make the latter almost certain. And what is the sense of ridiculum? Modern translators render Quintilian’s comment on Catullus as “He does not mean there is nothing ridiculous in her body” (D. Russell in the Loeb Classical Library) or “Non c’è niente di ridicolo” (Monaco 1967). It makes perfect sense in English (or Italian), but it ignores the other, active Latin sense of ridiculum—to make you laugh. Catullus could well be saying (as some modern commentators agree; see, e.g., Quinn 1970, 424) “there is not a spark of wit” in her. Throughout the passage there is an instability between the active and the passive sense of these words (as in ad risum compositi). Matters are further confused by the fact that Cicero (De or. 2.251) attempts (tendentiously maybe) to distinguish the salsum of the orator and the mime actor.
70. De or. 2.235. For the reading of venas or genas, see Leeman, Pinkster, and Rabbie 1989, 238.
71. De or. 2.236.
72. De or. 2.279.
73. De or. 2.248.
74. De or. 2.248.
75. De or. 2.254.
76. De or. 2.255, 2.260; see also p. 28.
77. De or. 2.255 (for the financial sense, see Plautus, Rud. 1327).
78. De or. 2.245.
79. De or. 2.252.
80. De or. 2.90–92; though there are dangers even in this kind of imitation, as Antonius points out (you have to make sure that you copy the most important features of the model, not merely those that are easy to imitate).
81. De or. 2.242.
82. See, e.g., Edwards 1993, 98–136 (see 117–19 for the comparison of actors and orators). Dupont 2000 is a subtle discussion of the interrelationships between Roman oratory and theater, as is, more briefly, Fantham 2002 (drawing particularly on Quintilian, Inst. 11.3). See further above, p. 167.
83. De or. 2.251.
84. De or. 2.247, 2.256.
85. Corbeill 1996, 26.
86. De or. 2.262.
87. One classic statement of this “brain-balkanisation” is Feeney 1998, esp. 14–21.
88. Krostenko 2001, 223–25; Dugan 2005, 105–6.
89. Seneca, Constant. 17. Vatinius is here dubbed (like Cicero) a scurra—but also venustus and dicax. “He used to joke about his own feet and scarred neck; in this way he escaped the wit [urbanitas] of his enemies—who outnumbered his deformities—and particularly Cicero’s.”
90. Macrobius, Sat. 2.3.5. Relations between Cicero and Vatinius were more complicated than the terms of simple enmity in which they are often painted. Cicero defended Vatinius in 54 BCE. Even if this was largely under pressure from Caesar and Pompey (see his lengthy explanation in Fam. 1.9 [SB 20]), there are later clear signs of cordiality, in, e.g., Att. 11.5.4 (SB 216); Fam. 5.9–11 (SB 255–59).
91. “Interactive” (as Ingo Gildenhard encourages me to say) is key here, and a feature lost from the necessarily nondialogic character of the speeches as circulated in written form. One might be tempted to say that the aggressive humor is a feature more of the written versions than of the original oratorical scene; that, in writing, invective has replaced the dialogic banter that is so central to the picture of joking in De Oratore.
92. Inst. 6.3 (with Monaco 1967, including Italian translation and notes); Fernández López 2007 is a brief introduction to the work as a whole.
93. Cicero’s account is explicitly referenced at, for example, Inst. 6.3.8 (De or. 2.236), 6.3.42 (Orat. 87).
94. Inst. 6.3.23 (verbo/re), 6.3.26 and 29 (funny faces), 6.3.34 (classes of people).
95. Inst. 6.3.50.
96. De or. 2.267; Inst. 6.3.67.
97. Inst. 6.3.102–12.
98. De or. 2.271 (see also 2.227); Inst. 6.3.19.
99. Inst. 6.3.28.
100. As suggested in another context (see pp. 131, 252n11) by Sherwin-White 1966, 305.
101. Inst. 6.3.82. See above, n. 89, for a scurra, Vatinius, who apparently told jokes on himself to his advantage.
102. Inst. 6.3.112, 6.3.54 (“est enim dictum per se urbanum ‘satagere’”). Martial, Epigram. 4.55.27–29, suggests that foreign place-names could be funny too.
103. Inst. 6.3.8, 6.3.32.
104. Inst. 6.1.48.
105. De or. 2.240–41.
106. Inst. 6.3.6, 6.3.70 (“ridiculum est autem omne quod aperte fingitur”).
107. Phaedrus, Fabulae 5.5; see also John Henderson 2001, 119–28. Here, as Henderson observes (224n70), the phrase urbanus sal signals Roman “show biz.”
6. FROM EMPEROR TO JESTER
1. SHA, Heliog. 26.6, 25.1.
2. Variations on this theme are found in other ancient reflections on the autocrat’s relationship to laughter and joking—in, for example, the story of the young Julius Caesar’s encounter with the pirates. In captivity, Caesar joked with the pirates that when he was free, he would crucify them, which is what he did. Suetonius (Iul. 4; see also 74) underlines the point: he really carried out “what he had often threatened them as a joke” (“quod saepe illis minatus inter iocum fuerat”). The message is that in different ways, the jokes of the powerful could turn out to have a greater truth-value than you might want.
3. Laurence and Paterson 1999 is an important introductory study on the whole theme of emperors and jokes.
4. Nicolaus’ Historiae does not survive complete; this passage is quoted by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 6.261c = Jacoby, FGrHist 90F75. Nicolaus was writing in Greek, hence the stress on “native language.”
5. Plutarch, Sull. 2, 36.
6. Succinctly characterized by Le Goff 1993, 26; in a slightly later period, Bowen 1984.
7. See further Laurence and Paterson 1999, 191–94; SHA, Avid. Cass. 2.5–6, a late antique reflection on such migration. In what follows, I hope it goes without saying that “Augustus quipped” is shorthand for “Augustus is said to have quipped.”
8. Dio 65(66).11.
9. Sat. 2.4.3; quoted by Quintilian, Inst. 6.3.59, as an example of raising a laugh by similitudo, or comparison. Other examples of friendly imperial jocularity include Suetonius, Tit. 3.2 (“cum amanuensibus suis per ludum iocumque certantem”); SHA, Hadr. 20.8.
10. Sat. 2.4.19–20. Roughly the same quip is told by Valerius Maximus (9.14 ext. 3), made to a republican governor of Sicily.
11. Ep. 4.25 (picking up a story from Ep. 3.20). The overall sense of the anecdote is clear, but there are some difficulties in the details. One crucial (and awkward) sentence is “Quid hunc putamus domi facere, qui in tanta re tam serio tempore tam scurriliter ludat, qui denique omnino in senatu dicax et urbanus et bellus est?” I have translated this, in common with others, as “What do we imagine that the kind of man who plays around just like a scurra in such a weighty matter and at such a serious moment does at home—when he is so sarcastic, facetious, such a sharp talker even in the Senate?” This would imply that Pliny sees the Senate as no place for the dicacitas, etc., that Cicero admired (and for Sherwin-White 1966, 305, is an illustration of a shift in the culture of wit). But I have wondered if it might rather mean “What do you imagine the man does at home who plays around just like a scurra in such a weighty matter and at such a serious moment yet in the Senate is a wonderfully witty, elegant, and smart speaker?”—implying approval of dicacitas, etc.
12. SHA, Comm. 15.6. See also Suetonius, Cal. 27.4 (a writer of “Atellan farces” burned alive in the amphi
theater by Caligula for a dodgy pun, “ob ambigui ioci versiculum”).
13. Claud. 21.5.
14. Suetonius, Cal. 32.3. Suetonius, Cal. 33, repeats a similar quip (“among his various jokes,” when he was smooching around the neck of his wife or mistress, he would say, “What a lovely neck—off it could come just as soon as I give the word”).
15. SHA, Comm. 10.4.
16. Suetonius, Iul. 45.2; Suetonius, Dom. 18.2; Juvenal 4.38 (calvus Nero). Emperors also joked about the baldness of others; Caligula famously, and nastily, ordered a line of prisoners to be executed “from bald head to bald head” (Suetonius, Cal. 27.1; Dio 59.22.3); see also SHA, Heliog. 29.3 (see p. 77).
17. Sat. 2.5.7.
18. Suetonius, Claud. 41.1 (“ne sedato quidem tumultu temperare potuit, quin ex intervallo subinde facti reminisceretur cachinnosque revocaret”).
19. Vesp. 22–23 (compare, for example, Cicero, De or. 2.236, 2.257). The specter of inappropriate wit also hovered over the emperor Augustus. We might, for example, wonder how far the adverse side of the mime was to be seen in his last words as reported by Suetonius (Aug. 99.1): Had he played his part well, he asked, in the mime of life?
20. Suetonius, Cal. 24.2; the classic account of Xerxes at the Hellespont is Herodotus 7.33–35.
21. Suetonius, Cal. 27.4; Seneca, De ira 2.33.3–5 (without specific reference to laughter).
22. Aug. 98. Wallace-Hadrill 2008, 38–41, discusses other aspects of this passage.
23. Dio 59.26.8–9. A story told of Hadrian, as of other rulers, focuses on his encounter with an ordinary woman he passed on a journey and points in a similar direction. In Dio’s account (69.6.3). she tries to waylay him with a request, but he brushes her off, saying that he does not have time. Her retort, however, turns him in his tracks: “Don’t be emperor, then.” The simple idea was that the emperor ought to have time for the humble and that the humble could answer back. This is discussed (with the parallels) by Millar 1977, 3–4.
24. SHA, Hadr. 17.6–7.
25. Met. 2.676–707. Barchiesi 2005, 295, compares this with the encounter between Athena and Odysseus at Homer, Od. 13.287, where Athena is said to “smile” (μειδιᾶν). He admits that it “develops very differently” (“lo sviluppo sarà ben diverso”)—so differently, I would suggest, that it points to the very different significance of ridere and μειδιᾶν.
26. Met. 9.306–23.
27. Met. 5.662–78. As Stephen Halliwell has suggested to me, there is a similarity between the sound of some of these creatures and human laughter, or it is easy enough to imagine one; for hearing the sound of crows (in the same family as magpies) as laughter, see Halliwell 2008, 3.
28. Unsurprisingly, Ovid’s work is a treasure chest of clever comments and reflections on and around laughter both human and divine. We shall focus on some more of these in the next chapter (see pp. 157–59). For more on divine laughter (as well as the misfit between the Greek μειδιᾶν and the Latin vocabulary of laughter), see Ovid, Fast. 4.5–6, with the parallels in Ennius and Lucretius noted by Fantham (1998, 91), though she treats ridere here as unproblematically “smile.”.
29. The “clever slave” of comedy is usefully discussed by Fitzgerald 2000, 10–11, 24–26, 44–47, and McCarthy 2000, esp. 211–13.
30. The most convenient edition of this text is Perry 1952, 35–208 (from which I take my references, with G and W indicating the different manuscript versions). For a translation, see Lloyd Daly in Hansen 1998, 111–62; Jouanno 2006. The complexities of the manuscript and papyrological tradition and the questions of cultural background are summarized succinctly by Hopkins 1993 (esp. 11) and in greater detail by Kurke 2011, 1–49 (including an excellent review of the secondary literature). In general, Kurke is more inclined than I am to identify earlier Greek traditions in the Life rather than to stress the Roman surface detail (such as monetary denominations; see Vita Aesopi W 24, 27); Pelliccia 2012 also resists Kurke’s intention to “frog-march the evidence backward” (40).
31. Note the carefully agnostic comments of Kurke 2011, 13 (citing further references to the ongoing debate on the “real existence” of Aesop).
32. Hopkins 1993, 13; Vita Aesopi G 1; Vita Aesopi W 1.
33. Vita Aesopi G 7 (in W 7, the goddess concerned is Tyche).
34. Vita Aesopi G 2–3; W 2–3, with Kurke 2011, 191–92. Kurke also points to other cultural roles of mutism in this text: for example, as a signal of social exclusion (162–63) or an analogue of fabular speech (201). Figs are also prominent in various laughter stories discussed above, p. 177.
35. Vita Aesopi G 24; W 24 (with reference to the “turnip” not in G).
36. Vita Aesopi G 25–27; W 25–27.
37. Freedom: Vita Aesopi G 90; W 90; death at Delphi: G 140–42; W 140–42. Kurke 2011, 53–94, fully discusses the critique of Delphic authority that the story implies.
38. Vita Aesopi G 36; W 36.
39. Inst. 6.3.71. The original Latin does not quite say “stupid” at the end, as in the English idiom of such gags, but it very nearly does: “Stulte interrogaverat exeuntem de theatro Campatium Titius Maximus an spectasset. Fecit Campatius dubitationem eius stultiorem dicendo: ‘
40. Baths: Vita Aesopi G 38; lentil(s): G 39–41; W 39–41.
41. Philo, Leg. 349–67.
42. Smallwood 1970, 3–50, discusses the historical background and the literary tradition of the Legatio. Conybeare 2013, 28–39, discusses the stress on laughter in Philo’s philosophical and theological works.
43. Stackelberg 2009, 135–40, explores the physical context of the meeting between the emperor and the envoys.
44. Leg. 349–59; mime: 359 (καὶ γὰρ τὸ πρᾶγμα μιμεία τις ἦν ). Smallwood 1970, 321–22, collects other references, in Philo and elsewhere, to the mocking of Jews being compared to mime, though she is carried away by the idea that some ancient figurines that may represent mime actors possibly have a distinctively Jewish physiognomy. The vocabulary at 351 and 368 also signals this episode as “theatrical” in a more general sense.
45. Leg. 361: πάλιν πρὸς τὴν πεῦσιν γέλως ἐκ τῶν ἀντιδίκων κατερράγη τοσοῦτος, τῇ μὲν ἡδομένων τῇ δὲ καὶ ἐπιτηδευόντων ἕνεκα κολακείας ὑπὲρ τοῦ τὸ λεχθὲν δοκεῖν σὺν εὐτραπελίᾳ καὶ χάριτι εἰρῆσθαι, ὥς τινα τῶν ἑπομένων αὐτῷ θεραπόντων ἀγανακτεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ καταφρονητικῶς ἔχειν αὐτοκράτορος.
46. Leg. 361. As Smallwood 1970, 322, puts it, if this was the rule, “Dio and Suetonius know nothing of this.”
47. Leg. 362–67.
48. Inst. 6.3.58 (the standard modern text simply draws from Horace’s account in Sat. 1.5 to fill the obvious gap in what has survived of Quintilian).
49. Martial, Epigram. 1.101. Plutarch, Mor. 760a (= Amat. 16), recounts a joking encounter between Gabba (called a γελωτοποιός) and Maecenas; see also Quintilian, Inst. 6.3.27, 6.3.80 (6.3.62 may also refer to Gabba).
50. Tacitus, Ann. 15.34: “Vatinius inter foedissima eius aulae ostenta fuit, sutrinae tabernae alumnus, corpore detorto, facetiis scurrilibus.”
51. The sense of copreae might be rather “found on the dung heap” (from κοπρία, “dung heap”), but I have been unable to resist “little shits.”
52. I include in this the “courts” of rivals or enemies; Dio (in a speech of Octavian) refers to the table companions of Antony and Cleopatra being called κοπρίαι (Dio 50.28.5).
53. Dio 74(73).6.
54. Tib. 61.6.
55. Suetonius, Claud. 8.
56. Pliny, HN 37.17; Seneca, Ben. 2.12.1. Caligula was said to wear them—see Suetonius, Cal. 52: “socco muliebri.”
57. Soccus could, in fact, be used as a metonym for comedy, as cothurnus (buskin) was for tragedy; see Horace, Epist. 2.1.174; Ovid, Rem. am.
376. For a parasite’s soccus, see Plautus, Persa 124.
58. I am aware that there may seem to be something risky about assuming that Suetonius’ account is much closer than that of the SHA to the reality of court life. But it’s not too risky. Suetonius had inside experience of the Roman palace (Wallace-Hadrill 1983, 73–96), and the use of the term copreae in different contexts and writers implies a recognizable referent. It is, as I have been suggesting, another case where these late imperial biographies hit the spirit if not the fact of Roman imperial life.
59. CIL 6.4886 (= ILS 5225): “. . .] Caesaris lusor / mutus argutus imitator / Ti. Caesaris Augusti qui / primum invenit causidicos imitari.” The fullest and most acute recent discussion is Purcell 1999 (who, however, prints the text as “mutus et argutus”).
60. Wallis 1853, 79–80.
61. Argutus on its own is a term that is more generally associated with the repartee of the Roman wit or jokester; see, for example, Plautus, Truculentus 491–96.
62. Garelli 2007, 251; a late antique glossary defines a female pantomime actress as “omnium artium lusor” (CGL 5.380.42); Petronius, Sat. 68, has perhaps a similar household “imitator.”
63. Laes 2011, 470, evades the problem by punctuating differently, to read “Mute and bright imitator. Of the household of Tiberius.” But the isolated phrase “Of the household of Tiberius” is very awkward, even by the standards of this awkward Latin.
64. Purcell 1999, 182–83, reviews various possible settings (including public performance), but the repeated stress on the emperor in this text strongly suggests that we are dealing principally with a court entertainer.
65. See, for example, Pliny, Ep. 3.1.9, 9.17; with further references and discussion in C. P. Jones 1991 and Dunbabin 2008.
66. Ep. 50 (esp. 2). Pliny, Ep. 5.19, also concerns a resident household comedian; similarly, Petronius, Sat. 68 (n62).
67. Barton 1993, esp. 107–8 (“What did the Romans see in the mirror of deformity?”) and 141 (Seneca’s Harpaste as a “freakish avatar” of the elite philosopher). This is an extremely powerful discussion (also linking the mimes I will be treating in the next chapter); in general, however, Barton stresses the roles of derision and monstrosity more strongly than I think plausible.
