Laughter in Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

  39. Phaedrus, Fabulae 4.14; acutely discussed by John Henderson 2001, 180–86. The text survives largely in a medieval paraphrase.

  40. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 14.613d.

  41. Lucian, Piscator 36; the anecdote is included as a fable in Perry’s collection (1952, 504, no. 463).

  42. Strabo, Geographica 17.3.4 (= Posidonius, frag. 245. [Kidd]).

  43. De usu part. 1.22 (Helmreich) = 1, pp. 80–81 (Kuhn).

  44. I am half tempted to see this phrase also proleptically; that is, “the ape imitates for the worse.”

  45. De usu part. 3.16 (Helmreich) = 3, pp. 264–65 (Kuhn).

  46. Horace, Ars P. 1–5, might (almost) count as another.

  47. For further discussion, see pp. 119–20.

  48. Fantham 1988. The influence of mime on particular authors and genres is discussed by, for example, McKeown 1979; Wiseman 1985, 28–30, 192–94; Panayotakis 1995, xii–xxv (summarizing the main theme of the book).

  49. The modern literature on Roman mime is now very large. Panayotakis 2010, 1–32, is a useful résumé with copious bibliography; Bonaria 1955–56 collects fragments and testimonia; some of Webb 2008, 95–138, is relevant to earlier periods of the Roman Empire. On women, see Webb 2002; Panayotakis 2006.

  50. The essays in E. Hall and Wyles 2008 give a good coverage of the debates about ancient pantomime. A standard list of the features supposed to distinguish ancient mime from pantomime is summarized by Hall 2008, 24. But Wiseman 2008 draws attention to the overlap between the two. As Panayotakis crisply sums it up, “The boundaries demarcating mime from pantomime were not always as clear as some scholars, seeking to impose order on inherently diverse and contradictory source materials, have liked to imagine” (2008, 185).

  51. De or. 2.251 (“. . . non ut eius modi oratorem esse velim, sed ut mimum”).

  52. Marshall 2006, 7, and Manuwald 2011, 183, offer the standard view; Panayotakis 2010, 5–6, is more cautious. Hunter 2002, 204–5, discusses the character of the sannio.

  53. Tertullian, Apol. 15.3. Plautus, Truculentus 594, suggests that masks did not necessarily preclude the idea of facial expression; however, Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 10.452f, is rather better evidence for an unmasked tradition in mime. Richter 1913 chooses (overconfidently) to identify grotesque figurines as mime actors because they have no masks.

  54. Note that according to Servius (see below, n. 57), even Cicero—whatever his expressed disdain—went to watch the mime actress Cytheris.

  55. Macrobius, Sat. 2.7.1–5; with Barton 1993, 143–44, who sees the story of Laberius as part of Rome’s “physics of envy.”

  56. The most extreme case is the so-called Charition mime (P.Oxy 413; Cunningham 1987, app. no. 6; the date is uncertain but sometime before the 200s CE, which is the date of the papyrus).

  57. Aulus Gellius 16.7.10 refers to the vulgar vocabulary of Anna Peranna; Panayotakis 2008, 190–97, discusses Virgilian renderings in mime, e.g., Servius ad Ecl. 6.11—the particular performer is elsewhere (Cicero, Phil 2.20) called a mima. Panayotakis imagines the performances were relatively straight. I wonder . . . I am likewise more skeptical than most about how far we can hope to identify precise roles for those known as “first mime,” “second mime,” etc.

  58. Walton 2007, 292.

  59. Panayotakis 2010, 1; Fantham 1988, 154 (“Best defined negatively. Whatever did not fit the generic categories of tragedy or comedy, Atellane or the Italian togate comedy, was mime”).

  60. Philistion: AP 7.155 (there are numerous scattered references to “Philistion” in the context of mime—e.g., Martial, Epigram. 2.41.15; Ammianus Marcellinus 30.4.21; Cassiodorus, Var. 4.51; it may have been a common stage or pen name); Vitalis: PLM 3.245–46.

  61. For example, Choricius, Apologia mim. 31–32 (at the mimes, Dionysos takes pity on human beings and is “so generous . . . as to prompt laughter of every kind”), 93 (“Humanity shares two things with the divine: reason [or speech] and laughter”). For a clear recent review of this text (with earlier bibliography), see Malineau 2005; Choricius is important to Webb’s (2008, 95–138) discussion; Bowersock 2006, 61–62, notes similar gelastic themes in contemporary Syriac defenses of mimes.

  62. The close link between mimicry and Roman laughter is emphasized by Dupont 1985, 298–99 (in the context of a wider discussion of mime, 296–306), which likewise distinguishes these aggressive forms of imitation from mimesis more generally.

  63. Csapo 2002 reviews some of the main issues and includes a good discussion of Aristotle’s anecdote about the fifth-century actor Callippides (Poet. 26, 1461b34–35), attacked for being a “monkey.” As Csapo rightly insists, the criticism did not rest on the fact that he acted with “exaggerated gestures”; his crime was not overacting in our sense but rather “imitating actions that are best not imitated at all” (128), including, in Aristotle’s words, those of “the inferior” and of “lower-class women” (Poet. 26, 1462a9–10). Csapo draws a clear and useful distinction between this mimicry and more general issues of tragic mimesis.

  64. Note also the mimicry implied by Suetonius, Cal. 57.4—discussed in terms of the (imitative) roles of the different actors in the mime company by Kirichenko 2010, 57; our lawyer imitator (see p. 144) might fit under this general heading too.

  65. GLK 1.491.13–19; Evanthius, Excerpta de comoedia (Wessner) 4.1.

  66. Lee 1990, 43; Godwin 1999, 67; Whigham 1966, 100; Quinn 1970, 217 (“The mimae were the cinema stars of the ancient world. . . . Her pout looks like a dog showing its teeth”).

  67. On the overall articulation of the full plot of the novel (of which only a small section survives), see Schmeling 2011, xxii–xxv; Sullivan 1968, 45–53, discusses the (irresolvable) problems of the ordering of this particular section.

  68. Plaza 2000, 73–83.

  69. Sat. 18.7–19.1 (“Complosis deinde manibus in tantum risum effusa est ut timeremus. . . . Omnia mimico risu exsonuerant”).

  70. Branham and Kinney 1996, 17 (“stagy”); Walsh 1996, 14 (“low stage”); “farcical” is M. Heseltine’s version in the Loeb Classical Library (27); “théâtral” is A. Ernout’s in the Budé (15).

  71. Panayotakis 1994 stresses the resonances of the figure of Quartilla with mime acting (“like an archimima in her own production of a mimic play,” 326), though sometimes pushes the exact parallels too far (even rewriting the episode as a mimic script on 329–30); largely reprised in Panayotakis 1995, 38–51. Other studies also point to the general influence of mimes, here and elsewhere, in the novel. See, e.g., Schmeling 2011, 55 (with earlier bibliography).

  72. I am here developing some of the implications of Plaza’s discussion of the episode (2000, esp. 77–79), including her interest in the “inversion of social and literary norms.”

  73. It is a text with a complicated history: Festus was drawing on the work of the Augustan scholar Verrius Flaccus, but part of Festus’ dictionary is now known only through a summary by an eighth-century scholar, Paul the Deacon. And that is only part of the text’s vicissitudes—which are a major theme of the essays in Glinister and Woods 2007.

  74. Festus, s.v. “Pictor Zeuxis,” p. 228L. My translation glosses over some of the predictable textual confusions.

  75. Golahny 2003, 199–205, clearly justifying the identification of the scene.

  76. For a brief collection of misogynistic themes on old women in Roman culture, see Parkin 2003, 86–87.

  77. Pliny HN 35.65–66 (the second part of the passage tells the story of Zeuxis’ dissatisfaction with his own lifelike rendering of a child). Discussions include Elsner 1995, 16–17; Morales 1996, 184–88; S. Carey 2003, 109–11.

  78. Warner 1994, 149–50.

  79. The scattered ancient evidence to Baubo (and her relation to the similar figure of Iambe) is collected and discussed from a classical perspective in, for example, H. King 1986; Olender 1990; O’Higgins 2001, 132–42. For modern feminist explorations, see Cixous and Clément 1986, 32–34; Warner 1994, 150–52. See also ch. 6, n.
70.

  80. Athenaeus, Deipnsophistae 14.614a–b.

  81. Jacoby, FGrHist, no. 396 (the story in question is F10). No surviving quotations from Semus are found in authors earlier than the late second century CE; how long before that he wrote is frankly impossible to be certain.

  82. In addition to this story, see Pausanias 9.39.13 and, more explicitly, Suda, s.v. εἰς Τροφωνίου μεμάντευται.

  83. My translation tries to capture the verbal echoes of the oracle’s response: promising soothing laughter for the “unsoothed” Parmeniscus.

  84. “Mothers” in literary oracular responses were never what they seemed: in another famous example, “kissing your mother” turned out to mean kissing the earth (Livy 1.56).

  85. It is often assumed (by, e.g., Rutherford 2000, 138–39) that this Parmeniscus was identical with the Pythagorean philosopher “Parmiscus” of Metapontum listed in a third-century CE treatise by Iamblichus (De vita Pythag. 267, p. 185 (Nauck), emended to “Parmeniscus”) and perhaps also with the Parmiscus whose dedication at the sanctuary of Leto is recorded on an inscribed temple inventory of 156/5 BCE (IDelos 1417A, col. 1, 109–11). Maybe, or maybe not. The passing reference to a Pythagorean Parmeniscus in Diogenes Laertius (Vitae 9.20) does not clinch it either; as LGPN makes very clear, Parmeniscus and its cognates are commonly attested Greek personal names.

  86. Kindt 2012, 36–54, based on Kindt 2010.

  87. Kindt 2012, 49: “Parmeniscus’ laughter, we may assume, changes in quality as it becomes self-reflective. It starts off as a naïve and unreflected response to the apparent crudeness of divine form and turns into an astonished appreciation of the complexities of divine representation as Parmeniscus grasps the meaning of the oracle.” Kindt 2010, 259, is more tentative (“we may suspect” rather than “assume”).

  88. παραδόξως ἐγέλασεν gives absolutely no hint of any change.

  89. Halliwell 2008, 38–40, provides a useful collection of Greek agelasts (though some of this laughter avoidance is not attested before the Roman period; see, e.g., Plutarch. Per. 5).

  90. Cicero, Fin. 5.92; Jerome, Ep. 7.5; Pliny, HN 7.79. Other references include Fronto, Ad M. Antoninum de eloquentia (van den Hout) 2.20; Ammianus Marcellinus 26.9.11.

  91. In Jerome’s letter (Ep. 7), the focus is not so much on Crassus himself but on the proverb: “. . . secundum illud quoque, de quo semel in vita Crassum ait risisse Lucilius: ‘similem habent labra lactucam asino carduos comedente.’” The idea of the donkey eating thistles as a visual spectacle, lying behind the popular saying, is clearly suggested in one of Babrius’ collection of fables (133): a fox spots a donkey eating thistles and asks him how he can eat such spiky food with his soft tongue.

  92. N. J. Hall 1983, 1035–39 (a less lurid version of the Trollope story than is often told). There is always the temptation to track down some medical cause, as in the case of the Kings Lynn bricklayer: see www.bbc.co.uk/news/ukengland-18542377.

  93. Valerius Maximus, 9.12, ext. 6.

  94. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae 7.185.

  95. For the obscene associations of figs, see Jeffrey Henderson 1991, 23, 118, 135. Is it relevant that it was figs that Aesop made his thieving fellow slaves vomit up (see above, p. 138)?

  96. Diogenes Laertius, Vitae 7.184.

  97. Tertullian, De anim. 52.3.

  98. The curious text known as the Testamentum Porcelli (The piglet’s last will and testament) provides another example here. Jerome stresses that it was well known to get people cracking up, cachinnare, rather than ridere (Contra Rufinum 1.17).

  99. The subtitle of Schlam 1992 has inspired this section’s title.

  100. My terminology on donkeys is not quite so loose as that on monkeys, but I recommend M. Griffith 2006 to anyone wanting precise information on the varieties of ancient (especially Greek) equids and their cultural resonances.

  101. The essays collected in Harrison 1999 offer a good conspectus of recent Anglophone approaches to the Metamorphoses, from what is now a vast bibliography. Fick-Michel 1991, 395–430, assembles references to laughter in the novel; Schlam 1992, 40–44, is a briefer critical résumé.

  102. It is generally agreed that this cannot be the second-century CE satirist Lucian; Mason 1999a, 104–5, sums up the arguments. In what follows, I will usually call the work Lucianic.

  103. Photios, Bib. Cod. 129. The problems in getting to the bottom of what Photios is saying are laid out as clearly and sharply as anywhere in Winkler 1985, 252–56; see also Mason 1999a, 103–4.

  104. The usual modern assumption is that the lost work of Lucius of Patrai is the earliest, but there has been endless learned conjecture (and plenty of false certainty) about the precise relationships of the various versions (summed up well by Mason 1999b), in particular which sections of Apuleius’ novel were his own invention and which derived from Lucius of Patrai. The wildly different conclusions on the extent of Apuleian originality reached (on the basis of minute philological dissection of the text) by Bianco 1971 and van Thiel 1971 are instructive (as well as dispiriting); Walsh 1974 clearly summarizes their differences.

  105. Apuleius, Met. 10.13–17; ps.-Lucian, Onos 46–48.

  106. Met. 10.13. I wonder if we should detect here a nod toward the saying about the donkey and the thistles.

  107. “Ne humanum quidem”: Met. 10.14. As Zimmerman 2000, 214, observes, “The ironical play with humanum becomes more complex when one considers that it is his very sensus humanus . . . that makes the ass steal human food.”

  108. Met. 10.16.

  109. J. R. Heath 1982 discusses the role of human nutrition in Apuleius (though not focusing on this passage in particular); for the presentation of the ass as a (human) friend, see Met. 10.16, 10.17.

  110. R. May 1998; 2006, 300–302.

  111. Met. 10.16; Onos 47 (τοσοῦτον γελῶσιν, πολὺν γέλωτα, etc.).

  112. Apuleius could not possibly have read the work of the third-century Diogenes Laertius, though Valerius Maximus was writing at least a century earlier. But my claim does not depend on whether Apuleius was familiar with these precise texts (and indeed there are no verbal echoes between the Latin versions of Valerius and Apuleius, and Apuleius in any case offers a different account of Philemon’s death, in Florida 16). The implication of what I have shown so far is that the “dining donkey” story was a well-known popular joke in the Roman world—and that common knowledge underpins my discussion of Apuleius’ use of it here.

  113. I do not see other significant differences between the two accounts that are relevant to my arguments on the culture of laughter. Zimmerman 2000, 229–30, contrasts the donkey’s reaction in each text to being laughed at when first caught eating: pleasure in Apuleius (10.16), shame and embarrassment in ps.-Lucian (47). But pleasure very soon returns in the Lucianic account, as Zimmerman allows.

  114. Onos 47.

  115. Met. 10.16.

  116. Bakhtin (1981 [1937–38]) underlined the polyphonic aspects of the novel in an essay first published half a century earlier.

  117. Onos 10 (before transformation), 15 (braying), 55 (for the implication of laughter after his return to human shape).

  118. Met. 2.31–3.13.

  119. Met 2.31.

  120. Met 3.2 (“nemo prorsum qui non risu dirumperetur aderat”).

  121. The story of the “murder” and the revelation of what “really” happened is, of course, more complicated than I am making it seem; for its literary precedents and the confrontation between reality and illusion staged here, see Milanezi 1992; Bajoni 1998; R. May 2006, 195–98.

  122. Met. 3.13.

  123. He is in fact called “victim” (victimam) at Met. 3.2.

  124. D. S. Robertson 1919 casts around for real-life ancient ritual parallels (involving the leading of a scapegoat around town); partly followed by James 1987, 87–90. Habinek 1990, 53–55, stresses the (structural) role of Lucius as scapegoat. Kirichenko 2010, 36–39, 45–58, identifies mimic elements (com
paring the risus mimicus of Petronius). R. May 2006, 182–207, the best introduction to the episode and previous scholarship on it, points to its theatricality and metaliterary aspects.

  125. R. May 2006, 190–92; Zimmerman 2000, 25–26, 225–26 (for verbal echoes in the description of laughter between the two episodes).

  126. Cachinnus: Met. 3.7 (with Van der Paardt 1971, 67; Krabbe 1989, 162–63).

  127. Met. 3.11: “Iste deus auctorem et actorem suum propitius ubique comitabitur amanter, nec umquam patietur ut ex animo doleas, sed frontem tuam serena venustate laetabit assidue.” Or so it reads if we accept an early twentieth-century emendation of the manuscript tradition. Auctorem et actorem is Vollgraff’s conjecture (1904, 253) for the unsatisfactory or incomprehensible manuscript reading: whether auctorem with the meaningless et torem written into the interlinear space above, or the alternative and feeble auctorem et tutorem. It is generally now accepted that auctorem et actorem is correct, but given the phrase’s celebrity status, it is worth remembering that this is (only) a conjecture. Tatum 2006 discusses Vollgraff’s conjecture, plus the background of the phrase in earlier Latin, at length, leading to (in my view) difficult conclusions on Apuleius’ links with Cicero, though La Bua 2013 takes a similarly Ciceronian direction in the discussion of Lucius’ mock trial.

  128. Winkler 1985, 13.

  129. Kirichenko 2010, 58, also stressing the contrast between the actor as “passive” (“Lucius improvises in accordance with a pre-ordained storyline”) and the auctor as auctorial/authorial (he “creatively co-authors the entire performance”); see above, pp. 119–20, 167, on the role of actors as “only mouthpieces of the scripts of others.”

  130. Schlam 1992 picks up the ambiguity here, with a slightly different emphasis from mine: “In an ironic sense the promise offered by the magistrates turns out to be true. Laughter does accompany the Ass, but he is the wretched object at which others laugh, often maliciously” (43).