Laughter in Ancient Rome (51 page)

33.
2.3.1–2.5.9; on the style of these jokes and Macrobius’ possible sources, see pp. 104–5, 130–31, 202.

34.
2.2.16 (
antiqua festivitas
); 2.4.21 (Augustus’ “Fescennines”); see pp. 68–69.

35.
2.2.10, 2.2.12–13. On Evangelus and Servius, see Kaster 1980, 222–29.

36.
Sat.
2.6.6–2.7.19 (avoidance of
lascivia,
2.7.1); for mime’s bawdy character in general, see pp. 168–69, 170.

37.
AP
7.155;
PLM
3, 245–46; see further above, p. 169.

38.
2.7.16 (on the blurring of mime and pantomime here, see pp. 168, 170).

39.
For an overview, see Bonner 1949; Bloomer 2007; Gunderson 2003, 1–25 (a more theorized account). Spawforth 2012, 73–81, considers the interface between Greek and Roman traditions.

40.
Controv.
9.2.

41.
Principally, Livy 39.42–43; Valerius Maximus 2.9.3; Cicero,
Sen.
42. Briscoe 2008, 358–59, reviews the variants.

42.
On the law in this case, see Bonner 1949, 108–9.

43.
9.2.9, 9.2.11.

44.
Drunkenness: 9.2.3; slippers: 9.2.25;
ioci:
9.2.1;
iocari:
9.2.9–10; laughter: 9.2.6.

45.
For the erotics of laughter, see pp. 3, 157–59. Halliwell 2008, 491, collects a wide range of instances (in Greek) of sexualized laughter, from the classical to the early Christian period.

46.
Another example of (sexualized) laughter as a transgressive irruption into the public official sphere is found in the trial of Maximus, the (likely fictionalized) Roman prefect of Egypt (
P.Oxy.
471). The “transcription” of the prosecution speech focuses on Maximus’ relationship with a young boy, whom he included in his official business. One specific accusation is that the boy used to laugh in the midst of Maximus’ clients. See Vout 2007, 140–50 (but note that the text does not claim that the boy was laughing “in the face of his clients,” 148; the point is that he was
laughing
in the sphere of serious, official business).

47.
Controv.
9.2.7.

48.
Ars am.
3.279–90 (discussed on pp. 157–59).

49.
Aeneid
4.128; discussed by Konstan 1986, careful to acknowledge the problem of reading this as a smile (“the smile, or perhaps it is a laugh,” 18). Though intended for high school students, Gildenhard 2012, 138–39, offers a concise paragraph summing up the main interpretative problems of Venus’ laugh.

50.
Ars P.
1–5 (“Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam iungere si velit . . . risum teneatis?”). The passage is more puzzling than it seems, for the laughable incongruities are in fact standard themes in Roman painting; see Frischer 1991, 74–85; Oliensis 1998, 199–202.

51.
Coleiro 1979, 222–29, reviews the main suggestions; more briefly, Coleman 1977, 150–52.

52.
Du Quesnay 1977, 37, is unusual in arguing that the singular “parent” here is the father.

53.
“Enigmatic” is the euphemism of Nisbet 1978, 70, for the final four lines of the
Eclogue.

54.
The text has been a matter of dispute since the Renaissance at least, with both Politian and Scaliger advocating what is now the standard reading against the manuscripts, largely on the basis of the parallel passage in Quintilian (
Inst.
9.3.8). Just to add to the complexity, the manuscript versions of Quintilian do in fact include the same version of these lines as the Virgilian manuscripts, but Quintilian’s use of this passage as an example of a plural relative (
qui
) attached to a singular referent (
hunc
) makes it clear that he had in mind a different text, more or less as modern editors have it. The issues are reviewed by Coleman 1977, 148–49; Clausen 1994, 144 (from which I take the word
natural
). Note, however, some remaining support for the manuscript reading: for example, F. della Corte 1985, 80.

55.
The quotation is from Clausen 1994, 144 (my emphasis); similarly R. D. Williams 1976, 119; Norden 1958, 63 (“
Ridere
c. acc. heisst überall sonst ‘jemanden auslachen’, nicht ‘ihm zulachen’”). Both Perret 1970, 55, and Nisbet 1978, 77n135, see that this is far too sweeping and cite many counterexamples, including Ovid,
Ars am.
1.87.

56.
Pliny
NH,
7.2, 7.72 (see p. 25), with Norden 1958, 65–67; Nisbet 1978, 70. This modern tradition of seeing the baby’s
risus
as similar to that of Zoroaster goes back principally to Crusius 1896, 551–53.

57.
See, for example, Perret 1970, 55 (“Il ne peut s’agir du sourire de la mère à l’enfant”); the different versions are briefly reviewed by R. D. Williams 1976, 120, and Coleman 1977, 148.

58.
Nisbet 1978, 70; words such as
tenderness
and
intimacy
(Putnam, 1970, 162; Alpers 1979, 173) recur in these discussions.

59.
Whatever the sentimentality, Nisbet is one of the very few translators to stick firmly to the word
laugh
rather than
smile
(translations in 2007 reprint of Nisbet 1978).

60.
Catullus 61.209–13 (“Torquatus volo parvulus / matris e gremio suae / porrigens teneras manus / dulce rideat ad patrem / semihiante labello”). Modern critics are divided on whether this is merely a close epithalamic parallel (a vague back-reference for Virgil) or a direct source (e.g., Putnam 1970, 163: “borrowed”). Hardie 2012, 216–18, reviews the more general links between this
Eclogue
and Catullus 61 and 64. We should note that there is no hint of divinity in the laughter of Catullus 61 and that the divinity implied in Theocritus,
Id.
17.121–34, a possible inspiration for the final line of the
Eclogue,
has nothing to do with any laughing baby.

61.
Bataille 1997, 60. He continues, “All of a sudden,
what controlled the child falls into its field.
This isn’t an authorization but a fusion. It’s not a question of welcoming the triumph of man over deteriorated forms, but of intimacy communicated throughout. Essentially the laugh comes from
communication
” (italics in the original).

62.
Parvulescu 2010, 161–62, rightly detects echoes of Virgil in Kristeva’s treatment of the laughter exchanged between mother and child (esp. Kristeva 1980, 271–94).

63.
Warner 1998, 348.

64.
It is striking that hardly any classical treatment of this text references its role in modern theory—nor, it must be admitted, vice versa. In fact, there is some sorry mangling of the Latin in the nonclassical discussions; for example, “Incipe, puer parvo” in the first printing of Warner 1992 (348; later corrected), introducing yet another ungrammatical scribal error into a complex text.

65.
The bibliography on constructing identity and on cultural change in the Greco-Roman world is now immense. In addition to other works cited in the following notes, significant contributions include Millett 1990; Woolf 1994; Goldhill 2001; Dench 2005; Mattingly 2011.

66.
Epist.
2.1.156 (“Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit”). As Wallace-Hadrill 2008, 24–25, points out, modern scholars rarely quote the very different view of Ovid,
Fast.
3.101–2, whose language alludes to Horace.

67.
For examples, see Van Dommelen 1997; Hill 2001, 14, (constellation); Webster 2001, 217–23 (hybridity and creolization); Wallace-Hadrill 2008, 27–28 (bilingualism); Le Roux 2004, 301 (crossbreeding,
métissage
). The influence (and terminology) of such theoretical and comparative studies as Bhabha 1994, esp. 112–16 (for “hybridity”), and Hannerz 1987 is clear.

68.
Wallace-Hadrill 2008. The clearest summary of the arguments is at 17–27, which also offers a punchy critique of some of the currently favorite metaphors while opting instead for the model of bilingualism (and also for a model of Greco-Roman cultural interaction based on the diastolic and systolic phases in the operation of the human heart). Wallace-Hadrill 1998 offers a brisk earlier version of his linguistic (code-switching) analogy.

69.
Some sensible reflections on the shared traditions of laughter between elite and nonelite are found in Horsfall 1996, 110–11 (though Horsfall is overall more confident than many about our ability to access Roman “popular culture”).

70.
Again, there is a vast bibliography. Significant contributions among the new wave of studies of Greek literature and culture in the empire include Swain 1996 (reflecting on “how the Greek elite used language to constitute themselves as a culturally and politically superior group,” 409); Whitmarsh 2001 (the question is “how ‘the literary’ is employed to construct Greek identity in relationship to the Greek past and the Roman present,” 1–2); Spawforth 2012 (“Where Greek culture was concerned, an ‘imperial style of signalled incorporation’ made clear the ‘pure’ brand of Hellenism that the ruling power sought to uphold as morally acceptable to the Romans,” 271). Konstan and Saïd 2006 includes a particularly useful range of essays.

71.
Goldhill 2001; Woolf 1994 (the phrase is also used as the title of Woolf 1998, which focuses on Gaul).

72.
Fraenkel 1922 (the English translation, Fraenkel 2007, reviews the impact of the book, on xi–xxii). From a more strictly historical perspective, the work of Erich Gruen has been particularly influential here; see, for example, Gruen 1990, 124–57.

73.
Christenson 2000, 45–55; Beard 2007, 253–56.

74.
Terence,
Eun.
1–45; with Barsby 1999, 13–19; Brothers 2000, 20–26. Terence’s Thraso derives from Menander’s Bias. But the matter is complicated by the fact that there is a character named Gnatho in Menander’s
The Toady
and another, Strouthias, who seems to be (from the fragments that remain) the inspiration for part of the portrayal of Terence’s Gnatho. Perhaps Terence conflated the two, keeping Gnatho’s name, or perhaps the same character went under two different names in Menander’s play. See further Brown 1992, 98–99; Pernerstorfer 2006, 45–50 (for the arguments that a single character was called by two different names). Pernerstorfer 2009 attempts a major reconstruction of the play, reprising the conclusions of the earlier article; for another, succinct, attempt to summarize the plot, see Gomme and Sandbach 1973, 420–22.