Laughter in Ancient Rome (55 page)

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 amphitheater 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: ‘ sed in orchestra pila lusi.’”

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.