Laughter in Ancient Rome (58 page)

22.
Pindar,
Pyth.
2.72–75. I am skating over some of the difficulties of this “critic-bedevilled sentence,” on which see C. Carey 1981, 49–55 (quote on 49).

23.
In addition to McDermott 1935 and 1938, Demont 1997 and Lissarrague 1997 assemble and discuss a wide range of classical Greek references to the habits of monkeys; for those in comedy in particular, see Lilja 1980. As these studies show, the stereotype of the monkey in classical Greece is not restricted to imitation and deception but also includes, for example, ugliness, low birth, and ferocity.

24.
Aristophanes,
Eq.
887–90. The context is some political banter in which two rivals are trying to bribe Dēmos, the personification of the Athenian people, with a cloak. The repartee shows that the reference to the monkey signals both mimicry (“No, I’m only copying your ways, as a man at a drinking party might when he borrows another man’s slippers to go and have a crap”) and flattery or bribery (“You’re not going to out-toady me”). Sommerstein 1981, 93, 191, misses some of the point, which is seen by Neil 1901, 127, and Demont 1997, 466.
Suda,
s.v. πιθηκισμοῖς περιελαύνεις, points explicitly to the various possible significances of “monkey business” here: trickery, flattery, and imitation.

25.
Phrynichus, frag. 21 (Kassel and Austin). The best guess is that the final “monkey” would have been a sycophant (see also Demosthenes,
De cor.
242; Aristophanes,
Ach.
904–7).

26.
Summed up briskly at Connors 2004, 183–84, 189. Isidore,
Etym.
12.2.30, refers to the etymology but insists that it is false. The Greek pairing of πίθηκος (monkey) and πιθανός (persuasive) could open up other related possibilities, puns, and associations.

27.
Cicero,
Nat D.
1.97 (Ennius,
Satir.
frag 69 [Vahlen] =
ROL
2 Ennius,
Satir.
23). The pun works despite (or because of) the fact that the first
i
in
similis
is short, in
simia
long. Other examples of such wordplay include Ovid,
Met.
14.91–98; Martial,
Epigram.
7.87.4; Phaedrus,
Fabulae
4.13.

28.
Connors 2004, 189–99, 202; briefly, hitting the nail on the head, John Henderson 1999, 34.

29.
Lissarrague 1997, 469.

30.
Sat.
1.10.18; with Gowers 2012, 316–17.

31.
Aelian,
NA
5.26 (see also 6.10); for the snares, see 17.25 (with Diodorus Siculus 17.90.1–3—though in a nice inversion of teaching and learning, Diodorus claims that the monkeys taught the hunters this trick). It is noteworthy that Aristotle’s main discussion of apes and monkeys (
HA
2.8–9, 502a16–b26) does not stress their capacity for mimicry.

32.
A. King 2002, 433–34, reviews the representations of monkeys, etc., at Pompeii and includes a brief discussion of those I refer to here; McDermott 1938, 159–324, is a comprehensive catalogue of images of simians in all media from the classical and preclassical Mediterranean world.

33.
M. Della Corte 1954, 210n498 (it is now lost).

34.
From the House of the Dioscuri (6.9.6–7); see
PPM
4.976, no. 225. It is not impossible that there were such performing monkeys in Pompeii, as the discovery there of a simian skeleton hints (Bailey et al. 1999).

35.
Often the image of the escape of Aeneas is discussed alone, but de Vos 1991, 113–17, makes clear the link between it and the image of Romulus; followed by J. R. Clarke 2007, 151–52. For dog-headed baboons (
cynocephali
), see McDermott 1938, 4–13, 35–46.

36.
Brendel 1953.

37.
McDermott 1938, 278–80; J. R. Clarke 2007, 153–54 (“comic resistance”). Cèbe 1966, 369–70, lists further explanations.

38.
Plutarch,
Mor.
64e (=
Quomodo adulator
23). Plutarch elsewhere—
Mor.
60c (=
Quomodo adulator
18)—casts the mythical simian Cercopes as flatterers, again eliding monkey, laughter, and flattery. Hercules carried off this mischievous pair of creatures, upside down, hanging over his shoulder, after they tried to steal his weapons. In the longest, late version of the story (ps.-Nonnus,
Comm. in IV Orationes Gregorii Naz.
4.39, of the sixth century CE; with Nimmo Smith 2001, 29–30), they start to discuss his “black arse”—and Hercules bursts out laughing and lets them off. For the complex tradition of the Cercopes (who in some versions gave the name to Pithecusae, modern Ischia), see Marconi 2007, 150–59; note also Woodford 1992; Kirkpatrick and Dunn 2002, 35–37; Connors 2004, 185–88.

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.