Laughter in Ancient Rome (31 page)

A more complicated and even more revealing example of this kind of dilemma is found in the vast
Library of History
by Diodorus—from the Roman province of Sicily (hence his now conventional name, Diodorus Siculus)—who wrote in Greek, in the first century BCE. This was a comprehensive project, tracing the history of the known world from its mythic origins to the present day.
⁹³
In one section, which survives only in quotations in Byzantine anthologies, he discusses the origins of the slave revolts that broke out in Sicily in the second century BCE. The leader of the revolts was a slave from Apameia in Syria called Eunus, whose claims to authority over his fellow slaves rested in part on the idea that the Syrian goddess (Atargatis) directly inspired him and had made him king. According to Diodorus, his master, Antigenes, treated these claims as an amusing bit of fun, and so he proceeded to give the slave the role of jester, but with an unexpected upshot:

As the whole thing was taken for a bit of amusement, his master Antigenes, enchanted by the hocus-pocus, used to introduce Eunus (for that was the charlatan’s name) at his dinner parties and question him about his kingship and how he would treat each of those present. And when he gave a full account without any hesitation . . . laughter used to overtake the guests, and some of them, picking up some tasty morsels from the table, would present them to him, interjecting that when he became king, he should remember the kindness. But it turned out that his charlatanism really did result in kingship, and he made recompense in earnest for what he had received in jest [
en gelōti
] at the banquets.
⁹⁴

That is to say, in the carnage that really did follow, Eunus did not kill those who had fed him at the table.

This is a marvelously dense passage, which exploits and enmeshes many of the issues we have been exploring in this chapter: dining, hierarchy, joking, subverted reality, truth and falsehood, autocracy and power. It involves a slave who is treated as a jester and fed by the diners in return for his jokes. Yet the jokes turn out not to be mere fiction (“jokes as lies,” as Quintilian would have seen it; pp. 125–26); they are the real plans of a slave who is claiming the status of king and patron for himself. In fact, in his role as king, he goes on to respect the patronage relationships of the dinner (joking as they may have been)—sparing the lives of those who had in their turn respected the patronage relationship by feeding him tidbits. Almost all the cultural norms of dining, patronage, and jocularity come together in this apparently simple story.

THE
SCURRA

More than anything else, the shadow of the Roman
scurra
has stalked the pages of this book. We have seen how he represented a disreputable form of joking: vulgar, imitative, unspontaneous—though at the same time almost guaranteed to raise a laugh. We have also seen how accusations of
scurrilitas
could be used in the infighting among the Roman elite. To his enemies, Cicero was “a
scurra
of a consul,” while he could criticize the jokes of others as far too like the quips of a
scurra.
There was something (as we might say) lippy or in-your-face about the
scurra;
in Roman terms, it was his
dicacitas
(lippiness) that made the emperor Vespasian appear
scurrilis
(like a
scurra
). Another good example of this style of banter (and its dangerous consequences) is found in Suetonius’ story of the pointed gibe of a
scurra
against the stinginess of the emperor Tiberius. The man called out to the corpse in a passing funeral to ask it to take a message to the dead emperor Augustus that the legacies he had left to the Roman people had not been paid. He got his comeuppance: Tiberius ordered him to be put to death, but not before he had been given his money, so he could take the message to the underworld that the dues had been paid.
⁹⁵

There was also something that was—or was thought to be—characteristically Roman about the
scurra.
At least, the word was seen to be more or less untranslatable into Greek, even in antiquity. I have already suggested that it may have underlain the Greek
geloios
in Plutarch’s version of Cato’s quip about Cicero (see pp. 102–3). Even more strikingly, when Zeno of Sidon was talking of Socrates and wanted, presumably, to call attention to his subversive repartee, he called him “an Athenian
scurra
”—using, as Cicero (to whom we owe the reference) says, “the Latin word.”
⁹⁶
There was nothing in Greek, we may imagine, that would quite capture it. The marked “Romanness” of the word was part of the reason, no doubt, that Eduard Fraenkel adopted the term
Skurrilität
to refer to some distinctively Plautine (that is, non-Greek) elements in Plautus.
⁹⁷

But can we get closer than this to the character, identity, or social role of the
scurra
? That has always proved difficult.
⁹⁸
We can detect all kinds of overlaps between
scurrae
and the so-called parasites of Greek and Roman comedy. It is hard, for example, not to be struck by the ready-made jokebooks of Gelasimus, which seem to fit very closely with some of the complaints of Cicero and Quintilian about the wit of the
scurra:
namely, that it was prepared in advance and that its targets were a whole class rather than an individual. Yet Gelasimus is never called
scurra
—while others in Plautus, sometimes rather smart urban types, sometimes meddling busybodies, are,
⁹⁹
and so is the jester Sarmentus in Horace’s
Satire.
Certainly the more or less standard translation of
scurra
as “buffoon” captures no more than part of the meaning of some of its usages.

The fact is that if we examine carefully all the people designated by this term in ancient literature, we find an apparently baffling range, from the urban flaneurs of Roman comedy through jokers and jesters in a narrower sense to Socrates or even members of the Praetorian Guard. In fact, according to the
Augustan History,
that jocular emperor Elagabalus himself was eventually murdered by
scurrae.
It is tempting to see this as a wonderfully appropriate end (a “scurrile” emperor killed by
scurrae
), but the standard assumption is that the reference here is to soldiers of the guard (with
scurra
used to reflect their city base, or “urbanity,” in contrast to those troops stationed through the empire).
¹⁰⁰

So did the meaning of the term change over time, as Philip Corbett wondered in his essay on the
scurra
? Was there a move from an amateur to a professional sense of the term, or vice versa? Did the role of
scurra
as a social category change over the course of Roman history? Were there in fact several very different social phenomena that, for whatever reason, were lumped together under the single designation
scurra
? These are not necessarily stupid questions, but they probably miss the main point of
scurrilitas.
For not unlike
parasite
in Damon’s analysis, it was hardly a simple referential term. It was, rather, a category within the imaginative economy and social policing of Roman laughter: the constructed, and shifting, antitype to the elite male jokester; the jesting transgressor of elite male values of jesting—symbiotically tied to, incomprehensible without, and always (as Cicero knew, to his cost) liable to merge with its opposite.
Scurra,
in other words, was a (negative) value judgment on the practices of laughter rather than a descriptor, a cultural constructor (and mirror) of the jocularity of the Roman elite.
¹⁰¹

Or so it seems from the elite texts we have. But did the term look different from the point of view of those who did not have a stake in the elite culture of Roman laughter? Were there contexts in which it could be positively revalued, even worn as a (subversive) badge of pride? I have already regretted that we have no view of “parasites” except through the eyes of those ancient writers committed to despise them. The same is broadly true for the
scurra
—except for one precious glimpse from the fourth century CE and its religious conflicts. The glimpse in question comes from Prudentius’ horribly gruesome cycle of poems
The Crowns of Martyrdom,
where we find the
scurra
reappropriated in a very different, Christian context.
¹⁰²

The second poem of the collection tells, in almost six hundred lines, the story of the martyrdom of Saint Laurence, who was roasted to death, slowly, on a gridiron in 258 CE. In a famous moment that became almost the slogan of this martyrdom (ll. 401–4), Laurence asked to be turned over just before his death, as one side was already cooked (hence, in part, his later role as the patron saint of chefs). Prudentius gives a detailed, vivid, and (presumably) highly embroidered, if not fictional, verse account of the clash between the saint and his elite pagan prosecutor. It starts with the pagan Roman demanding the wealth of the Christian church, which he believes is being concealed and not “rendered unto Caesar” (ll. 94–98). Begging for a delay, to bring out “all the precious things that Christ has” (ll. 123–24), Laurence tricks his prosecutor and parades before him the poor and the sick of Rome, as the treasures of the church. This does not go down well, and Laurence soon finds himself on the gridiron.

The style of this encounter is distinctive. Laurence is a clever, shifty, and witty character who teases the prosecutor dreadfully, and laughter plays a major role in this. Confronted with the sick and the poor as the treasures of the church, the prosecutor says, “We’re being laughed at [
ridemur
]” (l. 313). He goes on to explode, “You rascal, do you think you are getting away with weaving together such great tricks with mimic mockery [
cavillo mimico
] while you act out your tale like a
scurra
? Did it seem to match your
urbanitas
to treat me with jokes [
ludicris
]? Have I been sold off to the cacklers as a bit of festival entertainment?” (ll. 317–22). At the very end of the poem, we find that those worshiping the saint not only beg him for help and tell his story but also pick up Laurence’s style and “joke” (
iocantur
).
¹⁰³

Urbanitas, cavillatio,
a
scurra,
and mimicry. All the old Roman terminology of jesting is on display—a testimony to its cultural longevity. In a powerful recent analysis of the poem, Catherine Conybeare focused on its jocularity, which she saw in terms of gender: that is, in terms of a conflict between the masculinity of the aggressive prosecutor and the effeminacy of a subversively witty saint.
¹⁰⁴
But there is an even more straightforward point to be made about laughter here. For this poem of martyrdom replays that symbiotic relationship between elite Roman and jester, subverting it within a new context. The Christian writer has appropriated and revalued the role of the
scurra,
as the joking, jesting hero of the tale: the martyr as
scurra
has become the symbiotic antitype of his pagan persecutor.

Who knows if centuries earlier, long before the conflicts between “pagan” and Christian,
scurrilitas
was something in which those outside the corridors of power took pride?

CHAPTER 7

Between Human and Animal—Especially Monkeys and Asses

This book has so far featured rather few Roman women. We have glimpsed the image of the laughing prostitute (pp. 3, 80). And we have seen Augustus’ daughter, Julia, as the butt of her father’s good-humored banter about gray hair and baldness (pp. 132–33). According to Roman tradition, Julia was not merely on the receiving end of jokes. Alongside the anecdote about her hair plucking, Macrobius’
Saturnalia
includes a number of memorable quips that she was said to have made herself, several engaging transgressively with the moral policy of her father’s regime.
¹
One of the favorites for modern scholars has been her calculating approach to adultery (
flagitia,
“disgraceful behavior,” as it is called here) and illegitimate births: “When those who knew of her disgraceful behavior were amazed how her sons looked like her husband Agrippa even though she gave her body for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to enjoy, she said, ‘I never take on a passenger unless the ship’s hold is full.’”
²