Laughter in Ancient Rome (45 page)

36.
From Johnson’s
Life of Cowley, first
published in a collected edition of 1779–81 (see now, conveniently, Lonsdale 2009, 33); it is an exaggeration because Johnson is referring to not only the
sound
but also the
cause
of laughter (a universalizing claim that this book will dispute).

37.
Fraenkel 1922, 43–45 (2007, 32–35) offers the most significant variant interpretation—“You are a hare: you go after tasty food” (or in its weaker form “Du suchst dir
pulpamentum
wie ein Hase,” “You look for
pulpamentum
like a hare”)—which Fantham 1972, 80, follows but Wright 1974, 25–27, convincingly rejects.

38.
Barsby 1999, 163. I stress “Donatus’ text,” as the version of his commentary that has come down to us is a very mixed tradition, including Donatus’ own discussion and his compendium of earlier scholarship on the play as well as later additions and glosses incorporated in the process of transmission (Barsby 2000; Victor 2013, 353–58).

39.
“Vel quod a physicis dicatur incerti sexus esse,” Donatus,
Eun.
426. Frangoulidis 1994 shows more generally how the themes of the exchanges between Thraso and Gnatho look forward to later scenes in the play.

40.
Cicero,
De or.
2.217; see p. 28.

41.
Freud 1960 [1905]; his analysis in terms of “displacement” (86–93) seems particularly relevant here. The idea of incongruity is characteristic of (among others) the “General Theory of Verbal Humor” (GTVH), as developed in Attardo and Raskin 1991 and Attardo 1994. They stress, in a much more nuanced way than my crude summary suggests, how the
sequence
of interpretative dilemmas and their resolution construct a joke.

42.
On Freud and the physicality of laughter, see pp. 38–39, 40.

43.
SHA,
Carus, Carinus, Numerianus
13.3–5.

44.
For possibly older Greek antecedents, see pp. 90–91.

45.
See p. 4.

46.
Festus, p. 228L; Diogenes Laertius 7.185. See pp. 176–78 for further examples and discussion.

47.
Interestingly, Donatus (
Eun.
497) sees Thraso’s question (“What are you laughing at?”) and the whole exchange in terms of the soldier’s desire to elicit flattery for his wit from the sponger (as at 427). Although the commentary reflects on the point of Parmeno’s joke and its exaggeration of Thraso’s status (495), it does not canvas this as a possible prompt for Gnatho’s
hahahae.

48.
Goldhill 2006 discusses these issues well; Bakhtin 1986, 135, by contrast, claims (at least in relation to carnival laughter) that “laughter only unites” (see further pp. 60–62). Billig’s stress on laughter and “unlaughter” (2005, 175–99) is also useful here.

49.
Sharrock 2009, 163–249, discusses other aspects of “tired old jokes” (with a nice analysis of this particular exchange at 164–65). In general, recent discussions of laughter, ancient or modern, have tended to underplay its learned, practiced, or habitual aspects.

50.
This idea of the self-reflexivity of laughter is a major theme throughout Halliwell 2008.

51.
I have taken all these examples from good recent translations of
The Eunuch:
Radice 1976, Brothers 2000, and Barsby 2001. A particularly rich selection of laughter insertions (from
with a smile
to
digging him in the ribs
) can be found in the Loeb translation of Plautus, Nixon 1916–38.

52.
A vague “dozen or so” because emendation can add to the total: Plautus,
Poen.
768,
Pseud.
946, 1052,
Truculentus
209, and conjectured at
Mil.
1073; Terence,
An.
754,
Haut.
886,
Hec.
862,
Phorm.
411, as well as
Eun.
426, 497. The fragment of Ennius is quoted by Varro,
Ling.
7.93 (= Ennius, frag. 370 Jocelyn;
ROL
1, Ennius, unassigned fragments 399); the mention of a shield has encouraged the (unnecessary) assumption that the original context was tragic. I have not included in my total here nine instances of scripted laughter (
hahahe
) in the
Querolus,
an anonymous version of Plautus’
Aulularia
probably composed in the early fifth century CE, nor the glosses of grammarians. But they would not point to any significantly different conclusion.

53.
Other instances imply other emotions: for example, disbelief at Plautus,
Pseud.
946, or relief at
Truculentus
209—which, together with
Pseud.
1052, encouraged Enk (1953, vol. 2, 57–58) and others to reinterpret the
(ha)hahae
as merely an exhalation, the Latin equivalent of “phew,” a classic scholarly attempt to normalize Roman laughter.

54.
This was widely reported in the British media: e.g., the
Daily Mail
(
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1085403/Jim-Bowen-brings-worlds-oldest-jokebook-London-stage—reveals-ancestor-Monty-Pythons-Dead-Parrot.html
) and the BBC (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7725079.stm
).

2. QUESTIONS OF LAUGHTER, ANCIENT AND MODERN

1.
De or.
2.235; the words are put in the mouth of the lead character in this part of the dialogue, Julius Caesar Strabo. I am lightly paraphrasing “Strabo” ’s list of questions: “Quid sit ipse risus, quo pacto concitetur, ubi sit, quo modo exsistat atque ita repente erumpat, ut eum cupientes tenere nequeamus, et quo modo simul latera, os, venas, oculos, vultum occupet?” (The text is uncertain: did Cicero imagine laughter taking over the blood vessels,
venas,
or cheeks,
genas
? See p. 116.) Quintilian (
Inst.
6.3.7) follows Cicero’s disavowal: “I do not think the origin of laughter has been satisfactorily explained by anyone—though many have tried” (“Neque enim ab ullo satis explicari puto, licet multi temptaverint, unde risus”). For Cicero the jokester, see pp. 100–105.

2.
De motibus dubiis
4 (erections), 10.4–5 (laughter), with Nutton 2011, 349.

3.
Pliny,
HN,
praef. 17, proclaims the array of facts; for his encyclopedic project in general, see Murphy 2004; Doody 2010.

4.
7.2, 7.72. See pp. 35, 83–84.

5.
11.198.

6.
11.205 (“sunt qui putent adimi simul risum homini intemperantiamque eius constare lienis magnitudine”). Pliny may be referring to removal (as he notes here that an animal can continue to live if its spleen is removed because of a wound), but elsewhere (23.27) he refers to drugs that reduce the size of the spleen. Serenus Sammonicus (
PLM
21.426–30) and Isidore (
Etym.
11.1.127) agreed with, or followed, Pliny in stressing the role of the spleen in laughter.

7.
7.79–80.

8.
24.164. For the identification with cannabis, see André 1972, 150: “Très certainement le chanvre indien (
Cannabis indica,
variété
de C. sativa
L)”; “crowfoot” is the suggestion of
L&S,
the
OLD
being more guarded with “a plant yielding a hallucinatory drug.”

9.
31.19; Ramsay 1897, 407–8. For the springs on the Fortunate Islands, see Pomponius Mela 3.102.

10.
11.198. For the Greek tradition of such laughter, see Aristotle,
Part. an.
3.10, 673a10–12, and Hippocrates,
Epid.
5.95. How far this was clearly or systematically distinguished from the tradition, attested even earlier, of the “sardonic smile” or grimace of pain is a moot point; see Halliwell 2008, 93n100, 315.

11.
Praef. 17; the first book of the
HN
consists entirely of a list of contents of books 2 to 37, with the authorities consulted for each.

12.
31.19 (“Theophrastus Marsyae fontem in Phrygia ad Celaenarum oppidum saxa egerere”). Usually assumed to be derived from Theophrastus’ lost work
De aquis;
see Fortenbaugh et al. 1992, 394–95 (=
Physics,
no. 219).

13.
Aristotle,
Part. an.
3.10, 673a1–12.

14.
De usu part.
1.22 (Helmreich) = 1, pp. 80–81 (Kuhn); discussed further above, pp. 165–67. For issues of Galen’s dissection and his views on the homology between animal and human, see Hankinson 1997.

15.
Mor.
634a–b (=
Quaest. conviv.
2.1.11–12).

16.
De or.
2.236 (“Haec enim ridentur vel sola vel maxime, quae notant et designant turpitudinem aliquam non turpiter”); Quintilian,
Inst.
6.3.7.

17.
De or.
2.242 (mimicry), 2.252 (“pulling faces,”
oris depravatio
), 2.255 (the unexpected), 2.281 (“incongruous”); for further discussion of Cicero and incongruity, see p. 117. See also Quintilian,
Inst.
6.3.6–112; like Cicero, Quintilian (6.3.7) stresses the different ways that laughter is stimulated, from words to action and touch.

18.
De or.
2.217: “‘Ego vero’ inquit ‘omni de re facilius puto esse ab homine non inurbano, quam de ipsis facetiis disputari.’” It is even closer to the modern cliché if we emend the text (as many have) to read
facetius
for
facilius
(“more wittily than wit itself”).