Laughter in Ancient Rome (59 page)

63.
Csapo 2002 reviews some of the main issues and includes a good discussion of Aristotle’s anecdote about the fifth-century actor Callippides (
Poet.
26, 1461b34–35), attacked for being a “monkey.” As Csapo rightly insists, the criticism did not rest on the fact that he acted with “exaggerated gestures”; his crime was not overacting in our sense but rather “imitating actions that are best not imitated at all” (128), including, in Aristotle’s words, those of “the inferior” and of “lower-class women” (
Poet.
26, 1462a9–10). Csapo draws a clear and useful distinction between this mimicry and more general issues of tragic mimesis.

64.
Note also the mimicry implied by Suetonius,
Cal.
57.4—discussed in terms of the (imitative) roles of the different actors in the mime company by Kirichenko 2010, 57; our lawyer imitator (see p. 144) might fit under this general heading too.

65.
GLK
1.491.13–19; Evanthius,
Excerpta de comoedia
(Wessner) 4.1.

66.
Lee 1990, 43; Godwin 1999, 67; Whigham 1966, 100; Quinn 1970, 217 (“The
mimae
were the cinema stars of the ancient world. . . . Her pout looks like a dog showing its teeth”).

67.
On the overall articulation of the full plot of the novel (of which only a small section survives), see Schmeling 2011, xxii–xxv; Sullivan 1968, 45–53, discusses the (irresolvable) problems of the ordering of this particular section.

68.
Plaza 2000, 73–83.

69.
Sat.
18.7–19.1 (“Complosis deinde manibus in tantum risum effusa est ut timeremus. . . . Omnia mimico risu exsonuerant”).

70.
Branham and Kinney 1996, 17 (“stagy”); Walsh 1996, 14 (“low stage”); “farcical” is M. Heseltine’s version in the Loeb Classical Library (27); “théâtral” is A. Ernout’s in the Budé (15).

71.
Panayotakis 1994 stresses the resonances of the figure of Quartilla with mime acting (“like an
archimima
in her own production of a mimic play,” 326), though sometimes pushes the exact parallels too far (even rewriting the episode as a mimic script on 329–30); largely reprised in Panayotakis 1995, 38–51. Other studies also point to the general influence of mimes, here and elsewhere, in the novel. See, e.g., Schmeling 2011, 55 (with earlier bibliography).

72.
I am here developing some of the implications of Plaza’s discussion of the episode (2000, esp. 77–79), including her interest in the “inversion of social and literary norms.”

73.
It is a text with a complicated history: Festus was drawing on the work of the Augustan scholar Verrius Flaccus, but part of Festus’ dictionary is now known only through a summary by an eighth-century scholar, Paul the Deacon. And that is only part of the text’s vicissitudes—which are a major theme of the essays in Glinister and Woods 2007.

74.
Festus, s.v. “Pictor Zeuxis,” p. 228L. My translation glosses over some of the predictable textual confusions.

75.
Golahny 2003, 199–205, clearly justifying the identification of the scene.

76.
For a brief collection of misogynistic themes on old women in Roman culture, see Parkin 2003, 86–87.

77.
Pliny
HN
35.65–66 (the second part of the passage tells the story of Zeuxis’ dissatisfaction with his own lifelike rendering of a child). Discussions include Elsner 1995, 16–17; Morales 1996, 184–88; S. Carey 2003, 109–11.

78.
Warner 1994, 149–50.

79.
The scattered ancient evidence to Baubo (and her relation to the similar figure of Iambe) is collected and discussed from a classical perspective in, for example, H. King 1986; Olender 1990; O’Higgins 2001, 132–42. For modern feminist explorations, see Cixous and Clément 1986, 32–34; Warner 1994, 150–52. See also ch. 6, n. 70.

80.
Athenaeus,
Deipnsophistae
14.614a–b.

81.
Jacoby,
FGrHist,
no. 396 (the story in question is F10). No surviving quotations from Semus are found in authors earlier than the late second century CE; how long before that he wrote is frankly impossible to be certain.

82.
In addition to this story, see Pausanias 9.39.13 and, more explicitly,
Suda,
s.v. εἰς Τροφωνίου μεμάντευται.

83.
My translation tries to capture the verbal echoes of the oracle’s response: promising soothing laughter for the “unsoothed” Parmeniscus.

84.
“Mothers” in literary oracular responses were never what they seemed: in another famous example, “kissing your mother” turned out to mean kissing the earth (Livy 1.56).

85.
It is often assumed (by, e.g., Rutherford 2000, 138–39) that this Parmeniscus was identical with the Pythagorean philosopher “Parmiscus” of Metapontum listed in a third-century CE treatise by Iamblichus (
De vita Pythag.
267, p. 185 (Nauck), emended to “Parmeniscus”) and perhaps also with the Parmiscus whose dedication at the sanctuary of Leto is recorded on an inscribed temple inventory of 156/5 BCE (
IDelos
1417A, col. 1, 109–11). Maybe, or maybe not. The passing reference to a Pythagorean Parmeniscus in Diogenes Laertius (
Vitae
9.20) does not clinch it either; as
LGPN
makes very clear, Parmeniscus and its cognates are commonly attested Greek personal names.

86.
Kindt 2012, 36–54, based on Kindt 2010.

87.
Kindt 2012, 49: “Parmeniscus’ laughter, we may assume, changes in quality as it becomes self-reflective. It starts off as a naïve and unreflected response to the apparent crudeness of divine form and turns into an astonished appreciation of the complexities of divine representation as Parmeniscus grasps the meaning of the oracle.” Kindt 2010, 259, is more tentative (“we may suspect” rather than “assume”).

88.
παραδόξως ἐγέλασεν gives absolutely no hint of any change.

89.
Halliwell 2008, 38–40, provides a useful collection of Greek agelasts (though some of this laughter avoidance is not attested before the Roman period; see, e.g., Plutarch.
Per.
5).

90.
Cicero,
Fin.
5.92; Jerome,
Ep.
7.5; Pliny,
HN
7.79. Other references include Fronto,
Ad M. Antoninum de eloquentia
(van den Hout) 2.20; Ammianus Marcellinus 26.9.11.

91.
In Jerome’s letter (
Ep.
7), the focus is not so much on Crassus himself but on the proverb: “. . . secundum illud quoque, de quo semel in vita Crassum ait risisse Lucilius: ‘similem habent labra lactucam asino carduos comedente.’” The idea of the donkey eating thistles as a visual spectacle, lying behind the popular saying, is clearly suggested in one of Babrius’ collection of fables (133): a fox spots a donkey eating thistles and asks him how he can eat such spiky food with his soft tongue.

92.
N. J. Hall 1983, 1035–39 (a less lurid version of the Trollope story than is often told). There is always the temptation to track down some medical cause, as in the case of the Kings Lynn bricklayer: see
www.bbc.co.uk/news/ukengland-18542377
.

93.
Valerius Maximus, 9.12, ext. 6.

94.
Diogenes Laertius,
Vitae
7.185.

95.
For the obscene associations of figs, see Jeffrey Henderson 1991, 23, 118, 135. Is it relevant that it was figs that Aesop made his thieving fellow slaves vomit up (see above, p. 138)?

96.
Diogenes Laertius,
Vitae
7.184.

97.
Tertullian,
De anim.
52.3.

98.
The curious text known as the
Testamentum Porcelli
(The piglet’s last will and testament) provides another example here. Jerome stresses that it was well known to get people cracking up,
cachinnare,
rather than
ridere
(
Contra Rufinum
1.17).

99.
The subtitle of Schlam 1992 has inspired this section’s title.

100.
My terminology on donkeys is not quite so loose as that on monkeys, but I recommend M. Griffith 2006 to anyone wanting precise information on the varieties of ancient (especially Greek) equids and their cultural resonances.

101.
The essays collected in Harrison 1999 offer a good conspectus of recent Anglophone approaches to the
Metamorphoses,
from what is now a vast bibliography. Fick-Michel 1991, 395–430, assembles references to laughter in the novel; Schlam 1992, 40–44, is a briefer critical résumé.

102.
It is generally agreed that this cannot be the second-century CE satirist Lucian; Mason 1999a, 104–5, sums up the arguments. In what follows, I will usually call the work Lucianic.

103.
Photios,
Bib. Cod.
129. The problems in getting to the bottom of what Photios is saying are laid out as clearly and sharply as anywhere in Winkler 1985, 252–56; see also Mason 1999a, 103–4.

104.
The usual modern assumption is that the lost work of Lucius of Patrai is the earliest, but there has been endless learned conjecture (and plenty of false certainty) about the precise relationships of the various versions (summed up well by Mason 1999b), in particular which sections of Apuleius’ novel were his own invention and which derived from Lucius of Patrai. The wildly different conclusions on the extent of Apuleian originality reached (on the basis of minute philological dissection of the text) by Bianco 1971 and van Thiel 1971 are instructive (as well as dispiriting); Walsh 1974 clearly summarizes their differences.

105.
Apuleius,
Met.
10.13–17; ps.-Lucian,
Onos
46–48.

106.
Met.
10.13. I wonder if we should detect here a nod toward the saying about the donkey and the thistles.

107.
“Ne humanum quidem”:
Met.
10.14. As Zimmerman 2000, 214, observes, “The ironical play with
humanum
becomes more complex when one considers that it is his very
sensus humanus
. . . that makes the ass steal human food.”