Laughter in Ancient Rome (62 page)

54.
Critchley 2002, 65–66, partly drawing on Mary Douglas’s famous essay on jokes (1968) and crisply encapsulating approaches that underlie other, more specific contributions to joke studies (see, for example, Kerman 1980, discussing “light-bulb” gags in broadly similar terms). It is striking that some jokes in the
Philogelos
explicitly make issues of relativism (or the failure to understand the nature of a different perspective) the topic of joking: see, for example, 49, in which a
scholastikos,
looking at the moon, asks his father if other cities have moons like theirs.

55.
5: Σχολαστικῷ τις ἀπαντήσας ἔφη· Κύριε σχολαστικέ, καθ’ ὕπνους σε εἶδον. ὁ δέ· Μὰ τοὺς θεούς, εἶπεν, ἀσχολῶν οὐ προσέσχον; the alternative version is 102.

56.
15: Σχολαστικὸς καθ’ ὕπνους ἧλον πεπατηκέναι δόξας τὸν πόδα περιέδησεν. ἑταῖρος δὲ αὐτοῦ πυθόμενος τὴν αἰτίαν καὶ γνούς· Δικαίως, ἔφη, μωροὶ καλούμεθα. διὰ τί γὰρ ἀνυπόδητος κοιμᾶσαι; 207 (see also 124, 243). The theme of dreaming versus reality is also found in scoptic epigrams; see Floridi 2012, 643.

57.
W. V. Harris 2009 is an important survey; Harris-McCoy 2012, 1–41, is a useful introduction to the dream interpretations of Artemidorus.

58.
45: Σχολαστικὸς νυκτὸς ἐπανέστη τῇ μάμμῃ αὐτοῦ. πληγὰς δὲ διὰ τοῦτο ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς λαβών· Σύ, εἶπεν, τοσοῦτος χρόνος ἐστὶν ἐξ οὗ τὴν μητέρα μου ὀχεύεις, μηδὲν ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ παθών, καὶ νῦν ὀργίζῃ ἐπὶ τῇ μητρί σου ἅπαξ με εὑρών. Baldwin 1983, 65, detects the influence of mime.

59.
57: ∏ρῶτον, ἔφη, σὺ τὰ τέκνα σου κατόρυξον, καὶ οὕτως ἐμοὶ συμβούλευε τὸν ἐμὸν ἀνελεῖν.

60.
80: Σχολαστικοῦ πλέοντος ἐκινδύνευεν ὑπὸ χειμῶνος τὸ πλοῖον. τῶν δὲ συμπλεόντων ἀπορριπτούντων ἐκ τῶν σκευῶν, ἵνα κουφισθῇ τὸ πλοῖον, κἀκείνῳ τὸ αὐτὸ ποιεῖν παραινούντων, ὁ δὲ ἔχων χειρόγραφον ἑκατὸν πεντήκοντα μυριάδων, τὰς πεντήκοντα ἀπαλείψας· Ἲδε, φησίν, ὅσοις χρήμασιν ἐπεκούφισα τὴν ναῦν. Rougé 1987, 10–11, sees the point of this most clearly.

61.
12: Σχολαστικῷ ἀποδημοῦντι φίλος αὐτοῦ ἔλεγεν· Ἀξιῶ σε δύο παῖδας ἀγοράσαι μοι, ἑκ<άτερον> πεντεκαίδεκα ἐτῶν. ὁ δὲ εἶπεν· Ἐὰν τοιούτους μὴ εὕρω, ἀγοράσω σοι ἕνα τριάκοντα ἐτῶν. I include the sexual reading in deference to my graduate class at Berkeley, who had no doubt at all that that was the sense.

62.
IOU: 161; country estate: 131 (a doublet of 60; Baldwin 1983’s translation is misleading); ladder rungs: 93; tertian fever: 175a. Others jokes on related themes include 3, 62, 71, 84, 196, and the gags about wine and water in n. 7.

63.
22: Σχολαστικὸς ἀπαντήσας τινὶ φίλῳ αὐτοῦ εἶπεν· Ἤκουσα, ὅτι ἀπέθανες. ὁ δὲ ἀπεκρίνατο· Ἀλλ’ ὁρᾷς με ζῶντα. καὶ ὁ σχολαστικός· Καὶ μὴν ὁ εἰπών μοι κατὰ πολὺ σοῦ ἀξιοπιστότερος ἦν.

64.
193: Δύσκολόν τις ἐζήτει. ὁ δὲ ἀπεκρίνατο· Οὐκ εἰμὶ ὧδε. τοῦ δὲ γελάσαντος καὶ εἰπόντος· Ψεύδῃ· τῆς γὰρ φωνῆς σου ἀκούω—εἶπεν· Ὦ κάθαρμα, εἰ μὲν ὁ δοῦλός μου εἶπεν, εἶχες ἂν αὐτῷ πιστεῦσαι· ἐγὼ δέ σοι οὐ φαίνομαι ἀξιοπιστότερος ἐκείνου εἶναι;

65.
De or.
2.276.

66.
Twin: 29; baby’s name: 95; corpse: 171.

67.
Proofs of identity and status, including birth certificates, were not nonexistent in the Roman world; they were presumably commoner where issues of status and privilege were at stake and in some parts of the empire more than others (though how far the pattern of their survival reflects the original distribution is unclear). Schulz 1942; 1943 remain useful surveys of the evidence. Wallace-Hadrill 2011, 144–45, briefly discusses a case in Herculaneum where an individual’s birth details remained obscure (as I strongly suspect must have been the norm).

68.
Lucian,
Demon.
12–62. Schlapbach 2010, esp. 258–60, offers a sophisticated reading of the relationship between these witty sayings and Lucian’s construction of the written life of Demonax. Modern usage of the ancient terms
apophthegmata
and
chreiai
tends to imply too clear a division between the two categories: the former being “clever sayings,” the latter more specifically “moral maxims” or witty parodies of such. In practice, the categories merge, as they also do with proverbs and riddles. On the interchangeability, see McClure 2003, esp. 274.

69.
Suetonius,
Aug.
56. It was apparently a juvenile collection by the dictator and presumably consisted of his own
dicta
(though that is not explicitly stated), or why would Augustus have wanted to keep it under wraps?

70.
Such compilations as Plutarch’s
Sayings of the Spartans
are also classified according to speaker, even if the book as a whole adds up to a portrait of cultural or ethnic character.

71.
Suetonius,
Gram.
21. The title probably militates against a compilation of sayings, but it does clinch the issue; the collection of Aristodemus (see p. 204) seems to have been much more biographical than its title would suggest.

72.
Stich.
454–55, 221–24.

73.
Persa
392–94: “Librorum eccillum habeo plenum soracum / . . . / dabuntur dotis tibi inde sescenti logi.”

74.
Maltby 1999, referring to
Persa
395 (“atque Attici omnes; nullum Siculum acceperis”). We might compare Gow’s confidence that Machon’s
Chreiai
could well have been “a valuable vademecum” for an ancient jester, similar to “a modern book of jokes from which a public speaker or raconteur . . . can refresh his memory or replenish his repertoire” (1965, 24). As Kurke 2002 makes clear, whatever this puzzling text was, it certainly was not that.

75.
It is hard to get much sense of the work (and its date is, in any case, a matter of guesswork: second century BCE or later, but how much later?). The quotations in Athenaeus are all jokes attached to named individuals—kings, gluttons, parasites, and prostitutes; see, e.g., 6.244f (giving the terminus post quem), 6.246d–e, 8.345b–c, 13.585a. They may have some resemblance to the types of the
Philogelos,
but how close a resemblance I am not sure.

76.
The text is found most conveniently in Siegmann 1956, 27–37, which discusses in detail the different readings and interpretations up to that date. Almost everything about this text is contested. It is unclear, for example, whether
Pyrrhos
—if thought of as a proper name—is a “real” name or a nickname (such as
Ginger
). The only other more or less comprehensible heading, though much restored, appears to be εἰ[ς] φα[λ]ακρόν (few letters are entirely clear, and again there has been debate on whether it refers to a bald man or is some form of proper name).

77.
Kassel 1956. This view is accepted by, e.g., Maltby 1999; Andreassi 2004, 22–23 (“ha convincentemente sostenuto che il papiro costituisse una sorta di
Witzbuch
”).

78.
See Siegmann 1956; more briefly Andreassi 2004, 23.

79.
Aristophanes,
Vesp.
1427–31.

80.
Links with fable: Aristophanes,
Vesp
. 1259. The most recent survey of Sybarite stories is Bowie 2013, 252–55. I am not as confident as Bowie (252) that the genre of these stories must in some form go back to before the destruction of Sybaris (as the place had such proverbial renown), but I am struck that he concludes that the
collection
of these stories only just predated Ovid (255); Aelian,
VH
14.20 (writing in the late second or early third century CE) implies that he had read a collection. See also, on the tradition of Sybaris, Gorman and Gorman 2007 (usefully showing how much Athenaeus “contributes” to the fragments he cites).

81.
The context and characters of the
Deipnosophistae
are well discussed in various essays in Braund and Wilkins 2000, especially Milanezi 2000, on the section on joking, and Braund 2000, on the Roman background (including the identity of Ulpian: see esp. 17).

82.
Athenaeus,
Deipnosophistae
14.614d–e: τοσαύτη δ’ αὐτῶν δόξα τῆς ῥᾳθυμίας ἐγένετο ὡς καὶ Φίλιππον ἀκούσαντα τὸν Μακεδόνα πέμψαι αὐτοῖς τάλαντον, ἵν’ ἐκγραφόμενοι τὰ γελοῖα πέμπωσιν αὐτῷ. A similar but shorter version of the story is found at 6.260a–b, citing the second-century CE Hegesander of Delphi as the immediate source.

83.
Quotation from Hansen 1998, 273; see also Andreassi 2004, 18–19.

84.
As Hansen 1998, 273, carefully concedes.

85.
Deipnosophistae
14.614c. Athenaeus’ gloss: Ἀναξανδρίδης δ’ ἐν Γεροντομανίᾳ καὶ εὑρετὰς τῶν γελοίων φησὶ γενέσθαι Ῥαδάμανθυν καὶ ∏αλαμήδην, λέγων οὕτως; followed by the quotation itself: καίτοι πολλοί γε πονοῦμεν. / τὸ δ’ ἀσύμβολον εὗρε γελοῖα λέγειν Ῥαδάμανθυς / καὶ ∏αλαμήδης.

86.
For example, Milanezi 2000, 402, though the chapter is, in general, a useful study of this section of Athenaeus’ work. On Palamedes as a mythical inventor and culture hero, see Gera 2003, 122–27; for another appearance of Rhadamanthys, see p. 161; on this pairing, see Ceccarelli 2013, 69 (which is slightly more careful than most on what exactly it attributes to Anaxandrides).

87.
Of course, there may have been earlier, now lost, claims about the role of Palamedes and Rhadamanthys as inventors of the joke, but the fact is that this is the only testimony we have—and whatever parallels might once have existed (or not), the slippage in Athenaeus and the effective reinterpretation of Anaxandrides’ claim are striking.

AFTERWORD

1.
Marzolph 1987 explores the similarities with Arabic traditions. Andreassi 2004, 81–124, collects further parallels in different joking cultures.

2.
The work of Barbara Bowen has opened up the world of Renaissance jokebooks. See, for example, Bowen 1984; 1986a; 1986b; 1998. For an earlier period (Cicero’s jokes in the culture of the twelfth-century English court), see J. M. Martin 1990.

3.
This story goes back to the nineteenth century at least. It makes its point nicely (about both Porson and
Joe Miller
)—though it may not be strictly true; see Baldwin 1983, xii.

4.
The joke is less apocryphal than it might seem. It is told in the diary of Powell’s fellow politician Woodrow Wyatt (Wyatt 1998, 282–83, entry for 31 January 1987): “There is a very chatty barber in the [House of] Commons who never stops telling MPs whose hair he cuts about politics and what his views are on the world. Enoch Powell went to have his hair cut by him one day, sat down and the barber said ‘How would you like your hair cut, sir?’ ‘In silence,’ Enoch replied.” Wyatt makes clear that the barber was well known for his chattiness, so Powell would have had ample time to prepare his classical joke. Even better, since first investigating this story, thanks to Gloria Tyler of the House of Commons Library, I have been able to access an interview with the barber himself, Stephen Silverne (British Library, Sound and Moving Image Collection, C1135/14); in this, he gives a very similar account of the story. For another modern version of this gag, see Andreassi 2004, 75–76.