What made the Romans LOL Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo Listen to it carefully it is not an articulate clear welldefined sound it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another something beginning with a crash to continue in successive rumb ID: 813022
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Slide1
Roman Laughter
Week 2:
What made the Romans LOL?
Slide2‘Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo. Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain.’ (p11)
Slide3Slide4J.Henderson.1999.
Writing Down Rome
Slide5inepta
=‘silly moo’ (Ovid,
Amores 1.14)verbero = ‘Rapscallion’ (Plautus, Miles Gloriosus)amens = ‘brain dead’ (Cicero, In Pisonem
)insulsissimus = ‘king of the morons’ (Catullus 20)faciem durum, Phoebe, cacantis habes
= ‘you have the face of a man with severe constipation, Phoebus’ (Martial
Epigrams
3.89)
Non
tu
tibi
istam
praetruncari
linguam
largiloquam
iubes
?
= ‘Do me a favour and get that twaddle-talking tongue of yours surgically removed from your mouth’ (Plautus,
Miles
Gloriosus
).
pedicabo
vos
et
irrumabo
= ‘I’ll have my way with you upstairs and downstairs’ (Catullus 16)
.
Slide6The language of Roman laughter
deridere, to scornirridere/inridere - to laugh at, jeer at, ridiculeadridere – to smile upon approvingly, to be pleasingsubridere – to smile
Also renidere - to beam. rudere – to bray (cf Ovid Ars Amatoria 3.289-90 ridet/ ut rudet). risus
- laughterridiculus - risible. rictus – open mouth (esp in laughing?); used of animal mouthscachinnare - to laugh out loudcachinnus - loud laugh
Slide7Did the Romans smile?
subridere – to ?smile? (Compare French sourire, Italian sorridere)E.g. Virgil Eclogue 4.60: incipe, parve
puer, risu cognoscere matrem (‘begin, dear boy, to recognise your mother with a ?smile?’)Ovid Amores 3.1.33 [Roman smizing?]: altera, si memini, limis
subrisit ocellis. (‘The other one, if I recall, smiled with a sideways glance’).Virgil Aeneid 1.254-5: olli subridens …/ vultu quo caelum
tempestatesque
serenat
(‘?Smiling? on her with the face he uses to clear the sky and storms’)
Apuleius
, Met.
6.13: [Venus]
sed
contortis
superciliis
surridens
amarum
sic inquit (‘But Venus ?smiled? bitterly with contorted/raised eyebrows, and said…’)
Slide8It’s the way they told them…
(+ Quintilian 6.3.17-21)iocus – jest, jokelepos – charm, pleasantnessurbanitas – urbane witdicta - sayingsdicacitas – witty repartee, bantercavillatio – scoffing, banter, jeering, quibblingridiculum
– laughing matter, joke, absurditysal – wit, pungencysalsa – witty speechsatura – a dish filled with various kinds of fruits or food composed of various ingredients, satirefacetiae – brilliant remarks (etymology = fax, ‘firebran’)acetum – vinegar, pungent witironia – irony (
Gk eironeia)lusus – game, trick, jokeamphibolia – ambiguity, double meaning, double entendreludus – sport, game, amusement
Slide9(why) Do we find the ancient Romans funny?
Monty Python, The Life of Brian (1979)The Plebs
(ITV sitcom), 2013-16‘Rome is traditionally imagined as the home of emperors and senators, generals and gladiators, a dignified theatre of pomp and ceremony. But what about the little guys, the wasters - new to the big city, stuck in office jobs, unable to get the girls? A modern comedy in an ancient setting, Plebs follows three desperate young men from the suburbs as they try to get laid, hold down jobs and climb the social ladder in the big city…’
Slide10Penises in Pompeii
This House of the Vettii wall painting shows off economic power by dramatizing equivalence between money, produce and phallic potency. We tend to treat this as funny, naughty, or embarrassing…But we can only guess at Roman attitudes – impressed, amused, outraged, indifferent…all of the above? Was the painting an apotropaic shocker, or a corny status symbol, or…?To what extent do ancient categories of the comic, and of the pornographic, correspond to our own? (cf. A.Richlin, The Garden of Priapus)
Slide11brainstorm
What ideological function does making ancient Romans comic gold have for us?(or, to put it another way, how do we use ‘funny Romans’ to tell stories about ourselves?)
Slide12Roman (hi)stories of/about humour
Cultural identityClassGenderKnowledge and powerSelf-controlSee (handout): Horace Epist.2.1.139-55, Cicero, Fam 9.15, Tacitus Germania 19, Ovid Ars Amatoria
3.278-91.