Laughter in Ancient Rome (23 page)

It is in the course of this section on how far an orator should exploit laughter that the character of Strabo first introduces the distinction between wit
dicto
(in verbal form: a joke that depends on the exact words in which it is told) and wit
re
(in substance: one that can be told differently and still prompt laughter). That contrast becomes the main organizing principle of the long final discussion (248–88), on the different categories of “the laughable.” Here Strabo reviews the main types of witticism under those two headings, including jokes from ambiguity, from the intrusion of the unexpected, from wordplay, from the inclusion of lines of verse (257–58—not a familiar modern category of the laughable), from words taken literally, from witty comparisons or images, from understatement, from irony, and so on. But throughout, warnings about the inappropriate use of laughter are again repeatedly voiced. In fact, near the start of this discussion on categories, there is a short digression (251–52) on the tactics for raising a laugh that, however effective they may be, the orator should avoid. These include clownish mimicry and silly walks, grimacing, and obscenity. The bottom line is that not everything that raises laughter (
ridicula
) is also witty (
faceta
), and it is wit that we look for in the ideal orator.

This diversion on laughter comes to an end with Strabo running out of steam in his classification (“I feel I have rather overdone my division into categories”) and offering a perfunctory summing-up of what prompts laughter: disappointing expectations, ridiculing other people’s character, comparison with something more dishonorable, irony, saying rather silly things, or criticizing what is foolish. If you want to speak in a joking way (
iocose
), he finally insists, you must be naturally equipped for it and have a face to fit. Not a “funny” face, but quite the reverse. “The more severe and sterner a man’s expression, the more ‘salty’ [
salsiora
] his remarks are usually thought to be” (288–89). And on that cue, he hands back to Antonius to resume the tougher road of oratorical theory on more serious themes.

There are all kinds of intriguing puzzles and problems in this discussion of laughter that go far beyond the precise sources for the arguments. As often in Cicero’s dialogues, the selection of characters has been one topic of interest. Why choose Strabo to front the discussion? There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that he had (as Arndt fondly fantasized) written a treatise on laughter, though Cicero does refer to him, here and elsewhere, as a noted wit.
⁵⁸
Maybe it was an attempt to offer a back-handed compliment to the increasingly powerful Julius Caesar, whose distant relative Strabo was.
⁵⁹
Or maybe the choice was rather less important than we might imagine. After all, just six years on from writing
On the Orator,
Cicero referred to this discussion in his letter to Volumnius Eutrapelus (see p. 105), mentioning the forms of wit “that I discussed through the character of
Antonius
in the second book of
On the Orator
.”
⁶⁰
Had he forgotten that this section was almost entirely voiced by Strabo? If so, maybe not much hung on this choice of character.
⁶¹

There has been even more debate about the overall structure of the argument and its precise terms. At the very start of Strabo’s intervention, he seems to be basing his argument on the division of
facetiae
into
cavillatio
and
dicacitas,
as the “ancients” called them—another nice instance, I would like to think, of the nostalgia characteristic of histories of laughter (see pp. 67–69). But shortly after that, when he restarts his exposition, the five basic questions about the orator’s use of laughter now become the structuring principle (with a subsidiary division of wit
dicto
and
re
). No amount of modern ingenuity has been able to make the first division compatible with the second, and most critics would now agree that the opposition between
cavillatio
and
dicacitas
simply gets shelved as the new fivefold structure of the argument takes its place. In fact, maybe part of Cicero’s (witty) point is to parade a shift in style over the course of Strabo’s intervention—from a classification that is explicitly said to be a something of a joke
⁶²
to a more intellectualizing, Hellenizing approach, never intended to be compatible with the other.

It is not clear, either, how the division of
facetiae
into
cavillatio
and
dicacitas
in
On the Orator
relates to the ostensibly contradictory division laid out in Cicero’s later treatise
The Orator
(written in the mid-40s BCE), where he separates
sales
(witticisms) into
facetiae
and
dicacitas.
⁶³
Did he change the words because (as Rabbie and others have guessed)
cavillatio
was beginning to take on its later sense (which
cavil
in English still retains), of “quibble”?
⁶⁴
Possibly, but the space of ten years seems a rather short time for any such linguistic shift to have been marked. In any case, that would still leave the problem of why the overarching term for wit (
facetiae
) in the earlier work was changed into one of its constituent parts in the later.
⁶⁵

This raises the yet bigger question of the exact sense of the many and various terms for wit and joking that are found in
On the Orator
and elsewhere in Roman discussions of laughter. I confidently asserted in an earlier chapter (see p. 76) that it is impossible to define precisely the differences between such words as
sal, lepos, facetia, urbanitas, dictum,
and so on—any more than we could explain the difference, if any, between a chuckle and a chortle. Was that being too pessimistic? After all, we could plausibly explain the difference between a chortle and a giggle. Does the discussion in
On the Orator
help us get closer to the differences and distinctions between these terms?

Cicero certainly offers a range of semidefinitions and carefully stressed contrasts or parallels in this treatise:
ridicula
are not all
faceta,
for example, and
frigida
can be the opposite of
salsa,
while
bona
in the phrase
bona dicta
is more or less a synonym for
salsa.
⁶⁶
This has raised the hopes of some scholars that a much more exact Roman typology of wit might be discerned, especially since it is clear that some of these terms (most notably
urbanitas,
with its whiff of urbanity in the modern sense) were becoming strongly ideologically loaded at the period Cicero when was writing—the catchwords or slogans of a particular style, whether of speech or of life.
⁶⁷
Articles and even whole books have been devoted to this question, but (revealing as they are) we still remain a long way from any authoritative framework of definitions. Of course we do. It is not that these words all meant exactly the same thing. But as the different usages (of
facetiae, sal, dicacitas,
and
cavillatio
) between
On the Orator
and
The Orator
have already suggested, the contrasts and collocations that gave them meaning were unstable, provisional, and heavily dependent on context—not to mention sometimes constructed with an eye to the contrasts and collocations of an equally unstable set of Greek terms.

The word
lepos,
for example, as Krostenko amply documents, could refer in Cicero (never mind a wider range of authors) to a style of engaging wit, and it could be the result of cultured education, one of a group of desirable qualities (including
humanitas, sal,
and
suavitas
), but it could also be a proxy in Latin for the Greek
charis
—as well as the property of the uncultured
scurra
(
scurrile lepos
).
⁶⁸
Quintilian likewise underlines the instability of this vocabulary when he reflects in his
Handbook
that Latin seems to have several terms for similar qualities of wit and attempts to separate them (
diducere
). Of
salsum
(salty), he has this to say: “
Salsum
we use in everyday language for
ridiculum
[laughable]. That’s not what it is by definition, though anything that is
ridiculum
ought also to be
salsum.
For Cicero says that everything which is
salsum
is a feature of the Athenians, but that is not because they are particularly predisposed to laughter. And when Catullus says, ‘There’s not a grain of
sal
in her body,’ he does not mean there is nothing
ridiculum
in her body.” At which point he throws up his hands and states the blindingly obvious: “
Salsum
therefore is that which is not
insalsum
[unsalty].”
⁶⁹
It’s a fairly typical dead end.

But we can get further if we turn the question away from rhetoric and wit and toward the main subject of this section of
On the Orator:
that is, laughter itself. For these chapters represent a unique attempt to formulate a view of the role of laughter within public life and speaking, from a man (“new” though he may have been) at the very heart of the Roman political and social elite, and are worth considering in that particular light.

LAUGHTER AND ITS RISKS

Strabo does not linger long on the first three of his questions about laughter (what it is, where it comes from, and whether an orator should provoke it), but even the little he does have to say is more illuminating than it is usually assumed to be. The brief but varied reasons he offers for provoking laughter in the audience, from gaining goodwill to trouncing the opponent or relieving the austerity of a speech, go far beyond aggressive derision and ridicule. His other comments also point in useful directions.

On the first question, it is true that he quickly deflects the problem to Democritus, with a sideswipe at ignorant “experts,” but that is not before he has succinctly characterized the nature of human laughter. He refers to it “bursting out so unexpectedly that try as we might we cannot keep it in” (a clear example of the myth of uncontrollability), and he explains how “at the same moment it takes possession of
latera, os, venas, vultum, oculos
.”
⁷⁰
This is probably the most comprehensive single list we have from antiquity of the parts of the body that laughter disrupts, but it is frustratingly hard to make full sense of it. Does
latera
here mean the sides (as in the heaving of the rib cage) or, as it sometimes does, the lungs (so referring to panting)? Is
os
the mouth, the voice, or the face (or is the face ruled out because of
vultum,
“facial expression,” later in the list)? And can
venas
really be referring to the blood vessels (or maybe the pulse)—or would it make better sense if, as some editors have suspected, the text actually read
genas,
“cheeks”? And how exactly are the eyes (
oculos
) involved? But in whatever way we fine-tune the interpretation, we are clearly meant to understand that laughter makes a strongly physical impact, extending well beyond the mouth. Cicero does not have a silent smile in mind, and indeed, unless we fall back on some very creative translation, smiling is not on the agenda in this discussion at all. We are talking about raising (
movere
)
laughter.