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This is a fascinating and thought-provoking read, but you need to be aware beforehand of what you are about to be reading. What it isn't: a parade of hilarious one-liners. What it is: a serious, academic (but quite readable) attempt to get under the skin of a particular culture by analysing not just what made it laugh, but how it laughed, how it regarded laughter and what range of vocabulary it used for this activity (her observations on the role of smiling in Roman society, and the lack of vocabulary relating to it, for instance, are quite surprising). It isn't very often a light read, but it repays the concentration and thought that it demands.
Cicero's work, especially On the Orator, is naturally one of her most important sources, and the man himself comes over as Ancient Rome's most relentless (and often very funny) gag-merchant. In fact as an orator he was continually, and not always successfully, treading a thin line: wit could help him defeat political opponents and win law cases, but get the tone ever so slightly wrong and one could be accused of abandoning the dignity of an orator for the not dissimilar but less well-regarded trade of actor/comedian. Modern political parallels suggest themselves, but are not insisted upon; Beard is averse to trying to explain or interpret the Romans in terms of our own culture.
Nevertheless, apparent cultural differences often turn out to be not quite so different as they first seemed. Emperor Elagabalus amusing himself by inviting to dinner eight bald men, or eight one-eyed men, or eight deaf men (in which case the dinner conversation can't have got much beyond "Pardon?") was demonstrating extreme power, as were other emperors who liked to subject their guests to cruel mockery, knowing they dared not object. But they aren't so far removed from the City slickers of our own time who find it amusing to burn ten-pound-notes in front of the homeless; both are using laughter as a power tool. And the hapless citizens of Abdera, constantly guyed for alleged stupidity, have lived on in Gotham jokes, East Saxony jokes, Irish jokes, and will doubtless live on for ever.
People in the ancient world, doctors especially, were in fact very interested in how laughter worked physically and what caused it. Galen confessed himself baffled by this question; Pliny thought the diaphragm was involved in causing laughter, which can't help but remind one of Ken Dodd's explanation: "it starts at the chuckle muscle in the diagram, rises up past the clack, then comes out through the titter valve". We know more about the physiology now, but what actually gives us the desire to laugh is not as easy to pin down, though the kind of things we do laugh at can say much about our culture and society. That is what this book is really about.
Cicero's work, especially On the Orator, is naturally one of her most important sources, and the man himself comes over as Ancient Rome's most relentless (and often very funny) gag-merchant. In fact as an orator he was continually, and not always successfully, treading a thin line: wit could help him defeat political opponents and win law cases, but get the tone ever so slightly wrong and one could be accused of abandoning the dignity of an orator for the not dissimilar but less well-regarded trade of actor/comedian. Modern political parallels suggest themselves, but are not insisted upon; Beard is averse to trying to explain or interpret the Romans in terms of our own culture.
Nevertheless, apparent cultural differences often turn out to be not quite so different as they first seemed. Emperor Elagabalus amusing himself by inviting to dinner eight bald men, or eight one-eyed men, or eight deaf men (in which case the dinner conversation can't have got much beyond "Pardon?") was demonstrating extreme power, as were other emperors who liked to subject their guests to cruel mockery, knowing they dared not object. But they aren't so far removed from the City slickers of our own time who find it amusing to burn ten-pound-notes in front of the homeless; both are using laughter as a power tool. And the hapless citizens of Abdera, constantly guyed for alleged stupidity, have lived on in Gotham jokes, East Saxony jokes, Irish jokes, and will doubtless live on for ever.
People in the ancient world, doctors especially, were in fact very interested in how laughter worked physically and what caused it. Galen confessed himself baffled by this question; Pliny thought the diaphragm was involved in causing laughter, which can't help but remind one of Ken Dodd's explanation: "it starts at the chuckle muscle in the diagram, rises up past the clack, then comes out through the titter valve". We know more about the physiology now, but what actually gives us the desire to laugh is not as easy to pin down, though the kind of things we do laugh at can say much about our culture and society. That is what this book is really about.
