Mary Beard: Laughter in Ancient Rome: on Joking, Tickling and Cracking Up

Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, is a prolific author of books about the ancient world both for scholars and for the general public, and a well-known public figure because of her media work. She always writes clearly and incisively. The present volume had its origins in the Sather Classical Lectures which Beard delivered at Berkeley in 2008; a revised version of the lectures forms the second part of the book, but they are preceded by 98 closely argued pages which treat the larger questions raised by the study of Roman laughter. Laughter in Ancient Rome was first published in 2015, and I review it on the occasion of its 2024 reissue.

This book deserves the attention not only of those wishing to learn about Beard’s chosen subject but of all humour scholars. On p. 37 she rightly observes that: ‘There is far too much written – and still being written – on the subject of laughter for any one person to master, nor, frankly, would it be worth their while to try.’ She then proceeds to an acute critique which exposes the limitations of each of the three main strands of theorizing humour: the ‘superiority theory,’ the ‘incongruity theory’ and the ‘relief theory’ (36ff.). None of the three deals adequately with laughter, and the superiority theory has clear limitations; for example, it is unable to explain why we laugh at puns. The incongruity theory goes back to Aristotle, and has attracted major figures from Kant to Accardo, but like the superiority theory it ‘[does] not begin to explain why the physical response we know as laughter…should be prompted by the recognition of superiority or incongruity’ (39). The relief theory does at least do this, ‘but Freud’s suggestion – that the psychic energy that would have been deployed in repressing the emotion is somehow converted into bodily movement – is itself deeply problematic’ (ibid.). Beard wants us to admit that the study of laughter is ‘a messier rather than a tidier subject’ (42), to which no overarching theory responds adequately.

She returns to this theme after important discussions of nature versus culture, and the question whether there can be a history of laughter: ‘Notwithstanding all those grand theories of laughter, there is nothing that, intrinsically, causes human beings to crack up, there is nothing that systematically and unfailingly guarantees laughter as a response, even within the norms and conventions of an individual culture’ (58-9). For good measure she also shows that despite much learned speculation we know almost nothing about Aristotle’s views on humour, and demolishes Bakhtin’s claim that the ‘carnivalesque’ has its origins in the Roman Saturnalia. There is no basis for this in the actual known facts about that festival (61ff.).

The remainder of the book is devoted to treatments of the many different facets of Roman laughter. The main topics discussed are Roman laughter in the Greek language (the Roman Empire was bilingual); humour in oratory; the tense relationship between emperor, subjects and jester; ‘Between Human and Animal,’ a chapter which includes a fine analysis of Apuleius’ novel The Golden Ass; and finally, a chapter devoted to the complex problems posed by the Philogelos, a mediaeval collection of jokes from the ancient world. In her conclusion (212) Beard daringly offers the hypothesis that the Romans invented the joke. All of this subject-matter is treated with a total command of the material (including several texts which have hardly been read or studied by other classical scholars), a fine analytical eye and a readable style which elicits attention even when the argument is very detailed.

Scholars with greater expertise in Roman humour may challenge some details of Beard’s argument; I have much more knowledge of the Greek than of the Roman world. But I know enough to be satisfied that Laughter in Ancient Rome is an almost definitive study, compulsory reading for anyone interested in the subject; and that Beard succeeds in her aim to provide a worthy complement to Stephen Halliwell’s 2008 book Greek Laughter: a Study in Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity.