Looking at Laughter: Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture, 100 B.C.- A.D. 250 [Reprint 2019 ed.] 9780520929838

Citation preview

T H E

A H M A N S O N

F O U N D A T I O N

has endowed this imprint to honor the memory of F R A N K L I N

D.

M U R P H Y

who for half a century served arts and letters, beauty and learning, in equal measure by shaping with a brilliant devotion those institutions u p o n which they rely.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution

to this book^provided

by the Art

Endowment

Fund of the University of California Foundation, which is supported by a major gift from theAhmanson

Foundation.

The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the University Co-operative

Society Subvention

Grant awarded to this

book by The University of Texas at Austin.

L O O K I N G AT L A U G H T E R

L O O K I N G AT

LAUGHTER Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture,

100 B.C.-A.D.

250

JOHN R. CLARKE

CP U N I V E R S I T Y Berkeley

OF

CALIF O R N I A

Los Angeles

London

PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the U C Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2007 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clarke, John R., 1945Looking at laughter : humor, power, and transgression in Roman visual culture, 100 B.C.—A.D. 250 / John R. Clarke. p. cm. — (Ahmanson-Murphy fine arts book) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-23733-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Wit and humor in art. 2. Arts, Roman. I. Title. NX650.W58C53 2007 7OO'.4I7Q937-DC22

2007022331

Manufactured in the United States of America 16 10

15

14 9

8

13 7

12 6

5

11 4

10 3

2

09

08

07

1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

For Michael

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Introduction Part One V I S U A L H U M O R

ix i 13

1 Words or Images? Degrees of Visuality in Roman Humor

15

2 Funny Faces—Onstage and Off

29

3 Double Takes

51

4 Apotropaic Laughter

63

Part Two S O C I A L H U M O R

83

5 Power over the Other—or the Other's Power? Laughing at the Pygmy and the Aethiops

87

6 Who's Laughing? Modern Scholars and Ancient Viewers in Class Conflict

109

7 Parody in Elite Visual Culture at Pompeii: Heroes, Gods, and Foundation Myths

133

Part Three S E X U A L H U M O R

163

8 Sexual H u m o r and the Gods

165

9 Laughing at H u m a n Sexual Folly

191

Conclusion

229

Notes

235

Bibliography

279

List of Illustrations

299

Index

311

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a pleasure to recognize the many institutions and individuals w h o assisted me in w r i t i n g this b o o k — e v e n the anonymous reader w h o noted: " T h e book is extremely readable even if not terribly funny (which o f course simply points to the situatedness of humor)." Perhaps h u m o r — l i k e b e a u t y — i s in the eye of the beholder. A Fellowship f r o m the John Simon G u g g e n h e i m Foundation, generously augmented by a Faculty Research Assignment from the Faculty D e v e l o p m e n t Program o f the University o f T e x a s , provided eight months' time in R o m e to write the initial draft of this book. Further and continuing support for the project came f r o m the position I have been honored to hold for the past fifteen years, the A n n i e L a u rie H o w a r d Regents Professorship, and f r o m the College o f Fine Arts at Texas. Special thanks in the area o f f u n d i n g are due Sheldon E k l u n d - O l s e n , K e n Hale, John Yancey, and especially D o u g l a s Dempster. In the process o f w r i t i n g this book I have tested ideas in many lectures and at many conferences, but none so intense or r e w a r d i n g as the Benesen Lectures at D u k e University; I am most grateful to the D e p a r t m e n t of A r t History for inviting m e to present m y n e w research there in the fall o f 2004. Further product testing came from my lively graduate students in a seminar on constructions o f

ix

humor in ancient art: Lea Cline, Beth Gardiner, John Hopkins, Lenora Johnson, James Meyer, Onur Oztiirk, U f u k Soyoz, and Maia Toteva. I am especially grateful to the individuals w h o read and critiqued the finished manuscript. T h e readers for University of California Press, Alessandro Barchiesi and Anthony Corbeill, guided my revisions with their astute comments and criticisms. In their capacity as unofficial readers, Eric Moormann and Frank Fisher helped me enormously. Richard Beacham and Michael T h o m a s critiqued individual chapters. All of these responses were most useful and stimulating; w h a t is more, they saved me from many an embarrassing error. Whatever errors remain are my responsibility entirely. Illustrated books are becoming ever more difficult to produce because of the difficulties of obtaining photographs and then the permissions to publish them. Michael L a r v e y — a s ever—produced wonderful new photographs for this book, shooting and reshooting objects under often difficult conditions; Giuseppe L e v a n o kindly assisted us on several occasions. I am grateful to the talented individuals w h o created the d r a w i n g s and digital reconstructions that put paintings—cut, long ago, from their w a l l s — b a c k into their original settings: Juliana Budding, Kirby Conn, and especially Onur Oztiirk. In addition to all the individuals and institutions listed in the photo credits, Pietro Giovanni G u z z o deserves special thanks. As superintendent of Pompeii, he granted us extensive permissions for study, photography, and publication. W i t h similar generosity Stefano De Caro, Valeria Sampaolo, and M a r i a Luisa N a v a facilitated our w o r k at the National Archaeological M u s e u m in Naples. At Pompeii, special thanks are also due Antonio D'Ambrosio, Antonio Varone, Michele Borgoncino, and Grete Stefani. In the Naples Archaeological M u s e u m , M a r i a Rosaria Boriello, director of the museum, was most helpful. At Ostia I wish to thank A n n a Gallina Zevi, recently retired superintendent, and Jane Shepherd in the photographic archive. For images and information on Rhone Valley ceramics, special thanks are due Sandrine M a r q u i e and Michel Martin. Two g r a d u a t e research assistants helped me with this project: John H o p k i n s at the beginning and Lea Cline in its final stages. I am most grateful for their energy, enthusiasm, and accuracy. A m o n g the able and genial staff of the University of Texas Department of Art and Art History, special thanks are due M a u r e e n Howell, A m a n d a Butterfield, H i l l a r y Haines, Irene Roderick, Joe Barroso, a n d Lucille Carnes (now retired).

x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

On several occasions we enjoyed the hospitality of the American Academy in Rome, and we must thank Pina Pasquantonio, associate director, for making our stays there enjoyable and fruitful. Special thanks also go to Christina Huemer, director of the library, and her able staff: Denise Gavio, Paolo Brozzi, Antonio Palladino, Paolo Imperatori, and Tina Mirri. Thanks also to the men who greeted us every day at the gate to the Academy: Renzo Carissimi, Luca Zamponi, Norman Roberson, Cristiano Urbani, and Gianpaolo Battaglia. During our long stays at Pompeii we enjoyed—as always—the hospitality of the Sabatino family's hotel. I must also thank my friends in Italy and the United States who indulged my total immersion in ancient Roman life and laughter. In Italy: Jeffrey Blanchard, Alessandro Cascone, Archer Martin, Fabio Pignatelli, Brenda Preyer, Luciano Santarelli, Michael Thomas and Estelle Thomas, François Uginet, and Carolyn Valone. In Austin, I thank Frank Fisher and the Rankins: Susan, Jim, Jonah, and especially Zane for looking after house and garden, and also the friends who were always there when I needed them: Paul Bardagjy, BJ Garcia, Steve Gillis, Marcos Jimenez, and Natalie Thomas. All of this encouragement from friends would mean little without the ongoing support of Michael Larvey, partner in life and work for thirty years. He has always known when to keep silent and when to distract me. He has kept so many of our friendships on both continents alive with his amazing social talents. And then, too, he has personally seen, photographed, and asked good questions of nearly every object in this book. It's to his kindness, wisdom, and good humor that I dedicate this book:

TO M I C H A E L ' S

LAUGHTER.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

XI

INTRODUCTION

This book came about because I found so much visual humor in two previous investigations, each leading to a book published by the University of California Press. In the early 1990s I began a project that culminated inhoohjngat Lovemakjng: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art, 100 B.C.-A.D.

250. Deconstructive studies of an-

cient texts dealing with what we call sexuality, pioneered by Michel Foucault and vigorously pursued by a generation of classical philologists, led me to question how visual representation might reveal ancient Roman attitudes toward lovemaking. But among the serious, often romantically elevated images of humans making love, I found a host of images clearly meant to make Roman viewers laugh. Among these were the so-called apotropaia (images meant to ward off evil spirits with healthy laughter), ceramics with sexual jokes, and textual accounts of hilarious sexual spectacles.1 I had to pass them by in the interests of time and space. A more recent project applied the methodology of cultural studies to uncover attitudes toward practices of everyday life that were not sexual. The resulting book, Art in the hives of Ordinary Romans, had a subtitle that explained my focus: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100

1

B.C.-A.D.

3/5. I wanted to think

of these viewers in two ways: looking at art commissioned by the state but also looking at art that t h e y — o r their social peers—commissioned. In e x a m i n i n g so-called popular art under various rubrics (religion, work, spectacle, burial, banqueting, and portraiture), humor crept up everywhere: in a series of tavern paintings with humorous captions, in parodies of d r i n k i n g parties, in tombs with pygmies acting the clown. W h a t is more, some of these comic images were suspiciously subversive. 2 In these two books it w a s impossible to give the mechanisms of humor full play: that required another book—this one. Once I removed my serious, art-historical eyeglasses, I began to see even the old, familiar images in a new light. I admitted the possibility that a Roman viewer might see a serious—even tragic—mythological representation as comic; that i m portant state rituals, like the Triumph, had their funny side; and that apotropaic humor was far more common than I had imagined.

HOW HUMOR REVEALS

ACCULTURATION

To look at Roman visual humor with Roman eyes w e have to come to grips w i t h the fact that humor, like sexuality, is so specific to a culture that it often looks unfunny to our twenty-first-century eyes. Yet humor provides valuable insights: since it targets all the practices of everyday life, from sex and procreation to death a n d burial, it provides uncannily close views of how a community forms its attitudes toward those practices. H u m o r reveals acculturation: those processes that shape a person's attitudes toward social practices within a specific community. T h e purpose of all h u m o r — w h e t h e r visual, verbal, or a combination of the t w o — i s to get people to laugh. To study humor is to learn how particular stories, situations, or sights induce laughter. Although this book focuses on visual representation, ancient textual sources provide a useful f r a m e w o r k for understanding Roman attitudes toward humor. But such texts transmit the attitudes of only the upper echelons of Roman society: the imperial court and the senatorial and equestrian classes. After all, it was elite men (or men w o r k i n g for elite patrons) w h o wrote them. By e x a m i n i n g visual culture in a variety of media and contexts, this book ventures beyond the horizons of elite humor, revealing what sorts of things a broad spectrum of Roman society found funny.

2

I N T R O D U C T I O N

M O D E R N T H E O R I E S OF

HUMOR

Modern theories of humor generally divide into three streams: the psychological, the sociological, and the philosophical. Psychological theories attempt to explain the psychodynamics of humor, whereas sociological studies tend to frame humor as a strategy for social survival. Philosophical approaches examine humor within the broader framework of human thought and feeling. As I discovered in my investigation of Roman visual humor, no single theoretical model fully captures all the evidence. Yet it is useful to consider, briefly, some of the ways that modern thinkers have attempted to understand humor and how it functions in human society. Laughter and Stress Release Many doctors and psychologists have studied what laughter does to the individual. Most physiological descriptions of laughter recognize the temporary lapse, or gap, in normal consciousness that occurs in laughter. Scientists observing what happens to the human physiology when a person laughs generally agree that laughter releases stress, eases social and personal tensions, and contributes to a person's wellbeing. Laughter is healthy, not least because it defuses all manner of harmful emotions and strains, from anger to the tensions that come from physical exertion. A symptom of clinical depression is a person's inability to laugh. Some psychologists attribute the well-being or euphoria brought on by laughter to a temporary loss of ego control. For a moment the ego loses its hold on the reasoning processes of the mind. Why? Whatever stimulates laughter stymies the mind. Perhaps we love to laugh because when we laugh we can't think. When the ego and superego temporarily lose hold, we feel good. The well-being induced by a good laugh results from temporarily suspending the mind's normal processes: the maintenance of personality by the ego and the constant fact-checking by the superego— the internalized voice of authority. Social Theories of Humor If social theories look at laughter as a part of a repertoire of survival strategies developed over time by human beings, it is because such theories are concerned not so much with what makes human beings laugh as with how laughter functions. Patricia Keith-Spiegel's 1972 review of the scientific community's approach to

I N T R O D U C T I O N

3

humor is particularly useful for understanding the history of modern psychological and sociological approaches. 3 Biological theories point to the physical benefits of laughter (homeostatic restoration and oxygenation of blood), whereas instinct and evolution theories focus on how laughter facilitates social communication in preverbal societies. Superiority theories—of great relevance to Roman h u m o r — f o cus on how humor and laughter elevate the appearance or the actions of one individual over those of another and generate amusement at the misfortunes of others, especially individuals who are malformed or act the clown. Ambivalence theories relate humor to the resolution of conflicting emotions by surprise or shock, whereas release/relief theories see humor as a w a y to get rid of u n w a n t e d tensions. Keith-Spiegel points up unresolved issues among the proponents of these m a n y theories. T h e r e are, for example, problems of terminology: H o w to distinguish witticism, satire, pun, and parody? T h e r e is also the question of w h e r e humor comes from: Does it arise from "within" an individual, or is it generated by an outside s t i m u l u s — t h e g r o u p — a c t i n g upon the individual? Finally, w h a t is the relation of pleasure to laughter? W h i c h comes first? Although the w o r k o f S i g m u n d Freud most clearly addresses questions of terminology and the relationship of pleasure and laughter to the subconscious, social scientists have shed the most light on the place of humor in the dynamics of the group.

Sociological

Explanations of Humor

Social science has examined how humans use h u m o r — a n d laughter, the hopedfor response to h u m o r — a s a survival tool. From these studies it is clear that l a u g h ter saves the day in a host of social situations where confrontation threatens survival, sexual dominance, or status within a group. T h e jokester's social advantage over the dullard is one generally reinforced by the group. W h y ? Simply put, because human beings like to laugh. Most human societies find a place for laughter within their social practices. Social scientists have studied the use of humor and laughter in a w i d e range of human situations, from the personal (courtship, w e d dings, funerals, childbirth) to the collective (courts of law, negotiations with other communities, even warfare). W i l l i a m Martineau's model for the social functions of humor, although slightly dated in its desire to find w h a t he calls "structural settings of society," has special

4

I N T R O D U C T I O N

relevance for the study of ancient Roman humor. Martineau's model distinguishes three kinds of humor in terms of its relation to groups. 4 The first is humor that is internal to a group; the second, humor in an intergroup setting but focused on the internal structure of one group. The third kind of humor also looks at an intergroup setting but with a focus on the interaction between that group and a second, external group. Martineau sets four variables into these three structural settings: actor (the person initiating the humor), audience, subject (the butt of the joke), and judgment (decision based on the audience's reception of the humor). 5 Analyzing these variables, two theorems emerge, one applying to the intragroup situation and the other to the intergroup situation. The intragroup situation applies to humor initiated in the "in-group." Depending on how that group judges it, humor can control group behavior, intensify group identity, or control conflict within the group. In contrast, the intergroup situation describes the effects of humor initiated by an "out-group" on the in-group. Depending on how the in-group evaluates the humor that comes down upon it from the out-group, that humor can either boost the in-group's morale or create hostility toward the out-group. Although Martineau is looking at modern societies—and assumes that they have comparable social structures defined by race, class, and gender—much of what he says is applicable to ancient Roman society—precisely because it was so rigidly stratified. As we shall see, the usefulness of Martineau's structural analysis lies in its focus on reception. For instance, in the humorous ditties sung by Roman soldiers in the Triumph, the actor is part of an in-group (triumphing soldiers), the audience consists of the Roman populus, the subject is their commander in chief (the triumphator),

and the judgment belongs to both plebeians

and senators. From historical sources, examined in chapter i, we know that if the triumphator took well the jokes made at his expense—as did Caesar—he could expect a significant boost in his political status. Although Martineau's intent is not to define humor but rather to show how humor either disrupts or facilitates social interactions, his social-function model provides a way of measuring the social impact of humor, underscoring that there are structural configurations that affect why an individual or group laughs at a particular joke. With Freud we penetrate deeper into the individual psyche, but—to be sure—never completely abandoning the group dynamics of humor.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

5

Freudian Frameworks for Humor: Jokes and the Comic Theoretical models proposed by Freud, and the later approaches of Gestalt psychology, tend to emphasize laughter that comes from the reversal of rational order; they focus on the triad of the comic, wit, and humor. Although Freud admits that jokes constitute one species of the comic, he distinguishes jokes from the comic in order to investigate the differing degrees of conscious, as opposed to subconscious, activity in each. Naivete interests Freud particularly because it is unintentional, although many jokes construct naivete to make an audience laugh. A child, as well as a sophisticated adult, can unwittingly make a third party laugh through expressions that just slip out. Whether child or adult, it is a lack of inhibition that causes these naive slips. Freud's tripartite division of the naive joke into the naive, the absurd, and misleading naivete all find ample resonance in a collection (the only collection) of Roman jokes, the Philogelos, or, the

Laughter-Lover.6

If the naive comes from uninhibited thinking, Freud proposes that the comic— whether intentional or not—both arises from and finds resonance in the unconscious. Freud demonstrates that the comic results from a lack of ideation. His categories for the comic—including comic movement, comic situation, caricature, parody, and travesty—all rely on comparison between the person perceived as comic and the person who laughs. Whether it is your own ridiculous behavior or that of another, the origin of comic pleasure lies in a comparison of the difference between the states of the two persons: or, as Freud puts it, between two "expenditures" or levels of control.7 The person who trips and falls has lost control, whereas the person who laughs at her is in control. Roman comic theater relies heavily on such imbalances, emphasized by masks, exaggerated movements, and metatheater (playing to the audience).8 Freud presents a special argument about the obscene joke. A man telling a group of men an obscene joke about a woman whom that group finds attractive extends the dynamics of power into the sexual realm. Freud contends that such an obscene joke exerts a kind of shared control or triumph over an object of desire. Although Freud helps us understand both the unconscious and conscious roots of humor, his definition of the comic seems rather mechanistic. This same material, in the hands of a French philosopher, finds ampler explanation.

6

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Bergson on

Laughter

While philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer were attempting to define the comic, Henri Bergson focused on the role that the comic plays for human beings.9 But unlike social scientists, whose focus is group dynamics, Bergson criticizes the tendency of human beings to fall into a mechanical, lifeless pattern. Bergson's theory works well in demonstrating how laughter jolts us out of our own conformity— usually by demonstrating the absurdity of robotlike behavior. Pratfalls, slapstick, parody, and situation comedy all challenge the mechanical restrictions of society because they contrast what one should do (comme i l f a u t ) with accident and role reversal. Bergson's work applies most directly to visual humor, bringing to mind the films of Keaton and Chaplin (especially Modern Times). But if Bergson clearly identifies humor as a tool for freeing the individual from the strictures of society, it is Bakhtin who best demonstrates how one socially created institution—carnival— simultaneously reverses and enforces social differences. Bakhtin and Carnival The subtitle of this book—Humor, Power, and Transgression

in Roman

Visual

Culture— owes much to the approach of Mikhail Bakhtin in his seminal work, Rabelais and His World.10 Among the theories of the mechanics and purposes of humor, Bakhtin's characterization of Rabelais's humor as carnival applies most closely to visual representations in ancient Rome. Like Bakhtin looking at the world that Rabelais constructed for the exploits of Gargantua and Pantagruel, when I look at what the Romans found funny I repeatedly discover carnival: values (temporarily) turned upside down. If Roman culture had, as Erich Segal contends, an overdeveloped superego, the cultural expression of the Roman obsession with commanding and controlling events was a rigid class system." Comic theater, since it enacts transgression of so many Roman virtues, becomes a holiday from the superego.12 Laughter was the principal way to escape—again, temporarily—from the strictures of behavior prescribed for every practice of daily life from womb to tomb. And that laughter often arose from the carnivalesque. To turn the given order upside down during the French Renaissance, when Rabelais was writing, was to allow peasants to assume the power of church and king—for a short time. The church and royalty constituted the ruling classes; the

INTRODUCTION

7

peasants, the subjugated classes. Carnival created its own k i n g and queen, its pope and bishops—all from low-class types. A n d as Bakhtin suggests, and his interpreters emphasize, allowing the peasants to have carnival w a s a w a y for the ruling classes to assert their power. By a l l o w i n g — e v e n e n c o u r a g i n g — c a r n i v a l , the ruling classes repeatedly redefined their power over the masses, since each time carnival ended they reassumed their control. Natalie Zemon Davis and others have shown that comic inversions w o r k reciprocally; they both loosen and reinforce the established social hierarchy. 1 3 Just as Bakhtin risked anachronism in applying twentieth-century Marxist social theories to Rabelais, so I would risk anachronism if I were to frame R o m a n visual humor purely in terms of class. 14 Nevertheless, Bakhtin's model has much to recommend it, especially, as we shall see, in relation to Roman institutions that temporarily viewed the social order upside down: the Saturnalia (for some scholars, the precursor of the medieval and Renaissance carnival), the Triumph, and the Floralia. W e find the temporary reversal of class-based cultural values in m a n y public enactments that were principally visual spectacles: on the stage, in the streets, in the amphitheater. Art in semipublic spaces like taverns and baths often employed visual humor that got its punch from overturning class values. Bakhtin's notion of the grotesque body (perhaps the most problematic of his concepts for contemporary theorists) helps us understand the comic inversions in the Tavern of the Seven Sages, discussed in chapter 6. Just as Bakhtin recognizes how Rabelais's celebration of the body that eats, digests, copulates, and defecates as the force that temporarily liberates ordinary peasants from the humorless intellectual and spiritual regime of official culture, so w e find visual representations that invert upper and lower bodily strata in the visual culture of ordinary Romans. Ancient Roman humor, whether verbal or visual, repeatedly encoded transgressions of the rules set up by the powers that b e — t e m p o r a r i l y reversing that power with a good laugh. If verbal humor (including jokes, satires, and comic theater) flipped nearly every code of proper b e h a v i o r — w h e t h e r religious, ethical, political, familial, or sexual—so visual humor repeatedly u n d e r m i n e d the superegoic structures that supported the gods, heroes, the emperor, the state, the sages, and the family. In effect, by studying Roman visual humor I have come to the opposite conclusion of scholars w h o have convincingly argued, on the basis of textual sources, that public humor serves to reinforce the prevailing power structures. 1 5 And al-

8

INTRODUCTION

though Bakhtin provides a useful hermeneutic for analysis of these transgressive aspects of Roman humor, there still remains the question of reception: What messages did ancient viewers of different classes get from visual humor ?

P R O D U C T I O N A N D R E C E P T I O N OF V I S U A L

HUMOR

Scholars have tended to overinterpret ancient Roman visual representations— especially humorous ones—a point I expand upon in chapter 6. This practice has frequently resulted in complicated readings that few ancient Romans would have understood. The best antidote to fanciful overinterpretation is to insist on the circumstances of creation and reception for each visual representation. I have already laid out the terms of my own interpretative methods in the introduction to Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans.

Rather than reiterating what I say

there, I reproduce a chart that considers the variables that enter into the investigation of Roman visual representation (fig. i). The four key questions—Who is the patron? W h o is the artist? How is the viewer addressed? W h o is the viewer?— should lead to multivalent interpretations that are sensitive to at least some of the variables that would otherwise escape the modern viewer/researcher. 16 My desire to see visual representations with Roman eyes (a theme that runs through much of my work) has made me favor images that still carry some ancient context, whether an architectural setting or a genre that targeted a particular social class. If the themes I examine in each part of this book frequently draw me to archaeological sites, especially Pompeii and Ostia Antica, it is because they provide the richest contexts. Particularly in the case of wall paintings, mosaics, and architectural sculpture, it is the intersection of formal context (original placement, building type, circulation and viewing patterns) with social context that permits focused speculation on production and reception. Who paid for the funny representation? W h y ? W h o looked at it? Under what circumstances? Especially important for images that achieve their comic effect from crossing class boundaries (intergroup situations) is the question, What class (or classes) did the ancient viewer identify with ? Where sex and gender come into play, we have to question the viewer's sex and gender roles as well. My insistence on context made me, in the end, pass up certain kinds of visual representation that lacked physical contexts, such as the many comic grotesque

I N T R O D U C T I O N

9

statuettes from throughout the ancient Roman Mediterranean. What is more, my focus on the material from Pompeii, Rome, and Ostia Antica, along with the ceramic production coming from excavations in Roman Gaul, determines the chronological focus of this book. Although I briefly discuss the Palestrina Nile Mosaic (ca. ioo

b.c.—and

I find nothing comic in it), the bulk of my evidence from Roman

Italy fits into the period between 60 b.c. and the destruction of the area around Vesuvius in a.d. 79. Consideration of the ceramics made in workshops in the Rhone Valley (and widely exported throughout the Empire) extends my study chronologically to around a.d. 250. If the modern theories of humor I have outlined are those that resonate with my own methods of analysis, it is because they complicate and amplify the questions that I have repeatedly asked when looking at a potentially comic object in its physical and social context. Yet, as might be expected, modern theories can serve only as investigative guides, markers along the trail leading to those many laughing Romans of long ago. Not only is humor culture-specific, it depends—as Martineau and Freud demonstrate—on an individual's position within the group. Laughter often comes from reversals (of in-group vs. out-group, of rules of behavior, of power). And if humor is a mirror of attitudes toward the practices of daily life, we must know what those practices were in order to understand why an ancient listener or viewer laughed. We begin with the question of visual h u m o r — what the eye could capture in an instant. What kinds of visual representations made the Romans laugh—and in what circumstances?

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Part One

V I S U A L HUMOR

H o w to address the role of the visual in ancient Roman humor? Part I examines the permeable boundaries between verbal and visual humor through a variety of strategies. Chapter i begins rather conservatively, looking at the literary forms of jokes and puns, but it goes on to explore wilder a n d — t o us—stranger forms that privilege the visual rather than the verbal: the spectacles of street theater and the macabre humor of public executions. Although literary accounts describe these expressions of Roman humor, the fact that they appealed principally to the eye makes them both difficult for us to imagine and unusually revealing of Roman attitudes toward a host of cultural practices. Most of these attitudes prove quite foreign to us. Chapter 2 pushes farther into the visual aspects of the comic theater, with special emphasis on the use of masks—both as inherited from Greek theater and as a part of existing Roman ritual. Masks worn by actors on stage provided an instant index of character for both Greek and Roman theater, but since the Romans used ancestor masks in funeral rituals, that index had the potential to make life itself into a stage. When we find pictures showing scenes from known plays in domestic settings, they seem to encourage the owners and their guests to reflect on the

!3

theater and its messages in terms of their own lives. Graffiti that target anomalous features of an individual constitute homemade commentaries on the features stylized in theatrical masks. If decoding masks as signs of character constituted a mostly visual practice within the verbal performance of theater, the images meant to fool the ancient viewer worked on the principle of the double take, the subject of chapter 3. Essential to the success of the double take is the artist's ability to fool the viewer into believing that she is seeing the real thing. Laughter comes when the viewer recognizes her mistake. But in the examples I analyze, the double-take image gets its punch from two variables: its relationship with the viewer and its relationship with the space that it decorates. If the humor of the visual double take still works, it is because trompe l'oeil realism still astonishes us. T h e images considered in chapter 4 incite laughter in a different way and for purposes that go beyond mere entertainment. By placing images of deformed creatures in dangerous spots, the Romans hoped to incite salubrious laughter that would ward off evil forces. Such so-called apotropaic images instruct us about the kinds of bodies and behaviors the Romans considered to be improper. They also reveal that, for the Romans, it was perfectly fine—even salutary— to laugh at persons who were deformed or disabled. In visual representations, huge phalli—whether alone or attached to the comic body—reveal the belief in the power of the phallus as apotropaic. These four chapters remind us that if Roman visual humor sometimes escapes our comprehension, it is because it relies for its effect on practices and attitudes far removed from contemporary Euro-American culture. A t the same time, some of these cultural constructions—like belief in the power of laughter to reverse the power of the Evil E y e — s u r v i v e to this day. Whether foreign or oddly familiar, making the ancient Romans laugh—for whatever purpose—was a task enthusiastically embraced by visual artists.

14

V I S U A L

H U M O R

I

W O R D S OR I M A G E S ? Degrees ofVisuality in Roman Humor Seeing a pimp procuring for a black prostitute, a wag inquired, "How much do you charge for the Night?" Hierocles Philogelos, no. 1 5 1 a

This joke from the Philogelos neatly illustrates the visual pun. The visual attribute of the prostitute's black skin gets transferred to the darkness associated with the nighttime: she is both the Night and gets rented by the night. It makes a good starting point for this chapter, where we examine the role of the visual in Roman humor, starting with puns and ending with various forms of public spectacle entertainment. Although one might argue that puns, as pure wordplay, have no visual component, jokes do. And if many ancient Roman jokes or comic plays fall flat, it is because we are reading them rather than seeing someone tell them. Many of the jokes preserved in ancient written texts require the reader to imagine some sort of visual setting, and many of these settings are foreign to the modern reader. In joke-telling (as opposed to joke-reading), it is rarely just the speaker's utterance that makes a listener laugh; the joke-teller's appearance and gestures supply a good deal of the humor. To cite a contemporary example: although the stand-up comedy routine might seem to be entirely verbal, it relies heavily on purely visual signs, like the comedian's appearance and his or her body language. For the ancient world, we must supply the details of the social setting to understand the humor transmitted to us through ancient texts, whether orators' gibes in the Senate

or the scurrilous ditties sung by soldiers in the Triumph. So, too, the scripted humor of the comic theater.

VERBAL HUMOR: PUNS AND

JOKES

Until now, study of written sources—with a focus on puns, jokes, wit, and other forms of verbal humor—has dominated the scholarly literature on Roman humor.1 Underlying this research is the belief that classical literature provides the most accurate window into the Roman world—a natural assumption for classicists whose main concern is the written word. I am not the first scholar to point out that nearly all the texts that concern classical scholars are literary texts, written by or for elite men, thereby excluding the other 98 percent of Roman society. Perhaps the best example of the literary approach is Jean-Pierre Cebe's 1966 monograph La caricature et la parodie dans le monde romain antique, des origines a Juvenal (Caricature and Parody in the Ancient Roman World from Its Beginnings to Juvenal).2 Cebe devotes three-fourths of his book to the study of elite literature, with a final part quickly surveying and categorizing humorous visual images. In this way he separates Roman visual humor from the verbal and textual. What is more, his approach to visual humor aims at identification and classification rather than analysis of context. In a similar fashion, Paul Schulten's recent article privileges the textual evidence for Roman humor, focusing particularly on jokes.3 Yet other studies of textual humor have succeeded in opening up our understanding of the dynamics of Roman humor in contexts that go beyond the elite, male writer-listener. Amy Richlin's study analyzes certain of the Priapea, poems written to the phallic deity Priapus, to establish a paradigm for the way aggressive Roman humor operates. She demonstrates how obscene humor reveals elite male attitudes toward a host of sexual practices—and in particular attitudes toward women and homosexuals.4 In the context of defining Roman attitudes toward primary obscenities—what in English we call "four-letter words"—Richlin analyzes Cicero's letter to Paetus.5 Cicero illustrates how certain words are loaded with shame by constructing several puns that get the reader to supply the obscene word: What about the phrase commonly used "When we [cum nos; = cunnos, "cunts"] wanted you to meet with us?" That is not obscene, is it? I remember a well-

l6

V I S U A L

H U M O R

spoken consular in the senate meeting to have spoken these words: "Shall I call this fault or that one [illam dicam; = il-landicum, 'th' clitoris'] the greater? .. . When I say 'three each' I say nothing shameful; when I say 'two each' [bint; = Greek fiivel, 'fucks'] is it obscene?"6 In her analysis of this and other texts, Richlin demonstrates how jokes and other forms of verbal humor require much more than an understanding of the words to spring to life. Mere translation is not enough (as anyone who has tried to translate a joke from one language to another knows). For one thing, verbal humor plays with words and their meaning; rarely do puns translate. For another thing, verbal humor usually refers to social constructions that also require explanation. If only one ancient joke book survives—the Philogelos, or Laughter Lover— it is due to accidents of preservation (and perhaps the attitudes of medieval monks), not because the Romans had no interest in such collections.7 Probably compiled in the fifth century a.d., the Philogelos is the last of a long line of collections of jokes going back to the Comedians' Club in Athens at the time of Demosthenes. 8 Like the Greeks, the Romans valued joke books. Suetonius tells us that Melissus, a rhetorician living in the age of Augustus, produced 150 volumes of jokes.9 Compilers of joke books include none other than Cicero. A lengthy passage of his On the Orator provides an extensive analysis of the employment of wit in oratory, filled with numerous examples illustrating each of his categories. 10 Cicero's analysis of what comprises humor (ridiculum, ioci, or facetiae) often returns to its commonest type, the humor of temporary reversal—when we expect one thing and get another. 11 Elite Romans, like the Greeks, believed that learning how to use verbal humor— whether puns, jokes, or witticisms—was essential to a gentleman's education. They understood the powers of laughter and employed humor for specific social purposes. As Anthony Corbeill's study amply demonstrates, nowhere is laughter's power more evident than in the practice of oratory. 12 Both Cicero and Quintilian provide instructions for the orator on how he should use humor in the courtroom and the Senate. Laughter could win over a judge or an audience. But it could also backfire and discredit the speaker. In the examples provided by Cicero and Quintilian, we notice two things: these are jokes that belong to the specific setting of the Senate and the courtroom, and

WORDS

OR

I M A G E S ?

17

their focus is on discrediting the speaker's opponent—often through appeal to his appearance. T h e words of the joke require visual verification by the listeners. To understand w h y it was fair g a m e for an orator to call attention to an opponent's physical peculiarities, we must take into account the R o m a n notion that the individual was responsible for such features. 1 3 L i k e the Greeks, the Romans believed that a beautiful body expressed moral perfection—and vice versa. Cicero demonstrates how the orator can appeal to visual representations to m a k e the a u dience see w h a t is odd or unbeautiful in the opponent's appearance: Representations are also very humorous. They are usually directed at a deformity or some bodily fault, which is compared to something uglier. For example, there's that [joke] I directed at Helvius Mancia [when I remarked], "Now I'll show what kind of person you are." When Mancia [replied]: "Please do," I pointed with my finger to a Gaul that was painted on one of Marius' Cimbrian shields [hanging] near the New Shops. [The Gaul was] distorted, with his tongue hanging out and flabby cheeks. This stirred up laughter; nothing seemed as much like Mancia. 14

T h i s kind of humor would never w o r k in today's courts of law. Social conventions, in fact, prevent an attorney from calling attention to a person's physical

flaws—at

least as "proof" of his or her untrustworthiness or moral turpitude. Physical peculiarities that orators called attention to included small stature, u g liness, loss of hair, red hair, bodily swellings, large or thick neck, hydrocephalism, and an unclean mouth. 1 5 W h a t is more, speakers often accused opponents of effeminacy by calling attention to their gait, dress, or grooming; they could discredit a m a n by suggesting—through appeal to his a p p e a r a n c e — t h a t he spent the night before in the debauchery of the banquet. T h e stigma of convivial excess, Corbeill notes, "stems from anxiety over w h a t constitutes—and deconstitutes—Roman masculinity." 1 6 If Roman humor predicated on the w a y a person looks is u n d e r standable, it is because just beneath our own veneer of social correctness lies suppressed laughter at nonnormative bodies and behaviors. In contemporary E u r o A m e r i c a n culture we find television sitcoms, movies, and jokes that target fat people, bald people, and even w o m e n with blonde hair—not to mention the jokes based on racially or ethnically associated physiques and mannerisms. U n d e r l y i n g

18

V I S U A L

H U M O R

their appeal remains a vestige o f the ancient R o m a n notion that physical appearance s o m e h o w reveals a person's character. 1 7 But it is a different case with apotropaia, images and practices meant to fend o f f evil: they remain inscrutable for most modern viewers because science has all but erased belief in the power o f laughter to defeat demons.

APOTROPAICLAUGHTER Certain ritual practices m a k e it clear that ancient Romans connected jokes with magic. 1 8 T h e y fit with a class o f prayers, incantations, and utterances thought to avert the forces o f evil; in short, such j o k i n g was apotropaic. In some cases it seems that even the Romans had forgotten the origins o f ritual joking. T h e crude jokes made at the expense of newly w e d s — c o m m o n practice in Greece and R o m e — m u s t have originally been prophylactic, yet no ancient author explains h o w this practice arose. T h e i r ritual p u r p o s e — t o keep away evil by inciting l a u g h t e r — m u s t relate to the apotropaic visual representations meant to thwart the Evil Eye that w e will discuss fully in chapter 4. E v e n more obscure to us is the ritual laughter o f the Lupercalia. Plutarch reports that at a certain point in the ritual, the priests smear goat's blood on the foreheads o f t w o boys o f a good family. W h e n the priests remove it, the boys must laugh. 1 9 T h i s compulsory laughter s o m e h o w served to s a n c t i f y — o r better, safeg u a r d — a n important ceremony. A s far as w e k n o w , there was no verbal c o m p o nent to incite the boys' laughter: it was artificial and s t a g e d — a brief m o m e n t in a complex ritual.

ROLE REVERSAL: THE

SATURNALIA

A s w i t h the Lupercalia, w e have to rely on literary texts to imagine w h a t the comic representations surrounding the Feast o f Saturn, the Saturnalia, looked like. G e n erally celebrated for the seven days beginning on D e c e m b e r 17, the festival had a long life, extending from early Republican times through the Christian era (when it was called the Brumalia) and beyond. In some respects, especially in the exchange o f presents (typically w a x candles and terra-cotta figures and vessels), it was the

WORDS

OR

IMAGES?

I 9

forerunner of Christmas. But since Romans allowed an inversion of normal conduct during this feast, some scholars have linked the Saturnalia to the medieval carnival. Masters allowed slaves temporary liberty to do as they pleased. As with the carnival, there was a mock king, the leader of the Saturnalia (Saturnalicius princeps), who ruled over the merriment. Slaves dined before their masters and could talk out of turn. We find a telling example of the kind of insolent speech allowed slaves at the Saturnalia in Satire 2.7, where Horace invites his slave, Davus, to criticize him freely. In a blistering attack Davus demonstrates that it is Horace—not he—who is the slave: above all to his own sexual passions.20 In visual terms, the Saturnalia was a feast for cross-dressing; instead of the toga citizens wore informal clothing (the synthesis) and the felt cap normally worn by slaves (the pilleus). Much time was devoted to dinners, drinking parties, and games. There is something personal and lighthearted about the cross-dressing and insolent banter of the Saturnalia. With the verbal humor of the Triumph, laughter bears much heavier freight.

INSULTING THE THE

GOD-FOR-A-DAY:

TRIUMPH

The Triumph turned the whole city of Rome into a kind of theater.21 It was a way of representing the positive benefits of a bloody war that entailed much loss of life. It paraded the spoils of war: loads of booty bringing new wealth to the city; the captives who would provide new slave labor; and captive chiefs, who would probably be executed at the end of the Triumph. Most important, the Triumph paraded the victorious general himself, transformed for the event into the god Jupiter. Although the carmina triumphalia—the

obscene ditties sung by triumphing

soldiers—might, like the orators' attacks, call attention to the physical appearance of the triumphing general, their purpose is different. These songs have what can best be described as a magical or apotropaic function; they have the same purpose as the public slave who stands behind the triumphator in his chariot saying, "Look behind you! Remember that you are a human being!" (respicepost te/ hominem te memento!)}1 If the triumphator became Jupiter, the supreme Roman deity, during the procession through Rome, the slave's speech and the soldiers' taunts assured

20

V I S U A L

H U M O R

that the general would not offend the g o d — a n d bring misfortune to a l l — b y forgetting that he was but a man. 2 3 Although it is true that the original and ostensible purpose of the soldiers' taunts w a s apotropaic, the laughter they incited—like that in the courtroom—came from insult to the general's appearance and sometimes his sexual (mis)adventures. For Julius Caesar, the ditties combined baldness and promiscuity: "Romans keep an eye on your wives; we're bringing the bald-headed adulterer home." 2 4 T h e soldiers added the insult of financial profligacy: "You fucked a w a y in Gaul the money you borrowed here." 2 5 Julius Caesar, Suetonius tells us, accepted the taunts about his baldness, 2 6 and even about his affair with Cleopatra. But it w a s the accusation that as a young m a n he was K i n g Nicomedes' butt-boy that inspired the raunchiest triumphal ditty: The Gallic lands did Caesar master; Nicomedes mastered him; Look! now Caesar rides in triumph, the one who mastered Gallic lands. Nicomedes does not triumph, the one who mastered Caesar. 27 In Caesar's triumph, Dio tells us, the soldiers' mockery incited the people watching to compose a parody of a parody of a nursery r h y m e (nenia) criticizing Caesar's dictatorship: "Shouting out altogether they said, 'If you behave well, you will be punished; if you behave badly, you will be king.'" 2 8 T h e right thing to do would be to restore self-government. But if he did so, Caesar would have to stand trial for all his misdeeds and be punished. As Corbeill notes, in this setting the world has been turned upside down: "A p r o v e r b — a repository for a culture's values . . . — n o longer has any validity in Caesar's dictatorship." 2 9 By the time of Caesar, clearly the level of insult went far beyond mere mockery of the triumphator's physical appearance and sexual proclivities; the crowd's nursery r h y m e constituted mordant political attack. Caesar's good-natured acceptance of this and other criticisms leveled at him by the people won him their love and respect. 30 T h e humor of Caesar's t r i u m p h became m u c h more than apotropaic—and even more than a safety valve for blowing off steam. It constituted an arena of public exchange, w h e r e the disenfranchised temporarily got to taunt the all-powerful and receive his approval in return. It was a w i n - w i n situation operating like the Roman Saturnalia or the medieval carnival, with its temporary reversal of power relations. 31

WORDS

OR

IMAGES?

21

P R O S T I T U T E S ON S T A G E : THE FLORALI A If the irreverent, often obscene triumphal songs allowed the soldiers temporary license to deflate their commander through humor—just in the moment of his transformation into Jupiter—the ludi Floralia (April 28—May 2) deflated the hallowed institution of the Roman ludi, the athletic contests and games honoring a god or a human hero. Unlike the wild-animal shows and hunts that were part of the "serious" games, the ludi Floralia had beasts doing unexpected tricks, like modern circus animals. Instead of coins, the celebrants threw beans and chickpeas into the crowd.32 There was a torchlight procession leading to the culminating event: naked prostitutes dancing on stage to the cheers of the crowd. T. P. Wiseman has proposed three loose scripts for the prostitute-mimes, one a historical narrative, the other two origin myths: all require the women to dance and take off their clothes.33 Martial uses the word iocosi, "joking" or "humorous," to define the proceedings. Richlin comments: These prostitutes must have been specially hired and selected by the officials staging the games, and it must have been a honor to be chosen; this idea is at least not contradicted by Seneca and Lactantius. The whole agenda is almost a parody of more serious games—the animals do tricks instead of being killed, the crowd is sprayed with simple vegetables instead of costly gifts or favors, the procession marches at night, the finale features the lowest citizens with the enthusiastic participation of the crowd (which,... included citizens like Cato and Favonius).34 The humor in the Floralia, like that of the triumphal songs, comes from the reversal of normative social roles. The marginalized prostitutes (who suffer the status of infamy) take center stage, ostensibly because they stand for fertility and therefore properly celebrate the goddess of fertility, Flora. Despite their status, and despite the impropriety of any kind of naked dancing, the prostitutes entertain all the social classes under the umbrella of religious observance. While bringing the good fortune of fertility to the Roman people, they create a sexual spectacle that overturns propriety to induce laughter.

22

VISUAL

HUMOR

FARCICAL PUBLIC EXECUTIONS Imagine seeing a nude male criminal fitted with wings made of wax and feathers hoisted high above the floor of the Colosseum and then dropped. During Roman times, this is not imagination but a public execution.35 Myth becomes fact—and therefore hilarious—as a human being tries to flap his artificial wings like Daedalus. For the ancient viewer, the original myth is a moral lesson in filial obedience and respect for the gods. Icarus ignores his father's warning to avoid flying too close to the sun (the god Sol) lest the wax melt; heady with the experience of flying he tries to become like the god, the wings disintegrate, and he plunges to his death.36 But here it is the father, Daedalus, who fails to fly—a comic reversal of the myth's moral lesson.37 The criminal enacting this myth becomes a pitiful—and for the Roman spectators, hilarious—parody of this moral lesson. The humor lies in "Daedalus's" frantic and desperate attempt to fly with his fake wings, even though he knows as well as the crowd that he has no chance of succeeding. Or imagine a woman playing Pasiphae, who lusted after a bull. Forced to enter a wooden cow like the one Daedalus made for her— or perhaps gotten up to look like a cow—the criminal Pasiphae meets her death attempting to have sex with a real bull.38 The bull is the executioner as well in the literal enactment of the myth of Dirce, with the criminal tied to the animal and dragged to her death.39 Even the sublime moment in the saga of Hercules—his apotheosis, when his mortal coil burned away upon the pyre to make him an immortal god—turned ridiculous when a condemned criminal/Hercules was made to mount a pyre set up in the arena or forced to don tht tunica molesta, an inflammable garment smeared with pitch. Instead of the miracle of ascension to Olympus the crowd saw a man burned alive.40 Since wealthy Romans cremated their dead (until inhumation in sarcophagi became popular during the course of the second century), funeral pyres were a familiar sight. Viewers might well have remembered seeing the elaborate funerals of emperors.41 To encourage the belief that the emperor, like Hercules, attained divinity, the imperial family made sure that an eagle flew up from the pyre. Mary Beard and John Henderson have explored the potential humor of imperial apo-

W O R D S

OR

I M A G E S ?

23

theosis, underscoring the implausible—and perhaps laughable—visual representations. 42 The failed apotheosis of the criminal/Hercules makes such implausibility ridiculous—an enactment of myth that seems cruel to us moderns. A similar macabre humor underlies Nero's making human torches out of Christians for the entertainment of the populace. 43 Even more complex than the crematio

of the criminal/Hercules is the execu-

tion of a criminal gotten up as Orpheus, described in the longest epigram in Martial's Liber

Spectaculorum:

Whatever Rhodope is said to have seen on the Orphic stage, Caesar, the amphitheater has displayed to you. Cliffs crept and a marvelous wood ran forwards such as was believed to be the grove of the Hesperides. Every kind of wild beast was there, mixed with the flock, and above the minstrel hovered many birds; but the minstrel fell, torn apart by an ungrateful bear. Only this one thing happened contrary to the story.44 The humor in this execution depends on the elaborate stage setting, contrived so that "Orpheus" is initially successful in calming the beasts. The surprise release of a hungry bear upsets the bucolic scene with a comic jolt as the crowd sees the "god" mauled and dispatched by an animal he is supposed to be able to subdue with song. As Kathleen Coleman points out, as cruel as such staged executions might seem to us, the Romans considered them to be a crime deterrent. 45 Although making the mythological fatally literal might have seemed impious or sacrilegious to some Romans, it was also quite funny because of the status of the person playing the role. He or she was, after all, a condemned criminal who faced execution at the noon hour as part of the routine of spectacles in the amphitheater. Already judged guilty of a capital crime, he or she was a reviled enemy of the state. What is more, the usual means of disposing of condemned criminals at the noon hour, the damnatio ad bestias, had its own macabre humor. Executions of criminals followed the professional hunts of the morning hours (the venationes),

but even if they were

given weapons to fight the animals, the criminals' deaths were certain. The executioners handicapped them in some way so that the animals would inevitably triumph. 4 6

24

VISUAL

HUMOR

Although staged executions seem unusually inhumane to us, we must remember that capital punishment—for all but the elite—included some form of public display of the condemned, emphasizing their infamy. Humiliation was part of the punishment. And for spectators accustomed to seeing the death of performers they held in high esteem—the highly trained, prestigious gladiators—the death of criminals was unexceptional. Although the ancient descriptions fill in few details of these macabre yet humorous mythical enactments, they likely were charades in the sense that the identification of the myth rested on visual rather than verbal cues. A viewer had to identify the mythological episode—as she would in decoding any tableau

vivant—

by pairing the criminal's costume and the constructed stage set with imagery familiar to her.

P A R A L L E L S IN P A I N T I N G Romano-Campanian painting, in fact, gives us many "straight" representations of the deadly but farcical enactments of the amphitheater. Among the paintings excavated at Pompeii and Herculaneum, the fall of Icarus appears at least ten times;47 Daedalus presenting the wooden cow to Pasiphae, six times (one an outright comic parody; see chapter 7);48 Dirce being tied to the bull, eight times;49 Orpheus taming the beasts, four times.50 Only the apotheosis of Hercules appears but twice, though in both cases it claims pride of place. It is the physical and narrative centerpiece of the largest reception space of the House of Octavius Quartio." In the College of the Augustales at Herculaneum we see Hercules accompanied by Juno and Minerva on the left wall of the cella. Behind the hero is a rainbow, announcing the theme of the hero's introduction to Olympus. 52 And paintings and mosaics from the domestic realm represent only a part of the stock of images available to an ancient viewer. Consider, for example, how many viewers would have known a sculptural group like the Farnese Bull, a colossal representation of the punishment of Dirce, taking pride of place in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome.53 It was just one of many such groups seen by a huge public—the same public who attended the shows in the Colosseum. Part of the fun of death-dealing mythical enactments

WORDS

OR

IMAGES?

25

must have come from comparing the setups in the arena with images known from works of art and vice versa. If there was verbal commentary, it probably took second place to the visual humor. Both the executioners and the audience must have remarked on the action. The condemned may also have risen to the occasion—resigned to death but determined to make it an unforgettable spectacle for the crowds. After all, if the staged executions combined mythological narration with horrific display of death, it was to add variety and comic relief to the relentless bloodshed of public executions in the arena.

MIME To judge from ancient accounts and several provocative visual representations, mime was a variety of comic performance that often privileged the visual over the verbal. Yet, unlike the other humorous forms considered in this chapter, mime had a clear relation to the legitimate comic theater. In contrast to tragedy and comedy, performed by male masked actors reciting poetic scripts, mime seems to have been topical, improvised, slapstick comedy performed by troupes of men and—an exception to the rule that only males performed on stage—women actors. Mime (not to be confused with pantomime—a serious theatrical form imported from the Hellenistic East during the age of Augustus) had its roots in the earliest Roman theater: the Atellan farces. 54 The Atellanae

turned into the mime as their language

changed from their original Oscan into Latin. Mime held its place alongside the comedy of Plautus (early second century

B.C.),

and ancient references to mime con-

tinue through the sixth century a.d. One of the most popular themes in mime performances, to judge from ancient authors, was the adultery mime. 55 Whether it had its origins in Greece or Alexandria, the adultery mime found its fullest development in the mimic stages of the Romans—perhaps because they had more liberal attitudes toward the status of women than either the Greeks or the Egyptians. 56 R. W. Reynolds convincingly reconstructs the stage set, the props, and the actors' routines. There was only one set, furnished—at the minimum—with a bed and a trunk. There were only three characters: the wife; her bumbling, ugly husband; and the wife's handsome lover. The plot is simple: the wife finds a way to get her husband out of the house; she and her

20

VISUAL

HUMOR

paramour make passionate love; the husband returns unexpectedly, forcing the lover to hide in the trunk; the husband discovers the lover.57 For such a simple plot to have had such long-standing appeal for the Roman audience, each actor had to look right for the part and be skillful at elaborating effective comic routines. For example, we know that the husband, whom ancient authors call the stupidus, was fat, bald-headed, and ugly.58 Not only did he contrast visually with his pretty wife and her elegant lover, he had to act stupid. After all, he was gullible enough to believe whatever story she told him to get him out of the house. We can imagine lots of stage business for him; certainly the most amusing routine would have centered on his use of the trunk holding the lover. The cuckolded husband, dim-witted though he might be, could sit on the trunk, drum his fingers on it, kick it, and so on—eventually forcing the hapless young man to come out. If the stupid husband's appearance and stage business were all bumbling aggression, the young wife was all clever sexiness: an artful mix of beauty and deceit. And the more cultivated and handsome her lover, the bigger laughs his disgraceful appearance would get as he unfolded himself from the trunk. To judge from the objections to the adultery mime, one of its big attractions was seeing sex—or a close approximation of it—on stage. During the reign of Tiberius (a.d. 14—38) the town of Massilia (modern Marseilles) banned all mimes because their major theme was the sex act.59 Some mimes seem to have had even less plot than the adultery mime. In two other studies I have investigated the nudatio mimarum, the obscene mimes that were integral to Roman theatrical performances.60 They seem to have ended a day of standard presentations of tragedy and comedy: Valerius Maximus tells us that Cato, epitome of stern Republican demeanor, always left the theater before the nudatio mimarum so that his forbidding presence wouldn't spoil the people's fun. 61 Like the Floralia, the nudatio mimarum had its origins in cults of fertility, but by the second century b.c. it had become an outrageous sex farce. I have argued elsewhere that at least two of the paintings that originally decorated the little Inn on the Street of Mercury in Pompeii represented scenes from the mimes.62 One is a sexual balancing act featuring a man penetrating a woman as she crouches to retrieve a wine pitcher; the other a man with a huge erection chasing a women who is about to brain him with a jug (fig. 2). Although the artist has left out the stage and sets (if there were any), he has captured what we imagine mime to be: direct, slapstick, and topical.

WORDS

OR

I M A G E S ?

1"]

Figure 2.

Pompeii, Inn on the Street of Mercury (VI, 10, i),

woman resisting man.

Both the adultery mime and the nude mimes were impermanent. For the adultery mime we have a few fragmentary lines and songs; for the nude mimes, only the tavern paintings. Both forms were highly visual, and actors developed them by combining stereotype with improvisation. T h e actors' success in making the audience laugh depended on elements of surprise that ran the whole gamut of comic ploys from wordplay to slapstick. In the following chapter we begin by looking at another impermanent form of humorous visual culture, the comic theater. Fortunately, we have a much greater range of textual and visual artifacts documenting stage comedy; for this reason we can delve more deeply into how humor reveals Roman cultural formation.

28

V I S U A L

H U M O R

2

F U N N Y FACES — O N S T A G E A N D OFF

SCRIPT A N D V I E W E R IN ROMAN COMIC

THEATER

If we suppose that all forms of mime, nude or otherwise, emphasized the visual aspects of comedy, it is because we imagine that the audience was more attentive to action than words—or may not even have known the language being spoken. I am not the first to argue that legitimate comic theater-—without the acoustic benefits of modern buildings—also seems to have stressed the visual over the verbal, and sound effects (including music) over speech. Several scholars have recently called attention, as well, to "metatheater"—the ways that characters/actors appealed directly to the audience.1 Particularly in Roman times, when Greek or Latin may not have been a familiar language for at least some of the audience, visual cues, including gesture, pratfalls, and costume, had to show what was funny rather than say it. Reading comedy is one thing; seeing it with the eyes of a Roman audience is quite another. To our contemporary eyes, used to the proscenium stage with modern lighting—not to mention the close-up vision of cinema and television—the conditions of viewing theater in Roman times seem quite primitive. The configuration of a typical Roman theater makes us wonder how the audience sitting in the upper tiers of the semicircular bleachers, or cavea, managed to see much at all (fig. 3).

29

Figure 3.

Pompeii, plan of theater.

Scholars assume that actors were able to project their voices to the back rows, but to achieve such volume their delivery must have been highly stylized. Semaphoric gestures accompanied their declamations to get the meaning of the lines across. Music, too, played an important part in cuing the audience's reaction to the dynamics of a scene. But the best evidence for the visuality of comic theater comes from the study of masks.

MASKS AND

CHARACTER

T h e use of masks is the single convention most at home in ancient theater—and most foreign to our experience. Inherited from the Greek theater and elaborated by the Romans, the masks worn by actors conveyed the character's identity and ex-

3O

V I S U A L

H U M O R

pected behavior immediately and unmistakably. Even if a viewer couldn't hear or understand what a comic actor was saying, he or she could recognize the actor's role by looking at his mask. 2 Julius Pollux of Naucratis produced a catalogue that describes the forty-four New Comedy masks that may have still been in use in the second century a.d., when he wrote his Onomasticon (fig. 4).3 T. B. L. Webster's lifelong project catalogued Greek and Roman masks represented in painting, mosaic, and on terra-cotta objects such as lamps and statuettes. Although initially Webster believed he could correlate Pollux's list of masks directly with such visual representations, not all of the preserved representations of masks jibed with Pollux. In the end, he assigned each mask-type a letter rather than one of Pollux's numbers, concluding that there were local variants on theatrical masks; Pollux's list represented one such variant, since it seems to have drawn on a third-century b.c. Alexandrian source.4 Masks must have had an even stronger power to express and reveal character for the Romans than for the Greeks. In addition to seeing masked actors in performances of tragedy and comedy, there is some evidence that actors in the Atellan farces and in the scenic games (ludi scaenici) wore masks. 5 Beyond the walls of the theater Romans would have seen masked flute-players at the festival of Minerva on the Ides of June. 6 But the most important of these masking traditions surrounds the cult of the dead, where the term for mask is imago. The Greek historian Polybius (who lived with the family of Scipio Aemilianus between 166 and 149 b.c.) tells us that illustrious families put lifelike masks (the imagines maiorum, or masks of the ancestors) on prominent display in their homes. They also orchestrated elaborate funerary processions of family members, and actors, wearing those masks, each one impersonating the ancestor whose mask he wore. 7 Alongside these serious uses of masks and impersonation, a viewer might also see humorous elements. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived and taught in Rome during the reign of Augustus, reports that actors dressed as satyrs could form part of the aristocratic funeral procession. They preceded the bier, mimicking and hence mocking the serious movements of the others in a dance called the. sicinnis} What is more, comic merriment formed part of at least one emperor's funeral. At Vespasian's funeral a leading mime (the archimimus Favor) donned the death mask of the dead princeps and presented a hilarious impersonation, engaging the crowd in

F U N N Y

FACES

31

£

e 0

-C »v O JZ 0 be S 'rt

z p

Lh

« JS « -e 3 8

t-4-H -5

8 P » 8 J3 e* & rg « J „

V)

%

o >H

J3 Ou.

to U c« J3 H C rs C -0 O

UH

like

i

1

c S 0 -0

the corr

?

z w g

£ -3

j

$1£ 1 S U O

a -a |

13 ¡3 -S

c

IP u - s , K (j W C flj ^ 2 J (5 « « u v Q-. H

§

tT

1

T3

1

-0 c

£ -d

TJ 8 « K C u S a c K g .o to . o g ^ "T3 Ji M 5 5 u 6 S | ^ S " fC ^

c 1 s* i s

.2 J3 O L* 5 a

c

C 'C >

D

H r^i

G

0 2

s O i i _o

c I >> 13 2 -3 S: 3 1 «

s £ O •— elassss.

nose. A n d the graffitist has cleverly substituted the Greek letter for Severa's mouth, so that the elongated circle of the letter becomes her open mouth and the vertical stroke a penis penetrating it. If we imagine this part of the lettering to be Severa's profile, the remaining letters of elassss become her j a w — s t u c k out like that of Prom u s — a n d her short neck. Above, the extravagant r and a of Ssevera could be a fanciful hairdo with a bun or gathered-up curls. What fascinates about this graffito is how it forces the viewer to look (as I indeed have) for the image of Severa even while the reduplication at the beginning and end of the phrase communicates her excess (and perhaps her expertise). Funari astutely comments that Ssevera phelasss combines the verbal with the phonic and the iconic. 60 T h e focus on the laughable face, whether we find it in highly formal art like the theatrical pictures, or in informal visual representations like the graffiti, reveals the same deep-seated Roman belief that it was possible to read a person's character through his or her face. It is a striking corroboration of Cicero's advice about gaining power over an adversary by calling attention to his physical peculiarities. In the following chapter we turn to a kind of visual humor based, instead, upon surprise.

FUNNY

FACES

3

DOUBLE TAKES I w a s g a p i n g at all this in o p e n - m o u t h e d w o n d e r w h e n I suddenly j u m p e d w i t h terror, stumbled, and nearly b r o k e m y leg. For there on the left as y o u entered, in fresco, stood a huge d o g straining at his leash. In large letters u n d e r the painting w a s scrawled: B E W A R E OF T H E D O G !

T h e others burst out l a u g h i n g at m y fright. Petronius Satyricon 29.1—2

ILLUSIONISM:

T H E

ART

OF T H E

D O U B L E

T A K E

I f the pictures o f scenes f r o m c o m i c plays o n the w a l l s o f a h o u s e s e e m t o be a n o b l i q u e w a y to g e t a l a u g h , it is o n the w a l l s a n d floors o f h o u s e s t h a t w e find t h e most direct ploys o f R o m a n comic visual culture: the double-take image. T h e v i s u a l d o u b l e t a k e is t h e s t a n d a r d j o k e o f the w a x m u s e u m : y o u e n t e r a n d a t t e m p t t o p a y t h e t i c k e t - t a k e r — o n l y to r e a l i z e t h a t she is a w a x d u m m y . T h e r e m i g h t be o t h e r " p l a n t s " in t h e display. T h e fiercely v i g i l a n t g u a r d n e x t to M a r i l y n M o n r o e d o e s n ' t m o v e , f o r he's a w a x w o r k l i k e M a r i l y n . It's t h e h u m o r o f d o u b l e t a k e t h a t m a k e s A m e r i c a n artist D u a n e H a n s o n so p o p u l a r . H i s l o w e r m i d d l e - c l a s s types, c o n s t r u c t e d o f p o l y m e r resin a n d p a i n t e d a n d b e w i g g e d w i t h a s t o u n d i n g p r e c i s i o n , m a k e v i e w e r s l a u g h b e c a u s e they s e e m so o u t o f p l a c e in a n art g a l l e r y . B u t p u t t h e m in a s u p e r m a r k e t o r o n t h e street, a n d t h e y w o u l d n ' t g e t a laugh.1 C e n t r a l to a c e r t a i n k i n d o f realist art is t h e d o u b l e t a k e : t h e v i e w e r f o r a m o m e n t m i s t a k e s t h e s c u l p t u r e o r p a i n t i n g f o r t h e p e r s o n or t h i n g it r e p r e s e n t s . T h e

51

ancients, too, delighted in art that imitated nature so closely that a viewer might mistake it for the real thing. Pliny tells the much-repeated story of the contest between the painters Parrhasios and Zeuxis:

Zeuxis depicted some grapes so well that birds flew up to them, but Parrhasios then painted a linen curtain so realistically that Zeuxis, puffed up with pride by the birds' verdict, eventually asked Parrhasios to remove the curtain. When Zeuxis understood his error, he capitulated with sincere modesty, since he had only deceived the birds, but Parhassios had deceived him, an artist.2

What makes this story funny is the double take of illusionistic painting—and the fact that Parrhasios (an artist known for his excessive vanity) created an illusion so good that it fooled a painter, Zeuxis. 3 Although the famous easel paintings are long gone, we have reminders of the Romans' love of the visual double take in frescoes and mosaics—many from excavations in the area of Vesuvius. Highly skilled fresco painters, like the artists of the Second-Style decorations of the Villa of Oplontis, could transform a flat wall into a convincing representation of a sumptuously outfitted royal hall, complete with complex perspectives that made colonnades project from the wall, with vistas opening up behind the wall. Apropos the tricks of Parrhasios and Zeuxis, they were also able to place convincing representations of baskets of fruit covered with gauzy veils and startlingly lifelike birds on ledges within that Active architecture.4 But there's also comic illusionism in both painting and mosaic. Guard dogs seem to have been favorite double-take images in wall painting. In the excerpt at the beginning of this chapter, Encolpius, the comic protagonist of Petronius's Satyricon, mistakes a painting of a ferocious dog for the real thing.5 This kind of surprising representation seems to have been a commonplace in painting, if the guard dog from the Tavern (Caupona) of Sotericus is any gauge (figs. 13 and 14).6 Although an astute tavern-goer might see it upon entering, in most lights the dog remains in shadow. But no one could miss it as he passed from the streetside room taken up with sales counters to the back rooms, where, to judge from the graffiti, customers ate, drank, and received sexual favors from the serving staff. 7 Was the dog guarding the passageway?

52

V I S U A L

H U M O R

Figure 13. (left) Pompeii, Tavern of Sotericus (1,12,3), painting of guard dog, from entry way. Figure 14. (right) Pompeii, Tavern of Sotericus (I, 12, 3), detail, guard dog.

ENTER

LAUGHING:

T H E D O U B L E T A K E IN T H E

FAUCES

Although the guard dog on the wall is startling—at least the first time a viewer encounters it—the dogs represented in mosaic pavements decorating the entry ways to houses, are, if anything, more shocking than the painted ones.8 The painted guard dog stays at some distance, as it were, on the wall. But the mosaic image is much closer to the viewer, since she must also walk on it to enter the house—whether that entryway to the atrium takes the form of the fauces (literally "jaws"—a long, narrow space) or the relatively broad, shallow vestibule. As I have argued elsewhere, figures on the floor often address the movement of the spectator who walks over them. In a very direct way they dramatize the process of walking through a space, often suggesting that a viewer stay on axis or turn to his right or left. 9

D O U B L E

T A K E S

53

All of the mosaic guard dogs intensify the experience of entering a house. In the following chapter we will consider imagery in the fauces that is clearly meant to dispel evil spirits through laughter. The double-take mosaics of dogs, if apotropaic, take a less direct approach: they elicit laughter—to be sure—but without explicit representation of either the Evil Eye being attacked or the remedy of the phallus. The earliest "Beware the dog!" mosaic at Pompeii is the elaborate representation of a ferocious guard dog on the sloping floor of the fauces to the House of P. Paquius Proculus (I, 8, i), contemporaneous with the Third-Style decoration of the house (A.D. I—15; fig. 15). 10 The artist has doubled, as it were, the double take by representing the doors that the visitor has just passed through on the floor, as well as the huge dog barring both the open and the closed batten. He is large enough to block the entire entrance—his tail extending beyond the doorway to the left and his front paws pushing against the open batten to the right. The artist has chosen a simple but effective profile rendering to emphasize the dog's alert, energetic form—especially his powerful neck and head. Although the mosaicist used black and white tesserae throughout, he called attention to the dog's muzzle by using red tesserae for the tongue. The chain that keeps him under control—like the dog's active pose, ready to spring at any offender—emphasizes his ferocity. The dog in the threshold to the House of Caecilius Iucundus takes a very different tack by reversing expectations: he is amusing because he's napping on the job (A.D. I—15; fig. 16). Our resting dog occupies the upper step of a wide, shallow entryway quite different from the typical tunnel-like space framing the dog in the House of Paquius Proculus. The artist has made him all curves—from the tail, tucked under the elongated rump, to the parallel swelling curves to the torso to the sharp arc of the neck. His front paws demurely crossed, the dog turns his head back along his body to see who has interrupted him. His eye, wide open, gazes at the intruder. 11 The most famous of the Pompeian guard, in the fauces of the House of the Tragic Poet, dates to about fifty years later, in the period of the late Fourth Style (A.D. 62—79; fig. 17). 12 Although it's a chained dog like the one in the House of Paquius Proculus, the artist dispensed with the door and made the dog—if anything—more ferocious. What is more, he unmasked the humor of his artifice by adding the caption

54

VISUAL

HUMOR

Figure 16. threshold.

Pompeii, House of Caecilius Iucundus (V, i , 26), mosaic of dog napping on

Figure 17. Pompeii, House of the Tragic Poet (VI, 8, 5), mosaic of dog with caption C A V E C A N E M .

Cave canem—words

that warn the viewer to beware of a dog who is an illusion!

The fame of the image (discovered in 1824) is due in no small part to tourist art, especially the seemingly ubiquitous copies in glazed ceramic that have ended up below many modern doorbells. 13 If the image is still humorous today, it is because it makes the ancient Romans seem to be "just like us"—even to the point of having illustrated "Beware the dog!" signs at their doorways. But in its original setting the mosaic carried more punch because it was much more surprising than a small plaque set at eye level. For one thing, the fauces was extraordinarily long and tunnel-like—6.2 meters deep as opposed to 2.3 meters in the House of Paquius Proculus. And where the dog in the House of Proculus fills most of the fauces, in the House of the Tragic Poet he occupies only the lower fifth. The dog carries all the drama. In the House of Paquius Proculus, the doors, the attached chain, and the threshold band beneath the dog create a setting—a picture

VISUAL

HUMOR

detached from the viewer's space, no matter how ferocious the dog. A t the same time this mosaic picture recalls the real door that the viewer has just passed through. There's even a second picture, a framed landscape with centaurs above the Active door, to mark the threshold to the atrium proper. But there's no illusionistic framing for the dog in the House of the Tragic Poet. He's broken loose. T h e artist has rendered him three-quarters view, adding shadows beneath him to make him pop up from the floor. He makes straight for the intruder, who can see that the dog's chain hangs in space; he's freed himself from the ring that kept him safely at bay.

REFLECTIONS ON THE UNSWEPT

FLOOR

Just as a dog might sleep on a threshold or be chained to the battens of a door, after a banquet some of the food might have dropped on the floor. It turns out that the Romans eagerly installed mosaics that represented—for all eternity—what a floor might have looked like after a messy banquet. Pliny names this type of mosaic the asarotos oikos, usually translated "unswept floor," but more accurately "unswept hall." Pliny attributes the idea to Sosos, an artist from Pergamon. 14 T h e best-preserved copy, signed by Heraklitos and usually dated to the second century a.d., comes from Rome (fig. 18).15 Seashells, the bones of fish and fowl, lobster claws, chicken legs, fruits, and nuts take on great realism, to the point of casting shadows on the white pavement. T h e humorous intent seems clear when we see a mouse as well, contemplating nibbling on a huge split nut (fig. 19). A guest's eye could have scanned this kind of representation at many different moments in the dining process. T h e most disconcerting moment must have been the first time a viewer came into the room, seeing a prediction of the mess the diners could or would make with their food courses. He or she would recline on the couch looking down at, say, a wishbone or a discarded mussel shell, and then have the real thing served. After consuming courses of meat, fish, vegetables, and fruits, the representation on the floor took on yet another, ironic meaning: Was it a warning not to throw the remains on the floor, or an invitation to add to the artwork? If it was a kind of warning, it had the same playful flavor as the written instructions for proper dining behavior painted on the walls of an open-air triclinium in the House of the Moralist at Pompeii. 16 Although there are no illustrations ac-

D O U B L E

T A K E S

Figure 19. and nut.

Rome, mosaic of the asarotos oi\os, signed by Heraklitos, detail, mouse

companying those distichs, they clearly address—like the asarotos oikos m o s a i c — what happens at the dining couch. I have argued that lines like "Don't dirty our linen; use your napkin" or "Keep your eyes off the other man's wife" were tonguein-cheek humor, not actual injunctions to behave oneself. Similarly, the "warning" of the unswept floor could never have been serious, since we know that servants mopped the floors at intervals during the banquet. If a viewer saw the floor as an invitation to add to the composition on the floor, it's easy to imagine contests to see w h o could hit the image of a wishbone with a real one. T h e unswept floor could easily become a kind of game board, encouraging guests to throw trash on the floor—and possibly at each other. A likely parallel from classical Greece is \ottabos, a wine-drinking game that must have been just as messy. 17 In one variation, a drinker threw the dregs of his wine cup at a cup on a special stand. T h e object was to knock the cup off and break it. In our Roman dining room, after servants cleared away the remains of food on the tables and plates, as well as scraps on the floor, the visual representation of those scraps remained. Wine drinking followed into the night. If the many representations of drinking parties are any guide to the real thing, guests played with their wine as they had with their food. A favorite motif is the drinking contest, where drinkers display their skill at squirting wine into their mouths, or those of their partners, from drinking horns. Through the mists of inebriation, a drinker might look back down at the images of food scraps on the floor. A t this point, the illusion had come full circle, recording the past even while looking forward to future feasts. There's a sad note as well, for those so inclined. Like the image of the skeleton wine-steward from Pompeii, the asarotos oikos could be a memento mori (fig. 20).18 If the skeleton serving wine incites laughter, it is because the artist has animated the most inanimate—dead—symbol of a living human: the inert skeletal framework for flesh and blood. There's the laughter at this animation but even more at the suggestion that the person receiving the wine was just a step away from being a skeleton. In a parallel fashion, looking at the remains of a meal after the meal is done must have reminded the viewer that all pleasures must pass. T h e elaborate pièce de résistance ends up as refuse thrown to the floor. T h e party's over. T h e skeleton wine-steward can serve to introduce a kind of double-take that relies on the ironic modification of a well-known image, rather than trompe l'oeil illusionism, which causes a viwer to confuse the image for the real thing. If a viewer

D O U B L E

T A K E S

Figure 20. Pompeii, House of the Vestals (VI, 1, 7), mosaic of skeleton wine-steward.

laughed at the skeleton wine-steward, it was because the artist has substituted a dead body for a living one, overturning a viewer's expectations.

CONTROLLING A HUMOROUS

DEFECATION: ADMONITION

If the unswept floor motif—along with the skeleton wine-steward—provides comic commentary on a viewer's ingestion of food and wine, a unique relief from Aquileia goes to unusual lengths to show the consequences of eliminating food in the wrong place (fig. 21). 19 We see Jupiter raising his right arm to hurl a second thunderbolt at a man caught in the act of defecating. He is already falling to the ground

60

VISUAL

HUMOR

Figure 21.

Aquileia, Jupiter hurtling thunderbolts at a defecating man.

from the effects of the first thunderbolt; we see its three top prongs sticking out of the man's back, just behind his head. T h e artist has emphasized Jupiter's might by placing him above the man, in a niche hollowed out of the thickness of the limestone, and by m a k i n g him twice the size of his poor victim. Jupiter's powerful p o s e — right arm extended, right leg flexed, and left leg extended—harks back to classical models. But if Jupiter is all power, the man is all weakness. H i s nearly limp right a r m searches for support. Rather than showing the m a n crouching to defecate, the artist has (more tastefully?) suggested that he had been crouching by showing the front of the man's tunic pulled up to his genitals and by depicting the deep bend o f his knees. In a word, the m a n is about to fall forward on his face from what had been a defecating crouch. Body language—rather than w o r d s — c a r r i e s the humor. Exaggeration is at the heart of this comedy. T h e relief gets its humor from the unlikely event that Jupiter would take offense at a mere act of elimination and hurl not one, but two thunderbolts at the offender. When Jupiter launches his thunderbolts on the C o l u m n of Trajan, it's to save the Roman army from the threat of annihilation at the hands of their fierce Dacian opponents. 2 0 But here the artist calls u p this device of cosmic battle to kill—in a most dramatic w a y — a poor m a n who happens to be defecating in the wrong spot. T h e crime does not fit the punishment. N o r — if it is indeed a capital crime—would Jupiter himself carry out the punishment.

DOUBLE

TAKES

6l

It is lamentable that we do not know the exact archaeological context for the relief. Its large size (H 0.87 x W 1.32 m) and refined carving suggest a patron— whether an individual or a civic body—willing to pay the sculptor a substantial sum to carry it out. The patron's decision to use purely visual humor for his warning against defecating distinguishes the relief from the usual practice of written warnings. We find them on city streets, city walls, and tomb precincts. The typical formula is verbal: Cacator cave malum ("Shitter beware!"). 21 Sometimes, in addition to the inscription, we find a reference to the sanctity of the place in the representation of an altar approached by the propitious serpents, the agathodaemones.22 Along the Street of Abundance in Pompeii, at the intersection between city blocks III, 4 and III, 5, Matteo Delia Corte read three admonitions, now vanished: Cacator cave malu(m) (twice),23 and a third that helps explain why the father of the gods is punishing our helpless defecator: Cacator, cave malum, aut, si contempseris, habeas Jovem iratum ("Shitter, beware! But if you dare, you bring down the wrath of Jove"). 24 But nowhere do we find an image—let alone an elaborate carved relief— that shows the father of the gods himself carrying out the harshest of punishments: death by lightning. If, as the three scholars who have studied it believe, our relief came from a temple precinct, it was a warning for anyone tempted to relieve himself there—and in this case it would be a more serious offense than defecating along the city walls, streets, or in tomb precincts.25 One comic literary reference to the apparently common practice of defecating in tomb precincts comes from the mouth of Petronius's character Trimalchio. In his long-winded instructions for the building, decoration, and maintenance of his tomb, Trimalchio declares: "I'll appoint one of my ex-slaves to act as custodian to chase off the people who might come and crap on my tomb." 26 As we will see in the following chapters, visual artists elaborated extensively on the humor of transgressive bowel movements—with the difference that nowhere does a god punish these acts. What is more, comic representations of digestive incontinence could even have the positive effect of dispelling malevolent forces, a topic that we introduce in the next chapter and develop fully in chapter 5. Finally, in the sophisticated play of verbal and visual representation that constitutes the humor in the Tavern of the Seven Sages (discussed in chapter 6), the subject is the process of elimination.

62

V I S U A L

H U M O R

4

APOTROPAIC

LAUGHTER

L A U G H T E R IN L I M I N A L

SPACES

If the ritual joking of the Triumph or the forced laughter of the Lupercalia seems strange to modern audiences, it is because we don't share with ancient Romans the belief that laughter will propitiate gods or demons. In this chapter we examine the question of laughter as a protective strategy more fully by looking at visual representations meant to dispel evil forces. Central to understanding how laughter might do so is the analysis of images in their original architectural settings. It was the entryway to the house that provided the architectural setting for many of the humorous double-take images considered in the last chapter. If the images of guard dogs in entry ways of houses still make us laugh, it is because we can connect the image of a dog at a doorway with our modern experience of guard dogs. But many other images found in that same space resist explanation based on contemporary experience. Our first clue about their meaning lies in their spatial context: the fauces is a liminal, or boundary, space that marks a person's passage. Carlin Barton, citing ancient textual evidence, lists the places and points of passage where a person was especially vulnerable: "corners, bridges, baths, doorways." Such liminal areas

63

were highly charged and dangerous. 1 If we were to ask an ancient Roman, "Who protects you from misfortune and evil spirits within the city?" he or she would probably first name the city's titular deity, then—in the context of moving from place to place within the city—the various temples and shrines that defined specific neighborhoods. He would then name the guardian spirits, worshipped at certain crossroads—liminal places par excellence. Numerous altars to the protector-deities of the crossroads (called the lares compítales) attest to the common belief that individuals needed protection from evil forces lurking out in the open.2 Anthropologists have described and analyzed the idea of liminality in their studies of the rituals accompanying rites of passage. In particular, Arnold van Gennep, and later Victor Turner, defined three phases of liminality, or transition, in behavioral terms.3 The first consists of "symbolic behavior signifying the detachment of the individual or group from an earlier fixed point in the social structure, from a set of cultural conditions, or from both."4 The liminal state, derived from the Latin word limen, "boundary, threshold," derives from the situation when a person "passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state."5 The third phase of liminality is aggregation or incorporation; in this phase a person returns to a stable state once more, but one that includes clearly structured rights and obligations.6 The state change that a Roman entering a house undergoes has much in common with the structures of rites of passage observed by van Gennep and Turner.7 On entering a house—especially the domus, or patriarchal house that was both a place of business and a dwelling—a Roman passed from the protection of the civic deities to that of the owner of the house, sometimes called the paterfamilias. The focus of this experience of passage was literally the passageway of the fauces or vestibule.8 It is here that a Roman viewer encountered a host of peculiar, often laughter-inducing images meant to safeguard the guest in his or her liminal experience.9

LAUGHTER TO DISPEL THE EVIL

EYE

The most explicit representation of a prime liminal danger appears in the mosaic from the entry way to a second-century house at Antioch. The artist has represented the Evil Eye itself, vigorously attacked (fig. 22). A trident and sword pierce the Evil

V I S U A L

H U M O R

Figure 22.

Antioch, House of the Evil Eye, mosaic of the Evil Eye, second century a.d.

Eye; a scorpion, snake, dog, centipede, feline, and bird attack it. A d w a r f turns his back to the Evil Eye, but aims his huge phallus and his spiked c r o w n at it while clicking t w o pairs of crossed sticks. T h e inscription, k a i su ( " T h e same to you"), serves as a w a r n i n g to any malevolent person or spirit w h o m i g h t enter the house. W h a t is the Evil Eye? It is the w e a p o n o f the envious person. Katherine D u n babin and M a t t h e w W . D i c k i e have studied the ancient texts and visual representations o f E n v y (Phthonos/Invidia), demonstrating the ancient R o m a n preoccupation with w h a t envy could do both to the envious person and to the person w h o was the object o f envy. 1 0 A n c i e n t Romans believed (as do many Mediterranean people u p to the present day) that someone w h o envied your physical beauty or material prosperity could somehow fix his eye upon you and cause it to emit harmful particles. T h e s e particles entered you and could m a k e you sick or even die. 11 L a u g h t e r is a sure remedy against the Evil Eye. A l t h o u g h the sheer number o f w e a p o n s and creatures attacking the Evil E y e in our mosaic is humorous in its exaggeration, to an ancient R o m a n viewer the funniest image is that o f the d w a r f . H e carries the humor. A p r o p o s the Antioch Evil E y e mosaic, D o r o Levi proposes

A P O T R O P A I C

L A U G H T E R

that the purpose of the representation was to incite salubrious laughter, since laughter dispels the Evil Eye: "Beings with a funny appearance or in which some obscene details are accentuated are effective apotropaia,

as well as normal beings

represented in indecent attitudes, making vulgar gestures or noises.... Laughter is the opposite pole of the anguish produced by the dark forces of evil; where there is laughter, it scatters the shades and the phantasms."12 Levi uses the Greek word atopia—"unbecomingness"—to

explain why the

dwarf in the Evil Eye mosaic is laughable: he is unbecoming both because of his form and because of his action. His misshapen body lies far outside Roman standards of ideal beauty, and he attacks the Evil Eye with his huge phallus and his hump. Laughter at the unbecoming human seems to have been the essential weapon against the Evil Eye. In fact, right beneath the Evil Eye mosaic the excavator found proof that unbecomingness—the essential element of the apotropaion—could take different human forms. Under the Evil Eye mosaic he found an earlier pavement that omitted the image of the Evil Eye but still represented a misshapen human. He is not a dwarf, but rather a hunchback with a prominent phallus. And above him appears the same written warning found in the later mosaic: KAI su. 13 The laughable human characters that we find in the potentially dangerous liminal space of the entryway (the dwarf, the hunchback, the god Priapus, and the Black African) all exhibit physical peculiarities considered laughable in ancient Roman culture. Most contemporary cultures teach children not to laugh at persons with physical peculiarities or disabilities, and to accept without remark the Other: persons with a body or skin type different from their own. The ancient Romans (as we have seen in the practice of oratory) considered laughter at a person's physical peculiarities perfectly proper—even healthy. Robert Garland's study makes it clear that for a Roman the mere sight of a deformed person was cause for laughter.14 The wealthy sought out deformed slaves, who—like the fools, dwarfs, and court jesters in the early modern period—served as human lightning rods, attracting evil to themselves even while inciting laughter among the nondeformed viewers. Th &forum morionum

at Rome specialized in the sale of deformed and dis-

abled slaves. Barton notes how in the late Republic and the early Empire the dwarf and the giant, the hunchback and the living skeleton, "ceased being prodigies and became pets; they ceased being destroyed and expiated and became objects of the attention and cultivation of every class."15 If deformed human beings became light-

66

VISUAL

HUMOR

n i n g rods to pull a w a y the forces o f evil f r o m nondeformed individuals through the laughter they incited, w h e n a R o m a n encountered a visual representation o f deformed, phallic d w a r f s in a l i m i n a l — a n d therefore d a n g e r o u s — s p a c e , he or she understood that laughter was the point.

APOTROPAIA

FOR DEMON

VIEWERS

L o o k i n g , then, at the places where these f u n n y — o f t e n misshapen and h y p e r s e x u a l — images occur, w e begin to understand the places w h e r e the Romans perceived potential threats to their well-being. T h e s e are the places w h e r e laughter can be apotropaic. But was it just the laughter o f the person crossing the threshold that took care o f the Evil Eye, demons, and other evil forces? O n repeated viewings an image m i g h t become so familiar that no one laughed at it any more. I f w e think like an ancient R o m a n , w e have to imagine the invisible beings w h o m the image addressed. In so doing, w e begin to understand that such images were meant to surprise, amuse, repel, and distract both the human viewer and the d e m o n viewer. A l t h o u g h no one has fully articulated h o w visual imagery addressed nonhum a n viewers in ancient R o m e , Ruth M e l l i n k o f f has argued convincingly that in the medieval world a large category o f visual representations—classed variously as grotesque, comic, or o b s c e n e — h a d a single purpose: to avert demons. 1 6 T h e y were apotropaic. M e l l i n k o f f has underscored that in many cases the audience for an apotropaic representation was not the human viewer but rather the d e m o n viewer. For this reason unseemly images appear in unusual places: under choir stalls or high up on steeples w h e r e humans could not see them. Yet in other cases they are right out in the open, addressing the unseen but ubiquitous e n e m y — h e n c e the obscene couplings and sexual organs represented on the badges w o r n by pilgrims and the equally shocking antics adorning the margins o f manuscripts (fig. 23). 17 T h e belief that demons were e v e r y w h e r e was one that the medieval world shared w i t h the ancient Romans. 1 8 Just as w e believe, on the basis o f m o d e r n science, that the world is filled w i t h bacteria and viruses, so the Romans believed that demons surrounded them. R o m a n rituals, f r o m the official rites o f the state religion to the practices o f magicians and witches, reveal w h a t Romans feared. T h e r e were rituals to thwart everything that threatened life: illness, plague, famine, war, pain, infertility, and death itself. W h e n there was a threat o f famine because o f wheat

A P O T R O P A I C

L A U G H T E R

Figure 23.

Pilgrim badge with three phallic creatures carry-

ing vulva, ca. 1375—1425.

Figure 24.

Ostia, House of Jupiter the Thunderer (IV, 4), threshold mosaic, ca. A.D. 150.

rust, for example, the priests created a god/goddess o f wheat rust, Robigo, and sacrificed to him/her. 1 9 But if the state religion was there to take care of the big threats, like war, plague, and famine, it was up to the individual to ensure his or her personal safety and well-being through additional measures. To keep away evil from one's person, people regularly w o r e amulets, engaged in practices that w e m i g h t call superstitious, and remained on the lookout for odd omens. 2 0 A b o v e all, they avoided the glance o f anyone suspected o f harboring the Evil Eye.

THE

PHALLUS-FASC/NUM

T h e phallus alone, without its being attached to a misshapen human, was also a p o w e r f u l apotropaion. A viewer entering the second-century H o u s e o f Jupiter the T h u n d e r e r at Ostia w o u l d have understood the meaning of the prominent phallus in black-and-white mosaic (fig. 24).21 For one thing, he or she may already have been w e a r i n g phallic amulets for protection. 22 For another, the viewer w o u l d have connected this representation with the phallic monuments situated at liminal points throughout the ancient city. Both uses o f the phallus created an experiential context for the mosaic threshold. W h a t w o u l d keep the demon from attacking a human? O u r modern w o r d "fascinate" comes f r o m the Latin fascinum,

the term for the phallic object that w o u l d

avert evil by distracting, confusing, attracting, or repelling a demon. 2 3 A n c i e n t Romans believed that the male organ (called the fascinum

from the w o r d fas, "favor-

able") was a talisman o f fertility and prosperity that could also w a r d o f f evil spirits. Noise was also a p o w e r f u l charm: babies and domestic animals often had bells, called tintinnabula,

strung around their necks.

T h e many bronze tintinnabula found at H e r c u l a n e u m and Pompeii combine phajlus and bells in outrageous configurations meant to incite laughter and distract demons. T h e sound o f the bells w o u l d distract demons just as the phallus w o u l d o v e r p o w e r them. T h e house o w n e r hung tintinnabula in any space w h e r e he or she wanted special protection from malevolent spirits. T h e humorous intent of the tintinnabula is clear. W e find a gladiator whose phallus has m o r p h e d into a rabid dog, springing u p to bite him (fig. 25). T h e stern expression on his face and the raised sword in his right hand suggest that he w i l l —

A P O T R O P A I C

L A U G H T E R

Figure 25. Herculaneum, bronze tintinnabulum with gladiator attacking dog-phallus.

improbably—defend himself by stabbing the creature of his own loins. T h e comic trope of the phallus taking over the human informs the tintinnabula showing tiny dwarfs riding their own huge phalli. Phalli take on a life of their o w n — e v e n to the point of sprouting additional phalli. Some of the phalli fly, furnished with wings. Others do double duty as lamps, the wick usually placed in the tip of the phallus. 24 In the Roman city, one only had to look for images of the phallus to find where the danger was. In addition to the altars at crossroads to the lares compítales, a popular way of safeguarding streets was to place a phallus there. In 1880, excavators found a phallus carved out of tufa (25'/2 inches [64.8 cm] in length), installed at a height of about two meters into a wall in the alley between insulae 5 and 6 in region I X (fig. 2Ó).25 Someone—either the person who erected the phallus or a jokester who decided to embellish the image with a hilarious obscenity—placed a carved

V I S U A L

H U M O R

Figure 26. Pompeii, IX, 6, phallus with inscription H A N C EGO CACAVI.

marble plaque beneath it with the inscription

H A N C EGO CACAVI.

In his

1931

article

(written in Latin because of the obscenities it discusses), A. E. Housman explains that the inscription should be translated "I shat out this one (phallus/prick)."26 Although he attributes the inscription to a shameless homosexual who wished to boast about his abilities to take a huge phallus anally, it seems more likely to be a joke at the expense of all men who openly admitted to liking anal penetration (the cinaedi discussed in chapter 9). Elsewhere in Pompeii one finds terra-cotta plaques with single or multiple phalli set into the walls of street corners; they are talismans, like the large tufa phallus, meant to bring good luck to passersby. In an analogous practice, businesses liberally sought the good fortune that phallic images could bring. A masonry cauldron at the entrance to a cloth-treating shop on the Street of Abundance presents the phallus in two forms (fig. 27). The artist created a little temple out of stucco

APOTROPAIC

LAUGHTER

Figure 27.

Pompeii, Shop (IX, 7,2), Street of Abundance, cauldron decorated with phalli

in two forms, excavation photograph 1911.

and paint on the side facing the street. It houses a winged phallus. On the side of the cauldron was a second, much larger phallus, pointing toward the street. Above the oven in his bakery, the proprietor placed a particularly famous plaque, found in 1814 and removed to the Cabinet of Obscene Objects in the Naples Museum five years later. It bears the legend

HIC HABITAT FELICITAS,

or "Here dwells

happiness" (fig. 28). T h e plaque's humor rests on a double meaning: happiness of

72

V I S U A L

H U M O R

f

Figure 28. Pompeii (VI, 6, 18), terracotta plaque with legend HIC H A B I T A T FELICITAS, 9 % X 1 5 % in. ( 2 5 x 4 0 c m ) .

sexual arousal and the good luck that phallic fertility and power will bring. What is more, a Roman viewer might have connected fertility with happiness even more directly, by recognizing a pun in the word felicitas, often used to describe fertility (especially of the land). For someone who recognized this pun, the caption H I C TAT FELICITAS

HABI27

meant something like "Here lives fertility/happiness together." The

baker's concerns (and reasons for placing the phallic plaque over his oven) were that his bread would rise and that his business prosper. Sir William Gell's is the only record of the original position of the plaque before its removal (fig. What all of these fascina have in common is their emphasis on the phallus itself—above and beyond any plausible connection to a human being. Most, in fact, are independent sculptures. Even in the bronze tintinnabulum where the gladiator attacks his own member, the phallus is so enormous that no viewer could imagine a human being so endowed. To effectively merge the apotropaic, phallic fascinum with human bodies and personalities, Roman artists had to invent two new types, the Aethiops and the "pygmy."

A P O T R O P A I C

L A U G H T E R

Figure 29.

Pompeii, VI, 6,18, interior of bakery show-

ing original placement of plaque with legend TAT FELICITAS,

first century

HIC HABI-

A.D.

T H E A E T H I O P S A N D T H E " P Y G M Y " AS

APOTROPAIA

We meet these new types in the baths, where they incited laughter to counter the considerable dangers that lurked there. In her investigation of apotropaia in bath mosaics, Katherine Dunbabin outlines those dangers. 29 One of these, the Evil Eye of the envious person, we have met in the entryway to the House of the Evil Eye at Antioch. In the context of the bath, the danger is that a person so envies the beauty of another that he or she directs the Evil Eye at that person. Visual representations of unbecoming bodies (or, as we shall see in chapter 9, images of attractive people performing outrageous sex acts) could dispel the Evil Eye by inciting laughter.

VISUAL

HUMOR

But there were three further threats in the baths. The heat of baths constituted a physical danger addressed by images of sandals (reminding the viewer to protect his or her feet from the scalding pavement) or images of the Aethiops, or Black African. The Aethiops communicated the idea of heat in two ways. He comes from a hot climate, and his Greek name, Aethiops, means "burnt by the sun." The Greeks attributed the Aethiops's black skin to having been burnt by the sun. The two other dangers concerned evil forces. Some ancient texts cite demons lurking in the baths; others specify the baths as a place where malevolent individuals went to work black magic.30 Mosaics representing the phallus in single or multiple form, as well as the Aethiops with large phallus, seem to be the most frequent remedies against the dangers of the baths. Representations of the Aethiops in literature and visual art betray Roman ambivalence toward the black-skinned inhabitants of Africa. Frank Snowden and, more recently, Lloyd Thompson have attempted to account for two different visual representations of the Aethiops, one handsome, the other—the apotropaic Aethiops—grotesque and laughable.31 To cite but one example of the Aethiops as apotropaion: it was to provoke laughter that the owner of the House of the Menander had the mosaicist pave the entry to the caldarium, or hot room, of his bath with the image of a black servant (plate i). 32 His huge member immodestly hangs, perhaps partially engorged, below his kilt. The artist has comically framed the servant's penis between his spindly legs and emphasized it by using purple tesserae to highlight the exposed glans. What is more, he is carrying two water pitchers that look suspiciously phallic. Beneath the figure of the servant may be another reference to the phallus, this time within a vagina, but disguised as an ointment jar suspended on straps framed by strigils (skin scrapers used in the bath). In this visual pun, the ointment jar becomes the phallus and the strigils the labia of the vagina. A mosaic from Sousse in Tunisia makes a similar statement, where two pubic triangles representing female genitalia flank a fish-shaped phallus.33 Related to the Aethiops—both because of their supposed African origin and their use as apotropaia—are what the Romans called pygmies. In regard to the body of the pygmy, Veronique Dasen has demonstrated that the visual form of what the Greeks called the Trvyfidios combined ancient pseudoethnography with the pathology of dwarfism (large heads, short limbs and torso, protruding buttocks) to create a hybrid Other.34 For this reason, some scholars today prefer to use the

APOTROPAIC

LAUGHTER

75

seal*

Figure 30.

1.0 m

Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, section showing symposium scene and

pygmies on the Nile and table with silver service.

term " d w a r f " rather than "pygmy" to underscore the difference between the pygmy as imagined by Greek and Roman artists and the ethnic reality of the groups selfidentified as Pygmies still living in Africa. 3 5 In my discussion I retain the word " p y g m y " in the ancient Roman sense. Recently I have asked why pygmies performing naughty deeds appear in tombs. 36 In the midst of high-blown paintings trying desperately to make Vestorius Priscus, a minor official at Pompeii who died at the age of 22, into a great man, we have this: a tiny frieze beneath a symposium scene showing pygmies dancing on a boat and another pygmy o f f to the left defecating on a fish (fig. 30). A century later, in front of the columbarium in Tomb 16 at Isola Sacra (the cemetery along the road between Portus and Ostia) w e find a Nilotic mosaic populated with five ithyphallic pygmies. One pair, on a boat, battles a crocodile; a single pygmy carries water in the direction of the wellhead that interrupts the mosaic. A second pair, navigating a little boat, engage in anal sex (fig. 31). This scene of male-male intercourse between two pygmies in a boat faces the area probably

76

V I S U A L

H U M O R

Figure 31.

Ostia, Isola Sacra, tomb 16, mosaic.

used for funeral banquets, whereas the image of two pygmies battling a crocodile greets the viewer as he enters the courtyard on his way into the columbarium. After seeing the battling pygmies, and perhaps laughing, the visitor walks over the image at the center of the mosaic. It is the head of Oceanus—another apotropaion.37 This is, of course, the viewing scenario for a human visitor to the tomb. Yet visits to the tomb were infrequent. Thefamilia entered the tomb on the Parentalia, the Lemuria, and sometimes to commemorate a death or birth anniversary.38 But even when there were no human viewers to look at them, these images of pygmies performing unbecoming acts addressed another sort of viewer altogether: the demons thought to lurk in tombs. Like the head of Oceanus or the phallus-fascinum, the pygmies were intrinsically apotropaic and worked to keep demons away. There are

A P O T R O P A I C

L A U G H T E R

77

more examples from tombs—enough to make a convincing case for the use of the phallic, sexual, pygmy to thwart the demons thought to lurk in tombs. To test my hypothesis that humorous images of naughty pygmies addressed both human and demon viewer, let us leave the tomb context to consider a pygmy mosaic from a bath building at Ostia Antica. Giovanni Becatti has dated the mosaic found in the Baths of Neptune to the initial bath building, A.D. 132—139, since the excavator, Dante Vaglieri, found it beneath a later floor (fig. 32). 39 Although it is lacunose, it still preserves two stock scenes of unbecoming pygmy behavior (fig. 33). Along the south edge we see a crocodile pursuing a nude, ithyphallic pygmy running to the left. In his left hand he carries a forked stick while he stretches out his right. A boat occupies the center of the pavement, oriented to be seen right side up by a viewer walking along the west edge of the pavement, otherwise filled with long-stemmed water lilies. T h e boat's prow ends in the head of a \etos, and two poles rise from the hull to carry an awning. A t the base of the poles are the tops of several amphoras. Farther to the left are the remains of two figures. Becatti is certainly correct in his suggestion that it is a scene of sexual intercourse between a malefemale pygmy couple. Most interesting for my hypothesis is the function of the space. It is set apart from the grand, internal spaces of the bath. But its relatively large size (5.76 x 3.63 m) makes it unlikely to have been the janitor's room, as the excavator believed. 40 Becatti noted that the room has all the requisites of a latrine. It is located next to a principal entry, and it stands over the sewer coming from the bath. T h e position of the mosaic itself, not centered in the room but pushed up against the north and east walls, suggests that the latrine seats lined the south and west walls. From these seats the Roman viewer would have had prime views of the cavorting pygmies. Scholars have overlooked the possibility that this mosaic might have been an apotropaion to ensure the safety of defecating viewers. After all, the mosaics of the three large halls of the bath represent sea deities with their retinue of fish, dolphins, and hybrid aquatic creatures—all of them references to the waters of the bath. Following a similar logic, the mosaic in the room at the southeast corner of the palaestra depicts athletes exercising. Why, then, should our mosaic of pygmies in a Nile landscape not simply be another reference to water and bathing? To answer this question, we must ask why someone would need protection in the latrine. Analysis of imagery found in latrines of both private houses and public

VISUAL

HUMOR

Figure 32 (left). Ostia, Baths of Neptune (II, 4, 2), plan, detail, southeast corner with pygmy mosaic. Figure 33 (below). Ostia, Baths of Neptune (II, 4, 2), pygmy mosaic.

buildings reveals that Romans considered it prudent to evoke at least one deity, the goddess Fortuna, while voiding bladder or bowels. A particularly telling image of Fortuna graced the corridor leading to the latrine of a tavern at Pompeii (fig. 34). Although some scholars believe that the painting was a warning to tavern-goers to avoid defecating in the corridor rather than in the latrine, August Mau's interpre-

A P O T R O P A I C

L A U G H T E R

79

tation makes more sense. H e proposed that Fortuna is there to protect the vulnerable man, squatting to defecate—and quite naked. 41 T h e best evidence to support Mau's interpretation is that there was an altar beneath the image, and that the serpents are the agathodaemones that frequently appear in painted lararia. Here one of them licks the squatting man's head. T h e phrase

CACATOR CAVE MALU(ITI)

("Shit-

ter beware!") hardly fits with the combination of the benevolent images of Fortuna and the agathodaemones. It might have been added later by someone wanting to add humor to the scene. A well-preserved painted image of Fortuna in the latrine of the Suburban Baths at Pompeii stands next to the representation of an altar with offerings on it. She stands under two red garlands and holds the cornucopia in her left arm and with her right rests a rudder on a globe. T h e image dates to the Fourth Style. 42 Another shrine to Fortuna, this time a statue of the goddess in an aedicula and dating to the same period as our mosaic, graced the latrine of the Barracks of the Firemen at Ostia. A certain C . Valerius Myron dedicated it.43 These images of Fortuna in latrines demonstrate that ancient Romans felt the need for protection in the act of defecation. If Fortuna (and the agathodaemones) is apotropaic, then perhaps our pygmies are as well. T h e closest parallel is the mosaic that decorated the semicircular area in front of the seats in the latrine of the Great South Baths at Timgad. 4 4 T h e remaining fragment of the figural decoration shows a crocodile menacing two pygmies, one clearly ithyphallic. Someone entering the latrine would have taken in the pygmy images before sitting down to evacuate. Finally, in the latrine at the northwest side of the forum at Bolsena is a painting of a Nile landscape with pygmies, dated to the second quarter of the first century

A.D.45

These parallels suggest that the representation of the pygmy-Other and his antics could help to make even the latrine a place safe from demons. T h e Baths of Neptune are an attested imperial commission, begun by Hadrian and dedicated by Antoninus Pius in A.D. 139, a fact that underscores the "correctness" or appropriateness of the naughty pygmy imagery in the latrine. 46 T h e master-artist w h o set the iconographical program for the decoration of this imperial bath knew that its patrons, coming from all the social classes of Ostia, understood and appreciated both the need for protection in the latrine and the efficacy of the pygmy-Other as apotropaion. In this way, our pygmy mosaic reveals socially shared beliefs quite different from our own.

VISUAL

HUMOR

Figure 34. Pompeii, IX, 7, 21—22, south wall of corridor h leading to latrine g, Fortuna and nude man defecating with inscription C A C A T O R C A V E M A L U ( I T I ) .

Despite these clear examples from baths, tombs, and latrines, in some cases it is impossible—or foolhardy—to assert that an image of a misbehaving Aethiops or pygmy is purely apotropaic in function. In many instances representations of the pygmy and Aethiops cavorting on the Nile do double duty. If their wild dancing and outdoor lovemaking are apotropaic, it is because a Roman viewer saw such behavior as outrageously transgressive. But the activities of the Nile in flood, inevitably including exotic fauna and flora, were also fitting decoration for gardens and baths. The Roman notion that decoration should fit the use of a space (decor follows utilitas) allows Nilotic landscapes inhabited by funny pygmies and Aethiopes to be both apotropaic and decorative. In the following chapter I examine imagery where Aethiopes and pygmies perform funny, unbecoming acts—but in specific contexts where their apotropaic function, if intended, gets combined with notions of domestic decoration and the colonization of the new province of Egypt.

APOTROPAIC

LAUGHTER

8l

Part Two

S O C I A L HUMOR

We could argue that all humor is social—even the kind that makes a person laugh out loud without any company at all. Yet certain kinds of humor foreground relationships among people, since they work by calling attention to differences in gender, class, education, and ethnicity. To recall William Martineau's model, social humor plays with intragroup as well as intergroup dynamics. 1 Each chapter engages different theoretical models. T h e terms of postcolonial theory inform chapter 5, where I look at images of pygmies and Aethiopes. When they're acting the clown, they seem—on first glance—to be jolly decorations for the watery or garden settings in which they so often appear. Yet as we saw in chapter 4, the constructed pygmy can also be a powerful apotropaion. What is more, both pygmy and Aethiops appear in distinctly Nilotic settings; they stand for Egypt a n d — b y extension—the people who went from being proud citizens of the richest area in the Mediterranean to the colonial subjects of Rome. Chapter 6 looks at the differences between the ancient Romans who laughed at visual representations and the modern scholars who have attempted to explain why. What we find is the omniscient scholar-viewer explaining ancient humor anachronistically by insisting on erudite interpretations that would have been beyond the

»3

ken of most ancient Romans—especially the men and women who frequented the taverns where all the funny images appear. The result is a conflict between modern scholarship and ancient Roman social and cultural realities. Because these academicians assume that ordinary Romans knew the same texts and images that they know—thanks to scholarly editions and photo archives—they end up making ancient Roman viewers into versions of themselves. Since all three humorous visual representations considered in chapter 6 are paintings from taverns, I'm able to assume that their clientele belonged to the lower classes. I doubt that any modern scholar, if magically transported to ancient Pompeii or Ostia, would frequent any of them—except to go slumming. Two of these taverns, at Pompeii, are nothing but precarious, bare walls today—the best paintings cut from the walls and sent to the Naples Archaeological Museum. In the case of the so-called Tavern of Venus, I reconstruct what an ancient Roman viewer would have seen from the street, and once it's clear how many different signals that facade was sending, the scholarly interpretations start to crumble. The unusual comic-strip format of the painting removed from the Tavern of Salvius has the characters in its four panels speaking to each other—and what they say is hardly the stuff of high-minded scholarly discourse. If I treat the content as popular humor along the lines of Roman mime, it's because of what the characters say and do. It turns out that lower-class Romans were acutely aware of the pretensions of the intellectuals of their own day. On the literary side, we have the evidence (although from a late source) that the intellectual was the butt of many a joke. It's the scholasticus who's mocked in h i of the 265 jokes in the Philogelos. Barry Baldwin translates this late Greek term "egghead," in the sense of the absentminded intellectual.2 But on the visual side, we have the outrageous parody of the ultimate intellectuals, the Seven Sages, in a tavern at Ostia. To explore fully how this parody works in terms of class I invoke Bakhtin's articulation of the carnivalesque, since everything about the painting program works in terms of reversals: of class, social role, language, and bodily functions. 3 Chapter 7 leaves the lower classes behind to look at how humor worked in elite visual culture. Although there's lots of textual evidence—in the literary forms of satire, parody, and invective—for socially transgressive humor, the visual record is scant and fragmentary. I turn, once again, to wall painting. Two of my examples have a clear context within one of the finest houses of Pompeii. Since they are at

SOCIAL

HUMOR

least eighty years apart in date, the friezes in question demonstrate how ideas of the comic changed. In the earlier frieze the parody of gods and heroes is specific— even to the point of labeling each character in Greek. The later comic frieze is as generic as the earlier one is pointed, content to get a laugh out of a single—and quite generic—comic premise. In between these two friezes comes politically incorrect imagery squarely aimed at Augustan propaganda and its trickle-down from Rome to Pompeii. Although I can only guess at the original form the fragments took, enough remains from the 1760 excavations to reconstruct a wickedly funny frieze that targeted Rome's two founding heroes by transforming them into dog-headed apes. Here, too, scholarly interpretation goes off into the stratosphere, ignoring context in its pursuit of iconographie details. I propose a reading that attempts to put the frieze back into a room in someone's house at Pompeii.

SOCIAL

HUMOR

POWER OVER T H E O T H E R — OR T H E O T H E R ' S P O W E R ? Laughing at the Pygmy and theAethiops

When is the representation of the "pygmy" and the Aethiops decorative, and when apotropaicP Even more difficult, when do these supposed inhabitants of the province of Egypt stand for the colonial power of Rome? Over the past decade I have puzzled over the meaning of representations of what contemporary social historians call the Other—specifically in an attempt to understand two types, introduced in the last chapter in the context of apotropaia: the "pygmy" and the Black African, or Aethiops. Both types appear in Roman paintings and mosaics from the late Republic through the fifth century A.D., yet they often have little to do with the inhabitants of the lands of the Nile. They come more from the imaginations of artists and geographers than they do from observation of real pygmies or black Africans. In this chapter I explore how visual representations of these two types reveal the Roman mentality toward Egypt. For social and political reasons, the Romans needed to—to coin a verb—"other" Egypt, and they commissioned artists to create the Aethiops and the pygmy—as well as the Nile landscape—as visual representations of the Other. To simplify, the Other is the opposite of the dominant power in any culture. The dominant power often creates the Other in colonial situations. For instance,

87

when the British colonized India, they constructed the Other as the nonwhite native of the subcontinent. To justify and maintain power over the Other, the colonizer attributes to him or her traits that oppose the colonizer's collective ideology. Looking at any colonial situation we can see at least some of these oppositions: civilized/barbarian, white/colored, restrained/wild, sexually chaste/sexually promiscuous, intelligent/stupid, clean/dirty, properly religious/superstitious, and so on. Several scholars have suggested that the ancient Romans, too, as the dominant power that colonized the Mediterranean for many centuries, were constantly engaged in differentiating the Other from themselves in order to reinforce their own formulations of their cultural dominance. 1 In visual representation, the Other emerges in several guises, all marked by physical difference from the ideal Roman body type, including the normally proportioned but black-skinned Aethiops, pygmies given the physiques of dwarfs, and humans with physical deformities, including dwarfs and hunchbacks. As we have seen in our discussion of apotropaia, dwarfs and hunchbacks represent the Other, but not the colonial Other, since they do not belong to any specific place. But Romans connected both the Aethiops and the pygmy with Egypt and with the Nile landscape in particular. We should be able to understand power relationships between colonized Egypt and the Roman colonizer by looking at visual representations of the pygmy and the Aethiops. For one thing, these images come from a variety of contexts and in a variety of media. For another, if we understand them as constructions of the Other rather than records of the reality of the ethnic Aethiops or the ethnic pygmy, we can see how they expressed the mentality of Roman viewers. Unfortunately, it's not quite so simple. As with any theoretical model, exceptions abound. When is the theme of the Nile in flood—populated with pygmies, exotic beasts, and equally exotic flora—simply decoration that comments on its setting in the bath or in the garden of a Roman house? And whereas colonial theory requires that the colonized be "othered," does it require that pygmies and Aethiopes behave like animals, copulating and evacuating out in the open? Could their rampant sexual and digestive incontinence have another meaning? And finally, what about scenes where they don't misbehave, but rather act out the parts usually assumed by proper human beings? In this chapter I suggest that representations of these mythic inhabitants of the flooded Nile could act, simultaneously, on three levels. They could provide scenic

88

SOCIAL

HUMOR

entertainment, evoking the exotic fertility of the new Roman province, the jewel in the Roman crown. They could also "other" this province and all its inhabitants in order to empower a Roman viewer. A n d third, they could be used to avert demons: they could function as apotropaia in the ways described in chapter 4.

E G Y P T AS

WONDERLAND:

THE PALESTRINA NILE

MOSAIC

T h e earliest representations of Egypt seem bent on recording the wonders of the Egyptian landscape. T h e most famous example dates to around 100 B.C. and formed part of an elaborate fountain, or nymphaeum, that formed part of a public building below the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste.2 If there is a colonial Other in the Palestrina Nile mosaic, he is not misshapen or badly behaved. Most scholars agree that the upper part of the mosaic represents the wilds of Nubia in upper Egypt, populated with a mixture of real and fantastic creatures, labeled in Greek. T w o groups of Aethiopes appear in the guise of hunters, quite distinct in body type and behavior from the apotropaic clown Aethiops that appears forty years later in the baths of the House of the Menander (see plate 1). They are noble savages. Finely proportioned and dignified, they are exotic counterparts to the white men in the Nile delta below: Egyptian priests officiating in temples and soldiers gathering in palaces along the Nile (fig. 35). Just as the Aethiopes-hunters are the straight men to the Aethiopes-clowns that appear later in the first century, so the boatmen who navigate the waters around the temples and palaces are serious counterparts to another late first-century type, the comic pygmy-dwarf. They are ordinary men of the working classes—and they even wear the same headgear we later see on the pygmy-dwarf: white conical hats or round hats with flaps over the ears (fig. 36). But their proportions are regular, and they display none of the deformities of dwarfism. In a word, although we have the Aethiopes and the common Nile boatmen, not one of them plays the clown. T h e Palestrina Nile mosaic, like the contemporaneous threshold to the Alexander mosaic in the House of the Faun at Pompeii, seems bent on recording the wonders of Egypt rather than commenting on the laughable otherness of its inhabitants.3 There is no humor in either mosaic. T h e human actors in the Palestrina mosaic are unusual but not unbecoming either in their physical appearance or their activities.

POWER

OVER

THE

OTHER

Figure 36.

Palestrina, Nile mosaic, detail, boatmen.

The animals in the House of the Faun mosaic might surprise the viewer unused to the sight of crocodiles and hippopotami, but there is little to laugh at.

THE INCONTINENT OTHER:

AETHIOPS

A N D P Y G M Y IN T H E H O U S E OF T H E

SCULPTOR

But when we get to the later part of the century, around the time when Augustus defeats Antony and Cleopatra at Actium (31

B.C.),

a fairly well-to-do house owner

in Pompeii commissioned an artist to paint a comical fifty-meter frieze around the peristyle that surrounded his garden (labeled "first peristyle" on plan, fig. 37).4 The frieze on the north and south walls of the peristyle presented a complex—and highly loaded—view of Egypt. The landscape seems to be immersed in water— the blue-green Nile in flood—a habitat for exotic flora and fauna. And the artist has populated this enormous frieze not only with exotic creatures, like crocodiles, hippos, and cranes, but with equally exotic and wild humans of two types. We find the pygmy—a little person with the characteristic deformities of dwarfism—and the Aethiops—a normally proportioned person whose skin is black. The males of both types sport enormous penises and perform outrageous acts.5 A visitor would have entered the peristyle from the north, where the best-preserved fragment features little people dancing on a papyrus boat with an ejaculating prow (plate 2). The artist has depicted their animated dance steps in mirror reversal—except for their huge penises: one pygmy's erect, the other's forming a dangling third leg. On the penis-prow a pygmy woman claps her hands in time to the dance. We see just the profile of another person in the space between. We don't know what a viewer would have seen as she walked along the right side of the covered walkway, since Amedeo Maiuri found no traces of the frieze on that wall, but on the south wall our viewer saw another male couple dancing, and this time the dancers were normally proportioned Aethiopes (fig. 38). What a dance! Both are endowed, like the pygmies, with huge penises. But this time they are clearly urinating or ejaculating, and they have enormous testicles hanging between their legs. The dancer on the left raises his left leg and teeters back on his right while grabbing his head with both hands—a movement that swings his penis back behind his buttocks, watering or inseminating the soil at the feet of the double-pipe player, a black woman in a long gown.

POWER

OVER

THE

OTHER

91

Figure 37.

Figure 38.

Pompeii, House of the Sculptor (VII, 7, 24), plan.

Pompeii, House of the Sculptor (VII, 7, 24), earlier peristyle, south frieze

(wall A), dancing Aethiopes.

His partner, his weight balanced on both legs, steps toward him, holding crossed sticks in his left hand and touching his head with his right. His ejaculate sprays his partner's raised leg, but he's evacuating from behind as well. A nasty-looking crocodile menaces him, aiming for his prominent buttocks and even more prominent scrotum. The man's only defense is to bombard the croc with feces. Such projectile defecation is a standard defense of both the Aethiops and the pygmy. In this painting the crocodile gets doubly fertilized. The Aethiops to the right seems to have stopped for a moment in flight and planted his feet in a high squatting position (so his penis won't scrape the ground), and he aims his feces at the crocodile. His arms look like they're made of rubber as they flutter out to right and left (fig. 39). This Aethiops closes the narrative. The scene quickly shifts in tone and in scale, with figures half the size of the Aethiops populating a restful, idyllic setting (fig. 40). Above we see a reclining diner, below a nude Aethiops walking toward a tiny double-pipe player. Foodstuffs and vessels for food and drink fill out the scene, with a shish kebab on a skewer resting on a big storage jar (,dolium). A visitor who continued her walk along the east side of the peristyle would have noticed an even greater shift in both setting and style, where another, less talented artist painted pygmy pugilists fighting in the palaestra.6 The only references to the Nile are oblique, carried by a vignette of a crane perched atop a fallen pygmy and pecking at his buttocks,7 and by a pygmy hunting scene.8 The armed warships in this frieze may also have referred to Egypt or even Actium. 9 Admittedly the humor in the east frieze is much less direct than the scenes on the north and south walls. What's funny here is how the artist has put pygmies in the place of ideal athletes. Their deformed bodies, like that of the hunchback from Antioch, are intrinsically humorous for the Roman viewer. Everything about them contrasts with the Roman ideal of bodily beauty, from their physical proportions to the large size of the penises. But it's the artist of the north and south friezes who succeeds in combining evocative landscapes with truly funny narratives. If we consider the pygmies and Aethiopes from these friezes in terms of our first two categories—matching decoration to the use of the space and representing the colonized Other—they succeed admirably. The peristyle surrounded a garden, probably one with fountains or water features, so that the Nile landscape with its exotic plants, beasts, and wild humans

POWER

OVER

THE

OTHER

93

Figure 39.

Pompeii, House of the Sculptor (VII, 7, 24), earlier peristyle, south frieze

(wall A), detail, defecating Aethiops.

fit in perfectly. In fact, my survey of images of pygmies at Pompeii demonstrates that although they appear in other areas of the house, it's in the gardens that they constitute the main decoration. In the interior spaces of houses, pygmy imagery takes u p — a t m o s t — 1 0 percent of the painted surface (fig. 41). Out in the garden or peri-

94

S O C I A L

H U M O R

Figure 40. Pompeii, House of the Sculptor (VII, 7, 24), earlier peristyle, south frieze (wall A), sacral-idyllic landscape.

LOCATION Garden & Peristyle couch one wall all walls Atrium upper zone frieze Ala upper zone Tablinum predella Oecus median zone Triclinium median predella Cubiculum predella Bath predella

Figure 41.

NUMBER

WALL SURFACE COVERED

1 2 2

33 percent 100 percent 100 percent

1 1

5 percent 5 percent

1

5 percent

1

5 percent

1

10 percent

1

10 percent 5 percent

1

5 percent

1

5 percent

Chart of pygmy imagery in houses at Pompeii.

style, often—as here in the House of the Sculptor—pygmy imagery dominates; in other cases it shares the stage equally with representations of wild animals in parks (the so-called paradeisos motif) or idyllic landscapes dotted with temples, sacred trees, worshippers, and travelers (the so-called sacral-idyllic landscape).

POWER

OVER

THE

OTHER

As for the "othering" of Egypt and its people, remember that in this period few Romans ever got to see Egypt. One needed a senatorial visa to go there. 10 So it's little wonder that after Actium artists increasingly mythologize Egypt. Our frieze manages to denigrate both the normally proportioned Aethiopes whom we saw in the Palestrina Nile mosaic as well as the little people—the constructed pygmy whom the Romans imagined living on the Nile. Yet although the artist depicts both as physically deformed—and emotionally, sexually, and digestively incontinent—images of the pygmy and the Aethiops also underscore the fertility of this exotic land. They remind the viewer of the rich agricultural bounty ensured by the annual flood of the Nile—the very occasion that calls for all their feasting and dancing.

P O L I T E PYGMIES ON T H E

NILE:

T H E A T R I U M OF T H E H O U S E OF T H E

BULL

But not all representations of the inhabitants of the Nile included wild, orgiastic scenes. Around the same time that artists were painting the peristyle of the House of the Sculptor the owner of another house at Pompeii, the House of the Bull, had an artist paint pygmies acting out much more ordinary activities (plate 3). One reason that this is such a mild caricature is its location: the atrium was the most public space of the house, open daily to clients and even casual visitors. Within the SecondStyle scheme of the wall, now faded beyond recognition, our frieze originally occupied the same position on the wall as the contemporary frieze in the atrium of the Villa of the Mysteries, where the artist depicted scenes along the Nile similar to those of the Palestrina Nile mosaic—populated with normally proportioned individuals. 11 Faux-marble blocks with columns or piers in perspective transformed the atrium into a kind of colonnaded pavilion with our little frieze decorating the architrave that crowned the wall (fig. 42).12 Hanging masks frame the frieze, with figures placed on a yellow platform. The blue background suggests the Nile. Rather than engaging in outrageous, comic activities, these pygmies perform everyday activities: they are stand-ins for people with normative body types. Starting from the left we see two men in togas conversing, then a nearly nude, black worker carrying a pole across his back (a frequent motif in Nilotic scenes); his burden hangs from two baskets at either end of the pole. A woman with her child in

SOCIAL

HUMOR

Figure 42.

Pompeii,

House of the Bull (V, 1, 7), view of atrium 4, east and north walls.

tow approaches a sales counter with a woman behind it. Farther to the right is a seated black pygmy wearing a traveler's hat, or petasus, approached from behind by another man. An architectural element separates this group from two people standing near a table with vessels on it, followed by a vignette of a man and a woman reclining on a banquet couch while a diminutive servant waits on them. If the tone of this pygmy frieze is calm, it is because its humor lies solely in the substitution of little people for normally proportioned humans. The artist has lampooned body types. As we will see, an artist working on the contemporaneous frieze in the atriolo (little atrium) of the bath in the House of the Menander used similar means to exaggerate the human figure, but here in the House of the Bull he is creating caricatures of ordinary people rather than of gods and mythological heroes. We find represented a range of social classes and activities, from the work of the black basket-bearer to the woman buying foodstuffs, and from the leisurely conversation of the two men in togas to the couple enjoying an intimate banquet. Although it dates a hundred years later, the frieze from the atrium of the Villa of Julia Felix, also in Pompeii, gives us an idea of how such genre scenes might look with Romans—rather than pygmies—as actors. This scene of sales of vessels and cloth stuffs is set in a specific place and time: market day in Pompeii's forum (fig. 43). 13 A viewer could recognize familiar faces and activities—maybe even him- or herself, while following the frieze around Julia's atrium. Not so for the viewer in the House of the Bull, where the watery setting and the dwarf bodies of its inhabitants defamiliarized the familiar. The frieze in the House of the Bull had a dual function: it was genre decoration as well as caricature—and perhaps it also

P O W E R

OVER

T H E

O T H E R

97

Figure 43.

Pompeii, Praedia of Julia Felix (II 4, 3), atrium 24, scene of sales in forum.

expressed the otherness of Egypt. But there are no outsized phalli or tragic-comic crocodile hunts here. The frieze is clearly not apotropaic.

A C O M P E N D I U M OF P Y G M Y T H E H O U S E OF T H E

CAPERS:

DOCTOR

These two examples demonstrate that, along with the general increase in Egyptian imagery that comes in during the age of Augustus, 14 artists created humorous visual representations that encoded new attitudes toward the inhabitants of Egypt. There was a sliding scale of denigration ("othering"). Although many representations of hyperphallic Aethiopes and pygmies explicitly denigrated Egypt and Egyptians, there were mild caricatures as well, where pygmies populated an Egyptian version of the standard sacral-idyllic landscape. But if we flash forward seventy or eighty years two things happen: the Aethiops disappears, and the pygmy takes on a fuller range of caricatural roles.15 The earthquake that devastated Pompeii on February 5 in A.D. 62—an ominous warning of the eruption of Vesuvius that was to bury the city on August 24 in 79—seems to have changed the social and political climate of the town. According to some scholars, the elites left the town to the crews of laborers who set about the work of re-

98

SOCIAL

HUMOR

building. Many big houses, like that of the Menander, were still being reconstructed and redecorated at the time of the eruption. H o w , then, to explain the phenomenal proliferation of profusely decorated houses in the postearthquake period? In 1979 Paul Zanker proposed one scenario: that nonelites, especially former slaves, took advantage of cheap real estate prices to enlarge or modify damaged houses to create what he calls "miniature villas"— yet another example of "freedman art." 1 6 More recently, scholars have contended that elites did not abandon Pompeii to enterprising freedmen and gangs of construction workers. Henrik Mouritsen has argued on the basis of inscriptions that there was a much greater elite presence than earlier scholarship had proposed. 17 Roger L i n g doubts Maiuri's hypothesis that the owners abandoned the House of the Menander after the earthquake of A.D. 62. 18 Jens-Arne Dickmann has reexamined the evidence of domestic architecture, proposing that what we're seeing are new versions of the old atrium house that shift their emphasis from atrium and tablinum (where a paterfamilias would conduct his daily business) to the luxury garden around the peristyle. 19 Lauren Petersen goes a bit farther, casting substantial doubt on the whole notion of freedman art; her reading of the House of Octavius Quartio, for example, characterizes the elaborate garden—complete with dual canals, fish tanks, and an unusually ambitious, multivalent program of painted and sculpted decoration—not so much as a "Walt Disney World"—but as a reasonable way to refashion an old-style Roman town house. 20 Whatever the explanation, decorative schemes turn quite elaborate in this period. Owners tended to favor complex iconographical programs, like that of the center pictures in the House of the Vettii, 21 or the combinations of paintings and garden sculpture in the group of late houses discussed by Zanker. 2 2 I would characterize this urge on the part of patrons to multiply meanings and to complicate interpretations as a "compendium mentality." We see its effect in the apparent increase in the use of pygmy imagery of this period, with artists sometimes inventing new compositions or even new story-lines for the pygmies to act out. T h e best case-in-point comes from an odd little house in Pompeii excavated in 1882 and dubbed the House of the Doctor (fig. 44).23 Because of space restrictions the owner could not replicate the symmetrical plan of the atrium house; in the extension of his house to the southwest he carved out a little peristyle and a

P O W E R

OVER

T H E

O T H E R

99

20

21

23 - 2 4 J 5

22

26

27

dJ c

-CITE m

k n•

9 •

b

i

Figure 44. Pompeii, House of the Doctor (VIII, 5, 24), plan.

large reception and dining space (o on the plan). It is likely that if the owner conducted business, it would have been in the large room—not the tiny tablinum. It is certain that entertainment took place there. We find a similar displacement of the functions of business and convivial play in the much grander House of the Vettii, where the owners dispensed entirely with the tablinum and shifted business functions to the largest room around the peristyle.2 On the low walls (plutei) between the columns of the peristyle leading to room o, the excavator, Antonio Sogliano, found three frescoes that constitute the widestranging compendium of pygmy imagery from Pompeii's last two decades.25 He had them cut from the walls and shipped to the Naples Museum. Until now, no scholar has tried to reconstruct their original setting to ask how a viewer would have seen them. Sogliano's brief excavation report fails to tell us which way the frescoes faced. Did they face the peristyle's covered walkway, or did they face the open area (g on the plan)? From well-preservedpluteus decorations, like those from the peristyle of the House of the Menander, it is clear that both sides of the wall can receive painted decoration.26 Sogliano, however, only stipulates that the paintings were on the inner side ("il lato interno") of the wall. 27 August Mau, who published his account in the following year, uses the same ambiguous phrase, but he provides another clue. He notes that the open area is a not a planted garden but a basin, paved with red cement (opus signinum), and that it had two drainpipes, one leading to a

SOCIAL

HUMOR

cistern to store water and a second one to take overflow water out to the street. 28 Today, none of this pavement remains. A t some point Pompeii's garden crew dug up what remained of the pavement to plant ornamental bushes. Faintly indicated on Sogliano's plan on the west wall of the peristyle, and still in evidence today, is a break in the wall—most likely for a gate that would allow a viewer to enter the basin. Both Sogliano and Mau start their descriptions from the west side, and they proceed from left to right. If the painted panels faced the covered walkway of the peristyle, the description would have had to proceed from right to left. Both archaeologists were standing in the basin—rather than in the peristyle's w a l k w a y — t o describe the friezes before their removal. Digital reconstruction allows us to imagine how an ancient viewer would have experienced the paintings (plate 4). A t the western side we have a scene of pygmies hunting crocodiles and hippos on the Nile. This panel is taller than it is wide, a fact emphasized by the frame culminating in an upside-down V; the panel just fits the existing wall at the site. After the break in the wall is a long, unframed panel with a scene of pygmies banqueting that fits between the middle and corner columns. For the decoration of the north wall we have to rely on the excavator's descriptions, since the painting was left in place and has disappeared. It was a simple scene painted on a red background showing a lion pursuing a deer. This simple decoration continued around to the northern half of the east wall, where there was a swamp plant flanked by a rooster on the right and an ibis pecking at a toad on the left. But on the southern half of that wall was the much-discussed caricature of the Judgment of Solomon (plate 5). What a compendium! On the west side the artist has given us wild pygmies in foolhardy battle, and equally wild pygmies feasting and copulating along the Nile. On the north and part of the east side he painted generic scenes of animals, but then there's a dramatic shift to a full-blown pygmy parody of a story from the Bible. One key to understanding why the artist put these disparate themes where he did is to see them as a Roman visitor would. Although it's unlikely that the owner used the tiny tablinum (f on the plan) for meeting with clients (if he had any), the builder put a window on the side of the tablinum facing the garden. If the owner stood in the tablinum to greet visitors, he could glance out and see his peristyle decorated with the two pygmy vignettes (the hunt and the outdoor picnic); beyond he could see the doors to the small dining hall (m), the stairs to the upper floor (n),

POWER

OVER

THE

OTHER

IOI

and the entrance to the big dining room (o). I like to think that the owner kept the basin filled with a few inches of rainwater so that it reflected the pygmy paintings and set them, as it were, floating on the Nile. But, as is clear from the digital reconstruction, the best view of the two pygmy scenes on the west wall was for a person entering the little peristyle and walking toward room o. As for the Judgment of Solomon, it now seems clear that it was meant for invited guests to see, either as they emerged from room o or when, in an informal mood and perhaps after some wine drinking, they kicked off their sandals and sat on the west wall, dangling their feet in the water.29 As we will see, it is a sophisticated parody well suited to the practice of ekphrasis. At this point we must delve into the meanings of the paintings themselves. How do these pygmy paintings function in light of what we know about Roman attitudes toward garden decor, "othering" colonial Egypt, and—perhaps—warding away evil spirits? The hunt pulls out all the stops to make the pygmies both fierce and reckless hunters. Not only do the little fellows battle crocodiles (and lose); they even try to harness a hippo (plate 6). We can see one of the casualties drifting down the Nile; the artist has painted him white, perhaps to let us know he's dead. In the lower left corner our determined pygmies hunt using a hook hidden in a hunk of bait. Evidently the crocodile has swallowed it; three pygmies try to pull on the rope, while a fourth is on his back, holding two ropes like reins. The fact that there are no direct parallels for this motif suggests that it is the artist's invention. In either case, the pygmies clearly act the clown for the Roman viewer, accustomed to serious hunt scenes where the protagonist (for example, the deceased man represented on a typical hunt sarcophagus) exhibits his virtus (manly courage) using proper tactics and always bringing down his fierce prey. With the other scene on the west wall we move from the pygmies' folly in hunting to their unbridled appetites for drinking, dancing, and open-air sex (plate 7). Familiar secondary scenes frame the outdoor banquet in the center. In the upper left is a boat with an ass's head for its prow; below is a hippo devouring a pygmy, despite the efforts of a friend to extract him from its mouth. The scene on the right, like the genre scenes from the House of the Bull, is a riff on the familiar genre of the so-called sacral-idyllic landscape. The buildings, the high pier with statues, and

102

SOCIAL

HUMOR

the tree are right, but the two pygmy women are wrong. T h e inhabitants of serious sacral-idyllic landscapes are tall, slender, and elegant. 30 But it's the center of this composition that both "others" and eroticizes the insatiable pygmy. It's a lively sexual spectacle taking place under an awning stretched between two trees. Pygmy drinkers (for there are only drinking vessels on the table, with a wine amphora next to it that's about the size of a pygmy) watch while a couple makes love to the sound of the double pipes. T h e woman, her head crowned in flowers, performs the backwards-riding position (the adversus) so that she faces her a u d i e n c e — w h o might be her next partners. O f f to the right, a little apart, is a dancer performing the dance of the crossed sticks. There's a telling parallel for this painting in the garden of the House of the Ephebe. 31 It is still in place, part of an extensive Nilotic fresco that runs around all the sides of a masonry triclinium. All indications are that it dates from the same period as our pygmy paintings from the House of the Doctor, between the earthquake of A.D. 62 and the eruption of Vesuvius. It could even be the work of the same artist or workshop. W h y did the owners of both houses want a scene in their gardens that represented the very excesses decried by elite Romans—overindulgence in food and drink, dancing, and profligate sex? One way that such a scene expresses the Roman mentality—and specifically that of the probable freedmen owners of both houses—is in the appropriateness of scenes of banqueting pygmies on the Nile to a part of the house that is garden and dining area. T h e connection could not be clearer in the House of the Ephebe, where the sexual picnic scene decorates the masonry dining couch itself. But in the House of the Doctor, the theme of the pygmy banquet announces itself just as the invited diner is about to turn the corner of the peristyle and enter the big dining room. But why such wild behavior, and especially why such wild sex? T h e explanation might be found in the apotropaic benefits of laughter and the phallus. A Roman viewer laughs at an outrageous enactment of what he or she might do, but in a proper Roman fashion: drink too much, dance too much, and have too much sex. But this kind of overindulgence looks quite different when the protagonists are Greeks or Romans rather than pygmies. Even when someone has passed out or is about to collapse, there is a modicum of propriety—or at least someone sober

POWER

OVER

THE

OTHER

enough to keep the situation in check. 32 A n d when artists represent wild sex for humorous purposes, as in the sexual vignettes in the apodyterium of the Suburban Baths at Pompeii discussed in chapter 9, they put them on a bed and make their bodies beautiful—despite how outrageous such a coupling might have seemed to a Roman viewer. 33 T h e third funny pygmy scene is both the easiest and the hardest to understand (plate 8). Easy because it parodies a well-established high-art theme: the scenes of judgment that first appear in the age of Augustus. Although the paradigmatic example comes from the black triclinium of the Villa under the Farnesina in Rome (ca. 19 B.C.; see fig. 75), 34 the theme must have been in vogue in the area covered by Vesuvius at the same time, to judge from an elegant fragment of a Third-Style w a l l — n o w in the Naples M u s e u m — f r o m an undocumented excavation. 35 Sixty to eighty years later, our pygmy parody of the Judgment of Solomon appears. A l though it shares some characteristics with the Augustan-period parody of gods and heroes in the House of the Menander (see chapter 7), it targets, quite specifically, highfalutin scenes of judgment. N o w for the hard part. We can understand the parody—and we can even imagine that the artist could have gotten this composition from pattern books—the same ones that provided models for the traditional scenes of pygmies on the Nile. But why put it down low, on the wall surrounding a basin in a garden? Shouldn't it be part of a frieze in the atrium or in a dining space, like the frieze from the Villa under the Farnesina ? Mau tells us that at the time of excavation the decoration of the dining room of the House of the Doctor was still legible, and that it was older than the pygmy paintings by at least fifty years: it was, he says, a Third-Style decoration of mediocre quality. 36 Yet the owner opted to retain it—either to avoid the expense of redecorating or because the older decoration had some snob appeal. Yet he also wanted a conversation piece for his guests, and the Judgment of Solomon—even if displaced from the dining room to the edge of the pool—provided just that. What would a Roman viewer have found funny about our frieze? First and foremost, I think that he would have laughed at the deformity of the actors themselves: all pygmies afflicted with dwarfism. As I've already emphasized, often mere deformity was enough to make an image humorous. T h i n k , then, of a Roman viewer's reaction to the central group, where physical deformity meets hilarious

S O C I A L

H U M O R

Figure 45.

Ostia, relief from butcher shop, ca. 125—150.

gestures. A soldier with spindly legs and a head fully a fourth the height of his body raises a meat cleaver over the squirming mass on the block. T h e false mother indicates the middle of the baby to the soldier-butcher with her right h a n d — s o she'll get her fair h a l f — a n d turns toward the real mother with a quizzical expression on her face, as if to say, "So what's wrong? This is your half." Roman viewers would have also recognized how the artist transposed the iconography of the butcher shop into this noble theme, remembering real-life butcher shops or representations of the butcher at work in shop signs and reliefs from butchers' tombs (fig. 45). In fact, the artist subjects all the elements of the scene to exaggeration and to contrasts of scale and gesture: the small stature of Solomon and his two advisers in contrast to the huge podium; the gestures of the two diminutive onlooker figures at the left; the goofy expressions of the two tallest figures, the soldiers facing out at the viewer. Although some scholars see our fresco as evidence for anti-Semitic sentiments at Pompeii, the Judgment of Solomon seems to target the judgment scene itself. T h e Judgment of Solomon, like that of Bocchoris, was an exalted theme in elite art. T h e parody is not of Jews but rather of the high-minded seriousness of judgment scenes. What is more, the context pairs our diminutive protagonists with images of pygmies cavorting on the Nile. In fact, the artist has borrowed a motif from the Nile picnic scene—the a w n i n g — a n d made it part of the palace architecture where Solomon makes his judgment. H e has neatly attached the ropes that hold the scalloped borders just under the picture frame.

P O W E R

OVER

T H E

O T H E R

IO5

IDYLLS OF THE

PYGMY

T h e pygmy Judgment of Solomon is perhaps the most striking instance of an artist satirizing a pretentious elite theme, but I count the odd little pygmy room (a pygmaion ?) in the House of the Pygmies as another instance (room / on plan; fig. 46). Here the artist has transposed the straight sacral-idyllic landscape to the flooded Nile, substituted Egyptian temples and rituals, and populated it with civilized pygmies (plate 9). T h e artist has set the scene with unusual sacred monuments—most notably the crocodile god, Sobek, set high upon a c o l u m n — a sure reference to the Egyptian practice of zoolatry (crocolatry?). 37 T h e rituals as well deviate from the standard, calm worship of the usual inhabitants of the sacral-idyllic landscape. Note, for example, the image of a woman with torches before a t e m p l e — a scene of sacrifice bordering on sorcery (plate 10). It is an indication of the owner's penchant for pygmy humor that he carved this little room from a corner of his peristyle. Considering its small dimensions, it could only have been used for intimate entertainment; at other times the owner might have used it as a joke r o o m — a little surprise to entertain his guests. 38 1 believe that

SOCIAL

H U M O R

a Roman viewer would have found the mock-serious decoration of this little room hilarious. It parodies the long-revered tradition of representing worshippers and travelers in a kind of landscape never-never land—always exotic but never explicitly Nilotic. And, like the sacral-idyllic frieze from the atrium of the House of the Bull, it builds humor upon the deformed body of the pygmy-Other.

What has remained, and what has changed over the course of two centuries? If in the Palestrina Nile mosaic we see the Nilotic landscape as exotic wonderland populated by unusual fauna and flora and equally unusual human beings—whether the Aethiops hunter or the Egyptians themselves—in the painted frieze in the House of the Sculptor Egypt becomes funny as well as exotic, mainly because of the antics of the pygmy-dwarf and the Aethiops. The fact that artists made both pygmy and Aethiops phallic and hypersexual—and that they adorn a garden— gives them apotropaic powers as well. By the time artists revive and elaborate pygmy decorations for the new postearthquake houses at Pompeii, the Aethiops has dropped out the picture. The role of the pygmy has, if anything, expanded—especially where parody of elite visual culture is concerned. As Miguel Versluys has shown, there's a boom in Nilotic imagery in the second half of the first century, although the accidental preservation of so much wall painting from Pompeii causes a misleading spike in the charts. 39 The pygmy-Other, or the pygmy-clown, continues to be a favorite motif in the paintings and mosaics throughout the Empire and lasting until the sixth century. Both pygmy and Aethiops, whether used to act out—and therefore defuse— a Roman viewer's wild drives, or whether meant to avert demons, are much more than amusing genre characters. If a Roman viewer, in the act of looking, gained power over the pygmy-Other, the pygmy-Other had a power of his own: to create laughter that distracted both the human and the demon viewer.

POWER

OVER

THE

OTHER

6

WHO'S LAUGHING? Modern Scholars and Ancient Viewers in Class Conflict

If representations of the pygmy and the Aethiops indexed the funny Other for Roman viewers, it is because the artist placed them in the landscape of the Nile and because patrons often chose a garden or tomb setting to display them. With the study of tavern paintings in this chapter, I push the notion of context farther in the hopes of exposing how modern scholarship has failed to recognize social class as a determining factor for visual humor. In fact, it will become clear that many explanations of humorous images tell us more about the culture—and class—of modern scholars than about those of the original Roman viewers. The biggest problem with ancient Roman humor is trying to reconstruct its audiences. I say "audiences" rather than "audience" because Roman society was highly stratified, with huge divisions among classes. Yet, as I noted in the introduction, modern scholarship has focused on the humor of the top echelons of society—mainly because they left us written records. Philologists and ancient historians, working on ancient literary texts, have made great progress in characterizing elite humor. But this work gives us only the voices of elite men or men who worked for them. We have no voices of women, elite or not, and no literature written by nonelites: slaves, former slaves, foreigners, and the freeborn working poor. But luckily we do

109

have many visual representations aimed at nonelite audiences, and the three suites of wall paintings I analyze here come from places where an elite person would go only—if at all—if he were slumming. My first example demonstrates the lengths to which a philologist or ancient historian might go to raise the brow from low to high. It is a painting of an ass mounting a lion. Found at Pompeii around 1855, it was quickly removed to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples because of its obscenity (plate 11). 1 The image is funny even to modern viewers. The ass—normally the prey of the powerful carnivorous lion—has overcome the lion in a most vigorous and sexual way. The goddess Victory swoops in on outspread wings to crown the ass with her right hand while holding the palm of victory in her left.2 If a central element of humor is the surprise that comes from overturning the expected, the Victory-ass-lion painting overturns the expected in three ways. The ass mounts a lion; their intercourse is homosexual; 3 and Victory, a goddess who presides over the triumphs of gods and humans, crowns an ithyphallic ass.

THE PHILOLOGICAL

MODEL:

MINERVINI, FIORELLI, AND DELLA

CORTE

The earliest approaches to deciphering this painting were philological. Giulio Minervini's article of 1859—-a scant four years after the fresco's discovery—proposed that the fresco is a metaphorical enactment of a famous historical event: the battle of Actium fought between Octavian (who becomes the emperor Augustus in 27 B.C.) and Antony in 31 B.C. Giuseppe Fiorelli accepted Minervini's interpretations, and then—nearly a century later—Matteo Delia Corte recapitulated and elaborated Minervini's entire argument, adding little to it.4 Octavian, the ass, overcomes Antony, the lion. All three scholars based their claim on two passages that tell the same story of an omen seen by Octavian on the dawn of the battle: Suetonius Augustus 96,5 and Plutarch Vita Antonii 65. This is Plutarch's version: Octavian, on the dawn of the day of the battle of Actium, left his tent and while on his way to see the ships he met a man driving an ass. This man, upon being asked by Octavian what his name was said: "My name is Eutychus [Good

110

SOCIAL

HUMOR

Fortune] and this ass is called Nicon [Victor (He Who Wins)]." Therefore Octavian, after his victory, adorned that place with the ships' rostra and also placed there an ass and a man in bronze.6 After citing this passage to identify Octavian with the ass, our three philologists make Antony into the defeated lion by mustering lots of circumstantial evidence. They remind us that Antony (i) proclaimed himself the son of Hercules, who killed the Nemean Lion; (2) celebrated his victory at Pharsalis by going through the streets of Rome in a chariot pulled by lions; (3) adapted the image of a lion with a sword in its paws for some of his coins; and (4) in coins minted at Lyon, used the types of the Victory and the lion. Minervini adds the supposition that the image of the ass penetrating the lion is the visual representation of one of the obscene ditties recited by soldiers who accompanied their generals in triumphal processions—even going so far as to make up a likely bit of doggerel: Asinus ActiacusAntonii leonem devicit ("The ass of Actium subdued the lion of Antony")-7 We can see why these philologically oriented scholars wanted to believe their interpretation. It transforms an embarrassingly dirty sexual image into an almost clean allegory of a historical event. A well-known reversal in history becomes a history lesson—and an erudite, scholarly one at that. The biggest problem with this interpretation is how we get from an omen that is essentially verbal (an asinarius named Good Fortune and his ass named Victor) to a representation that is visual. How did the artist of our painting decide to make Octavian into an assP Our philologists assume that everybody knew the eve-ofActium story, so that when they looked at the image of the ass, they were looking at an allegorical substitution for Octavian himself.8 The identification of the lion with Antony is even more problematical, since the texts of Suetonius and Plutarch do not introduce the lion at all. From the accounts of Minervini, Fiorelli, and Delia Corte, it is clear that scholars who use the philological model want art to illustrate or illuminate history— the history known from the preserved texts. They assume that classical texts explain who the Romans were. In addition to leaving no room for the voices of nonelite, ordinary people, the philological/historical model is also a trickle-down model. It assumes that if Actium is on the minds of elite writers, it must trickle down to nonelite Romans. Even in a town like Pompeii, if a patron commissions

WHO'S

L A U G H I N G ?

ILL

a painter to put the Victory-ass-lion painting on the facade of his humble establishment, the idea of Octavian's victory over Antony is so pervasive that even an ordinary person thinks: Yes! This is an allegory of Octavian whipping his rival! There is a chronological problem as well. Since the excavator found the Victoryass-lion painting covered by a thin stratum of white plaster, Minervini felt vindicated in coupling the image with the period directly after Actium. Yet now that all of the wall plaster has fallen from the structure, it is clear that the Victory-ass-lion painting rested on postearthquake walls, making its earliest possible date a.d. 62.9 With such a long time between Actium and the painting, it is a stretch to believe that Octavian's triumph would be on the minds of the passersby or the tavern's clientele.

THE FOLKLORE MINGAZZINI AND

MODEL: KENNER

Beginning in the 1950s, two folkloric interpretations of our painting surface. Using the methodology of structuralism, they search for fables and images that contain interactions between asses and lions—or other strange reversals in the animal kingdom. Paolino Mingazzini puts forward his interpretation (written, by the way, in Latin) in a 1953 Festschrift honoring Ludwig Curtius. 10 He rejects the Actium allegory. To set up his folkloric interpretation, he mentions several lamps with images of reversals in the animal world that must, he maintains, refer to lost fables. Among the images of the upside-down world inhabited by animal characters, he includes a lamp where a stork holds a scale with two pans. A mouse in one pan outweighs an elephant in the other. 11 Mingazzini then relates a modern fable about an ass and a lion that, he says, is bandied about among the farmers of Sicily and Magna Graecia. The ass and the lion, traveling along the same route, agree to take turns carrying the other one across each river they come to. It's the ass's turn first, but when both are in the middle of the river, the lion sinks his claws into the ass so that he won't be swept away by the water. When the ass complains, the lion replies that it is his nature to use his claws, and he can't do otherwise. So when they come to the next river, and it's the lion's turn to carry the ass, in the middle of the river the ass penetrates the lion with all his might. When the lion complains, the ass says armis utitur quisque suis ("One uses whatever weapons one has"). Mingazzini concludes that this folktale, although not

112

SOCIAL

HUMOR

recorded in ancient literature, was the one known to the painter of the Pompeian Victory-ass-lion picture. 12 As proof that this fable existed in antiquity, he provides an illustration of a first-century A.D. lamp from Vindonissa depicting a lion on top of an ass (fig. 47). There are several problems with Mingazzini's reading of this image. For one thing, it looks like the lion is attacking, or bringing down, the ass rather than riding him. 13 For another, in our painting the ass is on top of the lion, so that— even if we accept the lion as riding the ass—the lamp would, at best, have illustrated the first half of the story. What is more, there is no figure of Victory either on the lamp or in Mingazzini's fable. Finally, where is the water? Yet the biggest problem is that of extrapolation. How do we get from the present-day fable all the way back to the first century A.D.? Minervini, writing in 1859, also knew the modern tale of the ass penetrating the lion. 14 But what neither Mingazzini nor Minervini knew was that a version of the story had already found its way into high literature in Giordano Bruno's 1582 comedy, Candelaio.15 Bruno's use of the fable in his play gets us back to the sixteenth century and to popular folklore of the time, showing the story's long life. Are we then correct in supposing that it was in circulation in some form in the first century, even though none of the fables of Aesop or others tell it? The problem of extrapolation becomes even more acute in Hedwig Kenners extensive study of the phenomenon of the world-turned-upside-down in GraecoRoman antiquity. 16 Kenner compares our painting with a mold found in the Celtish-Roman settlement of Magdalensberg in Kärnten. The mold itself shows a parallel but arguably quite different representation with an ass on top of a supine

WHO'S

L A U G H I N G ?

113

Figure 48.

Mold from Magdalensberg, ass on a supine lion, with man at left.

lion (fig. 48). It is a scene from the circus or amphitheater, for to the left is an animal handler wearing a short tunic with a wide belt; he holds a lance in his right hand. Here the lion is welcoming the stallion's penetration. T h e animals join mouths, mimicking a kiss. W h a t is more, the lion lies on his back, assuming a position common in images of human sexual intercourse. Even with all these differences, Kenner assumes that this representation is close enough to the Victory-ass-lion painting to mean about the same thing. She sees the Pompeian painting and the mold displaying a parallel structure: whereas in nature the lion is the predator of the ass, in both visual representations the ass/stallion and lion are copulating using positions that humans do. She then expands her search to include any image where animals act like humans. Although Kenner does not acknowledge it, her assumptions and methodology owe much to structuralist thinking in anthropology. In particular, comparative mythography, as practiced most famously by Claude Lévi-Strauss, seems to inform Kenner's approach. 1 7 What Kenner finds is what her method expects to find: that the structure of the world-turned-upside-down is pervasive in the ancient Mediterranean. Because she reads the Pompeian fresco—not as a transparent reference to a specific historical event, as our philologists did—but as one among many expressions of a deeply

II4

S O C I A L

H U M O R

rooted folklore circulating around the ancient Mediterranean, she robs the ass-andlion image of any claim to uniqueness. It becomes an image that surfaces from a plenum of popular imagery in which animals overturn the order of the human world by doing what humans do. I would put the visual evidence that Mingazzini and Kenner collect to a different use. It reveals possible sources for the artist who got the job of decorating the facade of this Pompeian establishment. He could have had visual models—like the lamp from Vindonissa or the Magdalensberg mold—to help him work out the Victory-ass-lion image. Whether he had sketches of the three figures in a modelbook, or whether he copied them from small-scale objects like lamps or carved gemstones, he was not inventing from scratch.

THE SITE-SPECIFIC

MODEL

If we step back from all this puzzling about the Victory-ass-lion combination and look at where it came from, a very different interpretation emerges. Walking through Pompeii, with remains of paintings decorating the facades of both fancy and humble buildings, one begins to realize that even the humblest image occupied a specific location in the skein of streets and alleys. That image spoke to the people who passed by that place or who frequented it.18 The Victory-ass-lion painting decorated a building on a corner just one block west of the forum. Although its removal preserved it, the rest of the painted program that passersby would have seen—as well as the numerous graffiti found on the structure—are gone. Yet it is possible to reconstruct the program. Giuseppe Fiorelli and Wolfgang Helbig provide descriptions that tell us that an image of Dionysus pouring wine down the panther's mouth was on the right pier and one of Mercury on the lefthand pier. A drawing by Nicola La Volpe gives us that Mercury: he wears thcpetasus, has winged shoes, and carries the caduceus in his left hand. He holds an unusually flat marsupium, or purse, in his right hand (fig. 49).19 An old photograph of the facade of another building (never excavated in its entirety) provides a plausible model for reconstructing the lost deities on VII, 6, 33—34. Like our building, V, 6, 1 was a commercial establishment; it occupied a street corner at the via di Nola and vicolo delle Nozze d'Argento (fig. 50). Mercury, on the left-hand pier, appears in profile striding to the right, wearing the petasus

WHO'S

L A U G H I N G ?

1 1 5

Figure 49. Pompeii, VII, 6, 34-35, drawing of Mercury from lefthand pier.

Figure 50. Pompeii, V, 6, 1-2, facade painting (destroyed).

and flowing mantle, and holding the caduceus in his left hand. In front of him is a conical stone (omphalos) with a serpent wound around it. A drunken Dionysus, supported by a satyr with a wand (thyrsus), decorated the right-hand pier. Dionysus gives a crouching panther a drink from the cup (kantharos) that he holds in his right hand. 20 Using the facade painting from V, 6,1—2 as a model, we can reconstruct the facade of our establishment. In this reconstruction I have put back the Victory-ass-

116

SOCIAL

HUMOR

Figure 51.

Pompeii VII, 6, 34—35, reconstruction of facade with paintings.

lion image and placed L a Volpe's drawing of the lost Mercury on the right pier. Only the figure of Dionysus is conjectural, based on the descriptions furnished by Minervini, Fiorelli, and Helbig and on the image of Dionysus from the facade of V, 6, 1—2 (fig. 51). T h e reconstruction clarifies the spatial relationships among the three paintings on the piers, the two rooms within, and the rear door. In addition to accounting for the combination of Mercury, the Victory-ass-lion image, and Dionysus, a site-specific, contextual interpretation of the Victory-asslion painting must consider the function of the building. We have to think what went on there. T h e excavator found the remains of stairs at the back of the western room that allowed access to upper-story rooms, leading him to suggest that there were lovemaking rooms above. If it was a bordello, as Delia Corte suggests, then we have to consider why the ass is more important than the lion. 21 Since the ass is penetrating a lion, not a lioness, it would be hard to read the scene as an allegory of a human male mounting a human female. It's certainly not a very flattering representation if it's supposed to stand for lovemaking between human beings. What we find in bordellos are images that romanticize the rough-and-ready sexual action that went on there. 22 A n d although Mercury and Dionysus are gods, I hesitate to see them as primarily religious images meant to lend a sacral character to the facade. This pair

WHO'S

L A U G H I N G ?

1 1 7

appears on the facades of many commercial establishments as bringers of good fortune to the establishment and its clientele. Sometimes Mercury took on the same meaning as phallic apotropaia (see fig. 93).23 The combination of Mercury and Dionysus is propitious, rather than sacral. Since Dionysus and Mercury appear together in almost every space that can be identified as a tavern in Pompeii, we might interpret their meaning on the facade of our tavern as follows: they expressed the tavern-goer's prayer or hope to consume enough wine to get happy, but not so much as to get sick, to dim his wits at the gaming table, or—worst of all—to blunt his sexual prowess in the lovemaking room.24 Mercury with his money bag is ubiquitous at Pompeii. He is both the god of commerce and, like Priapus, a phallic protector deity. On the facade of Verecundus's shop, Mercury appears, ensconced in his little temple, above the image of a woman selling shoes (fig. 52X25 He's there to make the shop turn a profit. On the facade of our tavern, he's there to help with another kind of money matter: gambling. But, seemingly, there's an odd twist to our Mercury. If we trust La Volpe's accuracy, Mercury's marsupium looks empty. Rather than bulging with coins, it is unusually thin, suggesting that it is either nearly or completely empty. If he's lost his money—or has yet to make his money—the god who's supposed to bring money is empty-handed. Here the painter may be connecting the Victory-ass-lion scene with Mercury. In both cases the tables are turned. Just as Mercury has lost his money, so the lion has lost his dominance. As the ass mounts the lion in a twist of fate, so Mercury, bringer of wealth, comes up empty-handed. What both paintings encode is the reversal of fortune. It is the world-turnedupside-down. It's the world where the goddess Fortuna guides the fates of the ordinary people who gambled for money—and perhaps gambled for love—in the tavern. And Dionysus is there to give his blessings to the goings-on. It's his wine that intoxicates and incites the grandiose behavior of humans—the very behavior that leads to Fortune's upsets. If the images of Mercury and Dionysus-Liber were placed there for good luck, this hoped-for luck extended to all the activities that went on there. If it was a tavern where people gambled, they counted on Fortune to give them the luck—and power—to mount the lion, as it were, and to win the games of dice (,alea) or whatever game of chance they were playing.26 And if it was a tryst they were after, the

118

S O C I A L

H U M O R

Figure 52.

Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus (IX, 7, 7),

Mercury in his temple above scene of shoe sales.

image served its purpose as well. In the end, the ensemble of images on the facade of the establishment spelled winning—or at least being on the good side of the gods.

DECONSTRUCTING THE MODERN

SCHOLARSHIP

The removal of the Victory-ass-lion painting from its decorative ensemble, although ensuring its preservation, has meant that scholars have studied it in isolation, as though it were a picture hung on a wall. Such decontextualization encouraged classical philologists to turn to texts—in this case the story of Octavian and Actium— to explain the image. Although Kenner cast a wider net and employed the methods of comparative mythography, her study still separated the image from its social context. Relying on photographic archives, she searched for images that looked like

WHO'S

LAUGHING?

119

the one she isolated for her study. Such research (called "motif-hunting" by its detractors) is fundamental to iconographical and iconological research. Kenner builds her interpretation on the notion that visual resemblance reveals a common, folkloric structure of the world-turned-upside-down. What the N e w Art History has to offer are interpretations based on the notion, common to all poststructuralist thinking, that meaning is not stable but rather dependent on w h o the readers are: what equipment, so to speak, they bring to the imagery. 27 A contextual approach wants to know what the original viewer k n e w or might have known about the visual representation. 28 What a Pompeian viewer brought to the Victory-ass-lion painting will have varied according to his or her class, gender role, past experience, beliefs, and much more. Starting with this assumption, it is possible to reconstruct, at least in part, what a Pompeian viewer understood about the Victory-ass-lion image by analyzing what coexisted with it on the facade (here Dionysus-Liber, Mercury, and the graffiti) and where else images like those on the facade appear. As a further step, going beyond what I have done here, I could create "viewer scenarios" that imagine how particular viewers—say, an elite man, a male slave, or a freedwoman—might have brought their own experiences to the interpretation of the image. 29 But even using a combination of site-specific analysis and viewer scenarios, I can only describe a zone of possible meanings rather than "solving" the Victory-ass-lion painting. In the end, I think, it is better to risk such indeterminacy rather than attempt to apply the isolating methodologies of pure philology or comparative mythography.

SITCOM, SLICE-OF-LIFE IN T H E T A V E R N OF

HUMOR

SALVIUS

We leave the realm of allegory when we enter the little Tavern of Salvius in Pompeii (plate 12). T h e fresco that decorated this wall (removed to the Naples Museum shortly after its discovery in 1876) offers four scenes where real people get into embarrassing situations over sex, drinking, and gambling. 3 0 There's another tavern down the street that shows scenes of tavern life, but in those paintings the artist didn't give his characters speech. All of the characters in the Tavern of Salvius have speech lines that put words in their m o u t h s — a n d this is what makes the pictures funny.

120

SOCIAL

HUMOR

Figure 53.

Pompeii,Tavern ofSalvius (VI, 14,36), scene 1, a man and

woman kissing.

Four scenes, each about 50 centimeters square, follow each other from left to right to make a frieze 2.05 meters long. T h e painting seems to have been the only decoration in this room, where ordinary people ate, drank, gambled, and perhaps dallied sexually with the male and female slaves who served them. H o w do class and power intersect in these little vignettes? A s we have seen, Martineau, a sociologist concerned with the social dynamics of humor, points out that many jokes and situation comedies rely on the contrast between the in-group and the out-group. 31 T h e in-group in the Tavern of Salvius are the nonelites w h o frequented taverns rather than entertaining at home, as the elites invariably did. They were the people with no access to the upper classes: slaves, former slaves, the freeborn working poor, and foreigners. There are two ways to create social humor in this situation: either to mock the elite who aren't there or to show members of your own group in compromising or embarrassing situations. T h e artist chose the second option in the Tavern of Salvius. In the first scene, a man kisses a woman, and the caption declares: nolo cum Myrtale...

(fig. 53). Although the final word, probably an infinitive, will keep us in eter-

W H O ' S

L A U G H I N G ?

121

Figure 54. server.

Pompeii,Tavern of Salvius (VI, 14,36), scene 2, two men and a woman

nal suspense, the rest of the phrase is clear: "I don't want to

with

Myrtalis." Since Myrtalis is a woman's name, it seems that the man is saying that he doesn't want to "go with" or "date" Myrtalis anymore. If we transposed this scene to a T V sitcom like Friends it would still be funny—as long as we knew who the man, the woman, and Myrtalis were. I suspect that the artist was portraying either specific individuals who frequented the tavern or characters in a popular romantic play or mime that everybody in Pompeii at the time knew. The artist has caught an intimate moment and published it for all to see. T h e viewer gets the inside scoop on this change of partners; the three people in the love triangle look like fools. In the second scene two effeminate-looking men vie with each other to be served the jug of wine that a large woman server carries—and they fail (fig. 54). T h e figure on the left says: hoc or " H e r e ! " while his companion counters: non /mia est or " N o ! It's mine!" 3 2 T h e server, feigning indifference, says: "Whoever wants it, take it" (qui vol/sumat)—but

then with a somewhat ominous change of heart she offers

the wine to someone else: "Oceanus, come and drink" (Oceane Iveni

bibe).

One scholar proposes that this man is none other than a famous Pompeian glad-

122

SOCIAL

HUMOR

Figure 55.

Pompeii, Tavern of Salvius (VI, 14, 36), scene 3, two men playing dice.

iator named Oceanus. 33 Even if the man she is addressing is not that Oceanus, the name itself must have carried a cachet in local circles. Martial uses the name four times for a person who performs the dual functions of usher and bouncer in the theater.34 A second, more likely, interpretation is that the serving woman is directly addressing one of the drinkers as Oceanus with the sense of "Okay, big boy, come and get it." T h e in-group here are real men who know how to control even the most surly servants—especially if they happen to be women. T h e artist has deliberately made the men in this scene unmanly: no beards, fluffy hairdos, and long, colored robes instead of tunics. In chapter 9 1 further investigate the sexuality of these characters, suggesting that the artist may be portraying the stereotype of thccinaedus, the "flaming queen" who appears frequently in defamatory literature. Whatever the men's status, the primary joke remains: it's two men against one woman, and she wins. Not only do they fail to get their wine—they get taunted to boot. Scenes three and four form a two-frame narrative where two real men—with wiry bodies and short-cropped hair and beards—get into trouble over gambling. In scene three they are playing dice (fig. 55). T h e man on the left holds the dice cup

WHO'S

L A U G H I N G ?

Figure 56.

Pompeii, Tavern of Salvius (VI, 14, 36), scene 4,

two fighting men and the innkeeper.

in his right hand and says: "I w o n " (exsi). His companion asserts: "It's not three; it's two" (non / tria duas I est). This disagreement turns ugly in the following scene, where the two men, now standing, come to blows (fig. 56). T h e man on the left grabs his dice partner, who holds a fist up to his face. They exchange insults. T h e man on the left says: "You no-name. It was three for me. I was the winner" (noxsi/a me I tria I eco I fui). T h e other responds: " L o o k here, cocksucker. I was the winner" (orte fellator /eco fui). T h e innkeeper wants none of this. H e tells them: " G o outside and fight it out" (itis/foras/ rixsatis). What's telling about these four vignettes is that their humor addresses anxieties of the in-group. T h e class of people who frequented the tavern might have worried about people knowing about their sex lives, about getting insulted by the help, or about getting thrown out for arguing. A n d the pictures, like modern cartoons, depend on a viewer's ability to read to get the joke. T h e in-group who reads the captions and the out-group in the pictures are really the same people—ordinary Romans. But the act of looking, reading, and laughing empowers the v i e w e r —

I24

S O C I A L

H U M O R

and that's where the laugh is. It's a laugh of relief as the viewer thinks: That could be me! In my next example there's a different dynamic. There the artist contrasts the social classes to show elites and nonelites in conflict.

MAKING

FUN

OF ELITE I N T E L L E C T U A L

PRETENSIONS

Luckily, we can study what remains of the painted program of the Tavern of the Seven Sages in its original setting, a tall, barrel-vaulted space.35 Although larger than the Tavern of Salvius, it's a place where ordinary people ate, drank, and chatted. But instead of showing slice-of-life scenes where their social equals get into embarrassing situations, the humor is about ordinary men besting those revered exponents of wisdom, the Seven Sages. Looking at the space as a whole, we can see that the decoration covered three distinct levels: there's a Dionysian flying figure and wine amphoras high up in the vault; figures of the Sages in the middle; and the upper bodies of five men along the bottom (plate 13 and fig. 57). All evidence dates the paintings to about forty to sixty years after the Tavern of Salvius (A.D. 100—120).36 T h e artist made the upper areas of this space into a kind of celestial sphere. Just as the vault becomes a kind of wine heaven, decorated with amphoras with labels like F a l e r n u m — a n expensive wine beyond the means of anyone drinking in this b a r — s o the realm of the Sages stands for intellectual high culture (fig. 58). T h e artist went to some pains to make the Sages like the statues that Roman viewers would see in the villas of the wealthy or in lecture halls. He placed them on individual plinths, put them on philosophers' stools, and labeled them in Greek. But it seems that the artist put a seat of a very different sort under the men on the b o t t o m — a latrine bench (fig. 59)! W h e n we read the captions above both the Sages and the seated men, we see why. T h e Greek label tells us that the left-hand Sage on the south wall is Solon of Athens. Careful Latin capital letters spell out the words above him: Ut bene cacaret ventrem palpavit Solon, "To shit well Solon stroked his belly." O n the right side of the same wall is Thales of Miletus, framed by the Greek words

THALES

and

MEILHSIOS.

He is clean-shaven, with short hair, and, like Solon,

he holds a staff in his left hand. Above him we read: Durum cacantes monuit ut

WHO'S

LAUGHING?

Figure 57.

Ostia, Tavern of the Seven Sages (III, 10, 2-3),

room 5, view with barrel vault.

Figure 58.

Ostia, Tavern of the

Seven Sages, detail, Thales.

w

* •

"••

Figure 59.

•

H

Ostia, Tavern of the Seven Sages, seated men.

nitant Thales, "Thales advised those who shit hard to really work at it." There is a fragmentary inscription below the Sage that includes the words [ujtaris xylosphongio, "use the sponge on a wooden stick"—comparing the philosopher's staff to the sponge on a stick used to clean oneself in a latrine. Although the long back wall would have contained the images of three Sages, only one is fully preserved. It is Chilon of Sparta, holding a scroll in his left hand, the emblem of his great wisdom. Above him we learn why he was such a great wise man: Vissire tacite Chilon docuitsubdolus, "Cunning Chilon taught how to fart without making noise." 37 As for the five men below, even though a later remodeling destroyed the lower halves of their bodies, they must be sitting and defecating, to judge from the words written above their heads in Latin. Above the man on the left wall (beneath Thales) we read: mulione sedes, "You are sitting on a mule driver." Mule drivers were proverbially mulish and stupid, like the animals they handled, and in this context the

W H O ' S

L A U G H I N G ?

Figure 60. Ostia (I, 12), Via della Forica, latrine,

phrase means that the man is constipated, making Thales' advice meaningful. This man looks across the corner of the room to the men on the back wall. The first man on the back wall says\propero, "I'm hurrying up"; he may be responding to what the man next to him says: agitate celerius /pervenies, "Shake yourself about so that you'll go sooner." Perhaps this is his remedy for constipation. The last translatable lines appear above the man next to him: amice fugit te proverbium / bene caca et irrima medicos, "Friend, the adage escapes you. Shit well and force the doctors to fellate you." A more colloquial translation might be "Hey buddy—don't you know the saying? If you shit well—fuck the doctors—you don't need them." There's a well-preserved latrine at Ostia that provided the basis for my reconstruction (fig. 60). Judging from the size and position of the five preserved figures, the original paintings must have depicted twenty-four men seated on a latrine bench running around three sides of the room.

128

SOCIAL

HUMOR

Above and Below: Images of Bakhtin's Material Bodily Lower

Stratum

What to make of this unusual program? Textual scholars have analyzed the meanings of the words, the meter of the Seven Sages' bogus sayings (they're iambic senarii, by the way), and the philosophy of evacuation. The excavator, Guido Calza, was so puzzled at this mocking of intellectual wisdom that he proposed that our tavern was an exclusive club for Ostia's smart Bohemians.381 took a very different tack. What struck me was how the humor set up a battle between intellectuals and ordinary men. Eventually I found my way to Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel,

where Bakhtin analyzes the carnival-like re-

versals that allow Everyman to trump—temporarily—the authority of the Church and King. 39 Several of Bakhtin's critical tools helped me to frame what we see in the Tavern of the Seven Sages in terms of class conflict. The tall, barrel-vaulted space itself inspired the artist to invoke what Bakhtin calls the reversal of upper and lower material bodily strata. If Bakhtin were to analyze this space in terms of the body, he would note that the upper register of the walls, with the Seven Sages, stands for the head: intellect, reasoning, the face. For ordinary persons, the Sages represent the values of elites and their sophisticated systems of philosophy, rhetoric, and religion. (Perhaps the fine wine is also a metaphor for refined spirits!) In contrast, the bottommost register represents what Bakhtin calls the lower material body, specifically the belly, genitals, and anus.40 The literal space also frames hierarchies of social class, intellectual ability, and physical activity. These are the hierarchies that a viewer must negotiate if he wishes to understand the painted program; he must scan the paintings, from vault to floor and back up again, taking time to read the captions. To see the celestial sphere with its heavenly wine, the viewer has to crane his neck to take in the ceiling; to see the Sages he must tilt his head upward; but he looks down on the seated men. Orality and anality constitute another pair of opposites cleverly united within the decorative program. The wine (from high "up above") is what goes into the mouths of both Sages and the ordinary men. What comes out of the philosophers is speech; what comes out of the men down below is feces and urine, for they are seated on a latrine. But Everyman also speaks, so that what unites both Sage and

WHO'S

LAUGHING?

E v e r y m a n is speech. T h e y share the ability to speak, to "hold f o r t h " — a n d w h a t they speak about is w h a t the lower material body produces: poop.

Heteroglossia Just as the Tavern's painted decoration opposes upper body to lower body, so it forces speech and social class to intersect. W h a t can speech—whether in the f o r m of labels, attributed utterance, or first-person d i a l o g u e — t e l l us about social class? T h e writing represents speech in several f o r m s : in the labels for wine a n d for the " s t a t u e s " o f the S a g e s (in G r e e k , no less), in the f o r m o f sayings attributed to the S a g e s , a n d in the f o r m o f w o r d s s p o k e n in the here a n d n o w by the defecating m e n . B a k h t i n proposes that one o f the innate features o f carnival is its e m p h a t i c a n d purposeful heteroglossia (raznogolosost').41

In the T a v e r n o f the Seven Sages, hetero-

glossia (literally, "the use o f different tongues or l a n g u a g e s " ) occurs in the d i f f e r ences of f o r m , g r a m m a r , and lexicon in the utterances attached to the two g r o u p s o f speakers. T h e reader encounters two k i n d s o f L a t i n , the carefully c o m p o s e d meter o f the sayings attributed to the S a g e s , a n d the v u l g a r — t h a t is, e v e r y d a y — L a t i n in the m o u t h s o f the seated m e n . B u t there is a subtler inversion here: the S a g e s ' m a x ims painted high u p on the wall are b o g u s a n d embarrassingly similar to the w o r d s c o m i n g f r o m the sitting men's m o u t h s d o w n below. T o u n d e r s t a n d the full comic impact o f this inversion, we have to look at w h a t the S a g e s properly s a y — a n d just h o w they say it. In book i o f D i o g e n e s Laertius's

hives of the Eminent Philosophers,

w e find the S a g e s a n s w e r i n g difficult questions,

a d v i s i n g heads o f state, a n d c o m p o s i n g verses. B u t it is their one-line m a x i m s that w o u l d have circulated w i d e l y — e s p e c i a l l y a m o n g ordinary people. I n d e e d , s o m e o f the S a g e s ' m a x i m s are still with us today: " K n o w t h y s e l f ! " ( T h a l e s ) , " N o t h i n g too m u c h ! " (Chilon), " P u r s u e worthy a i m s ! " (Solon), "Practice m a k e s p e r f e c t " (Periander). 4 2 T h e s e are brief, unelaborated c o m m a n d s — t h e opposite o f the convoluted iambic lines written above the S a g e s ' heads in the tavern. Since the S a g e s ' pithy mottoes were widely k n o w n , the phrase " K n o w t h y s e l f " always indicated that T h a l e s w a s s p e a k i n g . In this way, the S a g e s ' sayings b e c a m e verbal substitutes for the S a g e s themselves. In our tavern, however, the viewer gets phony texts that destroy this expected metonymy. T h e tavern-goer sees the label " T h a l e s o f M i l e t u s " but gets a surprise when he reads w h a t T h a l e s advises. B y having T h a l e s tell "those w h o shit h a r d to really w o r k at it," the artist has d o n e m o r e

S O C I A L

H U M O R

than simply destroy Thales' metonymic label: he has, in fact, reversed the Sage's proper role. Instead of speaking of the soul, as befits a Sage, Thales holds forth on the lower material body. What the sitting defecators have to say also has a proper context. In a real Roman latrine—as opposed to this painted one—the words of the men sitting and defecating would not have been out of the ordinary. They belong there. But when transferred to an urban tavern, the words turn into a humorous counterpoint to the expertise in techniques of defecating and breaking wind attributed to the Sages. Both Sages and men say—in all seriousness—silly things about bowel movements.

R E A D I N G CLASS D I F F E R E N C E THROUGH

CONTEXT

If there is a common thread running through my three examples of nonelite visual humor—aside from the fact that they come from taverns—it's how sophisticated nonelite humor could be. To discover this, all I did was refuse to be the omniscient scholar-viewer, with all the texts—ancient and modern—at my fingertips and all the archives of photos to try to match with my images. We are all familiar with scholarly solutions to visual problems that try to pin an image on some literary text or a chance visual resemblance. If we look at what was actually there, and who looked at it, study of visual representation in context can give a voice to the silent majority of antiquity: ordinary people. And what we hear is laughter. Perhaps we scholars can learn a lesson in humility from the excessively deterministic methods of our elders. The crossing of disciplines that has enriched humanistic studies should teach us to expect and embrace multivalent interpretations of visual representations from the past. If the New Art History has learned anything from anthropology, feminism, sociology, reception theory, and cultural studies, it is that the meanings of any single visual representation are anything but fixed and eternal. I believe that site-specific observations that take into account the variables outlined in the chart discussed in the introduction will continue to be useful as our knowledge of an image widens through new discovery and research (see fig. i). In fact, a new discovery tomorrow—text or image—could modify my interpretation, but what would stand is the contextual, site-specific part of my analysis.

WHO'S

LAUGHING?

A case in point is my earliest interpretation of the paintings from the Tavern of Salvius. Impatient to get my discoveries into print, I proclaimed that the first vignette of the two kissing people was a "lesbian" encounter. 43 When I first examined the fresco in the conservation lab of the Central Institute for Restoration in Rome, the conservators had not yet removed all of the calcified grime from the couple, but it seemed clear that both figures were wearing long dresses. What is more, A . E . Todd had made a compelling case for interpreting the image as two women kissing in his 1932 article. 44 Imagine my chagrin when I returned a year later to find that further cleaning had revealed that the figure on the right was not wearing a long red dress, and that he had a most masculine face with square jaw, short hair, and sideburns. A n d the figure on the left clearly wore a long orange-yellow dress and had her hair pulled back in a conspicuous bun. 45 What remained of my initial interpretation of this image was its social context: who looked at it and under what circumstances. What I have had to change are the backstories that I conjecture to explain why this clearly heterosexual couple's kiss and verbal exchange might have been amusing to those ancient viewers. With visual humor, we must remember that a viewer has to see it to get it, and that seeing is not innocent. It's dependent on the visual and verbal culture of his or her social group. To understand what's funny in visual humor, we moderns have to learn to look and listen with Roman eyes and ears. When the paintings from the taverns we've just considered encode conflict between upper and lower classes, their humorous message is for the lower-class patrons—most pointedly in the Tavern of the Seven Sages, where the artist has even depicted them shitting, farting, and talking about it. In the next chapter it is context, again, that suggests the class of both patron and viewer, but this time the visual representations overturn elite values for the amusement of elite viewers.

SOCIAL

HUMOR

PARODY IN E L I T E VISUAL C U L T U R E AT P O M P E I I Heroes, Gods, and Foundation Myths

If the paintings from the Tavern of the Seven Sages get most of their humor from mocking elite intellectual pretensions, it is because they set up the Sages as paragons of cultural values not necessarily revered by the habitués of the tavern. The context of the tavern space allows us to specify the social position of the viewers so that we can hypothesize how the humor of the paintings worked. Fortunately three frescoes from Pompeii allow me to ask what was funny for the elite viewer. My question is a big one: Why would elite Romans want to mock the gods, the emperor, or the moral lessons of mythology? Two of my examples of elite parody are painted friezes that come from the House of the Menander, introduced in chapter 4. Several facts establish that it belonged to a wealthy individual, probably a member of one of the upper-class orders at Pompeii—either the local senatorial class, called decurions, or the equestrian class. It is one of the largest houses in Pompeii (1800 m2), and its decoration is complex and of high quality. The excavator, Amedeo Maiuri, also discovered thirty kilos of household silver in a storage area beneath the bath.1 There's also some evidence that the House of the Menander (named after the image of the playwright Menander; see fig. 5) belonged to the gens Poppaea, the family of Nero's wife. 2

133

It was an old house, its original core rising up in the second century B.C. Sometime around 50 B.C. the owner acquired—and demolished—at least one house to make room for the addition to the huge peristyle. 3 Ten of the rooms off the peristyle retain the original, Second-Style pavements that belong to that phase.4 But of these only four retain vestiges of the Second-Style painting schemes that went with the floors. One of these fragmentary schemes is a parodic frieze that originally decorated the little atrium (atriolo) of the small but elegant bath complex. T h e other frieze decorates oecus 11, but it dates to about one hundred years later (the early Fourth Style of A.D. 45-55X 5 Because these two programs are still in place, we can encounter them much as an ancient Roman viewer would have. This fact, like the context of the paintings in the Tavern of Salvius or that of the Seven Sages, allows us to imagine what effect the friezes had on ancient visitors to these areas of the House of the Menander. These viewers were either family members or invited guests, since the rooms around the peristyle were for leisure activities such as bathing and dining with family members and social peers. Unlike the atrium, a semipublic space, access to the peristyle was by invitation only.

M O C K I N G T H E EXPLOITS OF GODS A N D

HEROES

There are several private baths in large houses at Pompeii dating to the period of the Second Style, 80 to 20 B.C., most of them lavishly decorated—but with serious themes. W h a t distinguishes the bath in the House of the Menander is the frieze decorating its elegant atriolo. It is a parody of the legendary feats and tragic loves of the gods and heroes. Since the main objective of the Second Style is to create trompe l'oeil architecture, figural friezes are rather rare. Although the paintings were in poor shape at the time of discovery, we can see how the wall painter conceived the entire decoration of the room (fig. 61). H e painted herms—evenly spaced—around the interior of the atriolo, transforming the flat walls into a kind of colonnaded pavilion. Our frieze, preserved only in fragments on the north and east walls, fits above and behind the herms in the architrave. Although the herms animate the wall, the real visual magnet for the ancient viewer must have been the frieze.

SOCIAL

H U M O R

THESEUS and MINOTAUR

MARSYAS, ATHENA, and APOLLO PASIPHAE, EPfTHYMIA, DAEDALUS, and APHRODITE

Figure 61.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), atriolo of bath, Second-Style

scheme.

Although the paintings have lost clarity since their discovery in the 1930s, it is still possible to read them by pairing recent photographs with Maiuri's drawings from his 1933 monograph. 6 Theseus and the Minotaur All that remains of the frieze on the north wall is the image of Theseus giving the death blow to the dreaded Minotaur (plate 14 and fig. 62). T h e ancient viewer was familiar with this moment in the story from numerous images, like the mosaic, executed around the same time, that decorated a reception room off the peristyle of the House of the Labyrinth. 7 In this mosaic, as in the three iterations of the same essential composition in the collection of the Naples Archaeological Museum, T h e seus has wrestled the Minotaur to the ground in the presence of enthralled onlookers. 8 But in the case of our caricature, the artist added labels, in Greek, to identify the two protagonists—just in case the viewer failed to recognize the scene. T h e labels might have added to a touch of irony, since serious renditions of the struggles of gods and heroes often included labels.

P A R O D Y

IN

E L I T E

V I S U A L

C U L T U R E

Figure 62. Pompeii, House of the Menander (1,10,4), Theseus and Minotaur.

Figure 63.

Herculaneum, Basilica, Theseus Liberator.

W h a t makes this image funny? More than anything, it is the distortion of bodies—those of both Theseus and the Minotaur—that makes heroic battle into farce. One of the most idealized body types in Greek and Roman art is that of the epic hero, and Theseus is the epitome of buff male beauty—so much so that artists often preferred to show him posing with the body of the dead Minotaur and being worshipped by the children of Athens, rather than actually fighting (fig. 63). There he stands, in artful Lysippean contrapposto, the paragon of ideal male beauty. But even when he's battling the fearful Minotaur, Theseus epitomizes heroic male beauty: nude, muscular, perfectly proportioned. What has the artist done? He's given Theseus the body type of an ugly dwarf, with huge, bald head, no apparent neck, a nose like the beak of an owl, short arms, and a misshapen, bulbous torso. Theseus's eye, intent on his opponent, fairly pops from its socket. He is about to deliver the death blow, his sword raised up, so that it nearly touches his head, while he holds the Minotaur by the neck. T h e Minotaur, on his knees, tries to detach himself from Theseus's grip with one of his arms, but he knows he's done for. With bulging eyes he stares at the ground, where his head will lie in a moment. Despite paint losses, it's clear that the artist matched technique to subject. O n the convincingly shaded black-brown bodies he lays in the features, like Theseus's nose, as squiggly highlights, handling his brush with a combination of confidence and caprice. Even the lettering, giving us \@e\cevc and Mei[vo]ravpoc, has a certain panache to it: the artist knew how to write Greek well.

Aphrodite and Eros T h e frieze on the east wall preserves fourteen figures, although all but the first four are hard to read because of plaster losses. Here the painter turns from mocking the human hero in mortal combat to mocking the gods. Maiuri has identified four parodies. T h e first is the best preserved and clearest, consisting of four figures (fig. 64). In the center Aphrodite incites Eros to let fly his arrow. She wears her characteristic diadem, but the artist has grossly distorted her face and bundled her bulging body in heavy robes. Imperiously she extends her right arm over her son's head and points her index finger at the target. Eros kneels, his right knee flexed (the classic pose used for archers), and takes aim, pulling back his arrow.

PARODY

IN

ELITE

V I S U A L

C U L T U R E

Figure 64. Pompeii, House of the Menander (1,10,4), Aphrodite and Eros.

The figures of two women, reacting dramatically, frame this tense little vignette. On the left, between a building with a pitched roof and a column, the artist placed a figure whose gesture parodies that of the famous "startled woman" from the Mysteries frieze in the Villa of the Mysteries.9 Comparing the two reveals the artist's comic strategy: putting funny clothes on a funny body. In particular, notice that he's given the comic type a short chiton doubly cinched up, making it look like she's wearing bloomers, and how the dramatic motif of the woman's hand grasping her billowing mantle becomes ridiculous because her head is so big and her arm so small. Maiuri claims that this woman has wings (no longer visible today); he identifies her as Iris, messenger of the gods. Framing Aphrodite and Eros on the right is a standing woman whose head is fully a fourth of her height—making her look like a doll or puppet. Unlike the dynamic contrapposto of her counterpart on the left, this woman is frozen in terror, her tiny outspread arms the only gesture she can make. Zeus and Europa Although the next tract of the frieze is poorly preserved, enough remains to suggest that Eros's arrow has hit none other than Zeus, father of the gods (fig. 65). It has incited him to take the form of a bull to abduct the mortal woman Europa. We can see the bull and his keeper clearly enough, as well as the marsh plants to the right of the bull that create a watery setting. Close to the group of bull and his keeper is the least legible fragment, recognizable as the head of an adult male; this should

SOCIAL

HUMOR

Figure 65.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), Zeus, bull, and Apollo.

be Zeus. Closing out the vignette, and removed from this group, we see a majestic face with foliage woven into his hair, his menacing eyes turned either toward the group of Zeus and the bull or toward Eros the archer. If we think through the list of Olympians likely to deprecate these goings on, it would most likely be Apollo—Mr. Masculine Antisepsis himself. 10 If this scene is the prelude to the Rape of Europa, then the startled woman at the beginning of the frieze should, indeed, be Iris, sent by Hera to spy on Zeus's adultery.

Pasiphae The next parody involves yet another human-bull encounter, this time clearly labeled (fig. 66). But there are no dramatic gestures here. Instead, the artist has made Pasiphae, the protagonist, into a pitiful, lovesick creature, gazing haplessly at the wooden cow that Daedalus has created so that she can fulfill her lust for a bull. 11 Pasiphae, seated, lifts her eyes in hope toward Epithymia ('Emdv/jLla)—personification

of

Desire—who looks back at her complicitously. She's the go-between. Little is left of the figure of Daedalus save four letters of his name (Aai[S]a[Ao?]), and we don't see his famous creation, the wooden cow, centerpiece of many well-known paintings from Pompeii. Instead, the artist has placed Aphrodite next to Daedalus. This time Aphrodite appears not as a maleficent crone but smiling, perhaps seated on a throne. Maiuri proposes that the artist represented her as an archaic statue, alluding to the kind of art that Daedalus was supposed to have made. Only three letters of her name survive (A ... AE = M[^po]Se[iTi7]). By giving Epithymia and Aphrodite (that is, voluptuousness and erotic love) center stage, the artist highlights Pasiphae's unnatural lust rather than Daedalus's magical skills. It is a parody of the lovesick woman with an unusual—if not to say sick—love-object.

PARODY

IN

ELITE

VISUAL

CULTURE

I39

Figure 66.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (1,10, 4), Pasiphae, Epithymia, Daedalus,

and Aphrodite.

Athena and Marsyas Athena, rather than Aphrodite, is the focus of the last o f the preserved vignettes (fig. 67). T h e artist has caricatured Athena's most formidable guise, the Promachos type. She's helmeted, with shield and spear, but looks like a children's doll. She turns to her left, as though to consult Apollo, seated and already holding the palm of victory. Behind Apollo is an altar on a high base. To the left is Marsyas, with his Silen's pug nose, intent on playing his double pipes. 12 G i v e n the state of the frieze today, worsened since its discovery seventy years ago, it is difficult to challenge Maiuri's identifications. W h e t h e r they are all correct must remain moot, but his identifications provide a springboard for a big question: W h y did the owner want this frieze in his elegant little bath?

PARALLELS AND IN S E C O N D - S T Y L E

SOURCES DECORATION

Let's first look at how our frieze fits with other contemporary interior decorative schemes. It is unique in the painting o f the Second Style (80—15 B-c-)> where figural friezes are nearly all megalographic: that is, they represent life-size figures on fictive stage platforms, the most famous being the Mysteries frieze from room 5 o f the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii. 13 A n d these megalographic friezes are loaded with high-minded seriousness and religious mysticism. A s for mythological pictures, they become prevalent only in the twenty-year period after our frieze was painted, in the last phase of the Second Style (40—20

B.C.).

Yet none of the pictures

in these late Second-Style walls are comic; instead they tend to be serious copies of old Greek masterpieces.

140

SOCIAL

HUMOR

Figure 67.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), Marsyas, Athena, and Apollo.

Interestingly, however, our painted frieze is not unique in the broader context of the Second Style, where we find mosaics showing the antics of so-called pygmies. In fact, comparison of the bodies of the actors in our frieze with those of the "constructed p y g m y " reveal many similarities. There are two mosaic insets contemporaneous with our frieze, one in the House of the Menander itself, the other in the nearby House of Paquius Proculus. 14 Both form the center of interest in the floors of rooms off the peristyle used for reception and dining—functions, like the use of the private bath, reserved for invited guests. But, unfortunately, in neither room do we know what the walls looked like, since the patron redecorated the walls in a later period, leaving the first-century B.C. floors. T h e body of one of the boatmen in the mosaic from oecus 1 1 of the House of the Menander has much in common with that of the terrified woman to the right of the group of Aphrodite and Eros (plate 15). Although he is anything but terrified—he seems to be dancing while he pushes the skiff with his pole—the artist constructed the boatman's body with the same proportions as the frightened woman: huge head, no neck, thick torso, and short arms. T h e most actively posed figure in our painting, the woman with the flying veil, repeats the comic formula for the poses of all the pygmies: exaggerated contrapposto and dramatic gestures made with tiny arms. Going even farther afield—to the three fine bronzes found in the shipwreck at Mahdia, T u n i s i a — w e find the artist using similar combinations of dwarf body types with comic poses and gestures. 15 One of these figures, a buffoon, is a dwarf afflicted with a big head, a thick, small torso, protruding buttocks, and short arms and legs (fig. 68). 16 T h e artist has coupled these bodily deformities with a dance pose so complex that the buffoon's efforts to strike the pose become all the more

PARODY

IN

E L I T E

V I S U A L

C U L T U R E

I4I

Figure 68. Mahdia, bronze figure of buffoon, late second century B.C.

ridiculous. The dancer's glaring eyes and toothy smile combine to suggest naughty or even malicious behavior. One thing that the bronzes, the mosaic insets, and our frieze have in common is their small scale. They're made for close-up viewing. Mosaicists executed the insets on trays of terra-cotta or travertine, using tiny tesserae to define details meant to be viewed up close. With our parodic fresco, we imagine the viewer entering the atriolo and taking in the artful perspectives that transformed the plain plaster walls into pavilions where herms in various poses supported the fictive architrave. 17 The effect would have been similar to that of the colonnade with herms in the House of the Cryptoporticus or the oecus of the House of Caesius Blandus. 18 In its original state, then, this bold trompe l'oeil painting would have provided the main effect. Only moving closer to the wall would a viewer begin to get the point of our witty frieze.

142

SOCIAL

HUMOR

As we have already seen, humor focusing on bodily "unbecomingness" extended to the floors of this little bath complex. In chapter 4 we investigated why the figure of the Aethiops bath servant in the entryway to the caldarium was an effective apotropaion. And the mosaic of the caldarium itself expands upon the theme of bodily exaggeration by picturing two Aethiopes, one of them a macrophallic swimmer.19

MYTHS, VISUAL LITERACY, AND

EKPHRASIS

IN T H E E L I T E HOUSE Even though our frieze constituted a secondary or perhaps tertiary part of the whole decorative scheme, we can be sure that a visitor would have been eager to interpret it. And that visitor has a clear profile: someone with a good knowledge of classical myths and willing to laugh at revered deities, heroes, and myths. In short, it appealed to the educated skeptic. Ancient Romans who had the money to own houses boasting wall paintings, mosaics, and stuccoes filled them with images portraying gods, goddesses, and demigods—as well as mortals—in mythical scenarios. Completely secular imagery is rare: we find, for instance, few pure genre scenes like the image of life in the forum from the House of Julia Felix discussed in chapter 5 (see fig. 43). Scenes of work and small industry either adorn the shops of tradespeople or form part of the imagery of a person's tomb.20 Given the preponderance of a standard, recognizable, and oft-repeated repertory of images of gods and myths in Roman houses, we might ask, Were they religious images? That is, did viewers—a whole range of people from humble clients to the owners' social peers—revere the gods and goddesses and believe their stories to be moral lessons? Although some art historians, like Karl Schefold, have framed the imagery of Roman houses in terms of owners who wanted to make the home into a kind of domestic sanctuary to the gods, today they are in the minority.21 Most scholars see the visual representations (usually paintings) found in the Roman house as markers of the owner's interests, tastes, and even his or her status. How do we understand the owner's—and guest's—attitudes toward the gods and myths? One way is to look at coherent systems of related imagery in the few

PARODY

IN

ELITE

VISUAL

CULTURE

houses where we moderns can discern possible relationships among the myths. The assumption is that when an ancient viewer saw these relationships, he or she created a narrative to connect mythological pictures in a room with each other. This was the practice of e1{phrasis, demonstrated in several texts—most famously in the Imagines of Philostratus the Elder. 22 We can see a good example of ekphrasis in action in the twin rooms of the House of the Vettii—one with a cycle of Cretan myths, the other with Theban myths. There scholars have proposed that astute ancient viewers articulated the complex relationships among the paintings of the two rooms. The chart shows how a Roman viewer might have interpreted the outcomes of the various interactions between gods and mortals, men and women, believers in the power of the deity and those punished for their refusal to believe (fig. 69). The second point I wish to make about the relationship of a Roman viewer to standard images of the gods and heroes is that visual literacy varied from viewer to viewer. Just as we know that most townspeople throughout Roman Italy were literate to some degree, depending on their education and status, so I propose that the ability to decode a visual representation varied. If we put a slave in the Ixion room of the House of the Vettii, he might or might not be able to recognize the pictures, depending on whether he was schooled in the myths. After all, he could have been the children's tutor, teaching them Homer and Virgil! Or he could have been a Syrian cook, who learned about his own gods and myths but not those of his new culture. As we move up the social scale—and therefore get to the level of the persons admitted to our private bath in the House of the Menander—we reach viewers whose visual literacy, as well as verbal literacy, is likely to have been high. 23 It's this viewer—literate, skilled in ekphrasis, and willing (perhaps eager) to see the gods and heroes lampooned—that our frieze was meant for. The grand— if not to say grandiose—effects of contemporary house decoration looked to the art of the great Hellenistic cities that Rome had spent the last century and a half conquering: Pergamon, Alexandria, and the great cities of Magna Graecia. Employing wall painters who probably learned their craft creating dramatic stage backdrops with bold perspectives, Roman patrons transformed the spaces of their houses and villas into simulacra of the palaces of Hellenistic kings and princes, like the grandiose Second-Style reception spaces of the Villa of Oplontis.24

SOCIAL

HUMOR

IXION ROOM P

diusuoqetai sirejep sgeuieg) leieueg

dtusuoqeiej lenpeqeiui Ixion as transgressor, who wanted to violate Hera and thereby directly and consciously acted against a divinity: Development of p1, Hybris

A Man is Guilty

A god appears on earth and rescues: a boy; this boy is loved by a god, is admitted to the gods, attains immortality, marries a goddess (Hebe). The same god punishes (indirectly) in p 2

A god appears on earth and rescues: a woman; this woman is loved by a god, is admitted to the gods, achieves immortality, marries a god. The same god punishes (indirectly) in n 2

Pentheus as transgressor, who assaulted Dionysos and thereby directly and consciously acted against a divinity: Intensification of n 1, Hybris

A Man is Guilty

6 figures

Dirke as transgressor, who because of her inhumanity to Antiope acts against divine laws and indirectly against the gods

A Woman is Guilty

Bull Human actors only

The power of the gods, especially Zeus and his sons, as guarantors of world order: blessing the innocent and god-fearing but punishing the transgressors and those odious to the gods

Unified thematic message: The relationship between parents and children Pietas as solicitude (of father for son) and as vengeance (sons for mother) and as lethal inversion The themes of all pictures come from the Theban legendary cycle The events in each picture go on dramatically

Care of a God (Zeus as an Eagle) for his Mortal Son Happy Outcome

Punishment inflicted by a Punishment inflicted and God (Dionysos, Zeus's Son) carried out by Men (Zeus's Sons)

Jj Pentheus (back wall -n 2) \

Love of a God (Dionysos, Zeus's Son) for a Mortal Woman Happy Outcome

The themes of two pictures (p 1 and p 3) come from the Cretan legendary cycle The events in each picture go on quietly

Unified thematic message: The relationship between the sexes Love as a pleasant and as a disaster-bringing power

Pasiphae as transgressor, who because of her perverse passion acts against divine laws and indirectly against the gods

A Woman is Guilty

6 figures

a. a £ S. S 1 1

(Wooden) Cow Human actors only

PENTHEUS ROOM N

\ 1 Herakles (left - n 3)

11 1 a

Punishment inflicted by a God (Zeus)

\ Dionysos (right=p3) 1

Punishment inflicted by a God (Poseidon or Zeus)

Ixion (back wall=p 2)

c »

Ajiun pesop e se suioojiQoqjo Mes); ui uiOQj goB3eujegi [EieueG e m

s -o c rt

'I

c

-C W î/> 1 (watercolor; Third Style); Imperial Villa: great triclinium, south wall: von Blanckenhagen, "Daedalus and Icarus," 107—8, pis. 27—29 (early Third Style); British Museum, unknown provenance: von Blanckenhagen, "Daedalus and Icarus," 113, 130—31, pi. 39, 2. 48. Pompeii: V, 2, 10, triclinium r, rear wall, Pasiphae in Daedalus's workshop (destroyed), drawing DAI Rome 53.580: Sampaolo, "V 2, 10," 837, fig. 15; next to it, Daedalus showing Pasiphae the finished cow (destroyed): Karl Schefold, Die Wände Pompejis: Topographisches Verzeichnis der Bildmotive (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1955), 72 (both Third Style); House of Vettii (VI, 15, 1), oecus/>, left wall: Valeria Sampaolo, "VI 15, 1: Casa dei Vettii," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 5 (Rome: Treccani, 1994), 534—36, fig. 114 (Fourth Style); House of the Ancient Hunt (VII, 4, 48), room 10, right wall, Naples inv. 8979: Penelope M. Allison, "VII 4, 48: Casa della Caccia Antica," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 7 (Rome: Treccani, 1997), 26, fig. 31 (Fourth Style); Shop of the Carpenters' Procession (VI, 7, 8-12), entryway pier, Daedalus and Pasiphae (destroyed): Irene Bragantini, "VI 7, 8.12: Bottega del Profumiere," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 4 (Rome: Treccani, 1993), 389; House of Meleager (VI, 9, 2), atrium 2, Daedalus presenting the wooden cow to Pasiphae: Irene Bragantini, "VI 9, 2.13: Casa del Melagro," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 4 (Rome: Treccani, 1993), 678, fig. 44; House of Julius Polybius (IX, 13, 1—3), cubiculum A', east wall, center picture: Irene Bragantini, "IX 13, 1—3: Casa di Polibio," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 10 (Rome: Treccani, 2003), 238-40, figs. 84,86 (late Third Style). The beginning of the story found its way into Romano-Campanian wall painting: Pasiphae in landscape pointing at the bull that enflames her, cubiculum 11 (destroyed), drawing: Irene Bragantini, "VI 14, 43: Casa degli Scienziati o Gran Lupanare," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 5 (Rome:

NOTES

TO

PAGE

25

Treccani, 1994), 444, fig. 37 (Fourth Style); a similar painting is in the House of the Bicentenary, Herculaneum (V, 15—16), tablinum: Amedeo Maiuri, Ercolano, I nuovi scavi (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1958), 231, fig. 181 (Fourth Style). 49.

Pompeii: House of the Menander (I, 10,4), room 15, south wall: Roger Ling,

" 1 1 0 , 4 : Casa del Menandro," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 2 (Rome: Treccani, 1990), 326, fig. 133 (Fourth Style); Roger Ling and Lesley Ling, The Decorations, vol. 2 of The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii, ed. Roger Ling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 76-77, fig. 68; House of the Vettii (VI, 15, 1), oecus n, south wall: Sampaolo, "Casa dei Vettii," 530-33, figs. 1 1 0 - 1 1 (Fourth Style); House of the Grand Duke (VII, 4, 56), tablinum 1 1 , east wall, Naples inv. 9042: Margaretha Staub-Gierow, "VII 4, 56: Casa del Granduca," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 7 (Rome: Treccani, 1997), 52, figs. 17, 19 (late Third Style); House of the Sailor (VII, 15, 2), exedra z', east wall (mostly destroyed): Valeria Sampaolo, "VII 15, 2: Casa del Marinaio," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 7 (Rome: Treccani, 1997), 752-55, figs. 94 a-b, 95 a—b; House of Julius Polybius (IX, 13, 3), triclinium E E , north wall: Eleanor Winsor Leach, "The Punishment of Dirce: A Newly Discovered Painting in the Casa di Giulio Polibio and Its Significance within the Visual Tradition," Römische Mitteilungen 92 (1986): 157—82, pis. 53—54, 1; Bragantini, "Casa di Polibio," 252, 256-61, figs. 105, 1 1 4 - 2 1 (Third Style); House of the Quadrigae (VII, 2, 25), uncertain: Leach, "Punishment of Dirce," 159 n. 7, no. 2, pi. 56,1; Herculaneum: House of Argo: Leach, "Punishment of Dirce," 159 n. 7, no. 4, pi. 57, 1 - 2 ; House of the Mosaic Atrium (IV, 1-2), exedra 9, north wall: Maiuri, Ercolano, I nuovi scavi, 295, fig. 238 (Fourth Style). 50.

House of Stallius Eros (I, 6,13), viridarium 13, north wall: Mariette de Vos, "I

6,13: Casa di Stallius Eros," in Pompei: Pitture e Mosaici, vol. i (Rome: Treccani, 1990), 405, fig. 8 (Third Style); House of Octavius Quartio (II, 2,2), portico i: Mariette de Vos, "II 2, 2: Casa di Octavius Quartio," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 3 (Rome: Treccani, 1991), 82, fig. 63 (Fourth Style); House of Orpheus (VI, 14, 20), peristyle o, east porticus: Federica Narciso, " V I 14,20: Casa di Vesonius Primus o di Orfeo," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 5 (Rome: Treccani, 1994), 284—87, fig. 33a-b-c-d (Third Style); House of M. Epidius Sabinus (IX, 1, 22), exedra t\ Orpheus, Hercules, and the Muses: Valeria Sampaolo, "IX 1, 22.29: Casa di M. Epidius Sabinus," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 8 (Rome: Treccani, 1998), 1032—36, figs. 135—38 (Fourth Style). 51.

John R. Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 250: Ritual, Space, and

Decoration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 201—7. 52.

Eric M. Moormann, "Sulle pitture della Herculensium Augustalium Aedes,"

Cronache ercolanesi 13 (1983): 176. On the opposite wall is a painting depicting Hercules battling the river god Acheloos. 53.

Christian Kunze, Der farnesische Stier und die Dir\egruppe des Apollonios und

Taurisfos, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Supplement (Berlin: Wal-

242

NOTES

TO

PAGE

2 5

ter de Gruyter, 1998), 91—107; Miranda Marvin, "Freestanding Sculptures from the Baths of Caracalla," American journal of Archaeology 87, no. 3 (1983): 347—84. 54.

B. Höttermann, "Phlyakenposse und Atellane," in Beiträge zur mündlichen Kul-

tur der Körner, ed. Gregor Vogt-Spira (Tübingen: G. Narr, 1993), 78—112. 55.

R. W. Reynolds, "The Adultery Mime," Classical Quarterly 40 (1946): 77.

56.

Reynolds, "Adultery Mime," 77.

57.

In Horace Satires 2.7.58—63, Davus, Horace's slave, describes his master as

though he were playing the young lover in the adultery mime: "What matters it, whether you go off in bondage, to be scourged and slain with the sword, or whether, shut up in a shameful chest, where the maid, conscious of her mistress's sin, has stowed you away, you touch your crouching head with your knees P Has not the husband of the erring matron a just power over both? Over the seducer a still juster?" (quid refert, uri virgis ferroque necari / auctoratus eas, an turpi clausus in area, / quo te demisit peccati conscia erilis, / contractum genibus tangas caput ? estne marito / matronaepeccantis in ambo iusta potestas, / in corruptorem vel iustior); trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Horace: Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 1929); I thank David Armstrong for this citation. 58.

Juvenal 8.196-97; Reynolds, "Adultery Mime," 82.

59.

Valerius Maximus 2.6.7b: Eadem civitas severitatis custos acerrima est, nullum

aditum in scaenam mimis dando, quorum argumenta maiore ex parte stuprorum continent actus, ne talia spectandi consuetudo etiam imitandi licentiam sumat ("The same community [Massilia] is a most strict guardian of morals, not allowing mimes access to the stage, as their themes for the most part involve the enactment of illicit intercourse, lest the habit of watching such things take licence to imitate them"; trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Valerius Maximus: Memorable Doings and Sayings, Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge M A : Harvard University Press, 2000]). For the objections of moralists, both Romans and church fathers, see Reynolds, "Adultery Mime," 78—81. 60.

Clarke, Looking at Lovemafyng, 209—12; Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 134—36.

61.

Valerius Maximus (2.10.8) specifies C. Messius as aedile, presumably the aedile

of 55, making this Cato Uticencsis (the Younger); Martial (1.1) repeats the story but does not specify the Cato. 62.

Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 206—12.

2.

i.

FUNNY

FACES — ONSTAGE

AND

OFF

Timothy J. Moore, The Theater ofPlautus: Playing to the Audience (Austin: Uni-

versity of Texas Press, 1998), passim. For metatheater in tragedy, see Mario Erasmo, Roman Tragedy: From Theatre to Theatricality (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004).

NOTES

TO

PAGES

2 6 - 2 9

2.

There is considerable debate about whether actors wore masks in Plautus's plays

(and thereafter). Having weighed the arguments for and against, I believe that Plautus did employ masked actors—partly because they came along with the Greek comedy he was imitating and partly because of indigenous traditions of masking. For a brief summary of the debate—but arguing^/br the use of masks—see David Wiles, The Masks of Menander: Sign and Meaning in Greek and Roman Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 132—33. 3.

Julius Naucratius Pollux, Onomasticon e codicibus ab ipso collatis denuo, ed. Er-

icus Bethe, Lexicographi Graeci (Leipzig: Teubner, 1900—1937), 4.143—54. Margarete Bieber, The History of the Greek and Roman Theater (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1939), 178—205; Margarete Bieber, "Maske," in Paulys Real-Encyclopadie, vol. 14 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche, 1930), 2093-2105; translations and discussions of Pollux's list: Wiles, Masks of Menander, 74—80; T. B. L. Webster, Monuments Illustrating New Comedy, 3rd ed., ed. J. R. Green and A. Seeberg (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1995), 6 - 5 1 . 4.

T. B. L. Webster, Monuments Illustrating New Comedy, 2nd rev. ed., Institute of

Classical Studies Bulletin, Supplement 24 (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1969), 5—37; although Luigi Bernabo-Brea (Menandro e il teatro greco nelle terracotte liparesi [Genoa: Sagep Editrice, 1981], 15) attests that the masks found at Lipari (sacked in 252 B.C., within a generation of Menander's death) correspond perfectly with the types in Pollux's catalogue and therefore go back to Menander himself, critics disagree. See especially Wiles, Masks of Menander, 80—82. 5.

Atellan farces: Festus De significatu verborum, s.v. "personata fabula": verisimi-

lis est earn fabulam propter ionopiam comoedorum actam novam per Atellanos, quiproprie vocantur personati, quia ius est is non cogi in scenam ponere personam, quod ceteris histrionibuspati necesseest. But this is a late source of the mid-fourth-century A.D. ludi scaenici. Our only source is Livy (7.2.3—5), who does not mention masks but is describing the origins of Roman theater. The scenic games, introduced by the Romans in imitation of Etruscan games, may have retained the masked dancer, or phersu. See Wiles, Masks of Menander, 131. 6.

Ovid (Fasti 6.651—94) and Valerius Maximus (2.5.5) mention that the flute play-

ers were masked; Livy (9.30.5—10) and Plutarch (Roman Questions 50) mention only that they wore women's clothes. 7.

Polybius 6.53. Harriet I. Flower, Ancestor Masks andAristocratic Power in Roman

Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 16—59; John Bodel, "Death on Display: Looking at Roman Funerals," in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of Art 56, Symposium Papers 34, ed. Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 1999), 260—62, for an excellent account of the use of the imagines; Hendrik S. Versnel (Triumphus: An In-

NOTES

TO

PAGE

3 1

quiry into the Origin, Development, and Meaning of the Roman Triumph [Leiden: Brill, 1970], 115—29) connects the funeral procession to the Triumph; Flower (Ancestor Masks, 107—9) analyzes the ideology of self-sacrifice emphasized in the funeral procession in Virgil Aeneid 6.756—866. See also Gôtz Lahusen, "Funktion und Rezeption des Ahnenbildes," Rômische Mitteilungen 92 (1985): 261—89, o n ancestor portraits in general, and Peter Stewart, Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 83—106, on the uses of portraits in Roman society. 8.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus Roman Antiquities 7.72.12.

9.

Suetonius Vespasian 19.2: Sed et in funere Favor archimimus personam eius fer-

ens imitansque, ut est mos,facta ac dicta vivi, interrogatepalam procuratoribus, quantifunus et pompa constaret, ut audit sestertium centiens, exclamavit, centum sibi sestertia darent ac se velin Tiberimproicerent ("Even at his funeral the arch-mime Favor, wearing his mask and mimicking, as is the practice, the deportment and speech of the dead man, asked the imperial procurators who were there, in front of everyone, how much the funeral and procession had cost. When he heard '10 million sesterces,' he retorted, 'Give me 100 and you can throw my body into the Tiber"'; trans. Nicholas Purcell, "Does Caesar Mime?" in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of Art 56, Symposium Papers 34, ed. Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon [Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 1999], 190 n. 9). 1 o. Seneca Apolcolocyntosis, more properly the ludus de morte Claudii; Purcell, "Does Caesar Mime?" 182—83. 11.

Alfred Ernout and E. Meillet, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine

(Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1939), 758—59; Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, 10, i,fasc. 11 (Stuttgart and Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1998), 1715—29. 12.

Wiles (Masks of Menander, 24), speaking of the Greek New Comedy masks of

Menander's time: "Ethos is a constant, a fixed moral disposition to undertake x action rather than y action in a given situation. Pathos is transient, it can only exist so long as it is felt. Thus ethos is signified by the unchanging element in theatrical communication, the mask, theprosôpon, the character type.... The mask is thcprosôpon—in Latin the persona—the type of person that one is." A similar view, for Roman theater, expressed by Corbeill (Controlling Laughter, 41): "The masks worn by actors on the comic stage . . . depict the marginalized figures of society as physically other, thus rendering them more susceptible to mockery. Slaves, moneylenders, pimps, and parasites were readily recognizable from their distorted features. Masks with gaping mouths, vicious teeth, bald heads, and distorted noses characterize the evil and absurd to the spectator at the theater. This equation of exterior and interior in the dramatic setting influenced everyday linguistic usage. The Latin word for mask, persona, came to denote the personality of the character behind the mask and thus, by extension, was commonly applied to any individual's moral temperament. In other words, whether in a dramatic

NOTES

TO

PAGES

3 I - 3 4

or a political context, the persona did not serve as a concealment but as a visual clue to the person beneath." 13.

Robert Garland, The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-

Roman World (London: Duckworth, 1995), 73—86. 14.

Naples inv. 9991; Wiles, Mas/çs ofMenander, 83—85. For the possible pitfalls of

this approach to the interpretation of masks in Romano-Campanian wall decorative schemes, see Agnes Allroggen-Bedel, Mas\endarstellungen in der romisch-\ampanischen Wandmalerei (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1974), 64—74. 15.

These visual representations are somewhat disappointing for someone want-

ing to know what comedy looked like on the stage, since the artist invariably favored the actors over the setting, omitting the scaenaefrons, chorus, and the musicians. They are vignettes that give us a close-up of a comic moment. 16.

Labeling theatrical scenes becomes increasingly important in the late Empire.

The earliest representation of the initial scene from Menander's Synaristôsai ( The Ladies at Lunch) is a fine emblema of 100 B.C. found in the so-called Villa of Cicero at Pompeii in 1763. Although signed by Dioskourides, none of the figures is labeled (Naples inv. 9987; Webster, New Comedy, 94, 3 DM 1). A recently discovered mosaic from Zeugma, dated to the first decades of the third century A.D. and signed by Zôsimos, gives us only the name of Menander's play in the accusative plural, CYNA / PI / CT / QCAC (Catherine Abadie-Reynal and Jean-Pierre Darmon, "La maison et la mosaïque des Synaristôsai [Les Femmes au déjeuner de Ménandre]," in Zeugma: Interim Reports, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Suppl. 51, ed. John H. Humphrey [Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2003], 95—99), whereas the mosaic with the same subject at Mytilene also provides the names of the three characters: the heroine; a courtesan, and an old go-between; Séraphim Charitonidis, Lilly Kahil, and René Ginouvès (Les mosaïques de la Maison du Ménandre à Mytilène, Antike Kunst, Suppl. 6 [Bern, 1970], 97—105) propose a date for the mosaics from Mytilene in the third quarter of the third century; Lasló Berczelly ("The Date and Significance of the Menander Mosaics at Mytilene," Bulletin, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London 35 [ 1988]: 119—26) and Katherine M. D. Dunbabin {Mosaics of the Gree\ and Roman World [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999], 217) argue for a date in the late fourth century. 17.

Segal, Roman Laughter.

18.

Plautus Trinummus 39—42; trans. Segal, Roman Laughter, 26.

19.

Mariette de Vos, "I 6,11 : Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali," in Pompei: Pitture e mo-

saici, voi. 1 (Rome: Treccani, 1990), 361—62. 20.

Antonella Coralini, Hercules domesticus: Immagini di Ercole nelle case della re-

gione vesuviana, Isecolo a.C-jc). d.C., Studi della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (Naples: Electa, 2001), 138: "Il rapporto preferenziale dei temi erculei con i luoghi dell'ospitalità selettiva e della vita privata (triclini, oeci, esedre, cubicoli), nella cui cor-

NOTES

TO

PAGES

3 4 ~ 3 7

nice spesso l'eroe-dio aveva un ruolo di protagonista: come veicolo delle istanze di autorappresentazione del dominus, come incarnazione dei suoi valori estici e delle sue aspirazioni." 21.

House of the Comedians, oectts N: Ulpiano Bezerra de Menesses, "Le revête-

ment mural," in L'îlot de la Maison des Comédiens (Paris: De Boccard, 1970), 168—72. 22.

Norbert Zimmermann, "Ausstattung von Haupt- und Nebenräumen: Zur

Datierung der Wandmalereien des Hanghauses 2 in Ephesos," in Das Hanghaus 2 von Epkesos: Studien zu Baugeschichte und Chronologie, Archäologische Forschungen 6, ed. Fritz Krinzinger (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2002), 101—17. 23.

Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 188—91; figs. 105 (Menander), 106 (Euripides).

24.

Although the evidence is scant—-consisting of two much-faded pictures fully

visible in the 1897 excavations—the Fourth-Style atrium of the House of the Centenary must have had a program alternating scenes of comedy with those of tragedy. One of these was a version of the same scene from Euripides' Heracles mainómenos on the west wall of the House of the Theatrical Pictures; Coralini (Hercules domesticus, 148—49, cat. no. P.009) carefully compares the two; illustration: Valeria Sampaolo, "IX 8,3.7: Casa del Centenario," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 9 (Rome: Treccani, 1999), 913, fig. 16. The scene from a comedy is better preserved but unidentified: Sampaolo, "Casa del Centenario," 912, fig. 14. 25.

Arnold de Vos, "V 1, 26: Casa di L. Cecilio Giocondo e casa anessa V 1, 23,"

in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 3 (Rome: Treccani, 1991), 574-620; Caroline E. Dexter, "The Casa di L. Cecilio Giocondo in Pompeii" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1975). 26.

Mariette de Vos, "Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali" with bibliog. Matteo Della Corte

{Case ed abitanti di Pompei, 3rd ed. [Naples: Fiorentino, 1965], 283—86) proposes that the house belonged to the Calavii, based on an amphora inscription, Calaviae Optatae. The inscriptions on the legs of an elaborate marble table, naming P. Casca Longus, caused the excavator to name the house after P. Servilius, tribunus plebis, the first to stab Caesar on the Ides of March, and subsequently exiled from Rome, his goods put up at public auction. One of the owners of the house may have acquired this table at the auction. 27.

Daniela Corlàita Scagliarini, "Spazio e decorazione nella pittura pompeiana,"

Palladio 23—25 (1974—76): 3—44. 28.

The atrium of the House of the Tragic Poet is a famous exception; for an in-

sightful interpretation and reconstruction, see Bettina Bergmann, "The Roman House as Memory Theater: The House of the Tragic Poet at Pompeii," Art Bulletin 76, no. 2 (June 1994): 225-56. 29.

Mariette de Vos, "Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali," 371, fig. 21.

30.

Pollux Onomasticon 4.150.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

3 7 - 4 I

31.

Pollux Onomasticon 4.144.

32.

Mariette de Vos, "Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali," 373, fig. 22.

33.

The old slave (the 7raV7roç) wears Pollux's mask no. 21, with white hair; the

hetaira (Aa/inraSiov, or "little lamp"—so called because her hair is gathered up like a flame at the top of her head) wears mask no. 42; and the young man (•ndyxp^oros veavioKos)

mask no. 10: Pollux Onomasticon 4.149, 4-154, and 4.146.

34.

Naples inv. 9037.

35.

Bezerra de Menesses, "Le revêtement mural," 169, pis. 21, 3; 22, 7; 23, 1—3.

36.

East wall, north part, Herakles in the Mainomenos of Euripides (but Mariette

de Vos ["Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali," 376] identifies the female protagonist with a sword in her left hand as Alcmene, mother of Herakles, at the end of the Hera^leida of Euripides, and the old man as Euristheus); for the fullest treatment now, see Coralini, Hercules domesticus, 148—49, cat. no. P.009 (House of the Theatrical Pictures) and P. 130 (House of the Centenary); east wall, part south of doorway to cubiculum 2: fragment of a tragic scene, according to Mariette de Vos ("Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali," 381, fig. 35), the moment in Euripides' Hekabe (1056-57), when Hecuba blinds Polimestor to vindicate the killing of her younger son Polidoros. Although there are no remains, there must have been at least one further tragic scene on the west wall. 37.

Flower, Ancestor Masks, 114—15.

38.

Cicero De republica 6.10: Africanus se ostend.it ea forma quae mihi ex imagine eius

quam ex ipso erat notior; quern ubi agnovi, equidem cohorrui; trans. Flower, Ancestor Mas\s, 291; Flower (appendix A, 281—325) gathers 107 literary testimonia to imagines; 20 of these are Cicero's. 39.

Wiles, Masf(s of Menander, 130.

40.

Flower, Ancestor Masks, 115.

41.

Bergmann ("Roman House as Memory Theater") takes a two-pronged ap-

proach: first she demonstrates how, since the discovery of the house, modern artists and writers have staged their fantasies of ancient Rome in their reconstructions of the atrium; she then goes on to provide a variety of ancient Roman viewing scenarios for the paintings in the atrium, positing its use not so much as a theater, but as space inviting viewers to interact with the paintings as they moved through it. 42.

On the concept of "life as a stage," the ancient notion of mimus vitae, see All-

roggen-Bedel, Maskendarstellungen, 68—71; for the appropriateness of representations of masks in the dining room, see Eleanor Winsor Leach, "Patrons, Painters, and Patterns: The Anonymity of Romano-Campanian Painting and the Transition from the Second to the Third Style," in Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome, ed. Barbara K. Gold (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1982), 154—55. 43.

Pedro Paulo Abreu Funari, "Graphic Caricature and the Ethos of Ordinary

People at Pompeii," Journal of European Archaeology 2 (1993): 131—47.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

4 1 - 4 4

44-

Martin L a n g n e r , G r a f f i t i z e i c h n u n g e n : Motive, Gestaltung und Bedeutung,

Palilia (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 2001), 36—40, 145. 45.

Pliny Natural History 35.114.

46.

H. Bartels, "Grylloi," Olympiabericht 8 (1967): 251—62, pls. 120—22; Luca Giu-

liani, "Der selige Krüppel: Zur Deutung von Mißgestalten in der hellenistischen Kleinkunst," Archäologische Anzeiger 102 (1987): 701—21; Rolf Albert Tybout, Aedificiorumfigurae: Untersuchungen zu den Architekturdarstellungen desfrühen zweiten Stils (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1989), 346—50, for a useful analysis of the element of caricature in Second-Style phallic dwarfs in alcove 45 of the House of the Labyrinth (VI, 11,8—10); Balbina Bäbler, "Der Zwerg am Pranger," Hefte des Archäologischen Seminars Bern 13 (1990): 17—20; Volker Michael Strocka, Casa delLabirinto (VI 11,8-10), Häuser in Pompeji (Munich: Hirmer, 1991), 52, 119. 47.

Dennis Mahon, Studies in SeicentoArt and Theory, Studies of the Warburg In-

stitute (London: Warburg Institute, 1947), 145, 233—75. 48.

Giovanni Becatti, "Caricatura," in Enciclopedia dell'arte antica, vol. 2 (Rome:

Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1966), 342—48; F. Tiradritti, "Caricatura (Egitto)," in Enciclopedia dell'arte antica, Supplement (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1973), 885-87; both with bibliog. 49.

CIL 4.9226.

50.

Beneath the completed head of Rufus is a partial one consisting of just fore-

head and nose, probably someone's inept attempt to copy this fluid and relatively accomplished graffito: Langner, Antike Graffitizeichnungen, no. 261, fig. ic. 51.

Suetonius Iulius 45.

52.

These details alone caused Matteo Della Corte, editor of the graffito in CIL 4,

supplement 3 (1952), 955, to construct a far-fetched identity for Rufus as "imperator." Delia Corte holds that the Villa of the Mysteries was an imperial property, later bought by Rufus: "Rufus est (imperator) intellegendum esse mihi persuasum habeo. Qui iste Rufus fuisse possit, liceat breviter attingere. Mihi quidem N. Istacidius Rufus, pater Istacidiae N. f. Rufillae, quam sacerdotem publicam Cereis i.e. divae Iuliae e monumento sepulcrali (vol. X 999) novimus, esse videtur. Villa enim empta, quae antea fuerat domus imperatoriae (cf. quae p. 950 praefatus sum), Rufus quasi successor Caesarum iure laureatus pingi poterat." 53.

Funari ("Graphic Caricature," 136—37) attempts to create a semiotic system ap-

plicable to graffiti caricatures, based on scattered references to these features in classical texts; his table 5, an interpretation of CIL 9226 Rufus est, reveals the inadequacy of his approach. 54.

Langner (Antike Graffitizeichnungen, 146) states that slaves were not the only

ones responsible for graffiti; the owners of the house and their guests also carried them out. He adds that graffiti in internal rooms of the house respect the wall decoration

NOTES

TO

PAGES

4 4 - 4 7

and complement it (his figs. 52, 53, 56-57), and he sees them as expressions of a sensation, a mood, or an event that the draftsman wants to present and retain a memory of: birds and monuments expressing the delight of the place; trips and sojourns symbolized by ships under sail; vases and dice recalling communal banquets. 55.

Langner, Antike Graffitizeichnungen,

145.

56.

Langner, Antike Graffitizeichnungen, nos. 238—41. Astyle, no. 237, has a bird's

beak and wears a veil or bonnet; the inscription Astyle dormi(en)s next to it suggests that the still sleeping Astyle will be horrified when she wakes to discover her picture. 57.

Langner, Antike Graffitizeichnungen, nos. 301—5.

58.

Langner, Antike Graffitizeichnungen, nos. 292-300.

59.

A s in CIL 4.10005, showing a woman with unruly hair, pointed nose, and, like

Promus, a jutting jaw with a large cavity for a mouth. A pointed phallus aims for her mouth; Fortunata is inscribed above her head and to the right. 60.

Funari, "Graphic Caricature," 143; Funari goes on to claim—perhaps reck-

lessly—that Ssevera phelasss "shows that people's aisthesis and expression, far from being unsophisticated, crude and direct, could reach high systemic levels of complexity and subjectivity."

3.

DOUBLE

TAKES

T h e epigraph is from Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon, trans. William Arrowsmith (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), 27. 1.

Joseph Masheck, "Verist Sculpture: Hanson and De Andrea," in Super Realism:

A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock ( N e w York: E. P. Dutton, 1975), 187-211. 2.

Pliny Natural History 35.65; my translation.

3.

Pliny Natural History 35.67: " H e [Parrhasios] was a prolific artist, but no one

ever made use of the fame of his art more insolently than he, for he even adopted certain surnames, calling himself the Habrodiaitos ['He who lives in luxury'] and, in some other verses, the 'Prince of Painting,' claiming that the art had been brought to perfection by him"; trans. J. J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece, 1400-31 B.C.: Sources and Documents, Sources and Documents in the History of A r t Series (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1965), 159-60. 4.

Alfonso D e Franciscis, "La villa romana di Oplontis," in Neue Forschungen in

Pompeji und den anderen vom Vesuvausbruch 79 n.Chr. verschütteten Städten, ed. Bernard Andreae and Helmut Kyrieleis (Recklinghausen: Bongers, 1975), 9—38, figs. 10 (fruit basket) and 22 (bird). 5.

NOTES

Quoted in the epigraph for this chapter: Ceterum ego dum omnia stupeo, paene

TO

PAGES

47-52

resupinatus crura mea fregi. Ad sinistram enim intrantibus canis ingens, catena vinctus, in pariete eratpictus, superque quadrata littera scriptum "Cave caneml" Et socii quidem mei riserunt. 6.

Elena Maria Menotti, "I 12,3: Caupona di Sotericus," in Pompei: Pitture e mo-

saici, vol. 2 (Rome: Treccani, 1990), 701-32, with bibliog.; Barbara Kellum, "The Spectacle of the Street," in The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of Art 56, Symposium Papers 34, ed. Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 2000), 284. 7.

Graffiti: (a) CIL 4.8442, in one of the electoral slogans commissioned by So-

tericus on the facade: Futui coponam ("I fucked the waitress"); (b) CIL 4.10033, next to the drawing of an ithyphallic rooster: Valeria fel[l]as ("Valeria, you suck"); (c) CIL 4.10033, Myrine (vocative of Myrina, perhaps an allusion to the myrrh tree; Romans believed that myrrh incense was an aphrodisiac); (d) CIL 4.10030, on the pilaster to the left of the sign of Roma-Virtus: Malim me amicifellentquam inimici irrument ("I'd rather that my friends sucked me off than that my enemies forced me to suck them off"). The owner was attentive to the decoration of one of these back rooms (cubiculum 3), where he paid an artist to produce a Third-Style scheme with a painting of Ariadne giving a ball of string to Theseus, copied from the same source as the Third-Style painting on the west wall of room g of the House of Lucretius Fronto: Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 156-57, fig. 73. 8.

For a discussion of how figural imagery functioned in the architectural spaces

of entry ways, see John R. Clarke, Roman Blac\-and-White Figural Mosaics, College Art Association and Archaeological Institute of America, Monographs on Archaeology and the Fine Arts (New York: New York University Press, 1979), 9—12. 9. 10.

Clarke, Figural Mosaics, 9-53. Mariette de Vos and Franca Parise Badoni, "I 7 , 1 : Casa di Paquius Proculus o

di Cuspius Pansa," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 1 (Rome: Treccani, 1990), 485, fig. 1; Wolfgang Ehrhardt (Casa di Paquius Proculus [I 7,1.20], Hauser in Pompeji [Munich: Hirmer, 1998], 141—42, figs. 107—8) dates the entire mosaic program of the house, including the fauces mosaic, before 30 B.C. 11.

I have suggested (Clarke, Figural Mosaics, 11) that the isolated eye may be an

apotropaion. 12.

Franca Parise Badoni and Federica Narciso, "VI 8,3.5: Casa del Poeta tragico,"

in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 4 (Rome: Treccani, 1993), 527—29, figs. 1—7. 13.

On the nineteenth-century reception of the mosaic, see Bergmann, "Roman

House as Memory Theater," 229; Bergmann notes that "literal-minded archaeologists were stumped when they could not identify any living counterpart for the image, a dilemma that was finally resolved when Giuseppe Fiorelli found a hollow containing the bones and chain of a dog of the same breed. The reception of the dog illustrates the

NOTES

TO

PAGES

5 2 - 5 6

nineteenth-century tendency to read a found image bothfrom a text, Petronius, and as a text, in this case a zoological one." 14.

Pliny Natural History 36.184: celeberrimus fuit in hoc genere Sosus qui Pergami

stravit quern vocant asaroton oecon, quoniampurgamenta cenae inpavimentis quaeque everri solent velut relieta fecerat parvis e tessellis tinctisque in varios colores ("In this latter field the most famous exponent was Sosus, who at Pergamum laid the floor of what is known in Greek as 'the Uns wept Room' [asarotos oif^os], because, by means of small cubes tinted in various shades, he represented on the floor refuse from the dinner table and other sweepings, making them appear as if they had been left there"; trans. D. E. Eichholz, Pliny: Natural History, Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962]). 15.

Bartolomeo Nogara, I mosaici antichi conservati nei Palazzi pontifici del Vati-

cano e del Laterano (Milan: U. Hoepli, 1910), 3—5, pls. 5—7; Klaus Parlasca, "Mosaiken," in Führer durch den öffentlichen Sammlungen Roms, vol. 1, ed. Wolfgang Heibig and Hermione Speier (Tübingen, 1969), no. 1094; Hugo Meyer, "Zu neueren Deutungen von asarotos oi\os und kapitolinischem Taubenmosaik," Archäologischer Anzeiger ( 1977): 104—10; G. Hagenow, "Der nichtausgekehrte Speisesaal," Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 121 (1978): 260—75; Eric M. Moormann, "La bellezza dell'immondezza: Raffigurazioni di rifiuti nell'arte ellenistica e romana," in Sordes urbis: La eliminación de residuosen la ciudad romana (Actas de la Reunion de Roma, 15-16 de noviembre de 1996), ed. Xavier Dupré i Raventós and Josep Anton Remolà Vallverdu (Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 2000), 75—94. 16.

Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 233—39: Pompeii, House of the Moralist (III, 4, 2).

17.

Rolf Hurschmann, "Kottabos," in Der Neue Pauly, vol. 6 (Stuttgart: J. B. Met-

zler, 1999), 782. 18.

Katherine Dunbabin, "Sic erimus cuncti: The Skeleton in Graeco-Roman

Art," Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 101 (1986): 215—16, fig. 25, with bibliog. 19.

National Archeological Museum of Aquileia, inv. 50397. Limestone from Au-

risina, H 0.87 x W 1.32 x 0.16/0.13 m. 20.

Column of Trajan: image of Jupiter with thunderbolt: Filippo Coarelli, The

Column of Trajan (Rome: Colombo, 2000), 68, pi. 24. 21.

The phrase occurs repeatedly at Pompeii, where it is a warning addressed to

people tempted to defecate on a specific stretch of wall. Antonio Sogliano ("Scavi di Pompei," Notizie degli scavi [1880]: 394—95) cites an inscription, now gone, on the west wall of the House of the Centenary (IX, 8, 3—6): Cacator, cave malu(m). 22.

A lararium painting with an altar approached by two agathodaemones appears

on an outer wall of the north side of the unexcavated insula 6 in Regio V, looking toward the Vesuvius Gate. The inscription painted on the left upper corner reads:

NOTES

TO

PAGES

5 7 - 6 2

CACATOR. / SIC.VALEAS VT.TBV.HOC LOCVM.TRASIR.

Eric Moormann, who kindly studied this inscription for me, suggests: "Defecator, you may live well in the following way: pass by this place." He notes that the last word is barely legible and must be a form of transire, but with the writer omitting the n. 23.

CIL 4.7714-15.

24.

Della Corte, Case ed abitanti, 367, no. 790 g (b): CIL 4.7716.

25.

Luigi Beschi, "Le arti plastiche," in DaAquileia a Venezia: Una mediazione tra

l'Europa e l'Oriente dal II secolo a.C. al VI secolo d.C., ed. Bruna Forlati Tamaro (Milan: Garzanti, 1986), 377, fig. 357; Giovanni Brusin (Aquileia e Grado: Guida storico-artistico, 4th ed. [Padua: Antoniana, 1956], 181—82, fig. 11) notes that the remains of three iron pegs above the relief suggest the support for a little roof to protect the relief from the elements. Valnea Santa Maria Scrinari (Museo Archeologico di Aquileia: Catalogo delle sculture romane [Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1972], 194, cat. no. 604, fig. 604) dates the relief, as does Brusin, to the first century A.D. on the basis of the man's hairstyle, its metallic rendering using only the chisel, with no drill work. 26.

Petronius Satyricon 71.20: praeponam enim unum ex libertis sepulcro meo custo-

diae causa, ne in monumentum meum populus cacatum currat.

4 .

A P O T R O P A I C

L A U G H T E R

1.

Barton, Sorrows of the Ancient Romans, 168—72.

2.

Sarah I. Johnston, "Crossroads," Zeitschriftfur Papyrologie und TLpigraphi\ 88

(1991): 217—24; compital altars at Pompeii: Kellum, "Spectacle of the Street," 285; lares compitales: Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 81 n. 16; Clarke, Roman Sex, 95—113. 3.

Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, 2nd ed., trans. Monika B. Vizedom

and Gabrielle L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). 4.

Turner, Ritual Process, 94.

5.

Turner, Ritual Process, 94.

6. Van Gennep, Rites of Passage, 11,21; Turner, Ritual Process, 94—95. Van Gennep uses the Roman triumph to demonstrate liminality in Roman culture. A victorious emperor passing through a triumphal arch is in the transitional stage. Before this passage, he must separate himself from the world of his defeated enemy in ritual washing— van Gennep's preliminal rites. After marching through the arch, he sacrifices to the Capitoline Jupiter in ceremonies of incorporation.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

6 2 - 6 4

7-

I thank Nayla Muntasser for bringing this literature to my attention; see her

doctoral dissertation: Nayla Kabazi Muntasser, "The Late Antique Domus in Ostia: Patterns of Diversity and Transformation" (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2003). 8.

Marbury B. Ogle, "House-Door in Religion and Folklore," American Journal

of Philology 32, no. 2 (1911): 251—71; Judith P. Hallett, "Ianus Iucunda: The Characterization of the Door in Catullus 67," in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, vol. 2, ed. Carl Deroux (Brussels: Latomus, 1980), 106—22. 9. Some of the mottoes traced on the sidewalks in front of entry ways have humorous connotations. In addition to the standard have and salve ("Hail!" or "Hello!") we find salve lucru(m) ("Hail to profit!" [VII, 1,47 ]),lucrum gaudium ("Profit is happiness" [VI, 14,39]), lucru(m) ac(c)ipe ("Accept profit" [VII, 3]), and eras credo ("I believe in tomorrow" [II, 8, 6]): Mariette de Vos, "Paving Techniques at Pompeii," Archaeological News 16, nos. 1—4 (1991): 42. 10.

Matthew W. Dickie and Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, "Invida Rumpantur

Pectora: The Iconography of Phthonos/Invidia in Graeco-Roman A r t " Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 26 (1983): 7—37. 11.

The literature on the Evil Eye is extensive. Some references that have been use-

ful in my research include Frederick Thomas El worthy, The Evil Eye: An Account of This Ancient and Widespread Superstition (1895; repr., New York: Julian Press, 1958); Clarence Maloney, ed., The Evil Eye (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976); Alan Dundes, ed., TheEvilEye:A

Casebook (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1981);

Pierre Bettez Gravel, The Malevolent Eye: An Essay on the Evil Eye, Fertility, and the Concept of Mana, American University Studies, Series 11, Anthropology and Sociology (New York: Peter Lang, 1995); Thomas Rakoczy, Böser Blick: Macht des Auges und Neid der Götter: Eine Untersuchungen zur Kraft des Blickes in der griechischen Literatur (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1996). 12.

Doro Levi, "The Evil Eye and the Lucky Hunchback," in Antioch-on-the-

Orontes, ed. Richard Stillwell (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 225. 13.

Levi, "Evil Eye," 225-26. This direct address to the envious person, by itself,

could work to thwart the Evil Eye, to judge from the inscription on the floor of a humble taverna at Ostia (IV, 5,1), where the proprietor had the mosaicist write in large letters inbide, calco te ("Envious one! I crush you beneath my feet"): Giovanni Becatti, Mosaici e pavimenti marmorei, vol. 4 of Sea vi di Ostia (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1961), 191, 345, cat. no. 361. 14.

Garland, Eye of the Beholder, 73—86.

15.

Barton, Sorrows of the Ancient Romans, 86.

16.

Ruth Mellinkoff, Averting Demons: The Protective Power of Medieval Visual

Motifs and Themes (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 1: 39—57.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

6 4 - 6 7

17.

Pilgrim badges: Mellinkoff, Averting Demons, 1: 51—54, with bibliog.; margins

of manuscripts: Michael Camille, Image on the Edge (London: Reaktion Books, 1992), passim. 18.

Dickie and Dunbabin, "Phthonos/Invidia," 7—37.

19.

Ovid Fasti 4.901-42 gives the feminine form, Robigo; the masculine form,

Robigus, appears in Augustine De civitate dei 2.79 and Festus De significatu verborum: Pauli excerpta, Mueller, 267. See also Robert Grosse, "Robigalia," Der kleine Pauly (Stuttgart: A. Druckenmuller, 1964—75). 20.

For an excellent overview up to the early modern period, see Dale B. Martin,

Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 21.

Becatti, Mosaici, 185—86, cat. no. 344 ("second century

22.

Stefano De Caro, Il gabinetto segreto del Museo Nazionale Archeologico di Napoli

A.D.").

(Naples: Electa, 2000), 29, illustration on p. 28. 23.

Michele Arditi, Ilfascino e l'amuleto contro delfascino presso gli antichi, 2nd ed.,

ed. Renato De Falco (1825; repr., Capri: La Conchiglia, 1991) is still useful. See also E. Kuhnert, "Fascinum," in Pauly-Wissowa, vol. 6 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1909), 2009—14. 24.

Clarke, Roman Sex, 153, fig. 105: a terra-cotta lamp from Aries combining

dwarf and phallus. 25.

De Caro, Gabinetto Segreto, 72, but with incorrect translation: "io ho cacato su

questo cazzo." 26. A. E. Housman, "Praefanda," Hermes 66 ( 1931): 404: "cacat, hoc est merdae modo emittit, mentulam cui eam finito opere extrahit pedicator; quae si iusto maior sit, cum dolore id fieri consentaneum est. eodem modo explicanda sunt tria huius verbi exempla non rectius in thes. ling. Lat. III p. 8 54—8 collocata. C.I.L. X 8145 'hanc (mentulam supra pictam) ego cacavi' scripsit impudicus

evpwrpwKTÌa

sua gloriatus." I wish to thank J. L.

Butrica for this citation in his review, where he notes my incorrect interpretation of this inscription: J. L. Butrica, "Review of John R. Clarke, Roman Sex," Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.01.03 (2004): http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2004/2004— 01—03.html. 27.

I thank Anthony Corbeill for this observation (personal communication).

28.

William Geli, Pompeiana: The Topography, Edifices, and Ornaments of Pompeii,

3rd ed. (London: H . G . Bohn, 1852). 29.

Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, "Baiarum Grata Voluptas: Pleasures and Dangers

of the Baths," Papers of the British School at Rome 57 (1989): 6—46. 30.

Dunbabin, "Pleasures and Dangers," 35-38.

31.

Frank Snowden, "Iconographical Evidence on the Black Populations in Graeco-

Roman Antiquity," in The Image of the Blac\ in Western Art, ed. Jean Vercoutter et al. (Fribourg: Office du Livre, 1976), 133—245; Lloyd A. Thompson, Romans and Blacks (London: Routledge, 1989).

NOTES

TO

PAGES

6 7 — 7 5

See Clarke, Looking at Lovemakjng,

32.

119—42,

for a full discussion of related

mosaics representing the hypersexual Aethiops from baths at Pompeii and elsewhere; in most cases they functioned as apotropaia. 33.

United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, Tunisia:

Ancient Mosaics (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, scription o

1962),

pi.

21.

The in-

is of uncertain meaning: "Oh delight"; an abbreviation of Charidotes

c h a r i

(an ephithet of Zeus, Bacchus, or Hermes); an invocation of charismion, a famous aphrodisiac (Tunisia, 17). Eric Moormann offers the more likely suggestion that it may be a vocative of

c h a r i s ,

meaning "O Love/Sweetheart!" (personal communcation).

Veronique Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece, Oxford Monographs

34.

on Classical Archaeology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,

1993),

169-74.

35.

Miguel John Versluys,Aegyptiaca Romana: Nilotic Scenes and the Roman Views

of Egypt, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden: Brill,

2002).

36.

Clarke, Ordinary Romans,

37.

Herbert A. Cahn, "Oceanus," in Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae

(Zurich: Artemis, 38.

1 9 9 1 ) , 8:

191—96,

with previous bibliog.

914.

Parentalia: Ovid Fasti 2.533ff; Lemuria: Ovid Fasti 5.419fr; Jocelyn M. C. Toyn-

bee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), 51, Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

62—64;

8

2

!9 3)> 3339. Becatti, Mosaici, 60. 40.

Dante Vaglieri, "Ostia," Notizie degli scavi ( 1 9 0 9 ) : 126—27; Dante Vaglieri, Ostia:

Cenni storici e guida (Rome: Ermanno Loescher, 41.

1914),

57—58.

August Mau, "Pompei," Bullettino dell'Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica

(1882): 196;

CIL

4.3832;

Maus interpretation is followed by Richard Neudecker,Die

Pracht der Latrine: Zum Wandel öffentlicher Bedürfnisanstalten in der kaiserzeitlichen Stadt, Studien zur Antiken Stadt (Munich: Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, Bragantini, "IX

7, 21—22,"

in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol.

9

1994), 24,

and Irene

(Rome: Treccani,

1999),

865-69.

42.

Luciana Jacobelli, "Lo scavo delle Terme Suburbane: Notizie preliminari," Ri-

vista di studi pompeiani 1

(1987):

153—54) fig-17; Thomas Fröhlich, Lararien-und Fassa-

denbilder in den Vesuvstädten: Untersuchungen zur "volkstümlichen" pompejanischen Malerei, Römische Mitteilungen, Supplement (Mainz: von Zabern, pl.

1991), 301,

cat. L i

14,

50, 3. 43.

Ferdinand Noack, "Ostia," Die Antike

2 (1926):

218. The small shrine attached

to the wall carries the inscription Fortunae sanctae (CIL

14.4282);

on the floor is the

marble altar dedicated to Fortuna by C. Valerius Myron, who served on the staff of the commander of the vigiles at Rome: beneficariuspraefecti vigilum (CIL

256

NOTES

TO

PAGES

7 5 - 8 0

14.4281).

44-

Suzanne Germain, Les mosaïques de Timgad: Étude descriptive et analytique

(Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1969), 134, pis. 72 (pygmy fragment) and 76 (drawing of semicircular frame). 45.

Alix Barbet, "Peintures murales trouvées dans les latrines et les boutiques près

du forum de Bolsena," in Les abords du Forum: Le côté nord-ouest (fouilles

1971-1973),

vol. 6 of Fouilles de l'École Française de Rome à Bolsena (Poggio Moscini), ed. Gilbert Hallier, Michel Humbert, and Patrice Pomey, Collection de l'École Française de Rome (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1982), 101—19, figs. 1—2. 46.

CIL 14.95,

PART

TWO.

SOCIAL

HUMOR

1.

Martineau, "Social Functions of Humor."

2.

Hierocles Philogelos, 52 n. 1. In late Greek, scholasticus is the term for some-

one who has completed the stages of a general education, or a lawyer. Other translations include "pedant," "professor," and "bookworm." Baldwin's choice, "egghead," is the somewhat dated American expression for an intellectual or highbrow. 3.

Bakhtin, Rabelais.

5.

1.

POWER

OVER

THE

O T H E R — OR

THE

OTHER'S

POWER?

Versluys, Aegyptiaca Romana, 413—22; G r e g Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Ori-

gins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 238—49, emphasizing degrees of assimilation and resistance on the part of native Gauls. 2.

P. G. P. Meyboom, The Nile Mosaic ofPalestrina: Early Evidence of Egyptian Re-

ligion in Italy, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 12-19. 3.

Naples inv. 10323; Erich Pernice, Pavimente und figürliche Mosaiken, Die hel-

lenistische Kunst in Pompeji (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1938), 167—68, pl. 68, nos. 1—4; Meyboom, Nile Mosaic of Palestrina, 219-20 n. 71; 337-38 n. 9; 357-58 n. 5, fig. 28 (90—80 B.C.).

4.

Early excavators (1796—98), finding finished and unfinished sculptures, as well

as sculptors' tools, dubbed VIII, 7, 24—22, the House of the Sculptor. In 1940, Amedeo Maiuri discovered the first part of the frieze—decoration of the socle—along the south wall, A , buried 1.1 o— 1.20 meters beneath the pavement of the postearthquake peristyle "al di sotto dell'attuale piano di calpestio." Thus there were two peristyles, the earlier one, labeled "first peristyle" on the plan, defined by walls A - D - B - C ; the "second peristyle" by walls A - D - Q - C on the plan, where Q - Q ' is the wall delimiting the northern extension of the earlier peristyle when wall B was demolished. W h e n Maiuri reopened

NOTES

TO

PAGES

8 0 - 9 1

excavations in 1953, he discovered a longer frieze on the north wall, B, and a less wellpreserved frieze on the eastern wall, C. No remains appeared on the western wall, D. But in all he recovered twenty-four meters of the original fifty-meter-long frieze. Maiuri dated this socle-frieze to the period between 50 and 15 B.C. on the basis of the construction technique: he found the plaster attached directly to walls in opus incertum: "l'intonaco appare direttamente sovrapposto sulle strutture in opera incerta dell'ultimo periodo sannitico senza altro intonaco sottoposto, il che ci porta a datare il dipinto se non ad età repubblicana, al più tardi alla prima età augustea" (Amedeo Maiuri, "Una nuova pittura nilotica a Pompei," Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Memorie series

8,

vol. 7 [1957]:

72—73).

Versluys {Aegyptiaca Romana,

140-42,

cat. no. 0 6 0 ) dates

the frieze to the period of the Fourth Style of about A.D. 70 on stylistic grounds, untenable considering Maiuri's stratigraphy and analysis of wall construction. Valeria Sampaolo ("VIII7,24.22: Casa dello Scultore," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 8 [Rome: Treccani,

1998], 718—19)

incorrectly locates the Nilotic frieze on a pluteus rather than

on the base or socle of the perimeter wall. I pass over another extensive Second-Style frieze featuring pygmies in a Nilotic landscape on the north wall of a large open area (34) at the lowest level of the House of Ma. Castricius (VII, 16 [Ins. Occ.], 17); a later owner had the frieze covered by a layer of white plaster, so that it is much faded and difficult to study. Nevertheless, the imagery furnishes many parallels to the more-or-less contemporary frieze of the House of the Sculptor: Irene Bragantini, "VII 16 (Ins. Occ.), 17: Casa di Ma. Castricius," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 5.

7

(Rome: Treccani,

1 9 9 7 ) , 940—46,

figs.

123—40.

Eric Moormann notes (personal communication) that a precedent for the

macrophallic "pygmies" and Aethiopes may be in the representations of fishermen in the Hellenistic period, who often appear nude (but not in heroic nudity) and with large penises as symbols of their low status. 6.

Sampaolo, "Casa dello Scultore,"

7.

Sampaolo, "Casa dello Scultore," 727, fig. 16.

8.

Sampaolo, "Casa dello Scultore,"

9.

729,

figs.

18—21.

figs.

12—15.

Sampaolo, "Casa dello Scultore," 730—31, figs.

22—24.

726—27,

10.

Versluys, Aegyptiaca Romana, 9.

11.

Amedeo Maiuri, La Villa dei Misteri (Rome: La Libreria dello Stato,

197—99,

12.

fig.

83;

Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 9 4 , fig.

1931),

29.

The total height of the fragment is forty-one centimeters, but the height of the

figurai frieze itself is about the same as that in the atriolo of the House of the Menander, about eighteen centimeters. Valeria Sampaolo, "V 1, 7: Casa del Toro," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 3 (Rome: Treccani, 1991), 487, figs. 9—11. 13.

NOTES

Clarke, Ordinary Romans,

TO P A G E S

91-98

96—98,

fig.

50.

14.

On so-called Egyptomania in the Augustan period, see my brief overview:

John R. Clarke, "Augustan Domestic Interiors: Propaganda or Fashion?" in Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, ed. Karl Galinsky (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2 0 0 5 ) , 15.

264—78.

There is a veritable explosion of representations of pygmies in Nilotic settings

during the period of the Fourth Style at Pompeii. Many are lost, like the decoration of the pluteus of the impluvium in the House of the Restaurant (IX, 5, 16): Clarke, Looking at Lovemakjng, 309 n. 50; others, like the pluteus paintings from the House of the Quadriga, were removed to the Naples Museum, but on-site remains are so scant as to prevent the kind of reconstruction that I have done for the pluteus paintings from the House of the Doctor: Valeria Sampaolo, "VII 2, 25: Casa delle Quadrighe," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi.

6

(Rome: Treccani,

figs.

1996), 687,

7

and

8.

Finally, others, like

the pygmies on the west edge of the frigidarium of the Sarno Baths, are too fragmentary to allow a coherent iconographical reading: Valeria Sampaolo, " V I I I 2 , 1 7 - 2 1 : Complesso a sei piani delle Terme del Sarno," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 8 (Rome: Treccani,

1998),

no, fig.

26.

For a comprehensive listing with current bibliography,

see Versluys, Aegyptiaca Romana, cat. nos. 0 3 5 — 0 4 6 ,

049—051, 053, 055—059,

061—066,

068-069.

16.

Paul Zanker, "Die Villa als Vorbild des späten pompejanischen Wohnge-

schmacks," Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 9 4

(1979): 460—523;

reprinted

in Paul Zanker, Pompeii: Public and Private Life, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1 9 9 8 ) ,

133-203

(although he admits in his pref-

ace that the 1979 article had perhaps overstated his case). I followed Zanker's lead in my account of the House of Octavius Quartio: Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy,

23-25,

193-207.

17.

Henrik Mouritsen (Elections, Magistrates, and Municipal Élite: Studies in Pom-

peian Epigraphy, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici [Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1988], 121—22)

rejects the notion, proposed by Paavo Castrén (Ordo Populusque Pom-

peianus: Polity and Society in Roman Pompeii, Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae [Rome: Bardi, 1975],

121,124)

that freedmen acquired a marked increase in political influence

in postearthquake Pompeii. 18.

Roger Ling, The Structures, vol. 1 of The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii, ed.

Roger Ling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19.

1997),

143—44.

Jens-Arne Dickmann, Domus frequentata: Anspruchsvolles Wohnen im pompe-

janischen Stadthaus (Munich: F. Pfeil, 1 9 9 9 ) ; see also the review by Eric M. Moormann, Journal of Roman Archaeology 20.

1 5 (2002):

429-36.

Lauren Hackworth Petersen, The Freedman in Roman Art andArt History (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2 0 0 6 ) ,

123—62.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

9 8 - 9 9

21.

Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 222—27, with bibliog.; see "ekphrasis chart,"

fig. 69. 22.

Zanker, "Die Villa als Vorbild"; Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, fig. 114, for

chart of paintings and sculpture in the garden of the House of Octavius Quartio. 23.

Irene Bragantini, "VIII 5, 24: Casa del Medico," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici,

vol. 8 (Rome: Treccani, 1998), 604—10. Note that the plan—like many in this series— is unreliable. 24.

Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 214—15. See also Dickmann, Domus frequen-

tata, passim. 25.

Antonio Sogliano, "Scavi di Pompei: V i l i 5—6, 24," Notizie degli scavi (1882):

322-24. 26.

Amedeo Maiuri, La Casa del Menandro e Usuo tesoro di argenteria (Rome: Li-

breria dello Stato, 1933), 82—84,

38—41.

27.

Sogliano, "Vili 5—6, 24," 332.

28.

August Mau, "Scavi di Pompei: V i l i , 5, 24 (Casa del Medico)," Bullettino del-

l'Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (1883): 228. 29.

I wish to thank Ann Kuttner for suggesting this use of the paintings.

30.

Eleanor Winsor Leach, The Rhetoric of Space: Literary and Artistic Representa-

tions of Landscape in Republican and Augustan Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 197-260. 31.

Arnold de Vos, "I 7, 11: Casa dell'Efebo o di P. Cornelius Tages," in Pompei:

Pitture e mosaici, vol. i (Rome: Treccani, 1990), figs. 165—87. 32.

See discussion of drinking scenes from the House of the Chaste Lovers and

the House of the Triclinium, both at Pompeii, in Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 227—33. 33.

Clarke, Looking at Lovemakjng, 212—40.

34.

Irene Bragantini and Mariette de Vos, Le decorazioni della villa romana della

Farnesina, Museo Nazionale Romano, Le pitture (Rome: De Luca, 1982), 234—39, pls122—65. 35.

Karl Schefold, Vergessenes Pompeji: Unveröffentlichte Bilder römischer Wand-

dekprationen in geschichtlicher Folge herausgegeben (Bern and Munich: Francke Verlag, 1962), 60, 66—67, pl- 7> 236.

Mau, "Casa del Medico."

37.

Eric M. Moormann, La pittura parietale romana come fonte di conoscenza per la

scultura antica, Scrinium: Monographs on History, Archaeology, and Art History (Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1988), 215, cat. no. 285. 38.

House of the Pygmy (IX, 5,9), measurements of room I: N wall, 2.65 m; S wall,

2.73 m; E wall 2.25 m; W wall 2.27 m. 39.

NOTES

Versluys, Aegyptiaca Romana, 249—99.

TO

PAGES

9 9 - I O 7

6.

1.

WHO'S

L A U G H I N G ?

Naples inv. 27683, H 137 x W 74 cm. Valeria Sampaolo, "VII 6,34—35," in Pom-

pei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 7 (Rome: Treccani, 1997), 207—9 (with previous bibliog.); De Caro, Gabinetto Segreto, 41—45. 2.

On the iconography of Victoria, see Tonio Hölscher, Victoria Romana: Archäol-

ogische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Wesensart der römischen Siegesgöttin von den Anfangen bis zum Ende des 3. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (Mainz: von Zabern, 1967); for the crown J. Rumscheid, Kranz und Krone: Zu Insignien, Siegespreisen und Ehrenzeichen der römische Kaiserzeit, Istanbuler Forschungen 43 (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 2000). 3.

I assume that the lion is male, although the artist has not depicted its penis.

4.

Giulio Minervini, "Nuove scavazioni di Pompei, rimpetto al Foro civile, e nella

continuazione del vicoletto detto di Augusto," Bullettino archeologico napolitano New Series 7 (1859): 68—71; Giuseppe Fiorelli, Descrizione di Pompei (Naples: Tipografìa Italiana, 1875), 437—38; Matteo Della Corte, Cleopatra, M. Antonio e Ottaviano nelle allegorie storico-umoristiche delle argenterie del tesoro di Boscoreale (Pompei: Scuola Tipografica Pontificia, 1951), 25—30; Della Corte, Case ed abitanti, 169—72, nos. 309—12. According to Wolfgang Heibig Wandgemälde der vom Vesuv verschütteten Städte Campaniens [Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1865], L. Stephani {Comptes-rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 7 [1863]: 235 n. 5) opposed Minervini's interpretation, holding that the painting simply showed the victory of the ass's fertility over that of the lion. (Helbig's reference to Stephani, repeated in the literature, appears incorrect, as I failed to locate it.) Helbig catalogues all three paintings from the facade (nos. 10 [Mercury], 23 [Dionysus], 1548 [ass-lion-Victory]) and questions Minervini's interpretation. 5.

Suetonius Augustus 96: ApudActium descendenti in aciem asellus cum asinario

occurrit: homini Eutychus, bestiae Nicon erat nomen. Utriusque simulacrum aeneum victor posuit in tempio, in quod castrorum suorum locum vertit. 6.

Plutarch Vitae Parallelae, Antonius 65.3: Kalaapi

dm rrjs OKijvrjs

KVKXW

vepiióvri

77pòs

8è Xéyerai ¡xèv en

TTvOoixévqj Sè Tovvo/xa yviopioas avTov eìneìv. " 'Efxol fièv Evtvxos NIKOIV."

SW

KOI

TÖls epbßoXoLS ròv

OKOTOVS

ras vavs avdpomos iAauvojv ovov ¿TravTrjoai,

TOTTOV

Koafiwv voTepov

earrjae

ovo/xa, reo Sè ovip

XCLXKOVV

OVOV KAL

(ivdpoiiTov.

7.

Minervini, "Nuove scavazioni di Pompei," 70.

8.

For an excellent account of the effects of Actium, see Robert Alan Gurval, Ac-

tium and Augustus: The Politics and Emotions of Civil War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995). 9.

All of the piers seem to be postearthquake repairs, employing typical brick-and-

tufa courses, in contrast to the opus incertum of the inner walls of the two shop spaces.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

II0-II2

10.

Paolino Mingazzini, "De pictura quadam Pompeis reperta et de fabula ab ea

nobis tradita," Römische Mitteilungen 60 (1953): 150—52. 11.

H.B. Walters, Catalogue of the Greek and Roman Lamps in the British Museum

(London: British Museum Publications, 1914), 90, cat. no. 595, pl. 16. 12.

Although twenty of the fables of Aesop involve the ass, and three of them in-

clude the lion, none recounts this story: É. Chambry,Ésope: Fables (Paris: Société d'Édition Les Belles Lettres, 1927), nos. 262-81. 13.

S. Loeschcke, Lampen aus Vindonissa (Zurich: Beer & cie, 1919), cat. nos.

383-88, pl. 12. Another lamp of the first century is a less ambiguous representation of a lion bringing down an ass: Gerald Heres, Die römischen Bildlampen der Berliner Antiken-Sammlung, Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1972), cat. no. 136, Antikensammlung inv. T C 6315.89. 14.

Minervini, "Nuove scavazioni di Pompei," 69.

15.

G. Bârberi Squarotti, ed., II Candelaio di Giordano Bruno (Turin: Giulio Ein-

audi, 1964), act 2, scene 5, pp. 65—66: "Once upon a time a lion and an ass were companions; and travelling together, they agreed that when they had to cross a river by swimming, the first time the ass would carry the lion and the second time the lion would carry the ass. Having to go to Rome, and coming upon the river Garigliano, without either ferry or bridge, the ass took the lion on his back. As the ass swam across the river, the lion, for fear of falling, dug his claws deeper and deeper into the ass's hide, so much so that he penetrated the poor animal all the way to the bone. And this poor beast, being one who makes a living out of his patience, kept on going as best he could without complaining. Once he had reached safety and was out of the water, he shook his back a little, and rolled around on his back three or four times in the hot sand, and they went on. Eight days later, on their return, it was the lion's turn to carry the ass. The ass, being on top, dug his teeth into the lion's neck to keep from falling in the water, but since that wasn't enough to hold him on, he thrust his tool—or, I mean, his . . . , you know what I mean,—to speak honestly, into the empty space, below the tail, where there isn't any skin: and he did so in such a way that the lion felt worse than a woman who screams in the pain of childbirth 'Olà, olà, oi, oi, oi, oimè, traitor!' To which the ass responded, with a serious look and a grave tone of voice: 'Patience, my brother: you see that I have no claws other than these to hold on with.' And thus the lion had to suffer and be patient until he got across the river. The lesson: Omnia rero vecissitudo este [editor's note: "Deformation of the Latin proverb Omnium rerum vicissitudo est: 'Things constantly change'; 179, scena quinta, n. 7]; and no one is such an ass that now and again, when the occasion arises, he doesn't take advantage of it" (my translation). I thank Hilary Gatti for this citation. 16.

Hedwig Kenner, Das Phänomen der verkehrten Welt in der griechisch-römischen

Antike (Klagenfurt: Ernst Ploetz, 1970).

NOTES

TO

PAGES

I 1 2 - 1

13

17.

A good overview of Lévi-Strauss's structural treatment of mythology is found

in Marcel Hénaff, Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Maying of Structural Anthropology, trans. Mary Baker (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 159—89. 18.

Diane G. Favro, The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge and New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Kellum, "Spectacle of the Street." 19.

Irene Bragantini and Valeria Sam paolo, "La Volpe," in Pompei: Pitture e mo-

saici: La documentazione nell'opera di disegnatori e pittori dei secoli XVIII e XIX (Rome: Treccani, 1995), 683, cat. no. 132. 20.

Fourth Style. Like the establishment at VII, 6, 34—35, the image of Dionysus

covers a pier in opus listatum, indicating a date after the earthquake of 62: Arnold de Vos, "V 6, i," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 3 (Rome: Treccani, 1991), 1099-1101; Antonio Sogliano, "Relazione degli scavi fatti dal dicembre 1902 a tutto marzo 1905," Notizie degli scavi (1906): 155—56, fig. 5; George K. Boy ce, "Corpus of the Lararia of Pompeii," Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 14 (1937): no, cat. no. 6; Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 318—19, cat. no. F34. 21.

Della Corte, Cleopatra, M. Antonio e Ottaviano, 25—27; Della Corte, Case ed abi-

tanti, 1965, nos. 309—12. 22.

Clarke, Looping at Lovemakjng, 196—206; Clarke, Roman Sex, 60—67 ¡Fröhlich,

Lararien- und Fassadenbilder, 65. 23.

In other contexts Mercury can be an unstable figure. See Gerhard Binder,

"Verkehrte Welt: Gott Mercurius als Mensch in Rom ? Gedanken zu Horaz, Carmen i, 2," in Gottmenschen: Konzepte existentieller Grenzüberschreitung im Altertum, ed. Gerhard Binder, Bernd Effe, and Reinhold F. Glei (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2003), 46—65; Arlene Allan, "From Agonistes io Agon ios: Hermes, Chaos, and Conflict in Competitive Games and Festivals," in Games and Festivals in Classical Antiquity, Proceedings of the Conference Held in Edinburgh 10-12 July 2000, ed. Sinclair Bell and Glenys M. Davies (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2003), 45—54.1 thank Sinclair Bell for these references. 24.

On lovemaking and drinking, see Nicholas Purcell, "Women and Wine in An-

cient Rome," in Gender, Drin\, and Drugs, ed. Maryon McDonald (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 191—208. 25.

Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 106, fig. 61.

26.

Nicholas Purcell, "Literate Games: Roman Urban Society and the Game of

Alea," Past and Present 147 (1995): 3—37; M. Ihm, "Römische Spieltafeln," in Bonner Studien: Aufsätze aus der Altertumswissenschaft (Reinhard Ke\ulézur Erinnerung an seine Lehrthätigi{eit in Bonn, gewidmet von seinen Schülern) (Berlin: W. Spemann, 1890), 223—39; taverna lusoria at Pompeii: Kellum, "Spectacle of the Street," 287—88. 27.

Natalie B. Kampen, "On Writing Histories of Roman Art," Art Bulletin 85,

no. 2 (2003): 371—86; Richard Brilliant, "The New Roman Art History," Journal of Roman Archaeology 11 (1998): 557—65.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

I I 4 - I 2 O

28.

Peter Burke, "Context in Context," Common Knowledge 8, no. i (2002): 152—77;

R. R. R. Smith, "The Use of Images: Visual History and Ancient History," in Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. T. P. Wiseman (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2003), 59—102. 29.

Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 9—13.

30.

For an earlier interpretation of the Caupona of Salvius, see Clarke, Ordinary

Romans, 161—70 with previous bibliog. 31.

Martineau, "Social Functions of Humor."

32.

Anthony Corbeill points out (personal communication) that the mia est could

suggest a sexual advance with the feminine adjective ("She is mine"), with the barmaid responding with appropriate ambiguity. 33.

A. E. Todd, "Three Pompeian Wall-Inscriptions, and Petronius," Classical Re-

view 53 (February 1939): 6. 34.

Martial 3.95.10; 5.23.4; 5.27.4; 6.9.2.

35.

For an earlier interpretation of the program of the Tavern of the Seven Sages,

see Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 170—80. 36.

S. T. A. M. Mols ("I 'sette sapienti' ad Ostia Antica," in I temi figurativi nella

pittura parietale antica [IVsec. a.C.-IVsec. d.C.], Atti del VI Convegno Internazionale sulla pitturaparietale antica, ed. Daniela Scagliarini Corlaita [Bologna: University Press Bologna, 1997], 90—91) reviews the dating evidence and proposes a date in the Hadrianic period. 37.

Edward Courtney (Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin Verse Inscriptions,

American Classical Studies [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995], 87, no. 70A) provides the following translations: "To have a good shit, Solon rubbed his stomach. Thales instructed the constipated to strain. Crafty Chilon taught how to fart silently." 38.

Guido Calza, "Die Taverne der Sieben Weisen in Ostia," DieAntike 15 (1939):

104. 39.

Bakhtin, Rabelais. See introduction, pp. 7—8.

40.

Bakhtin, Rabelais, 368—436. In the prologue to this 1984 edition, Michael Hol-

quist comments on the reception of Bakhtin's notions of the material bodily lower stratum: "In the prim world of Stalinist Biedermeier, that world of lace curtains, showily displayed water carafes, and militant propriety, Bakhtin's claim that the folk not only picked their noses and farted, but enjoyed doing so, seemed particularly unregenerate" (xix). 41.

See Krystyna Pomorska's definition in the foreword to Bakhtin, Rabelais (x).

42.

Diogenes Laertius, The Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 1.39 (Thales); 1.41

(Chilon); 1.60 (Solon); 1.99 (Periander). 43.

John R. Clarke, "Look Who's Laughing: Humor in Tavern Painting as Index

NOTES TO PAGES 1 2 0 - 1 3 2

of Class a n d Acculturation," Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 4 3 / 4 4 ( 1 9 9 8 — 9 9 ) : 27-48.

44.

Todd, " T h r e e Pompeian Wall-Inscriptions."

45.

Clarke, Ordinary Romans,

7.

PARODY

IN

162-63.

ELITE

VISUAL

CULTURE

AT

POMPEII

1.

Maiuri, Casa del Menandro,

2.

A b r o n z e seal belonging to the freedmanprocurator, or administrator, of Q u i n -

245—53;

Ling, Insula of the Menander, 9 5 , 1 4 3 — 4 4 .

tus Poppaeus, f o u n d in r o o m 43, indicates that at the time of the eruption the house was the property of the gens Poppaea. O t h e r properties at Pompeii, a n d possibly the Villa of Oplontis, belonged to branches of this wealthy local family. John H . D ' A r m s ("Proprietari e ville nel G o l f o di Napoli," in I Campi Flegrei nell'archeologia ria, Atti del 33 Convegno Internazionale 347—63)

dell'Accademia

e nella sto-

Nazionale dei Lincei [Rome, 1977],

m a k e s the point that n o n e of the excavated villas can be ascribed w i t h cer-

tainty to any of the families k n o w n f r o m epigraphical sources. 3.

Maiuri partially excavated several First-Style rooms of this house u n d e r the

p a v e m e n t of oecus 18; Maiuri, Casa del Menandro, 4.

182—86, fig. 86.

Second-Style pavements r e m a i n in all rooms of the bath, a n d in rooms 11, 15,

a n d 2 1 — 2 5 ; Pernice, Pavimente

undfigürliche

Mosaiken, 5 9 - 6 0 ; L i n g a n d Ling, Insula

of the Menander, 201—2 (oecus 11); 2 1 6 ( 1 5 ) ; 2 3 4 — 4 2 ( 2 1 — 2 5 ) ; 2 43~44 (atriolo 4 6 ) ; 2 4 6 — 4 7 (tepidarium 4 7 ) ; 2 4 8 - 4 9 (caldarium 4 8 ) . 5.

H e n d r i k G . Beyen, "Die g r ü n e D e k o r a t i o n des Oecus a m Peristyl der Casa del

M e n a n d r o , " Nederlands ^unsthistorisch Jaarboe\

5 (1954): 199—210.

6.

Maiuri, Casa del Menandro,

7.

Volker Michael Strocka ("Casa del Labirinto: VI 11, 8 - 1 0 , " in Pompei:

129—37,

figs. 5 9 - 6 3 . Pitture

emosaici, vol. 5 [Rome: Treccani, 1994], 1—2) maintains that the H o u s e of the L a b y r i n t h received its Second-Style decoration after being confiscated by R o m a n s w h e n they defeated the Pompeians in the Social W a r (89 B.C.). T h e mosaic, part of this c a m p a i g n , decorated the cubiculum (42) belonging to the master of the house. T h u s T h e s e u s represents the victorious R o m a n s , the M i n o t a u r the defeated Pompeians. T h e same a r g u m e n t , in greater detail: Strocka, Casa del Labirinto, 8. 298;

107,

pis. 2 6 9 — 7 3 .

Mola di Gaeta (Formia), N a p l e s inv. 1 0 0 1 7 : Strocka, Casa del Labirinto,

99

n.

Chieti, N a p l e s inv. 1 0 0 1 8 : Strocka, 9 9 n. 2 9 9 ; t o n d o f r o m Pompeii, Naples inv.

10016: 9.

Strocka, 99 n. 3 0 0 . I t h a n k O n u r O z t ü r k (unpublished paper f r o m m y spring 2 0 0 4 seminar, " C o n -

structions of H u m o r in Ancient Visual C u l t u r e " ) for this observation.

N O T E S

TO

PAGES

I 3 2 - I 3 8

10.

I borrow this term from Philip Elliot Slater, The Glory of Hera: GreekMythol-

ogy and the Greeks Family (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 137-60. 11.

Neptune (Poseidon), in answer to the prayer of Pasiphae's husband, King Mi-

nos, sent him a beautiful bull. But when Minos would not sacrifice it, substituting an inferior bull, Poseidon made Pasiphae conceive an unnatural lust for the bull. The offspring of that union was the dreaded Minotaur. 12.

Maiuri (Casa delMenandro, 135—36) confusingly places Marsyas to the right and

Apollo to the left; apparently he is describing them as being to Athena's right and left. 13.

Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 98—105, with bibliog.

14.

De Vos and Parise Badoni, "Casa di Paquius Proculus," 532-33, figs. 83-84,

triclinium 16. 15.

Susanne Pfisterer-Haas, "Die bronzenen Zwergentänzer," in Das Wrack: Der

antike Schiffsfund von Mahdia (Exhibition catalogue, Rheinischen Landesmuseum Bonn, 8. September 1994—29. January 1995), ed. Gisela Hellenkemper Salies (Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag, 1994), 483—504, pls. 16—18. Dated to second half of the second century B.C. I 6.

Pfisterer-Haas, "Die bronzenen Zwergentänzer," 484-86, cat. no. F 215, pi. 17.

17.

Moormann, La pittura parietale romana, 153, cat. no. 163/4.

18.

Herms in the cryptoporticus of the House of the Cryptoporticus (1,6,2): Hen-

drik G. Beyen, Pompejanische Wanddekpration: Vom zweiten bis zum vierten Stil (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, i960), 19, fig. 39; Moormann, La pittura parietale romana, 143—44,cat- n

o

-

I — 2

> herms in the triclinium of the House of Caesius Blandus (VII,

i, 40): Beyen, 39, fig. 96; Moormann, 192, cat. no. 233/2. 19.

For a full discussion of these and related bath mosaics representing the

Aethiops, see Clarke, Looking at Lovema^ing, 120—42. 20.

For discussion of the possible meanings and viewing scenarios for scenes of

work, see Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 95—129. 21.

Karl Schefold, La peinture pompéienne: Essai sur l'évolution de sa signification,

Collection Latomus (Brussels, 1972). 22.

Karl Lehmann-Hartleben, "The Imagines of the Elder Philostratus," Art Bul-

letin 23 (1941): 16—44; Mary Lee Thompson, "The Monumental and Literary Evidence for Programmatic Painting in Antiquity," Marsyas 9 (1960—61): 36—77; Richard Brilliant, Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Etruscan and Roman Art (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 54—89; Jass Eisner, Art and the Roman Viewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 21—48; Eleanor Winsor Leach, "Narrative Space and the Viewer in Philostratus' Eikones," Römische Mitteilungen 107 (2000): 237—51> J as ^ Eisner, "Making Myth Visual: The Horae of Philostratus and the Dance of the Text," Römische Mitteilungen 107 (2000): 253—76; Francesca Ghedini, Isabella Colpo, and Novello Marta, eds., Le immagini di Filostrato minore: La prospettiva dello storico dell'arte, Antenor, Quaderni 3 (Rome: Quasar, 2004).

NOTES

TO

PAGES

I 3 9 - I 4 4

23.

Andreas Grüner, Venvs ordinis: Der Wandel von Malerei und Literatur im Zeital-

ter der römischen Bürgerkriege, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums, Monographien (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004); see especially the review by Eric Moormann, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.12.07: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ bmcr/2004/2004—12— 07.html. 24.

Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 47—49; 113—23 with references to the scholarly

debates. 25.

Ling and Ling, Insula of the Menander, 22; they note: "Such parodies are vir-

tually without parallel in Roman art; but their brand of irreverent humour would fit well with a period before the Augustan empire became established and a new regime of sobriety was imposed upon artistic expression: it was about the same time that the young Octavian himself invited reprobation for parodying the Olympian gods at a banquet" (Suetonius Augustus 70.1). 26.

Martin Spannagel, Exemplaria Principis: Untersuchungen zu Entstehung und

Ausstattung des Augustusforums, Archäologische und Geschichte 9 (Heidelberg: Verlag Archäologische und Geschichte, 1999), east porticus with Aeneas group in center of exedra: the Julian ancestors, 263—66; Latin kings, 267—87; the gens lulia, 288—89; Divus lulius, 300—316; west porticus with Romulus exedra: the principes viri, 317—44. 27.

Pliny Natural History 22.6.13: quod et statuae eius inforo suo divus Augustus sub -

scripsit ("Such is the story that divine Augustus carved under Scipio's statue in his forum"). Variations include subscripsit, inscripsit, scripsit. 28.

Spannagel, Exemplaria Principis, 90—130 (Aeneas group); 131—61 (Romulus).

29.

Valeria Sampaolo, "IX 13, 5: Fullonica di Ululitremulus," in Pompei: Pitture

e mosaici, vol. 10 (Rome: Treccani, 2003), 357—60, with bibliog. Vittorio Spinazzola (Pompei alia luce degli scavi nuovi di via deU'Abbondanza [anni 1910-1923] breria dello Stato, 1953], 147—55)

ca

"

s l

[Rome: Li-

e

h structure "casa con officina fullonica di un

Fabio," even though his excavations revealed only the facade and part of the vestibule at no. 5. 30.

CIL 4.9131: Fullones ululamqtie cano, non arma virumque, for Arma virumque

cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris, Virgil Aeneid 1.1. 31.

Aeneid 2.721—25: Haecfatus latos umeros subiectaque colla / Veste super fulvique

insternor pelle leonis / Succedoque oneri. Dextrae se parvus lulus / Implicuit sequiturque patrem non passibus aequis, / Pone subit coniunx; trans. Robert Fitzgerald, Vergil, The Aeneid (London: Harvill Press, 1984), 58. 32.

Livy 1.1 o: "He [Romulus] then led his victorious army back, and being not more

splendid in his deeds than willing to display them, he arranged the spoils of the enemy's dead commander upon a frame, suitably fashioned for the purpose, and, carrying itself, mounted the Capitol. Having there deposited his burden, by an oak which the shepherds held sacred, at the same time as he made his offering he marked out the

NOTES

TO

PAGES

I 4 4 - I 4 9

limits of a temple to Jupiter, and bestowed a title upon him. 'Jupiter Feretrius,' he said, 'to thee I, victorious Romulus, myself a king, bring the panoply of a king, and dedicate a sacred precinct within the bounds of which I have even now marked off in my mind, to be a seat for the spoils of honour [opimis spoliis] which men shall bear hither in time to come, following my example, when they have slain kings and commanders of the enemy.' This was the origin of the first temple that was consecrated in Rome"; trans. B.O. Foster, Loeb Classical Library (New York: Putnam's, 1919), 39. 33.

Thespolia opima were spoils dedicated by a Roman general who had killed an

enemy leader in single combat, a practice traditionally begun by Romulus: Piero Treves and Tim J. Cornell, "Spolia opima," in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1436. The sanctuary of Jupiter Feretrius was one of three ancient sanctuaries of Jupiter on the Capitol: John Scheid, "Jupiter," in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 801. 34.

Alda Levi, Le terrecottefigurate del Museo Nazionale di Napoli (Florence: Val-

lecchi, 1926), 193 n. 842, fig. 142, Naples inv. 110338. 35.

Valeria Sampaolo, "VII 2, 16—17: Casa di M. Gavius Rufus," in Pompei: Pit-

ture e mosaici, voi. 6 (Rome: Treccani, 1996), 530—85, with bibliog. See also Arnold de Vos and Mariette de Vos, Pompei Ercolano Stabia, Guide Archeologiche Laterza (Rome: Laterza, 1982), 193. 36.

Pasquale Carcani, ed., Le pitture antiche d'Ercolano e contorni incise con qualche

spiegazione, Le Antichità di Ercolano, voi. 4 (Naples: Regia Stamperia, 1765), 367, cat. no. 108 ("scavazioni di Gragnano"). 37.

De Caro, Gabinetto Segreto, 11.

38.

Mariette de Vos, "La fuga di Enea in pitture del 1 secolo d.C," Kölner Jahrbuch

für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 24 (1991): 113—20. 39.

These grottoes are likely the multistoried houses built over the city walls, now

in the area of VI, 17 Insula Occidentalis. 40.

De Vos reports traces of similar writing on the Aeneas group; I was unable to

detect it. 41.

Amedeo Maiuri, "La parodia di Enea," Bollettino d'arte 35 (1950): 108—12.

42.

William C. McDermott, The Ape in Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1938),

122, 278—80, cat. no. 278. 43.

McDermott, Ape in Antiquity, 7—10; discussion of relevant ancient texts and the

visual tradition for Cynocephalus, passim. 44.

McDermott, Ape in Antiquity, 63—65: the ancient names were Inarime, Aenaria,

and Pithecussa; McDermott locates the Semitic word harim, "a flat-nosed person" ("ape") within Aenaria and Iiwz'me. Pithecussa was a literal translation of the word into Greek. 45.

NOTES

Otto J. Brendel, "Der Affen-Aeneas," Römische Mitteilungen 60 (1953): 157.

TO

PAGES

I 4 9 - I 5 2

46.

I wish to thank John Hopkins, who suggested the line of reasoning in this sec-

tion in my spring 2004 seminar, "Constructions of Humor in Ancient Visual Culture." 47.

Paavo Castrèn, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus: Polity and Society in Roman Pom-

peii, Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae (Rome: Bardi, 1975), 95—101. 48.

CIL 10.808, 809. Maiuri ("La parodia di Enea," 109 n. 15) places the inscrip-

tions under the twin niches on the facade of the Eumachia building (there are modern copies there today), but Attilio Degrassi (Inscriptiones Italiae, vol. 13.3 [Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1937], 68—70) gives insula VIII, 7, for the findspot of the fragment cited in Notizie degli scavi (1882): 82, because he confuses the reference to the finding of the fragment "presso il foro" with the findspot of the piece in the previous section. It is not certain, therefore, that the elogia—and therefore the statues on the facade of the building of Eumachia—belong there. If we follow the first report, inscription 10.809 w a s found "non molto lunghi dalla porta del tempio seil. Vespasiani." Mouritsen (Elections, Magistrates, and Municipal Élite, 42, 135—38) dates the inscription on the basis of the letter style to the 20s of the first century A.D. 49. Kurt Wallat ("Der Marmorfries am Eingangsportal des Gebäudes der Eumachia [VII, 9] in Pompeji und sein ürsprünglischer Anbr'mgungsort," ArchäologischerAnzeiger, no. 4 [1995]: 345—73) proposes that the frieze is not original to Eumachia's building. 50.

Gradel (Emperor Worship, 71—84) argues convincingly that it was Augustus him-

self, not his Genius, who was worshipped here and in the other fifteen imperial temples in Italy outside of Rome. 51.

August Mau, Pompeii, Its Life and Art, rev. ed., trans. Francis W. Kelsey (Lon-

don: Macmillan, 1902), 13—14. 52.

Tacitus Annales 14.17; detailed discussion in Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 152-59.

53.

For an overview of the aesthetics and ideology of the Third Style, see Clarke,

Houses of Roman Italy, 52—56, 63—65; Clarke, "Augustan Domestic Interiors." 54.

Irene Bragantini, "Triclinio C," in La Villa della Farnesina in Palazzo Massimo

alle Terme, ed. Maria Rita Sanzi Di Mino (Milan: Electa, 1998), 47. 55.

Mariette de Vos, "La fuga di Enea," 116—17.

56. Edward Kennard Rand, ed., Servius' Commentary on the Aeneid, Books 1-2, Servianorum in Vergilii Carmina Commentariorum, Editionis Harvardianae (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946), 2: 186-87 (Servius's commentary on Aeneid 1.382, matre dea monstrante viam). 57.

Beyen, "Casa del Menandro"; Ling and Ling, Insula of the Menander, 28—34,201—7.

58. Irene Bragantini, "I 6, 2: Casa del Criptoportico e Casa del Sacello Iliaco," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 1 (Rome: Treccani, 1990), 304— 5, figs. 41—43; room e dates to after earthquake of 62: Bragantini, "Casa del Criptoportico," 194; Nicole Blanc, "L'énigmatique 'sacello iliaco' (16,4 E): Contribution à l'étude des cultes domestiques," in I temi figurativi nella pittura parietale antica (IV sec. a. C.-IV sec. d. C.), Atti del VI Con -

NOTES

TO

PAGES

I 5 3 —I 5 8

vegno Internazionale sulla pittura parietale antica, ed. Daniela Scagliarini Corläita (Bologna: University Press, 1997), 37—4159.

House of Gavius Rufus, exedra o, west wall, Naples inv. 9044; Sampaolo, "Casa

di Gavius Rufus," 567, fig. 60. 60.

For a discussion of epitomized narrative, see Kurt Weitzmann, Illustrations in

Roll and Codex: A Study of the Origin and Method of Text Illustration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947), 12-33. 61.

Marie-Louise Säflund, The East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia: A

Reconstruction and Interpretation of Its Composition, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology (Göteborg: Lund, 1970). 62.

John Boardman, The Parthenon and Its Sculptures (Austin: University of Texas

Press, 1985), pis. 127—30; pi. 151 shows a bearded centaur carrying off a Lapith woman. 63.

Becatti, "Caricatura," 346; see also Tybout, Aedifiaorumfigurae,

346—50.

64.

Eric Moormann (personal communication) suggests that the feminized cen-

tauromachy could have been a vehicle for performances of female gladiators.

PART

i.

THREE.

SEXUAL

HUMOR

See especially Walter M. Kendrick, The Secret Museum: Pornography in Mod-

ern Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

8.

1.

SEXUAL

HUMOR

AND

THE

GODS

Most of the nonsexual humor focuses on drunken gods and demigods: e.g.,

drunken Hercules pissing, a wineskin over his shoulder; drunken Dionysus supported by satyrs. 2.

Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, trans. Granger

Ryan and Helmut Ripperger (London: Longmans, Green, 1941), 437—45. 3.

Dirk Obbink, "Virgil'sDe Pietate: From Ehoiae to Allegory in Vergil, Philode-

mus, and Ovid," in Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans, ed. David Armstrong et al. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 175—209. 4.

Anita Reiche, "Die Kopien der 'Leda des Timotheos,'" Antike Plastik 17 (1978):

21—55; Moormann, La pittura parietale romana, 8, 32, 61, 166, 195, 207, 239; Angelika Dierichs, "Es muß nicht immer Timotheos sein: Leda und der Schwan in Wandmalereien aus den Vesuvstädten," Kölner Jahrbuchfür Vor- und Frühgeschichte 25 (1992): 51—64. 5.

Clark c, Houses of Roman Italy, 231—31, fig. 140.

6.

Pascale Linant de Bellefonds, "Leda," in Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae

classicae, vol. 6 (Zurich: Artemis, 1992), 240—43.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

1 5 9 - 1 6 7

7-

See chapter 7, note 22, discussion of ekphrasis.

8.

See chapter 1 : Pasiphae-female criminal, 32, note 38; chapter 7: atriolo of bath,

House of the Menander, 104, note 11. 9.

Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti, Giochi e giocattoli, Vita e Costumi dei Romani A n -

tichi (Rome: Quasar, 1995), 26—27, fig. 15 (a minature toy horse on wheels, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum); Marco Fitta, Giochi e giocattoli nell'antichità

(Milan:

Leonardo arte, 1997), 72—76, fig. 130.1 thank Eric Moormann (personal communication) for this idea. I o.

Superi risere, diuquel haecfuit in toto notissimafabula caelo, Ovid Metamorphoses

4.188—89. See also Homer Odyssey 8.333—42. 11.

W. J.T. Peters and Eric M. Moormann, La casa di Marcus Lucretius Fronto a

Pompei e le sue pitture (Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers, 1993), 214—16. See also Mariette de Vos, " V 4, a: Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 3 (Rome: Treccani, 1991), 1017—18, fig. 94. T h e second copy is in the house annexed to the House of the Ephebe (I, 7, 19), tablinum c, north wall: Arnold de Vos, "I 7, 19: Casa annessa alla Casa dell'Efebo o di P. Cornelius Tages," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 1 (Rome: Treccani, 1990), 766, fig. 28 (probably Fourth Style). 12.

Other images of Mars with his hand on Venus's breast include Pompeii, House

of the Punished Cupid (VII, 2, 23), t a b l i n u m / south wall, which closely repeats the scheme of Mars and Venus: Valeria Sampaolo, "VII 2, 23: Casa dell'Amore punito," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 6 (Rome: Treccani, 1996), 674—76, fig. 16 (late Third Style, Naples inv. 9249). 13.

Antoine Hermary, "Eros Archer," in Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae clas-

sicae, vol. 3 (Zurich: Artemis, 1986), 878—81. 14.

L u d w i g Curtius (Die Wandmalerei Pompejis: Eine Einführung in ihr Verständ-

nis [Leipzig: E. A . Seemann, 1929], 251) interprets this figure as Sol (Sun), a spy of Hephaistos; Mariette de Vos ("Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto," 1017—18, fig. 94) suggests that it could also be Hypnos (Sleep); Arnold de Vos ("I 7, 19," 766, fig. 28) identifies this figure as Hypnos and the two women as Charités (Graces); Peters and Moormann (La casa di Marcus Lucretius Fronto, 214—16) conclude that the figure with wings on his temples is Hypnos and that the other figures are ancillary onlookers with no role in the story. 15.

Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro

(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 195—201. 16.

Amable A u d i n and H . Jeanclos, "Le médallion des amours de Mars et Vénus,"

Bulletin des musées et monuments lyonnais (1969): 181—83; Sandrine Marquié, "Les médaillons d'applique rhodaniens de la Place des Célestins à Lyon," Revue archéologique de l'Est 50, no. 172 (1999—2000): 278, fig. 2 1 , 1 . 17.

I thank Eric Moormann (personal communication) for this observation.

18.

Sandrine Marquié, "Trois médaillons d'applique inédits de la Place des Célestins

NOTES

TO

PAGES

169-171

à Lyon," Société Française d'Étude de la Céramique Antique en Gaule, Actes du Congrès de Dijon (1996): 470—71, figs. 5a—5b. 19.

Slater, Glory of Hera, 337.

20.

Natalie Boymel Kampen, "Omphale and the Instability of Gender," in Sexu-

ality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, ed. Natalie Boymel Kampen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 233—46. Kampen's focus is on a Severan portrait statue of a woman in the guise of Omphale. She proposes that in contrast to the negative associations of Omphale with Cleopatra and the decadent East in the Augustan period, by the late second to early third century Omphale comes to represent virtue, Bacchic beliefs, and the gender crossing that symbolizes the relationship between life and death. For a parallel reading of cross-dressing on sarcophagi, see Lâszlô Berczelly, "The Soul After Death: A New Interpretation of the Fortunati Sarcophagus," Acta ad archeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 6 (1987): 59—90. 21.

Diodorus Siculus 4.31 ; Apollodorus 2.6.3; Apollodorus (2.7.8) tells us that Her-

cules fathered a son, Agelaus (or Lamus in Apollodorus 4.31.8 and Ovid Heroides 9.53—54) by Omphale. 22.

Ovid Heroides 9.55—120; Propertius 3.11, 17—20.

23.

Ovid Heroides 9.65—74, 79—80; trans. Grant Showerman, Loeb Classical Li-

brary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). 24.

Statius (Thebaid 10.646—49) emphasizes Hercules' clumsiness in drag: "So his

Lydian wife [Omphale] smiled to see Amphitrion's son stripped of the bristly hide, spoiling Sidonian garments with his shoulders and upsetting the distaffs and breaking the drums with his right hand"; trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 25.

Seneca Hercules furens 465—76; Lucian History 10.

26.

Zanker, Power of Images, 67.

27.

Eva Cantarella, lecture at the Finnish Academy at Rome, spring 1995.

28.

Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical An-

tiquity (New York: Schocken, 1975), 150—63; although the poet Martial (late first century A.D.) was writing parody—much of it openly misogynistic—he must be reflecting at least some men's anxieties when he writes: "You ask why I have no desire to marry riches? / Because, my friend, I want to wear the britches. / Wives should obey their husbands; only then / Can women share equality with men" (uxorem quare locupletem ducere nolim, / Quaeritis? Uxori nubere nolo meae. / Inferior matrona suo sit, Prisce, marito: / Non aliter fiunt femina virque pares, Martial Epigrams 8.12); trans. James Michie, in Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands, ed. }. P. Sullivan and Peter Whigham (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 291. 29.

Martial 7.67; trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Martial: Epigrams, Loeb Classical

Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).

NOTES

TO

PAGES

I 7 3 - I 7 5

30.

Pompeii, House of Marcus Lucretius (IX, 3, 5), triclinium 16, east wall: Irene

Bragantini, "IX 3, 5.24: Casa di Marcus Lucretius," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 9 (Rome: Treccani, 1999), 268, figs. 171, 191a—d (particularly large: H 1.95 x W 1.55 m, Fourth Style, Naples inv. 8992). Most of the paintings were cut from the walls and removed to the Naples Archaeological Museum. 31.

Coralini, Hercules domesticus, color illustrations, 50—51, 114, 132—33; cat. no.

P.i 15; Coralini characterizes the hero as an exemplumfelicitas—not a victim of servitude to Omphale; his dual happiness comes from being taken over by the wine of Dionysus and his love for Omphale. 32.

Valeria Sampaolo, "VIII4,34," in Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 8 (Rome: Trec-

cani, 1998), 534—36, figs. 4 and 6; Coralini, Hercules domesticus, cat. no. P. 100. 33.

There are at least ten representations of Achilles being discovered on Skyros

in houses at Pompeii alone: House of the Epigrams (V, 1, 18), peristyle n, north wall (destroyed); House of Modestus (VI, 5,13), atrium 2 (destroyed); House of Apollo (VI, 7, 23), xystos/(mosaic); House of the Dioscuri (VI, 9, 6—7), tablinum 42 (Naples inv. 9110); House of the Vettii (VI, 15, i), triclinium t, west wall; House of Siricus (VII, 1, 25.47), r o o m 34 (Naples inv. 8994); House of the Ancient Hunt (VII, 4,48), ala 6, west wall (destroyed); VIII, 4,4, triclinium 29, left wall; House of the Fountain of Love (IX, 2,7), triclinium k, (destroyed); Domus Uboni (IX, 5,2), room n, north wall (Naples inv. 116085); from Schefold, Die Wände Pompejis. 34.

Jennifer F. Trimble, "Greek Myth, Gender, and Social Structure in a Roman

House: Two Paintings of Achilles at Pompeii," in The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity, Memoirs of the American Academy, suppl. 1, ed. Elaine Gazda (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 230—41. 35.

Angelos Delivorrias and Anneliese Kossath-Deissmann, "Die sog. Aphrodite

Kallipygos," in Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, vol. 2 (Zurich: Artemis, 1984), 85-86. 36.

Ovid Metamorphoses 4.285—388.

37.

Pliny Natural History 7.34; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 47-55.

38.

Clarke, Houses of Roman Italy, 213, fig. 123.

39.

The Dioscuri painter: Lawrence Richardson, Jr., A Catalog of Identifiable Fig-

ure Painters of Ancient Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 109; the Io painter: Richardson, 125. 40.

Ovid Fasti 2.303-58; Kampen, "Omphale," 242.

41.

Bettina Bergmann, "Varia Topia: Architectural Landscapes in Roman Painting

of the Late Republic and Early Empire" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1986). 42.

Richlin, Garden of Priapus.

43.

Virgilian Appendix, Priapea 4.6—15; trans. Richlin, Garden of Priapus, 119—20.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

1 7 5 - 1 8 5

44-

Pia Kastenmeier, "Priap zum Gruße," Römische Mitteilungen

108 (2001):

301-11. 45.

Madeleine Jost, "Hermes," in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., ed. Si-

mon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 690—91, with bibliog. 46.

Carmina Priapea, 25; trans. Richlin, Garden ofPriapus, 122.

47.

The Priapus statue is unusual in several respects: he raises one arm, he is beard-

less, and he lacks the Phyrgian cap. At present I have no explanation for these anomalies, other than that the statue may have had an added wig and/or Phyrgian c a p — missing at the time of excavation. Excavators found the statue's torso in the kitchen (w), whereas the head, broken in two, the phallus, and the pilaster were found in room r, a storage room at the northwest corner of the peristyle. Currently the statue is disassembled for conservation and study in the Conservation Lab of the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompeii. 48.

Another humorous Priapus overlooks the proceedings in Pompeii's main

brothel (the so-called Grand Lupanar at VII, 12, 18—20): the artist has given him two phalli. See Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking,

199—201, fig. 82; see also Moormann, La

pittura parietale romana, 56, 198—99.

9.

1.

LAUGHING

AT

HUMAN

SEXUAL

FOLLY

Molly Myerowitz, "The Domestication of Desire: Ovid's Parva Tabella and the

Theater of Love," in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, ed. Amy Richlin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 131—57; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 91—108; Clarke, Roman Sex, 19—35. 2.

Important sources on the sexual rules and roles include Amy Richlin, ed.,

Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin, eds., Feminist Theory and the Classics (New York: Routledge, 1993); Natalie Boymel Kampen, ed., Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner, eds., Roman Sexualities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking. 3.

Werner A. Krenkel, "Fellatio and Irrumatio," Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der

Wilhelm-Pieck-Universität

Rostock 29 (1980): 77-78; Amy Richlin, "The Meaning of ir-

rumare in Catullus and Martial," Classical Philology 76 (1981): 40—46. 4.

Catullus 16.1—4: Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo, /Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi, /

qui me ex versiculis meis putastis, / quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum; my translation.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

1 8 6 - 1 9 3

5-

Barbara K. Gold, "Humor in Juvenal's Sixth Satire: Is It Funny?" in Laugh-

ter Down the Centuries, vol. i, ed. Siegfried Jäkel and Asko Timonen (Turku: Turun Yliopisto, 1994—97), 95-112. 6.

Luciana Jacobelli, Le pitture erotiche delle Terme Suburbane di Pompei (Rome:

"L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1995). 7.

John R. Clarke, "Look Who's Laughing at Sex: Men and Women Viewers in

the Apodyterium of the Suburban Baths at Pompeii," in The Roman Gaze, ed. David Fredrick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 149—81; Clarke, Roman Sex, 115—33. 8. Jacobelli (Terme Suburbane, 94—97) argues for both sexes using the baths simultaneously; see also Clarke, "Look Who's Laughing at Sex," 149—81. 9.

Given the poor state of preservation, I hesitate to see the man's garment as a

toga. If it is a toga, it would make the scene all the more scandalous, since the man would be a citizen and possibly a member of the elite classes. 10.

Martial Epigrams 4.43: Non dixi, Coracine, te cinaedum: / Non sum tam temer-

arius nec audax / Nec tnendacia qui loquar libenter. / Si dixi, Coracine, te cinaedum, / Iratam mihi Pontiae lagonam, / Iratum calicem mihi Metiii: / Iuro per Syrios tibi tumores, /1uro per Berecyntios furores. / Quid dixi tamen? Hoc leve et pusillum, / Quod notum est, quod et ipse non negabis, / Dixi te, Coracine, cunnilingum; my translation. 11.

Holt N. Parker, "The Teratogenic Grid," in Roman Sexualities, ed. Judith P.

Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 47-65. 12.

Becatti, Mosaici, 141, cat. no. 277; Carlo Pavolini, Ostia, Guida Archeologica

Laterza (Rome: Laterza, 1983), 68,130. 13.

See Jacobelli, Terme Suburbane, pi. 1.

14.

Jacobelli, Terme Suburbane, 47, fig. 37.

15.

Seneca Controversiae 1.2.23.

16.

For a fuller treatment of this argument, see John R. Clarke, "Representations of

the Cinaedus in Roman Art: Evidence of'Gay' Subculture?" Journal ofthe History of Homosexuality 39,2.4 (2005): 271—98; also appearing as John R. Clarke, "Representations of the Cinaedus in Roman Art: Evidence of'Gay' Subculture?" in Gree\ hove through the Ages: Same-Sex Desire and Love in the Greco-Roman World and in the Classical Tradition of the West, ed. Beert Verstraete (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2005), 271—98. 17.

John Pollini, "Slave-Boys for Sexual and Religious Service: Images of Pleasure

and Devotion," in Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, ed. A. J. Boyle and W. J. Dominik (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 149-66; but see also comments in the review by Eric M. Moormann, Mnemosyne 58 (2005): 146—47. 18.

For example, the figure of Perseus liberating Andromeda from peristyle 53 of

the House of the Dioscuri at Pompeii (VI, 9, 6): Clarke, Roman Sex, fig. 78.

NOTES TO PAGES I94-2O7

19.

Amy Richlin, "Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and

the Roman Law against Love between Men," Journal of the History of Sexuality 3, no. 4 (i993): 54!-4 6 20. Richlin, "Not Before Homosexuality," 554—71. 21.

Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical

Antiquity (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 18-19, 30—38, 49~5I> 77~ 8i > 226 > 245-46. 22. Andrew M. Riggsby, "Lenocinium: Scope and Consequences," Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftungfur Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung 112 (1995): 423—27. 23.

Andrew F. Stewart, "Reflections," in Sexuality in AncientArt, ed. Natalie B. Kam-

pen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 148; Clarke, Ordinary Romans, 148. 24.

Clarke, Roman Sex, 84, figs. 57-58; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 79-83,

pis. 3-4. 25.

Clarke, Roman Sex, 78—84, fig. 53; Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 78, pi. 2.

26.

Catharine Edwards, The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1993), 83-84. 27.

Martial 10.81 : Cum duo venissent ad Phyllida mane fututum / Et nudam cuperet

sumere uterque prior, / Promisit pariter se Phyllis utrique daturam, / Et dedit: ille pedem sustulit, hie tunicam; trans. J. P. Sullivan, in Martial Englished, ed. Sullivan and Whigham, 395. 28.

Armand Desbat recently reconstructed another sexual threesome of an applied

medallion found at La Solitude, Lyon. Two men face each other on a large bed, their legs crossing, while a woman rides—both?—one man's? penis. At the lower right is a pair of slippers, and the woman holds the palm of victory: Armand Desbat, "Vases à médaillons d'applique des fouilles récentes de Lyon," Figlina 5—6 (1980—81): 99, no. E.001, fig. 4; Clarke, Roman Sex, 145, fig. 98. 29.

Hierocles Philogelos, nos. 116—19.

30.

Lecture, Center for the Study of Modernism, Department of Art and Art His-

tory, University of Texas, 1989. 31.

Clarke, Roman Sex, 121—23.

32.

Corbeill writes (personal communication): " 'volvi me' could mean 'I rolled my-

self (in supplication)', a common meaning of volvere, although in the mediopassive (Volutus sum') rather than with a reflexive pronoun. It would then convey the notion of something like 'I have offered myself up to you as a victim,' used of a person supplicating for his life in battle (like Turnus at the end of the Aeneid). This would explain her ready pose, and maybe also her averted eye; you would also be using a military metaphor such as one in Wca' (or in 'impelle'??) and in countless literary metaphors (about swords, battles in bed, etc.);... volvi could also be the perfect of the verb volo, meaning here 'I wanted,' but I can't see what that could possibly mean in this context."

NOTES TO PAGES 2 0 7 - 2 1 6

33-

The only other clear parallel for the artist putting words into the sexual pro-

tagonists' mouths is a painting removed from a room of the tavern near the Forum at Pompeii (VII, 9, 33, A.D. 62—79, Naples inv. 27690). The excavator who found this picture concluded that the entire tavern was a whorehouse, although it now seems clear that at most this was a single room for a prostitute, a so-called cella meretricia. In this picture the woman, who has assumed the position for rear-entry sex, turns to her partner, kneeling behind her, to say, L E N T E

IMPELLE,

or "Thrust slowly." Although I have

interpreted these words as flattering the man's large penis, they may also be a joking commentary on the man's overlarge penis, given the Roman preference for small penises: Clarke, Roman Sex, 154—55,

7> s e e comments on my translation, "Put it

10

in slowly," in Butrica, "Review." 34.

Marquié, "Les médaillons d'applique rhodaniens," 268—70, figs. 16,31; Clarke,

Roman Sex, 142—44, figs. 96 and 96—1. 35.

Gerhard Neumann, Gesten und Gebärden in der griechischen Kunst (Berlin: De

Gruyter, 1965), 67—69; Leo Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 3. 36.

Anthony Corbeill points out (personal communication) that the medallion

could also contain a pun on the navigium Isidis, a festival to Isis traditionally celebrating the first day of sailing, well known in Rome and described in Apuleius; the cult of Isis was well known for its welcoming of women. 37.

One such boat has been reconstructed in the Musée Gallo-Romain de Saint-

Romain-en-Gal, Vienne, France. 38.

Arles, Musée d'Arles antique, inv. IRP 89.214.333.

39.

Terra-cotta, diameter of disk 3 inches (7.6 cm); Arles, Musée d'Arles antique,

inv. FAN. 9.00.2067. 40.

Clarke, Looking at Lovemaking, 206—12, fig. 88; Clarke, Roman Sex, 68—70, fig.

41.

Pierre Wuilleumier and Amable Audin, Les médaillons d'applique gallo-romains

2

4de la vallée du Rhône (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1952), 49—58, 125—38. 42.

Palatine Anthology 5.7; 8; 128; 166.

43.

Horace Satires 2.7.48.

44.

Martial 12.43.

45.

Catherine Johns, Sex or Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome (Austin: Uni-

versity of Texas Press, 1982), no—11, fig. 90.

NOTES

TO

PAGES

2 2 0 - 2 2 Ô

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abadie-Reynal, Catherine, and Jean-Pierre Darmon. "La maison et la mosaïque des Synaristôsai (Les Femmes au déjeuner de Ménandre)." In Zeugma: Interim Reports, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Suppl. 51, edited by John H. Humphrey, 79—99. Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2003. Allan, Arlene. "From Agonistes to Agonios: Hermes, Chaos, and Conflict in Competitive Games and Festivals." In Games and Festivals in Classical Antiquity, Proceedings of the Conference Held in Edinburgh 10-12 July 2000, edited by Sinclair Bell and Glenys M. Davies, 45—54. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2003. Allison, Penelope M. "VII 4,48: Casa della Caccia Antica." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 7, 6—43. Rome: Treccani, 1997. Allroggen-Bedel, Agnes. Mas^endarstellungen in der römisch-kampanischen Wandmalerei. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1974. Arditi, Michele. Ilfascino e l'amuleto contro delfascino presso gli antichi. 2nd ed. Edited by Renato De Falco. 1825. Reprint, Capri: La Conchiglia, 1991. Armstrong, David. "Horatius Eques et Scriba: Satires 1.6 and 2.7." Transactions of the American Philological Association 116 (1986): 255—88. Audin, Amable, and H. Jeanclos. "Le médallion des amours de Mars et Vénus." Bulletin des musées et monuments lyonnais (1969): 181—83. Aurigemma, Salvatore. / mosaici di Zliten. Roma: Società Editrice d'Arte Illustrata, 1926.

279

Bäbler, Balbina. "Der Z w e r g am Pranger." Hefte des Archäologischen Seminars Bern 13 (1990): 17-20. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Cambridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 1984. Barberi Squarotti, G., ed. Il Candelaio di Giordano Bruno. Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1964. Barbet, Alix. "Peintures murales trouvées dans les latrines et les boutiques près du forum de Bolsena." In Les abords du Forum: Le côté nord-ouest (fouilles

1977-/973),

101—32. Vol. 6 of Fouilles de l'École Française de Rome à Bolsena (Poggio Moscini), edited by Gilbert Hallier, Michel Humbert, and Patrice Pomey. Collection de l'École Française de Rome. Rome: École Française de Rome, 1982. Bartels, H . "Grylloi." Olympiabericht 8 (1967): 251—62. Barton, Carlin A . The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Beard, Mary. " T h e Triumph of the Absurd: Roman Street Theatre." In Rome the Cosmopolis, edited by Catharine Edwards and G r e g Woolf, 21—43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Beard, Mary, and John Henderson. " T h e Emperor's N e w Body: Ascension from Rome." In Parchments of Gender: Deciphering the Body in Antiquity, edited by Maria W y k e , 191—219. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Becatti, Giovanni. "Caricatura." In Enciclopedia dell'arte antica, vol. 2, 342—48. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1966. . Mosaici e pavimenti marmorei. Voi. 4 of Scavi di Ostia. Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1961. Berczelly, Laszló. " T h e Date and Significance of the Menander Mosaics at Mytilene." Bulletin, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London 35 (1988): 119—26. . " T h e Soul After Death: A N e w Interpretation of the Fortunati Sarcophagus." Acta ad archeologiam etartium historiam pertinentia 6 (1987): 59—90. Bergmann, Bettina. " T h e Roman House as Memory Theater: T h e House of the Tragic Poet at Pompeii." Art Bulletin 76, no. 2 (June 1994): 225-56. . "Varia Topia: Architectural Landscapes in Roman Painting of the Late Republic and Early Empire." Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1986. Bergson, Henri. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Translated by Cloudesley Shovell Henry Brereton and Fred Rothwell. London: Macmillan, 1911. Bernabò-Brea, Luigi. Menandro e il teatro greco nelle terracotte liparesi. Genoa: Sagep Editrice, 1981. Beschi, Luigi. "Le arti plastiche." In DaAquileia a Venezia: Una mediazione tra l'Europa e l'Oriente dal II secolo a.C. al VI secolo d.C., edited by Bruna Forlati Tamaro, 333—93. Milan: Garzanti, 1986.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Beyen, Hendrik G . "Die grüne Dekoration des Oecus am Peristyl der Casa del Menandro." Nederlands kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 5 (1954): 199—210. . Pompejanische Wanddekoration: Vom zweiten bis zum vierten Stil. T h e Hague: Martinus N i j h o f f , i960. Bezerra de Menesses, Ulpiano. "Le revêtement mural." In L'îlot de la Maison des Comédiens, 151—93. Paris: De Boccard, 1970. Bieber, Margarete. The History of the Greek and Roman Theater. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1939. . "Maske." InPaulys Real-Encyclopädie, vol. 14,2070—2120. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche, 1930. Binder, Gerhard. "Verkehrte Welt: Gott Mercurius als Mensch in Romp Gedanken z u Horaz, Carmen 1, 2." In Gottmenschen: Konzepte existentieller Grenzüberschreitung im Altertum, edited by Gerhard Binder, Bernd Effe, and Reinhold F. Glei, 46—65. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2003. Blanc, Nicole. "L'énigmatique 'sacello iliaco' (I 6,4 E): Contribution à l'étude des cultes domestiques." In I temi figurativi nella pittura parietale antica (IV sec. a.C.-IV sec. d. C.), Atti del VI Convegno Internazionale sulla pittura parietale antica, edited by Daniela Scagliarini Corlàita, 37-41. Bologna: University Press, 1997. Boardman, John. The Parthenon and Its Sculptures. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985. Bodel, John. "Death on Display: Looking at Roman Funerals." In The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of A r t 56, Symposium Papers 34, edited by Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon, 258-81. Washington, D C : National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 1999. Boyce, George K . "Corpus of the Lararia of Pompeii." Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 14 (1937). Bragantini, Irene. "I 6, 2: Casa del Criptoportico e Casa del Sacello Iliaco." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 1, 193—329. Rome: Treccani, 1990. . " V I 7, 8.12: Bottega del Profumiere." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 4,389— 94. Rome: Treccani, 1993. . " V I 9, 2.13: Casa del Melagro." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 4, 660—818. Rome: Treccani, 1993. . " V I 14, 43: Casa degli Scienziati o Gran Lupanare." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 5, 426—67. Rome: Treccani, 1994. . "VII 16 (Ins. Occ.), 17: Casa di Ma. Castricius." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 7, 887—946. Rome: Treccani, 1997. . " V i l i 5,24: Casa del Medico." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 8,604—10. Rome: Treccani, 1998. . "IX 3, 5.24: Casa di Marcus Lucretius." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 9, 141—313. Rome: Treccani, 1999.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

. "IX 6, d - e . " In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 9,722—32. Rome: Treccani, 1999. . "IX 7,21—22." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 9,865—69. Rome: Treccani, 1999. . "IX 13, 1-3: Casa di Polibio." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 10, 183-356. Rome: Treccani, 2003. . "Triclinio C . " In La Villa della Farnesina in Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, edited by Maria Rita Sanzi D i Mino, 46—55. Milan: Electa, 1998. Bragantini, Irene, and Mariette de Vos. Le decorazioni della villa romana della Farnesina. Museo Nazionale Romano. Le pitture. Rome: D e Luca, 1982. Bragantini, Irene, and Valeria Sampaolo. "La Volpe." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici: La documentazione nell'opera di disegnatori e pittori dei secoli XVIII e XIX, 5 72—775. Rome: Treccani, 1995. Bremmer, Jan N., and Herman Roodenburg. A Cultural History of Humour: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Maiden, M A : Blackwell Publishers, 1997. Brendel, Otto J. "Der Affen-Aeneas." Römische Mitteilungen 60 (1953): 153—59. Brilliant, Richard. " T h e N e w Roman A r t History." Journal of Roman Archaeology 11 (1998): 557-65. . Visual Narratives: Storytelling in Etruscan and Roman Art. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. Brusin, Giovanni. Aquileia e Grado: Guida storico-artistico. 4th ed. Padua: Antoniana, 1956. Bryson, Norman. "Semiology and Visual Interpretation." In Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation, edited by Norman Bryson, Michael A n n Holly, and Keith Moxey, 61—73. N e w York: HarperCollins, 1991. Burke, Peter. "Context in Context." Common Knowledge 8, no. 1 (2002): 152—77. Butrica, J.L. "Review of John R. Clarke, Roman Sex." Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.01.03 (2004): http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2004/2004-01-03.html. Cahn, Herbert A . "Oceanus." In Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, vol. 8, 907—14. Zurich: Artemis, 1997. Calza, Guido. "Die Taverne der Sieben Weisen in Ostia." Die Antike 15 (1939): 99—115. Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge. London: Reaktion Books, 1992. Carcani, Pasquale, ed. Le pitture antiche d'Ercolano e contomi incise con qualche spiegazione. L e Antichità di Ercolano, voi. 4. Naples: Regia Stamperia, 1765. Castrén, Paavo. Ordo Populusque Pompeianus: Polity and Society in Roman Pompeii. Acta Instituti Romani Finlandiae. Rome: Bardi, 1975. Cèbe, Jean-Pierre. La caricature et la parodie dans le monde romain antique, des origines à Juvénal. Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d'Athènes et de Rome. Paris: D e Boccard, 1966. Chambry, É. Ésope: Fables. Paris: Société d'Édition Les Belles Lettres, 1927. Charitonidis, Séraphim, Lilly Kahil, and René Ginouvès. Les mosaïques de la Maison du Ménandre à Mytilène. Antike Kunst, Suppl. 6. Bern, 1970.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Cicero, Quintus Tullius. De oratore. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by E. W. Sutton. Cambridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 1938. Clarke, John R. Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non -Elite Viewers in Italy, 100B.C.-A.D. 3/5. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. . "Augustan Domestic Interiors: Propaganda or Fashion?" In Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, edited by Karl Galinsky, 264—78. N e w York: C a m bridge University Press, 2005. .Houses of Roman Italy, 100B.C.-A.D.

250: Ritual, Space, and Decoration. Berke-

ley: University of California Press, 1991. . Looking at Lovemakjng: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art, 100 B. C.-A.D. 250. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. . "Look Who's Laughing: H u m o r in Tavern Painting as Index of Class and A c culturation.^" Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 43/44 (1998—99): 27—48. . "Look Who's Laughing at Sex: Men and Women Viewers in the Apodyterium of the Suburban Baths at Pompeii." In The Roman Gaze, edited by David Fredrick, 149—81. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. . "Representations of the Cinaedus in Roman Art: Evidence of 'Gay' Subculture?" In Gree\ Love through the Ages: Same-Sex Desire and Love in the GrecoRoman World and in the ClassicalTradition of the West, edited by Beert Verstraete, 271—98. Binghamton, N Y : Haworth Press, 2005. — . "Representations of the Cinaedus in Roman Art: Evidence of 'Gay' Subculture }" Journal of the History of Homosexuality 39, 2.4 (2005): 271—98. . Roman Blac\-and-White

Figurai Mosaics. T h e College A r t Association and the

Archaeological Institute of America. Monographs on Archaeology and the Fine Arts. N e w York: N e w York University Press, 1979. . Roman Sex: 100 B.C. to A.D. 250, with New Photography by Michael Larvey. N e w York: Harry N . Abrams, 2003. Coarelli, Filippo. The Column of Trajan. Rome: Colombo, 2000. Coleman, Kathleen M. "Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological EntertainmentsJournal of Roman Studies 80 (1990): 44—73. Coralini, Antonella. Hercules domesticus: Immagini di Ercole nelle case della regione vesu viana, Isecolo 0.C.-79. d.C. Studi della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei. Naples: Electa, 2001. Corbeill, Anthony. Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. . Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Courtney, Edward. Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin Verse Inscriptions. American Classical Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Curtius, Ludwig. Die Wandmalerei Pompejis: Eine Einführung in ihr Verständnis. Leipzig: E. A . Seemann, 1929. D ' A r m s , John H . "Proprietari e ville nel Golfo di Napoli." In I Campi Flegrei nell'archeologia e nella storia, Atti del

Convegno Internazionale

dell'Accademia

Nazionale dei Lincei, 347—63. Rome, 1977. Dasen, Véronique. Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece. Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology. Oxford and N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modem France: Eight Essays. C a m bridge: Polity, 1987. D e Caro, Stefano. Il Gabinetto Segreto del Museo Nazionale Archeologico di Napoli. Naples: Electa, 2000. D e Franciscis, Alfonso. "La villa romana di Oplontis." In Neue Forschungen in Pompeji und den anderen vom Vesuvausbruch 79 n.Chr. verschütteten Städten, edited by Bernard Andreae and Helmut Kyrieleis, 9—38. Recklinghausen: Bongers, *975Degrassi, Attilio. Inscriptiones Italiae. Vol. 13.3. Rome: La Libreria dello Stato, 1937. Delivorrias, Angelos, and Anneliese Kossath-Deissmann. "Die sog. Aphrodite Kallipygos." In Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, vol. 2, 85—86. Zurich: Artemis, 1984. Deila Corte, Matteo. Case ed abitanti di Pompei. 3rd ed. Naples: Fiorentino, 1965. . Cleopatra, M. Antonio e Ottaviano nelle allegorie storico-umoristiche delle argenterie del tesoro di Boscoreale. Pompei: Scuola Tipografica Pontificia, 1951. Dentith, Simon. "Bakhtin's Carnival." In Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader, edited by Simon Dentith, 65—104. N e w York: Routledge, 1995. Desbat, Armand. "Vases à médaillons d'applique des fouilles récentes de Lyon." Figlina 5—6 (1980—81): 1—203. de Voragine, Jacobus. The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. Translated by Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger. London: Longmans, Green, 1941. de Vos, Arnold. "I 7, 11: Casa dell'Efebo o di P. Cornelius Tages." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 1,619—727. Rome: Treccani, 1990. . "I 7, 19: Casa annessa alla Casa dell'Efebo o di P. Cornelius Tages." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 1,750—89. Rome: Treccani, 1990. . " V 1, 26: Casa di L . Cecilio Giocondo e casa anessa V 1,23." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 3, 574—620. Rome: Treccani, 1991. . " V 6,1." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 3 , 1 0 9 9 — n o i . Rome: Treccani, 1991. de Vos, Arnold, and Mariette de Vos. Pompei Ercolano Stabia. Guide Archeologiche Laterza. Rome: Laterza, 1982. de Vos, Mariette. " 1 6 , 1 1 : Casa dei Quadretti Teatrali." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 1, 361—95. Rome: Treccani, 1990.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

. "I 6, 13: Casa di Stallius Eros." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 1, 400—406. Rome: Treccani, 1990. . "I 9, 5: Casa dei Cubicoli Floreali o del Frutteto." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 2, i—137. Rome: Treccani, 1990. . "II 2,2: Casa di Octavius Quartio." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 3,42—108. Rome: Treccani, 1991. . " V 4, a: Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 3, 966—1029. Rome: Treccani, 1991. . "La fuga di Enea in pitture del 1 secolo d.C." Kölner Jahrbuch für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 24 (1991): 113-23. . "Paving Techniques at Pompeii." Archaeological News 16, nos. 1—4 (1991): 36-60. de Vos, Mariette, and Franca Parise Badoni. "I 7 , 1 : Casa di Paquius Proculus o di Cuspius Pansa." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. i, 483—551. Rome: Treccani, 1990. Dexter, Caroline E. " T h e Casa di L. Cecilio Giocondo in Pompeii." Ph.D. diss., D u k e University, 1975. Dickie, Matthew W., and Katherine M. D. Dunbabin. "Invida Rumpantur Pectora: T h e Iconography of Phthonos/Invidia in Graeco-Roman Art." Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 26 (1983): 7-37. Dickmann, Jens-Arne. Domus frequentata: Anspruchsvolles Wohnen im pompejanischen Stadthaus. Munich: F. Pfeil, 1999. Dierichs, Angelika. "Es muß nicht immer Timotheos sein: Leda und der Schwan in Wandmalereien aus den Vesuvstädten." Kölner Jahrbuch für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 25 (1992): 51—64. Dunbabin, Katherine M. D. "Baiarum Grata Voluptas: Pleasures and Dangers of the Baths." Papers of the British School at Rome 57 (1989): 6—46. . Mosaics of the Gree\ and Roman World. N e w York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. . The Mosaics of Roman North Africa: Studies in Iconography and Patronage. O x ford: Oxford University Press, 1978. . "Sic erimus cuncti: T h e Skeleton in Graeco-Roman A r t " Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 101 (1986): 186—255. Dundes, Alan, ed. The Evil Eye: A Caseboo\. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981. Edwards, Catharine. The Politics ofImmorality in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Ehrhardt, Wolfgang. Casa di Paquius Proculus (17,1.20). Häuser in Pompeji. Munich: Hirmer, 1998. Eisner, J ass. Art and the Roman Viewer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

. "Making Myth Visual: T h e Horae of Philostratus and the Dance of the Text." Römische Mitteilungen 107 (2000): 253—76. El worthy, Frederick Thomas. The Evil Eye: An Account of This Ancient and Widespread Superstition. 1895. Reprint, N e w York: Julian Press, 1958. Erasmo, Mario. Roman Tragedy: From Theatre to Theatricality. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Ernout, Alfred, and E. Meillet. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. Paris: C . Klincksieck, 1939. Favro, Diane G . " T h e City Is a Living Thing: T h e Performative Role of an Urban Site in Ancient Rome, the Vallis Murcia." In The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of Art 56, Symposium Papers 34, edited by Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon, 204—19. Washington, D C : National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 1999. . The Urban Image of Augustan Rome. Cambridge and N e w York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Fiorelli, Giuseppe. Descrizione di Pompei. Naples: Tipografia Italiana, 1875. Fittà, Marco. Giochi e giocattoli nell'antichità. Milan: Leonardo arte, 1997. Flower, Harriet I. Ancestor Mastis and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture. N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Freud, Sigmund. Jo\es and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Translated by James Strachey. 1905. Reprint, N e w York: Norton, i960. Fröhlich, Thomas. Lararien-und Fassadenbilder in den Vesuvstädten: Untersuchungen zur "volkstümlichen"pompejanischen

Malerei. Römische Mitteilungen, Supplement.

Mainz: von Zabern, 1991. Funari, Pedro Paulo Abreu. "Graphic Caricature and the Ethos of Ordinary People at Pompeii." journal of European Archaeology 2 (1993): 131—47. Garland, Robert. The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World. London: Duckworth, 1995. Geffcken, Katherine A . Comedy in the Pro Caelio: With an Appendix on the In Coldium et Curionem. Mnemosyne Supplement. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Gell, William. Pompeiana: The Topography, Edifices, and Ornaments of Pompeii. 3rd ed. London: H . G . Bohn, 1852. Germain, Suzanne. Les mosaïques de Timgad: Étude descriptive et analytique. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1969. Ghedini, Francesca, Isabella Colpo, and Novello Marta, eds. Le immagini di Filostrato minore: La prospettiva dello storico dell'arte. Antenor, Quaderni 3. Rome: Quasar, 2004. Giuliani, Luca. "Der selige Krüppel: Zur Deutung von Mißgestalten in der hellenistischen Kleinkunst." Archäologische Anzeiger 102 (1987): 701—21.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Gold, Barbara K . " H u m o r in Juvenal's Sixth Satire: Is It Funny?" In Laughter Down the Centuries, vol. i, edited by Siegfried Jäkel and A s k o Timonen, 95—112. Turku: Turun Yliopisto, 1994-97. Gradel, Ittai. Emperor Worship and Roman Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Gravel, Pierre Bettez. The Malevolent Eye: An Essay on the Evil Eye, Fertility, and the Concept of Mana. American University Studies, Series 11, Anthropology and Sociology. N e w York: Peter Lang, 1995. Grüner, Andreas. Venvs ordinisi Der Wandel von Malerei und Literatur im Zeitalter der römischen Bürger!{riege. Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums. Monographien. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004. Gurval, Robert Alan. Actium and Augustus: The Politics and Emotions of Civil War. A n n Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Hagenow, G . "Der nichtausgekehrte Speisesaal." Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 121 (1978): 260-75. Hallett, Judith P. "Ianus Iucunda: T h e Characterization of the Door in Catullus 67." In Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, vol. 2, edited by Carl Deroux, 106—22. Brussels: Latomus, 1980. Hallett, Judith P., and Marilyn B. Skinner, eds. Roman Sexualities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Helbig, Wolfgang. Wandgemälde der vom Vesuv verschütteten Städte Campaniens. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1865. Helttula, Anne. "Epigraphical Laughter." In Laughter Down the Centuries, vol. 2, edited by Siegfried Jäkel and A s k o Timonen, 145—59. Turku: Turun Yliopisto, 1994-97. Heres, Gerald. Die römischen Bildlampen der Berliner Antillen-Sammlung.

Deutsche

Akademie der Wissenschaften z u Berlin. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1972. Hermary, Antoine. "Eros Archer." In Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, vol. 3, 878—81. Zurich: Artemis, 1986. Hénaff, Marcel. Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Maring of Structural Anthropology. Translated by Mary Baker. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Hierocles, Grammarian. The Philogelos, or, Laughter-Lover. Translated by Barry Baldwin. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1983. Hölscher, Tonio. Victoria Romana:Archäologische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Wesensart der römischen Siegesgöttin von den Anfangen bis zum Ende des 3. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. Mainz: von Zabern, 1967. Hopkins, Keith. Death and Renewal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Höttermann, B. "Phlyakenposse und Atellane." In Beiträge zur mündlichen Kultur der Römer, edited by Gregor Vogt-Spira, 78—112. Tübingen: G . Narr, 1993. Housman, A . E. "Praefanda." Hermes 66 (1931): 402-12.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

. " T w o Epigrams of Martial." Classical Review 15 (1901): 154—55. Hurschmann, Rolf. "Kottabos." In Der Nette Pauly, vol. 6,782. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1999. Ihm, M. "Römische Spieltafeln." In Bonner Studien: Aufsätze aus der Altertumswissenschaft (Reinhard Kekulé zur Erinnerung an seine hehrthätigkeit in Bonn, gewidmet von seinen Schülern), 223—39. Berlin: W. Spemann, 1890. Jacobeiii, Luciana, he pitture erotiche delle Terme Suburbane di Pompei. Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1995. . " L o scavo delle Terme Suburbane: Notizie preliminari." Rivista di studi pompeiani 1 (1987): 151—54. Johns, Catherine. Sex or Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982. Johnston, Sarah I. "Crossroads." Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphy 88 (1991): 217—24. Jost, Madeleine. "Hermes." In The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, 690—91. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Kampen, Natalie Boymel. "Omphale and the Instability of Gender." In Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, edited by Natalie Boymel K a m pen, 233—46. N e w York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. . " O n Writing Histories of Roman Art." Art Bulletin 85, no. 2 (2003): 371—86. , ed. Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Cambridge Studies in N e w A r t History and Criticism. N e w York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Kastenmeier, Pia. "Priap zum Gruße." Römische Mitteilungen 108 (2001): 301—11. Keith-Spiegel, Patricia. "Early Conceptions of Humor: Varieties and Issues." In The Psychology of Humor, edited by Jeffrey H . Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee, 3-39. N e w York: Academic Press, 1972. Kellum, Barbara. " T h e Spectacle of the Street." In The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of Art 56, Symposium Papers 34, edited by Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon, 282—99. Washington, D C : T h e National Gallery of Art, 2000. Kendrick, Walter M. The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Kenner, Hedwig. Das Phänomen der verkehrten Welt in der griechisch-römischen Antike. Klagenfurt: Ernst Ploetz, 1970. Krenkel, Werner A . "Fellatio and Irrumatio." Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der WilhelmPiec\-Universität Rostock^ 29 (1980): 77—78.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Kris, Ernst. Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art. N e w York: International Universities Press, 1952. K u h n e r t , E. "Fascinum." In Pauly-Wissowa,

vol. 6, 2009—14. Stuttgart: }. B. Metzler,

1909. K u n z e , Christian. Derfarnesische Stier und die Dirl(egruppe des Apollonias und Tauris\os. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. Supplement. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. Lahusen, G ö t z . "Funktion und Rezeption des Ahnenbildes." Römische Mitteilungen

92

(1985): 261-89. Langner, Martin. Antike Graffitizeichnungen:

Motive, Gestaltung und Bedeutung. Palilia.

Wiesbaden: L u d w i g Reichert, 2001. Leach, Eleanor Winsor. "Narrative Space and the V i e w e r in Philostratus' Eikones." Römische Mitteilungen

107 (2000): 237—51.

. "Patrons, Painters, and Patterns: T h e A n o n y m i t y of R o m a n o - C a m p a n i a n Painting and the Transition from the Second to the T h i r d Style." In Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome, edited by Barbara K . G o l d , 135—73. Austin: University o f Texas Press, 1982. . " T h e Punishment of Dirce: A N e w l y Discovered Painting in the Casa di Giulio Polibio and Its Significance within the Visual Tradition." Römische

Mitteilungen

92 (1986): 157-82. . The Rhetoric of Space: Literary and Artistic Representations of Landscape in Republican and Augustan Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Lehmann-Hartleben, Karl. " T h e Imagines o f the Elder Philostratus." Art Bulletin 23 (1941): 16-44. Levi, A l d a . Le terrecottefigúrate del Museo Nazionale di Napoli. Florence: Vallecchi, 1926. Levi, Doro. " T h e Evil Eye and the L u c k y H u n c h b a c k . " \nAntioch-on-the-Orontes,

ed-

ited by Richard Stillwell, 220—32. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941. Linant de Bellefonds, Pascale. " L e d a . " In Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, vol. 6, 240—43. Zurich: Artemis, 1992. L i n g , Roger. "I 1 o, 4: Casa del Menandro." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 2,240—397. Rome: Treccani, 1990. . The Structures. Vol. 1 o f The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii. Edited by Roger L i n g . O x f o r d : O x f o r d University Press, 1997. L i n g , Roger, and Franca Parise Badoni. "I 10, 7: Casa del fabbro." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 2, 398—419. Rome: Treccani, 1990. L i n g , Roger, and Lesley L i n g . The Decorations. Vol. 2 o f The Insula of the Menander at Pompeii. Edited by Roger L i n g . O x f o r d : O x f o r d University Press, 2005.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Loeschcke, S. Lampen aus Vindonissa. Zurich: Beer & eie, 1919. Mahon, Dennis. Studies in Seicento Art and Theory. Studies of the Warburg Institute. London: Warburg Institute, 1947. Maiuri, Amedeo. La Casa delMenandro e il suo tesoro di argenteria. Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1933. .Ercolano, I nuovi scavi. Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1958. . "Una nuova pittura nilotica a Pompei." Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Memorie series 8, vol. 7 (1957): 65—80. . "La parodia di Enea." Bollettino d'arte 35 (1950): 108—12. . La Villa dei Misteri. Rome: La Libreria dello Stato, 1931. Maloney, Clarence, ed. The Evil Eye. N e w York: Columbia University Press, 1976. Marquié, Sandrine. "Les médaillons d'applique rhodaniens de la Place des Célestins à Lyon." Revue archéologique de l'Est 50, no. 172 (1999—2000): 239—92. . "Trois médaillons d'applique inédits de la Place des Célestins à Lyon." Société Française d'Étude de la Céramique Antique en Gaule, Actes du Congrès de Dijon (1996): 467-73. Martin, Dale B. Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians. C a m bridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 2004. Martineau, William H . "A Model of the Social Functions of Humor." In The Psychology of Humor, ed. Jeffrey H . Goldstein and Paul E. McGee, 101-25. N e w York: Academic Press, 1972. Marvin, Miranda. "Freestanding Sculptures from the Baths of Caracalla." American Journal of Archaeology 87, no. 3 (1983): 347—84. Masheck, Joseph. " Verist Sculpture: Hanson and De Andrea." In Super Realism: A CriticalAnthology, edited by Gregory Battcock, 187—211. N e w York: E. P.Dutton, 1975. Mattick, Paul, Jr. "Context." In Critical Terms for Art History, edited by Robert S. N e l son and Richard Shiff, 70—86. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Mau, August. "Pompei." Bullettino dell'Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (1882): 196. . Pompeii, Its Life and Art. Rev. ed. Translated by Francis W. Kelsey. London: Macmillan, 1902. . "Scavi di Pompei: V i l i , 5, 24 (Casa del Medico)." Bullettino dell'Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (1883): 228—30. McCarthy, Kathleen. Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. McDermott, William C . The Ape in Antiquity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1938. Mellinkoff, Ruth. Averting Demons: The Protective Power of Medieval Visual Motifs and Themes. Eugene, O R : W i p f & Stock, 2004. Menotti, Elena Maria. "112,3: Caupona di Sotericus." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 2, 701—32. Rome: Treccani, 1990.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Meyboom, P. G . P. The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina: Early Evidence of Egyptian Religion in Italy. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Meyer, Hugo. " Z u neueren Deutungen von asarotos oikps und kapitolinischcm Taubenmosaik." Archäologischer Anzeiger (1977): 104—10. Minervini, Giulio. "Nuove scavazioni di Pompei, rimpetto al Foro civile, e nella continuazione del vicoletto detto di Augusto." Bullettino archeologico napolitano N e w Series 7 (1859): 68-71. Mingazzini, Paolino. " D e pictura quadam Pompeis reperta et de fabula ab ea nobis tradita." Römische Mitteilungen 60 (1953): 150—52. Mols, S. T. A . M. "l'sette sapienti' ad Ostia Antica." In / temi figurativi nella pittura parietale antica (IVsec. a.C.-IVsec.

d.C.), Atti del VI Convegno Internazionale sulla

pittura parietale antica, edited by Daniela Scagliarini Corlàita, 89—96. Bologna: University Press Bologna, 1997. Moore, Timothy J. The Theater of Plautus: Playing to the Audience. Austin: University o f T e x a s Press, 1998. Moormann, Eric M. "La bellezza dell'immondezza: Raffigurazioni di rifiuti nell'arte ellenistica e romana." In Sordes urbis: La eliminación de residuos en la ciudad romana (Adas de la Reunion de Roma, 15-16 de noviembre de 1996), edited by Xavier Dupré i Raventós and Josep Anton Remolà Vallverdü, 75—94. Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 2000. . La pittura parietale romana comefonte di conoscenza per la scultura antica. Scrinium. Monographs on History, Archaeology, and Art History. Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1988. . "Sulle pitture della Herculensium Augustalium Aedes." Cronache ercolanesi 13 (1983): 175-77. Mouritsen, Henrik. Elections, Magistrates, and Municipal Élite: Studies in Pompeian Epigraphy. Analecta Romana Instituti Danici. Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1988. Muntasser, Nayla Kabazi. " T h e Late Antique Domus in Ostia: Patterns of Diversity and Transformation." Ph.D. diss., University ofTexas at Austin, 2003. Myerowitz, Molly. " T h e Domestication of Desire: Ovid's Parva Tabella and the T h e ater of Love." In Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, edited by A m y Richlin, 131—57. N e w York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Narciso, Federica. " V I 14, 20: Casa di Vesonius Primus o di Orfeo." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 5, 264—307. Rome: Treccani, 1994. Neudecker, Richard. Die Pracht der Latrine: Zum Wandel öffentlicher Bedürfnisanstalten in der \aiserzeitlichen Stadt. Studien zur Antiken Stadt. Munich: Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, 1994. Neumann, Gerhard. Gesten und Gebärden in der griechischen Kunst. Berlin: D e Gruyter, 1965.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Noack, Ferdinand. "Ostia." Die Antike 2 (1926): 218. Nogara, Bartolomeo. I mosaici antichi conservati nei Palazzi pontifici del Vaticano e del Laterano. Milan: U. Hoepli, 1910. Obbink, Dirk. "Virgil's De Pietate: From Ehoiae to Allegory in Vergil, Philodemus, and Ovid." In Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans, edited by David Armstrong, Jeffrey Fish, Patricia A . Johnston, and Marilyn B. Skinner, 175—209. Austin: University o f T e x a s Press, 2004. Ogle, Marbury B. "House-Door in Religion and Folklore." American Journal of Philology 32, no. 2 (1911): 251—71. Parise Badoni, Franca. "I 8,17: Casa dei Quattro Stili." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 1, 847—913. Rome: Treccani, 1990. . " V 5,3: Caserma dei Gladiatori." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 3,1069—98. Rome: Treccani, 1991. Parise Badoni, Franca, and Federica Narciso. " V I 8,3.5: Casa del Poeta tragico." InPompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 4, 527—603. Rome: Treccani, 1993. Parker, Holt N . " T h e Teratogenic Grid." In Roman Sexualities, edited by Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner, 47—65. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Parlasca, Klaus. "Mosaiken." In Führer durch den öffentlichen Sammlungen Roms, vol. 1, edited by Wolfgang Heibig and Hermione Speier, no. 1094. Tübingen, 1969. Pavolini, Carlo. Ostia. Guida Archeologica Laterza. Rome: Laterza, 1983. Pernice, Erich. Pavimente und figürliche Mosaiken. Die hellenistische Kunst in Pompeji. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1938. Peters, W. J. T., and Eric M. Moormann. La casa di Marcus Lucretius Fronto a Pompei e le sue pitture. Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers, 1993. Petersen, Lauren Hackworth. The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History. N e w York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Petronius Arbiter. The Satyricon. Translated by William Arrowsmith. A n n Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959. Pfisterer-Haas, Susanne. "Die bronzenen Zwergentänzer." In Das Wrack.: Der antike Schiffsfund von Mahdia (Exhibition catalogue, Rheinischen Landesmuseum Bonn, 8. September igg4—29. January /995A edited by Gisela Hellenkemper Salies, 483—504. Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag, 1994. Pollini, John. "Slave-Boys for Sexual and Religious Service: Images of Pleasure and Devotion." In Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, edited by A . J. Boyle and W. J. Dominik, 149—66. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Polliti, J. J. The Art of Greece, 1400-31 B.C.: Sources and Documents. Sources and Documents in the History of Art Series. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1965.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Pollux, Julius Naucratius. Onomasticon e codicibus ab ipso collatis denuo. Edited by Ericus Bethe. Lexicographi Graeci. Leipzig: Teubner, 1900—1937. Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. N e w York: Schocken, 1975. Purcell, Nicholas. "Does Caesar Mime?" In The Art of Ancient Spectacle, Studies in the History of A r t 56, Symposium Papers 34, edited by Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon, 180—93. Washington, D C : National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 1999. . "Literate Games: Roman Urban Society and the G a m e of Alea." Past and Present 147 (1995): 3-37. . "Women and Wine in Ancient Rome." In Gender, Drink, and Drugs, edited by Maryon McDonald, 191-208. Oxford: Berg, 1994. Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin, and A m y Richlin, eds. Feminist Theory and the Classics. N e w York: Routledge, 1993. Rakoczy, Thomas. Böser Blick: Macht des Auges und Neid der Götter: Eine

Unter-

suchungen zur Kraft des Blickes in der griechischen Literatur. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1996. Rand, Edward Kennard, ed. Servius' Commentary on theAeneid, Books 1-2. Servianorum in Vergilii Carmina Commentariorum. Editionis Harvardianae. C a m bridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 1946. Reiche, Anita. "Die Kopien der 'Leda des Timotheos.' "Antike Plastik 17 (1978): 21—55. Reynolds, R. W. " T h e Adultery Mime." Classical Quarterly 40 (1946): 77—84. Richardson, Lawrence, Jr. A Catalog of Identifiable Figure Painters of Ancient Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Richlin, Amy. The Garden ofPriapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor. 2nd ed. N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1992. . " T h e Meaning of irrumare in Catullus and Martial." Classical Philology 76 (1981): 40—46. . " N o t Before Homosexuality: T h e Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman L a w against Love between Men." Journal of the History of Sexuality 3, no. 4 (i993): 554-7 1 , ed. Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome. N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Riggsby, A n d r e w M. "Lenocinium: Scope and Consequences." Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftungfür Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung 112 (1995): 423—27. Rumscheid, J. Kranz und Krone: Zu Insignien, Siegespreisen und Ehrenzeichen der römische Kaiserzeit. Istanbuler Forschungen 43. Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 2000. Säflund, Marie-Louise. The East Pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia: A Recon-

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

struction and Interpretation of Its Composition. Studies in Mediterranean A r chaeology. Göteborg: Lund, 1970. Salza Prina Ricotti, Eugenia. Giochi e giocattoli. Vita e Costumi dei Romani Antichi. Rome: Quasar, 1995. Sampaolo, Valeria. "I 7, 7: Casa del Sacerdos Amandus." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 1, 586—617. Rome: Treccani, 1990. . " V 1, 7: Casa del Toro." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 3, 481—532. Rome: Treccani, 1991. . " V 2, 10." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 3, 830—47. Rome: Treccani, 1991. . " V I 15,1: Casa dei Vettii." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 5,468—572. Rome: Treccani, 1994. . "VII 2, 16—17: Casa di M. Gavius Rufus." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 6, 530—85. Rome: Treccani, 1996. . "VII 2,23: Casa dell'Amore punito." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 6,665-82. Rome: Treccani, 1996. . "VII 2,25: Casa delle Quadrighe." InPompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 6,683-717. Rome: Treccani, 1996. . "VII 6, 34—35." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 7, 207—9. Rome: Treccani, 1997. . "VII 15, 2: Casa del Marinaio." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 7, 704—65. Rome: Treccani, 1997. . "VIII 2,17—21: Complesso a sei piani delle Terme del Sarno." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 8, 94—135. Rome: Treccani, 1998. . " V i l i 4,34." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 8,531—46. Rome: Treccani, 1998. . " V i l i 7,24.22: Casa dello Scultore." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 8,718—31. Rome: Treccani, 1998. . " I X 1, 22.29: Casa di M. Epidius Sabinus." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 8, 956—1044. Rome: Treccani, 1998. . "IX 7, 16." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 9, 782—96. Rome: Treccani, 1999. . "IX 8,3.7: Casa del Centenario." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 9,903—1104. Rome: Treccani, 1999. . "IX 13, 5: Fullonica di Ululitremulus." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 10, 357—60. Rome: Treccani, 2003. Scagliarmi, Daniela Corlàita. "Spazio e decorazione nella pittura pompeiana." Palladio 23-25 (1974-76): 3-44. Schefold, Karl. La peinture pompéienne: Essai sur l'évolution de sa signification. Collection Latomus. Brüssels, 1972. . Vergessenes Pompeji: Unveröffentlichte Bilder römischer Wanddekorationen in geschichtlicher Folge herausgegeben. Bern and Munich: Francke Verlag, 1962.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

. Die Wände Pompejis: Topographisches Verzeichnis der Bildmotive. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1955. Scheid, John. "Jupiter." In The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, 801—2. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Schulten, Paul. "Ancient Humor." In After the Past: Essays in Ancient History in Honour of H.W. Pleket, edited by Willem Jongman and Marc Kleijwegt, 209—34. Mnemosyne 233. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Scrinari, Valnea Santa Maria. Museo Archeologico diAquileia: Catalogo delle sculture romane. Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1972. Segai, Erich. Roman Laughter: The Comedy ofPlautus.

Harvard Studies in Compara-

tive Literature. Cambridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 1968. Slater, Philip Elliot. The Glory of Hera: Gree\ Mythology and the Greeks Family. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968. Smith, R. R. R. " T h e Use of Images: Visual History and Ancient History." In Classics in Progress: Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by T. P. Wiseman, 59—102. London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2003. Snowden, Frank. "Iconographical Evidence on the Black Populations in Graeco-Roman Antiquity." In The Image of the Blacky in Western Art, edited by Jean Vercoutter et al. Fribourg: Office du Livre, 1976. Sogliano, Antonio. "Relazione degli scavi fatti dal dicembre 1902 a tutto marzo 1905." Notizie degli scavi (1906): 148—61. . "Scavi di Pompei." Notizie degli scavi (1880): 394—95. . "Scavi di Pompei: V i l i 5—6, 24." Notizie degli scavi (1882): 322—24. Spannagel, Martin. Exemplaria Principis: Untersuchungen zu Entstehung und Ausstattung des Augustusforums. Archäologische und Geschichte 3. Heidelberg: Verlag Archäologische und Geschichte, 1999. Spinazzola, Vittorio. Pompei alla luce degli scavi nuovi di via dell'Abbondanza 1910-1923).

(anni

Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1953.

Sprigge, T. L. S. "Schopenhauer and Bergson on Laughter." Comparative Criticism: An Annual Journal 10 (1988): 39—68. Staub-Gierow, Margaretha. "VII 4, 56: Casa del Granduca." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, voi. 7, 44—62. Rome: Treccani, 1997. Steinberg, Leo. The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modem Oblivion. N e w York: Pantheon Books, 1983. Steingräber, Stephan. Catalogo ragionato della pittura etrusco. Milan: Jaca, 1985. Stewart, A n d r e w F. "Reflections." In Sexuality in Ancient Art, edited by Natalie B. K a m pen, 136—54. N e w York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Stewart, Peter. Statues in Roman Society: Representation and Response. N e w York: O x ford University Press, 2003.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Strocka, Volker Michael. "Casa del Labirinto: V I n , 8—10." In Pompei: Pitture e mosaici, vol. 5, 1—70. Rome: Treccani, 1994. . Casa del Labirinto (VI11,

8-10). Häuser in Pompeji. Munich: Hirmer, 1991.

Sullivan, J. P., and Peter W h i g h a m , eds. Epigrams of Martial Englished by Divers Hands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Thompson, Lloyd A . Romans and Blacks. London: Routledge, 1989. Thompson, Mary Lee. " T h e Monumental and Literary Evidence for Programmatic Painting in Antiquity." Marsyas 9 (1960—61): 36—77. Todd, A . E. "Three Pompeian Wall-Inscriptions, and Petronius." Classical Review 53 (February 1939): 5 - 9 . Toynbee, Jocelyn M. C . Death and Burial in the Roman World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971. Treves, Piero, and T i m J. Cornell. "Spolia opima." In The Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, 1436. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Trimble, Jennifer E "Greek Myth, Gender, and Social Structure in a Roman House: T w o Paintings of Achilles at Pompeii." In The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality andTradition from the Present to ClassicalAntiquity, Memoirs of the American Academy, suppl. 1, edited by Elaine Gazda, 225—48. A n n Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Turner, Victor W. The Ritual Process: Structure andAnti-Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Tybout, Rolf Albert. Aedificiorumfigurae: Untersuchungen zu

denArchitefyurdarstellun-

gen desfrühen zweiten Stils. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1989. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. Tunisia:Ancient Mosaics. Greenwich, C T : N e w York Graphic Society, 1962. Vaglieri, Dante. "Ostia." Notizie degliscavi (1909). . Ostia: Cenni storici e guida. Rome: Ermanno Loescher, 1914. van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, i960. Vergil. The Aeneid. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. London: Harvill Press, 1984. Versluy s, Miguel John. Aegyptiaca Romana: Nilotic Scenes and the Roman Views of Egypt. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Versnel, Hendrik S. Triumphus:An Inquiry into the Origin, Development, and Meaning of the Roman Triumph. Leiden: Brill, 1970. von Blanckenhagen, Peter Heinrich. "Daedalus and Icarus on Pompeian Walls." Römische Mitteilungen 75 (1986): 106—43. Wallat, Kurt. "Der Marmorfries am Eingangsportal des Gebäudes der Eumachia (VII,

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

9) in Pompeji und sein ürsprünglischer Anbringungsort."

Archäologischer

Anzeiger, no. 4 (1995): 345—73. Walters, H . B. Catalogue of the Gree\ and Roman Lamps in the British Museum. London: British Museum Publications, 1914. Webster, T. B. L . Monuments Illustrating New Comedy. 2nd rev. ed. Institute of Classical Studies Bulletin, Supplement 24. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1969. . Monuments Illustrating New Comedy. 3rd ed. 2 vols. Edited by J. R. Green and A . Seeberg. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1995. Weitzmann, Kurt. Illustrations in Roll and Codex: A Study of the Origin and Method of Text Illustration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947. Wiles, David. The Mas\s of Menander: Sign and Meaning in Gree\ and Roman Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Williams, Craig A . Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. Oxford and N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Wiseman, T. P. " T h e Games of Flora." In The Art of Ancient Spectacle, vol. 34, edited by Bettina Bergmann and Christine Kondoleon, 194—203. Studies in the History of Art. Washington, D C : National Gallery of Art/Yale University Press, 1999. Woolf, Greg. Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul. C a m bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Wuilleumier, Pierre, and Amable Audin. Les médaillons d'applique gallo-romains de la vallée du Rhône. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1952. Zanker, Paul. Pompeii: Public and Private Life. Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider. Cambridge, M A : Harvard University Press, 1998. . The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Translated by Alan Shapiro. A n n Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988. . "Die Villa als Vorbild des späten pompejanischen Wohngeschmacks." Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 94 (1979): 460—523. Zimmermann, Norbert. "Ausstattung von Haupt- und Nebenräumen: Z u r Datierung der Wandmalereien des Hanghauses 2 in Ephesos." In Das Hanghaus 2 von Ephesos: Studien zu Baugeschichte und Chronologie, Archäologische Forschungen 6, edited by Fritz Krinzinger, 101—17. Vienna: Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2002.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

ILLUSTRATIONS

Unless otherwise noted, drawings and plans are by the author. For complete bibliographic citations, please refer to the bibliography. The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum has been abbreviated C I L .

PLATES

(following page 162) 1.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), black bath servant, entrance to caldarium of bath. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

2.

Pompeii, House of the Sculptor (VII, 7, 24), first peristyle, wall B, dancing pygmies on boat. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

3.

Pompeii, House of the Bull (V, 1, 7), atrium, east wall, upper zone, pygmy frieze. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

4.

Pompeii, House of the Doctor ( V i l i , 5,24), digital reconstruction, west side of peristyle g, with pluteus panels: 1) pygmies hunting; 2) pygmies at outdoor banquet. Digital reconstruction by Julianna Budding.

299

5-

Pompeii, House of the Doctor ( V i l i , 5,24), digital reconstruction, east side of peristyle g , with pluteus panel: Judgment of Solomon. Digital reconstruction by Julianna Budding.

6.

Pompeii, House of the Doctor (VIII, 5,24), pluteus of peristyle^, west side, south part, pygmies hunting. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 113195. Photo Alfredo Foglia.

7-

Pompeii, House of the Doctor (VIII, 5,24), pluteus of peristyle^, west side, north part, pygmies at outdoor banquet. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 113196. Photo Alfredo Foglia.

8.

Pompeii, House of the Doctor (VIII, 5, 24), pluteus of peristyle^ east side, south part, Judgment of Solomon. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 113197. Photo Alfredo Foglia.

9-

Pompeii, House of the Pygmies (IX, 5, 9), room I, north wall, detail, sacral-idyllic scene. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

io.

Pompeii, House of the Pygmies (IX, 5,9), room I, south wall, detail, sorcerer. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività C u l t u r a l i — Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

il.

Pompeii, Tavern (VII, 6, 34—35), ass mounting a lion. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 27683. Photo Michael Larvey.

12.

Pompeii, Tavern of Salvius (VI, 14,36), four scenes of tavern life, frieze from north wall of room a. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, in v. 11482. Photo Michael Larvey. Ostia, Tavern of the Seven Sages (III, 10, 2—3), room 5, view of south and west walls, Sages and sitting men. Photo Michael Larvey. Pompeii, House of the Menander (1,10,4), atriolo of bath, north wall frieze, T h e seus and Minotaur. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

15

Pompeii, House of the Menander (1,10, 4), oecus 11, pygmy mosaic, detail, boatman. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

16.

Pompeii, Masseria di Cuomo, frieze of Aeneas the Ape, 20 x 24 cm. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 9089. Photo Michael Larvey. Pompeii, Masseria di Cuomo, frieze of Romulus the Ape, detail, Romulus (at the end of a frieze 76 Vi in. [196 cm] long). Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 8588. Photo Michael Larvey.

18.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (1,10,4), oecus n , frieze of centaurs and Lapith women, north wall, east third. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

I L

S T R A T I O N S

19.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), oecus 1 1 , frieze of centaurs and Lapith women, north wall, west third. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

20.

Pompeii, House of the Vedi (VI, 15, 1), oecus p, north wall, center picture, Daedalus presents wooden cow to Pasiphae. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

21.

Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, cubiculum 4, east wall of north alcove, midnight sacrifice to Priapus. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

22.

Pompeii, House of the Vettii (VI, 1 5 , 1 ) , digital reconstruction showing both Priapi. Digital reconstruction by Kirby Conn.

23.

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, digital reconstruction. Digital reconstruction by Kirby Conn.

24.

Male-female couple on boat with caption

NAVIGIUM VENERIS,

second century

A.D.,

applied medallion on vase, terra-cotta, diam. 6V2 in. (12.3 cm). Photo Musée galloromain de Lyon, Département du Rhone, France, inv. CEL 76451. Photo J.-M. Deguele.

FIGURES

1.

A model for the production and reception of visual art in ancient Rome.

2.

Pompeii, Inn on the Street of Mercury (VI, 10, 1), woman resisting man. After

1o

César Famin, Musée Royal de Naples: Peintures, bronzes et statues erotique du cabinet secret (Paris: Abel Ledoux, 1836), pi. 38.

28

3.

Pompeii, plan of theater. Drawing by Onur Oztiirk.

4.

Pollux, Ononmasticon 4.143—154, the 44 comic masks. Webster, Monuments Illustrating New Comedy, 3rd ed., 1:9—51.

30

32

5.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), reconstruction of exedra 23. Draw-

6.

Pompeii, House of the Theatrical Pictures (1,6,11), location of pictures in atrium.

ing by Onur Oztiirk. Drawing by Onur Oztiirk. 7.

38 40

Pompeii, House of the Theatrical Pictures (I, 6 , 1 1 ) , east wall, north part, picture with an old slave, a prostitute, and a young man. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

8.

41

Pompeii, House of Caecilius Iucundus (V, 1, 26), herm portrait of Caecilius

ILLUSTRATIONS

3OI

Iucundus. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 110663. Photo Michael Larvey. 9. 10.

43

Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, north wall atrium, Rufus est. CIL 4.9226.

Pompeii, Necropolis of Porta Nocera, tomb 6, external wall, Promus fel(l)ator. CIL 4.10222.

11.

47

Pompeii, House VII, 6, 7, peristyle 48, east porticus, second column from north (destroyed), Sum Max(imus). CIL 4.9008.

12.

46

48

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), on the back of the east anta of the tablinum, seen from the south (peristyle), Ssevera elassss. CIL 4.8329.

13.

49

Pompeii, Tavern of Sotericus (I, 12, 3), painting of guard dog, from entryway. Photo Archivo Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

14.

53

Pompeii, Tavern of Sotericus (I, 12, 3), detail, guard dog. Photo Archivo Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei). 53

15.

Pompeii, House of P. Paquius Proculus (I, 8, 1), mosaic of dog in fauces. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali— Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

16.

55

Pompeii, House of Caecilius Iucundus (V, 1,26), mosaic of dog napping on threshold. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

17.

55

Pompeii, House of the Tragic Poet (VI, 8, 5), mosaic of dog with caption CANEM.

CAVE

Photo Archivo Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pom-

pei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

56

18.

Rome, mosaic of the asarotos oikos, signed by Heraklitos. Museo Gregoriano Pro-

19.

Rome, mosaic of the asarotos oi\os, signed by Heraklitos, detail, mouse and nut.

fano, Vatican Museums, inv. 10132. Photo Musei Vaticani.

58

Museo Gregoriano Profano, Vatican Museums, inv. 10132. Photo Musei Vaticani. 58 20.

Pompeii, House of the Vestals (VI, 1,7), mosaic of skeleton wine-steward. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples inv. 9978. Photo Michael Larvey.

21.

60

Aquileia, Jupiter hurtling thunderbolts at a defecating man. Aquileia Archaeological Museum, inv. 50397. Photo Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, Rome (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali— Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologiei del Friuli-Venezia Giulia).

22.

302

61

Antioch, House of the Evil Eye, mosaic of the Evil Eye, second century A.D.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Hatay Archaeological Museum, Antakaya, Turkey, inv. 1024. Photo courtesy Hatay Archaeological Museum. 23.

65

Pilgrim badge with three phallic creatures carrying vulva, ca. 1375-1425. Van Beuningen Collection, Cothen, The Netherlands. Heilig en Profaan (1993), cat. no. 652. Photo Van Beuningen Collection.

24.

Ostia, House of Jupiter the Thunderer (IV, 4), threshold mosaic, ca. A.D. 150. Photo Michael Larvey.

25.

68

68

Herculaneum, bronze tintinnabulum with gladiator attacking dog-phallus. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 27853. Photo Michael Larvey.

26.

Pompeii, IX, 6, phallus with inscription

H A N C EGO CACAVI.

Nazionale, Naples, inv. 113415. Photo Michael Larvey. 27.

70

Museo Archeologico 71

Pompeii, Shop (IX, 7,2), Street of Abundance, cauldron decorated with phalli in two forms, excavation photograph 1911. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

28.

Pompeii (VI, 6, 18), terra-cotta plaque with legend

72

HIC HABITAT

FELICITAS,

9% x 15% in. (25 x 40 cm). Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 27741. Photo Michael Larvey. 29.

Pompeii, VI, 6, 18, interior of bakery showing original placement of plaque with legend H I C

30.

73

HABITAT FELICITAS,

first century A . D . After Geli,Pompeiana (1852).

74 Pompeii, Tomb of Vestorius Priscus, section showing symposium scene and pygmies on the Nile and table with silver service. Drawing by Jane Whitehead. 76

31.

Ostia, Isola Sacra, tomb 16, mosaic. Photo Michael Larvey.

32.

Ostia, Baths of Neptune (II, 4, 2), plan, detail, southeast corner with pygmy mosaic. Drawing by Onur Oztürk.

33.

79

Ostia, Baths ofNeptune (II, 4,2), pygmy mosaic. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici di Ostia.

34.

79

Pompeii, IX, 7, 21—22, south wall of corridor h leading to latrine g, Fortuna and nude man defecating with inscription

CACATOR C A V E MALU(ITI).

logico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 112285. Photo Michael Larvey. 35.

77

Museo Archeo81

Palestrina, Nile mosaic, detail, Aethiopes hunters. Museo Archeologico Prenestino, Palestrina, Soprintendenza Archeologica del Lazio. Photo Michael Larvey. 90

36.

Palestrina, Nile mosaic, detail, boatmen. Museo Archeologico Prenestino, Pales-

37.

Pompeii, House of the Sculptor (VII, 7, 24), plan. Drawing by Onur Oztürk.

trina, Soprintendenza Archeologica del Lazio. Photo Michael Larvey.

90

92

ILLUSTRATIONS

3O3

38.

Pompeii, House of the Sculptor (VII, 7, 24), earlier peristyle, south frieze (wall A), dancing Aethiopes. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali— Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

39.

92

Pompeii, House of the Sculptor (VII, 7, 24), earlier peristyle, south frieze (wall A), detail, defecating Aethiops. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

40.

94

Pompeii, House of the Sculptor (VII, 7, 24), earlier peristyle, south frieze (wall A), sacral-idyllic landscape. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

95

41.

Chart of pygmy imagery in houses at Pompeii.

95

42.

Pompeii, House of the Bull (V, 1,7), view of atrium 4, east and north walls. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali— Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

43.

97

Pompeii, Praedia of Julia Felix (II 4,3), atrium 24, scene of sales in forum. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 9063. Photo Michael Larvey.

98

44.

Pompeii, House of the Doctor ( V i l i , 5, 24), plan. Drawing by Onur Oztùrk.

45.

Ostia, relief from butcher shop, ca. 125—150, Skulpturensammlung, Dresden, inv.

46.

Pompeii, House of the Pygmies (IX, 5, 9), plan. Drawing by Onur Oztùrk.

47.

Vindonissa, lamp, lion on top of ass. Photo Kantonsarchaologie Aargau, Vindo-

100 Hermann 418. Photo Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.

105

106 nissa Museum, Brugg, Switzerland. 48.

gional Museum, Klagenfurt, Austria. 49.

113

Mold from Magdalensberg, ass on a supine lion, with man at left. Carinthian Re114

Pompeii, VII, 6,34—35, drawing of Mercury from left-hand pier. Drawing by Nicola La Volpe. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, Archivio di Disegni e Stampe. 116

50.

Pompeii, V, 6,1—2, facade painting (destroyed). Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

51.

struction by Alison Duke. 52.

116

Pompeii VII, 6, 34—35, reconstruction of facade with paintings. Digital recon117

Pompeii, Shop of Verecundus (IX, 7,7), Mercury in his temple above scene of shoe sales. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei

ILLUSTRATIONS

(su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

119

53.

Pompeii, Tavern of Salvius (VI, 14,36), scene 1, a man and woman kissing. Museo

54.

Pompeii, Tavern of Salvius (VI, 14, 36), scene 2, two men and a woman server.

Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 11482. Photo Michael Larvey.

121

Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 11482. Photo Michael Larvey. 122 55.

Pompeii, Tavern of Salvius (VI, 14, 36), scene 3, two men playing dice. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 11482. Photo Michael Larvey.

56.

123

Pompeii, Tavern of Salvius (VI, 14, 36), scene 4, two fighting men and the innkeeper. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 11482. Photo Michael Larvey.

124

57.

Ostia, Tavern of the Seven Sages (III, 10, 2—3), room 5, view with barrel vault.

58.

Ostia, Tavern of the Seven Sages, detail, Thales. Photo Michael Larvey.

126 127

Photo Michael Larvey.

126

59.

Ostia, Tavern of the Seven Sages, seated men. Photo Michael Larvey.

60.

Ostia (I, 12), Via della Forica, latrine. Photo Michael Larvey.

61.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (1,10,4), atriolo of bath, Second-Style scheme. Drawing by Onur Oztiirk.

62.

135

Pompeii, House of the Menander (1,10,4), Theseus and Minotaur. After Maiuri, La Casa del Menand.ro (1933).

63.

136

Herculaneum, Basilica, Theseus Liberator. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 9049. Photo Michael Larvey.

64.

138

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), Zeus, bull, and Apollo. After Maiuri, La Casa del Menandro (1933).

66.

136

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), Aphrodite and Eros. After Maiuri, La Casa delMenandro (1933).

65.

139

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), Easiphae, Epithymia, Daedalus, and Aphrodite. After Maiuri, La Casa del Menandro (1933).

67.

140

Pompeii, House of the Menander (I, 10, 4), Marsyas, Athena, and Apollo. After Maiuri, La Casa delMenandro (1933).

68.

128

141

Mahdia, bronze figure of buffoon, late second century B.C. Musée National du Bardo, Tunis. Photo Deutsches Archaologishes Institut, Rome.

69.

Chart of possible relationships among central pictures in the "twin" oeci p and n. Pompeii, House of the Vettii.

70.

145

Rome, Forum of Augustus, plan. After Spannagel, Exemplaria Principis (1999), pi. 1, 2. Drawing by Onur Oztiirk.

71.

142

147

Pompeii, facade of the Fullonica of Ululitremulus (IX, 13, 5) in 1915. Photo

I L L U S T R A T I O N S

3O5

Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei). 72.

148

Pompeii, facade of the Fullonica of Ululitremulus (IX, 13,5), Aeneas group. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

73.

148

Pompeii, facade of the Fullonica of Ululitremulus (IX, 13, 5), Romulus. Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

74.

150

Pompeii, House of Gavius Rufus (VII, 2,16), flight of Aeneas, terra-cotta. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 110338. Photo Michael Larvey.

75.

150

Rome, Villa under the Farnesina, triclinium C, Judgment of Solomon. Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, inv. 1080. Photo Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Rome.

155

76.

Frieze of Aeneas and Romulus, hypothetical reconstruction. Drawing by Onur

77.

Pompeii, House of the Menander (1,10,4), view of oecus 1 1 with walls and pave-

Öztürk.

156

ment. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei). 78.

157

Pompeii, House of Gavius Rufus (VII, 2, 16), exedra o, west wall, Pirithous receiving the centaur Eurytion. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, inv. 9044. Photo Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Rome.

79.

159

Leda and the Swan (assisted by a small Cupid), terra-cotta lamp, first century A.D. British Museum, inv. G & R Q 871. Photo © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum.

80.

167

Pompeii, House of Lucretius Fronto (V, 4, a), tablinum h, north wall, Mars and Venus on a bed, A.D. 45. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

81.

171

Lyon, Place des Célestins, applied medallion, Mars and Venus making love, observed by the gods. After Audin and Jeancolas, "Le médallion des amours de Mars et Venus" (1969).

82.

172

Lyon, Places des Célestins, applied medallion, second century A.D., Vulcan surprising Mars and Venus. After Marquié, "Trois médallions d'applique inédits" (1996).

83.

172

Hercules and Omphale, mold of bowl, Arretine ware (two views). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 98.870. Photos © 2007 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

ILLUSTRATIONS

174

84.

Pompeii, House of M. Lucretius (IX, 3, 5), Hercules and Omphale, A.D. 62-79. Museo Nazionale Archeologico, Naples, inv. 8992. Photo Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Rome.

85.

176

Pompeii V I I I , 4, 34, tablinum 4, north wall (lost), Hercules spinning wool in Omphale's court. D r a w i n g by Nicola L a Volpe. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, A D S 871. Photo Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Rome.

86.

178

Hermaphroditus, first view. Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome, inv. 1087. Photo Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Rome. 180

87.

Hermaphroditus, second view. Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome, inv. 1087. Photo Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Rome. 180

88.

Pompeii, House of Octavius Quartio (II, 2, 2), plan with paintings and sculptures indicated.

89.

181

Pompeii, House of Octavius Quartio (II, 2,2), rear garden, statue of H e r m a p h roditus. Ufficio Scavi, Pompeii, inv. 3 0 2 1 . Photo Francesca C . Tronchin (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—-Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

182

90.

Pompeii, House of the Vettii (VI, 15, 1), plan showing location of Hermaphro-

91.

Pompeii, House of the Dioscuri (VI, 9, 6), atrium, digital reconstruction of en-

92.

Pompeii, House of the Vettii (VI, 1 5 , 1 ) , entry way alb, Priapus weighing his mem-

ditus paintings.

183

try to south peristyle. Digital reconstruction by Onur Oztiirk.

183

ber against a sack of coins. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei). 186 93.

Pompeii, I X , 12, 2, Mercury. Pornographic Collection, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. Photo Michael Larvey.

94.

187

Pompeii, House of the Vettii (VI, 1 5 , 1 ) , statue of Priapus. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

95.

188

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, south and east walls. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

96.

195

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, scene III, fellatio. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

197

97.

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, scene III, fellatio, drawing.

197

98.

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, scene IV, cunnilingus. Photo Michael

ILLUSTRATIONS

3O7

Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei). 99.

199

Cyprus, lamp showing male-female couple performing "69." Cyprus Museum, Nicosia, inv. D 2759. Photo courtesy Cyprus Museum.

100.

LINGIORUM.

STATIO

CUNNI-

Photo Archivio Fotografico della Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeo-

logici di Ostia. 101.

199

Ostia, Baths of the Trinacria (III, 16,7), mosaic with inscription 200

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, scene V, two women having intercourse. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

202

102.

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, scene V, drawing.

202

103.

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, scene VII, foursome with woman performing cunnilingus on woman. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

205

104.

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, scene VII, drawing.

105.

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, scene VI, threesome of two men and

205

a woman. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali—Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei). 106.

Man-boy couple, detail, Arretine bowl fragment (30

B.C.-A.D.

210 30). Museum of

Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Ed ward Perry Warren, 13.109. Photo © 2007 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 107.

211

Threesome with two men and a woman, lamp, first century A.D., terra-cotta, from Kavousi, east Crete. Archeological Museum of Herakleion, inv. 9284. Photo Chrysostomos Stefanakis.

108.

213

Pompeii, Suburban Baths, dressing room 7, scene VIII, erotic poet. Photo Michael Larvey (su concessione del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali— Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei).

214

109.

Dancing dwarf with hydrocele, terra-cotta, from Smyrna. Louvre, inv. 1150.

no.

Male-female couple on a bed, with caption

Photo Reunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, N Y .

215

B E N E F U T U O VOLVI M E ,

second—early

3

third century A.D., applied medallion, terra-cotta, diam. 2 /8 in. (6 cm). Photo Musée gallo-romain de Lyon, Département du Rhone, France, inv. 2000.0.2679. Photo J.-M. Deguele. HI.

217

Male-female couple on a bed, with caption

T U SOLA N I C A ,

second century

A.D.,

3

applied medallion, terra-cotta, diam. 3 /4 in. (9.5 cm). Photo Musée gallo-romain de Lyon, Département du Rhone, France, inv. 2000.0.2567. Photo J.-M. Deguele. 217 112.

Male-female couple on a bed, with caption

ILLUSTRATIONS

ORTE S C U T U S EST,

second century

A.D., applied medallion, terra-cotta, diam. 4 in. (10.2 cm), found near Arles (1951, now lost). After Wuilleumier and Audin, Les médallions d'applique gallo-romains (1952), no. 74. 113.

218

Male-female couple on a bed, with caption

ITA V A L E A ( M ) DECET M E ,

second

century A.D., applied medallion, terra-cotta, diam. 33/S in. (8.6 cm). Musée de l'Arles et de la Provence antique, inv. CIM 67.00.180. Photo Michel Lacanaud. 219 114.

Male-female couple on a bed beneath shuttered panel, with caption V A QVAM BENE CHALAS,

Trajanic

(A.D.

. . . VIDES

98—118), plaster cast of original terra-cotta,

diam. 2'/8 in. (5.4 cm). Musée Archéologique, Nîmes. Photo Victor Lassalle. 221 115.

Male-female lovemaking with Cupid, lamp, second century A.D., terracotta, diam. 3% in. (9.8 cm). Musée de l'Arles et de la Provence antique, inv. IRP.89.2114.333. Photo Michel Lacanaud.

116.

222

Male-female couple on a bed, lamp, end of first century A.D., terra-cotta, diam. 3% in. (9.8 cm). Musée de l'Arles et de la Provence antique, inv. CIM.66.00.106. Photo Michel Lacanaud.

117.

223

Pompeii, Inn on the Street of Mercury (VI, 10, 1), male-female couple performing sexual acrobatics. After M. L. Barré, Herculanum et Pompéi, vol. 8: Musée Secret (Paris, 1877).

118.

225

Threesome of two men and a woman, second to early third century A.D., applied medallion, terra-cotta, diam. 2% in. (6 cm). Musée Archéologique, Nîmes, inv. 90851.1106. Photo Dejan Stokic.

119.

225

Lamp with woman on bed with a small horse or pony, made in Athens by lampmaker Preimos, mid-third century A.D. London, British Museum, inv. G&R 1971.4—26.39. © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum.

227

ILLUSTRATIONS

3O9

INDEX

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. acculturation, 2,230; laughter as index of,

ambivalence theories, 4 Amphitryon, 166, 2 7 2 ^ 4

232-33; sexual, 164, 215

anal penetration, 71, 198, 204; during group

Achilles, 179, 273n33

sex, 209—13; between pygmies, 76; status

acrobatics, sexual, 221-26,225, 232

and, 192, 208

Actium, 91,93, 96, 1 1 0 - 1 2 , 119 adultery, 189; mime of, 26—28, 2 4 3 ^ 7 , n59

ancestors: masks of, 13, 3 1 , 42—44; sculptures

Aemilianus, Scipio, 31 Aenaria, 2 6 8 ^ 4

of, 38-39 Anchises, 149

Aeneas, 146, 147,148, 149, /50, 170; parody

androgyny, 180; see also Hermaphroditus

of, 1 5 1 - 5 8 , 756, 160, 170, 230, 233,plate 16

anthropology, 114

Aesop, 1 1 3 , 262m2

Antichità di Ercolano, Le, 151

Aethiops, 83, 87-88, 98, 109, 230, 233, 258n5;

Antioch, 64-66, 65, 74, 93

apotropaic, 73-75, 81, 83, 87, 89, 107, 143,

anti-Semitism, 105

163, 185, 2 5 6 ^ 2 ; incontinent, 91, 92, 93,

Antoninus Pius, 80

94; noble savage images of, 89,90, 96

Antony, 91,110—12,146, 173-75

Africans, black, 66; see also Aethiops

ape, see dog-headed apes

agathodaemones, 62, 80

Aphrodite, 137-39,

Agelaus, 272n2i

'4°> 141', see also

Venus

Alcmene, 1 6 6 , 1 7 2 , 2 4 8 ^ 6

Apollo, 139,139, 140,141, 1 5 1 , 159, 184,

Alexandria, 31; caricature in, 160; mime in, 26

311

266m 2

Apollodorus, 2721121

80, 89; elite parodies in, 134—44, J 57 — 62;

apotheosis, 23—25

Nilotic landscapes in, 88; see also Suburban

apotropaic humor, 1, 2, 14, 19, 63-81, 230;

Baths (Pompeii)

of Aethiops and pygmies, 73—81, 83, 87,

battle of the sexes, 160—61, 2 1 6 - 2 0 , 2 / 7 - / 9

89, 107, 143, 163, 185; deformed bodies in,

Beard, Mary, 23-24, 2 3 8 ^ 3

65—67; for demon viewers, 67—69, 77—78;

Becatti, Giovanni, 78

double takes and, 54; gods and, 182, 189;

Berczelly, Laslo, 246m 6

phallic, 14, 54, 68, 69-73, 7°~74> 75. 77»

Bergmann, Bettina, 2 4 8 ^ 1 , 2 5 i n i 3

118; in Triumph, 20, 21; see also Evil Eye,

Bergson, Henri, 7

laughter to dispel

bestiality, 226

Apuleius, 2 7 7 ^ 6 ; Golden Ass, 226

biological theories of humor, 4

Aquileia, 60, 61

Bithynia, 2391127

Ara Pacis, 153

Bocchoris, 105

Arditi, Michele, 1 5 1 - 5 2

bordellos, 1 1 7

Ares, see Mars

Bragantini, Irene, 155

Ariadne, 168, 2 5 1 ^

Brendel, Otto, 1 5 2 - 5 3

Arretine bowls, 173-75, !74> 2 1 0 - 1 1 , 2 / /

British, colonization of India by, 88

Arsinoe, 238n27

bronzes, 141—42

asarotos oikos, 5 7 , 5 8 5 9

brothels, 194, 2 7 4 ^ 7

Ascanius, 149, 1 5 1 , 152

Brumalia, 19

Atellanae, 2 6 , 3 1 , 2 3 8 m 8

Bruno, Giordano, Candelaio, 1 1 3 , 262ni5

Athena, 1 4 0 , 1 4 1 , 167, 266m 2

Brusin, Giovanni, 2 5 3 ^ 5

Athens, 17, 168

Bryson, Norman, 236m 6

atriums: entryways to, see fauces; graffiti

Bull, House of the (Pompeii), 96, 97, 97, 1 0 2 -

in, 45, 46; Nilotic landscapes in, 96; of

3, 107,plate 3

postearthquake period, 99; traditional function of, 38—40, 44 Augurs, Tomb of the (Etruscan), 2 4 0 ^ 6 Augustales, College of the (Herculaneum), 25 Augustine, 255a 19 Augustus (Octavian), 17, 2 6 , 3 1 , 98, 104, 170,

Caecilius Iucundus, House of (Pompeii), 39, 4 2 -43.43< 55' 187 Caesius Blandus, House of (Pompeii), 142 Caesar, Julius, 5, 21, 46, 146, 233, 2381127, 247n26

173, 2 6 7 ^ 5 , 2 6 9 ^ 0 ; at Actium, 91, 1 1 0 -

Calavii, 247n26

12, 119; founding epic to legitimize rule

Caligula, 154, 189

of, 146—47, 149; neoclassical cultural pro-

Calza, Guido, 129

gram of, 231; Pompeian resentment of, 153

Caracalla, Baths of (Rome), 25

Aurelius, 193

caricature, 44—45, 48, 160, 233, 237nio carmina triumphalia, 20

Bacchus, 256n33

carnival, 7—8, 20, 21, 84, 236ni4, n i 5

Bakhtin, Mikhail, 7—9, 84, 129, 130, 236ni4,

Carracci, Annibale, 45

264^0

312

Casca Longus, P., 2 4 7 ^ 6

Baldwin, Barry, 84, 257M

Castren, Paavo, 153, 259ni7

Barton, Carlin A., 6 3 , 6 6 , 2 3 9 ^ 1

Castricius, Ma., House of (Pompeii), 2 5 8 ^

Basilica (Herculaneum), 136

Cato, 22, 27,243n6i

baths: apotropaic humor in, 74—75, 78, 79,

Catullus, 193

INDEX

Cebe, Jean-Pierre, La caricature et la parodie dans le monde romain antique, des origines a Juvenal, 16 centaurs, battle of Lapiths and, 157—61, plates 18-19 Centenary, House of the (Pompeii), 247n24 Central Institute for Restoration (Rome), 132 ceramics, 1, 11; of taboo sex acts, 192; see also terra-cotta objects Ceres, 166, 184 Chaplin, Charlie, 7 Charites, 27m 14 Charitonidis, Seraphim, 246m 6 Chilon, 127, 197, 2 6 4 ^ 7 Christianity, 19, 24, 165-66 Cicero, 16—18, 23, 42, 45, 49, 2 4 8 ^ 8 ; On the Orator, 17; Villa of (Pompeii), 246ni6 cinaedus, 123, 205—9; ' n g r o u P sex > 209—12 circus freak shows, 232—33, 238ni8 Claudius, 34 Cleopatra, 21, 91, 146,173-75, 2 39 n2 7> 272n20 Clinton, Bill, 193 Coleman, Kathleen, 24, 2 3 9 ^ 7 Colosseum (Rome), 234; farcical public executions in, 23—26 Comedians, House of the (Delos), 37, 42 Comedians Club (Athens), 17 comedies, see theater, comic Coracinus, 198 Coralini, Antonella, 2 4 6 ^ 4 , 2 7 3 ^ 1 Corbeill, Anthony, 17, 18, 21, 216, 245m 2, 2 6 4 ^ 2 , 276032, 2 7 7 ^ 6 Courtney, Edward, 2 6 4 ^ 7 courtroom, use of humor in, 17—18 crematio, 24 Cretan myths, 144, 168 cross-dressing: by Achilles, 179; by Hercules, 172—79, 232, 272n24; at Saturnalia, 20 Cryptoporticus, House of (Pompeii), 142 cunnilingus, 193,198-201; woman-to-woman, 175, 204, 205, 212 Cuomo, Masseria di, grottoes of (Pompeii), 152, 158, plates 16-17

Cupid, 168, 170,2.2.2 Curtius, Ludwig, 112, 27ini4 Cynocephalus (dog-headed ape), 152 Daedalus, 23, 25,139,140, 168-69, 2 3 9 ^ 7 , plate 20 damnatio ad bestias, 24 Danae, 166, 168 Dar Bue Amméra, Villa at (Zliten, Libya), 240046 D'Arms, John, 26502 Dasen, Veronique, 75 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 8 Davus, 20,233,243n57 dead, cult of the, 31 decurions, 133 defecation, 60—62, 93, 230, 252n2i, 2 5 3 ^ 2 ; in parody of philosophers, 125—30, 264037; protection during, 79—80, 81 deformed persons, 88, 93, 213-14, 231, 233, 238ni7; apotropaic function of, 65—67; in elite parodies, 137, 141—42 Degrassi, Attilio, 269048 Deianeira, 173 Della Corte, Matteo, 62, n o , 111, 117, 2 4 9 ^ 2 Delos, 37, 42 Demeter, 166 Demosthenes, 17 Dentith, Simon, 23Óni4 Desbat, Armand, 276028 de Vos, Arnold, 27ini4 de Vos, Mariette, 41,152,155,248036, 268n4o,27ini4 Dickie, Matthew W., 65 Dickmann, Jens-Arne, 99 dildoes, 203 dining rooms, 57—60; pygmy imagery in, 103 Dio, 21 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 130 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 31 Dionysus, 37-38,42,44,115-18, 120, 166, 177—78, 185, 270m; Triumph of, 177 Dioscuri, House of (Pompeii), 182-84,183

INDEX

Dioskourides, 2461116 Dirce, 23, 25 Doctor, House of the (Pompeii), 99—105,100, 2591115, plates 4-8 dog-headed apes, parody of Aeneas and Romulus as, 151—58, 756, 160, 170, 230, 233, plates 16-1 j doorways, seefauces double takes, 14, 51—62, 233; sexual, 179 drag, see cross-dressing drinking contests, 59 Dunbabin, Katherine, 65, 74 dwarfs, 65, 66, 88, 233; in elite parodies, 137; with hydrocele, 213-14, 2/5; see also pygmies effeminacy, 18, 122, 123 ego control, loss of, 3 Egypt: Cynocephali in, 152; denigration of, 98, 107; mythologized, 96; Roman colonization of, 81, 83, 87-89,93,230; status of women in, 26; see also Alexandria; Nilotic landscapes Ehrhardt, Wolfgang, 25inio e^phrasis, 102, 144, 160, 169 Elegabalus, 189 elite parody, 133—61, 230; of battle of the sexes, 157—61; of exploits of gods and heroes, 134-43; founding epic, 151-58 envy, 65,195-96,254ni3 Ephebe, House of the (Pompeii), 103 Ephesus, 37 Epithymia, 139,140 equestrian class, 133 Eros, 35, 137-39, 1 3 8 > M 1 ethnic humor, 18, 233 Etruscans, 34, 240^6, 2 4 4 ^ Eumachia, 153, 269048 Euripides, 37, 248^6 Euristheus, 248^6 Europa, 138-39,166; Rape of, 139 Eurytion, 159, 759 Evil Eye, 14,19, 54, 69, 233,254ni3; House of the (Antioch), 64-66,65, 74; laughter to dispel, 64—67, 185, 196, 209, 214, 226

INDEX

evolution theory, 4 executions, farcical, 13, 23-25, 226, 240^6; parallels in painting to, 25—26 fables, 112—13, 262ni2 Farnese Bull, 25 Farnesina, Villa under the (Rome), 104, 154— 56,155 fascinum, see phallus fauces: guard dog images in, 53-54,55, 56— 57.5 6 ' 63, 25inio, ni3 Faun, House of the (Pompeii), 89, 91 Faunus, 184 Favonius, 22 Favor, 31—32, 245n9 Favro, Diane G., 2 3 9 ^ 2 fellatio, 175, 196-98, 797, 204; forced (irrumatio), 193; graffiti of, 47, 49; status and, 192, 193, 208 Festus, 255m 9 Fiorelli, Giuseppe, no, i n , 115, 117, 25ini3 Firemen, Barracks of the (Ostia), 80 First Style, 2 6 5 ^ Flora, 22 Floralia, 8, 22, 27, 2 3 9 ^ 2 Flower, Harriet I., 43, 245n7, 248038 folklore, 1 1 2 - 1 5 , 1 2 0 Forica, Via della, latrine (Ostia), 128 Fortuna, 79-80,81, 1 1 8 , 1 5 1 , 256^3; Augusta, Temple of (Pompeii), 153; Primigenia, Sanctuary of (Praeneste), 89 forum morionum, 66 Forum of Augustus (Rome), 146,14J, 151, I

53> !54 Foucault, Michel, 1 founders of Rome, 146—51; parody of, 151-57 Fourth Style, 37, 54, 134, 157, 247^4, 2 5 8 ^ , 259m 5 Francesco I, King of Naples, 1 5 1 - 5 2 freak shows, 232-33, 238ni8 freedman art, 99 frescoes, see paintings Freud, Sigmund, 5—6, n , 231

Funari, Pedro Paolo Abreu, 44-45, 49, 2491153, 2501160

Hanson, Duane, 51

funeral rituals, 13, 23, 3 1 , 34, 2381118, 245117, n

Hadrian, 80 Hecuba, 248036 Helbig, Wolfgaog, 1 1 5 , 1 1 7 , 26104

9

Heleo, 167 Heoderson, John, 24

Furius, 193

Hephaestus, see Vulcan Ganymede, 166

Hephaistos, 27ini4

gardens, pygmy imagery in, 9 3 - 9 5 , 9 9 - 1 0 1 ,

Hera, see Juno

103,109

Herakles, see Hercules

Garland, Robert, 66

Heraklitos, 57,5S

Gaul, Roman, 1 1 , 1 7 1 , 216,220-27, 232, 239n27 Gavius Rufus, House of (Pompeii), 1 5 1 , 154,

Hercules (Herakles), 1 1 1 , 163, 166, 189,

Herculaneum, 42, 69, 70 232,248036, 270m; apotheosis of, 2 3 -

'59> '59 Geli, William, 73

25; Omphale and, 172-79, IJ4, Ij6,

genre scenes, 97, 143

184, 201, 272n2i, n24, 2 7 3 ^ 1

gens, 39, 43; of Rome's founders, 146, 149

Ij8,

Hermaphroditus, 1 6 3 , 1 6 6 , 1 7 9 - 8 4 , 1 8 0 , 182, 183, 189, 191, 232

Gestalt psychology, 6 Ginouvés, René, 2461116

Hermes, see Mercury

gladiators, 25, 192

herms, 42-43,43, 134, 187

gods: parodie imagery of, 134—46, 158; sexual

heroes: parodic imagery of, 134—46, 158;

adventures of, 163, 165—66, 189, 191, 232; see also specific gods

see also specific heroes heteroglossia, 130—31

Gospels, 165

Hierocles, 15; Philogelos, or, the Laughter-

Gradel, Ittai, 269050

Lover, 6, 15, 17, 84, 214

graffiti, 14, 44-49,46-49, 52, 115, 120, 149, 233, 2 4 9 n50, 052-54

high culture, 104—7; intellectual, making fun of, 125—28see also elite parody

Great South Baths (Timgad), 80

Hippodamia, 158-59, 759

Greeks, 18, 214, 238017, 257n2; Aethiops

Holquist, Michael, 2 6 4 ^ 0

and pygmy imagery of, 75, 76; androgyny

Homer, 144

and, 180; attitude toward status of women

homosexuals, 180, 192, 226; stereotypes of,

of, 26; erotic imagery of, 192, 203, 209;

205-9; see also a n a ' penetration

jokes of, 1 7 , 1 9 ; New Comedy of, 245012;

Horace, 226,233, 243057; Satires, 20

phallic crossroad statues of, 187; theatrical

House of the Comedians (Delos), 37,42

masks of, 13, 30, 3 1 , 34, 24402, 245ni2;

House of the Evil Eye (Antioch), 64-66,65, 74

wioe-driokiog games of, 59

House of Jupiter (Ostia), 68, 69

Grosz, Elizabeth, 214

houses (Pompeii), see under Bull; Caecilius

groups, functions of humor in, 5, 83, 124—25, 231

Iucundus; Castricius; Centenary; Cyptoporticus; Dioscuri; Doctor; Ephebe; Faun;

group sex, 192, 204, 2 1 2 - 1 3 , 2 I 3 >

22

^> 276028;

Gavius Rufus; Labyrinth; Lucretius

acrobatic, 224; cinaedus io, 209—12,210,

Fronto; Marcus Lucretius; Menander;

211

Moralist; Octavius Quartio; Paquius

gryllos, 45

Proculus; Punished Cupid; Pygmies;

guard dogs, paiotiogs aod mosaics of, 52—54, 6

53> 55. 5 - 5 7 . 5

6

Quadriga; Restaurant; Sculptor; Theatrical Pictures; Tragic Poet; Vestals; Vettii

INDEX

Housman, A. E., 71 hunchbacks, 66, 88,93,185, 233 hydrocele, 2 1 3 - 1 4 Hypnos, 2711114 Icarus, 23, 25, 2401137 illusionism, 51—60 imagines maiorum, 31 imago, 42-43,43 Inarime, 2681144 incest, 189 India, British colonization of, 88 instinct theory, 4 intellectual pretensions, making fun of, 84, I2

5-31»'33 invective, 84 Io painter, 184 Iris, 138, 139 irrumare, 193; see also fellatio Isis, cult of, 2 7 7 ^ 6 Islam, 165 Isola Sacra (Ostia), 76-77, 77 Jacobelli, Luciana, 194—95, 202, 275ns jokes, 1, 13, 15—19; apotropaic, 19; class and, 121; in Freudian framework, 6; intellectual as butt of, 84; Roman collections of, 17 Judaism, 105,165 Julia Felix, Villa of (Pompeii), 97, 98, 143 Juno (Hera), 25, 139, 166, 173 Jupiter, 22, 23, 172, 189, 222; Capitolinus, Temple of (Rome), 153, 253n6; defecator punished by, 60-62, 61; Fereterius, sanctuary of (Rome), 149, 268^2, n33; sexual adventures of, 166—68; the Thunderer, House of (Ostia), 68, 69; triumphator as, 20—21 Juvenal, 16, 194, 201 Kahil, Lilly, 246ni6 Kampen, Natalie, 173,184, 272n20 Keaton, Buster, 7 Keith-Spiegel, Patricia, 3-4 Kenner, Hedwig, 1 1 3 - 1 5 , 119-20 kottabos, 59

INDEX

Labyrinth, House of the (Pompeii), 135,265 n7 Lactantius, 22 lamps, 224, 226; folkloric imagery on, 112, 113, 115; mask, 31, 34; phallic, 70; sexual imagery on, i6y, 168, 199, 213, 221—24, 2.2.2, 223, 227 Lamus, 2 7 2 ^ 1 Langner, Martin, 44—47, 249^4 Lapiths, 157-61,plates 18-19 Lares, the, 146, 151 lares compitales, 64, 70 La Solitude (Lyons), 276n28 latrines, 78-80, 81, 125, 127-29, 230 laughter: apotropaic, see apotropaic humor; as index of acculturation, 232—33; ritual, 19, 20; and stress reduction, 3; as survival strategy, 3,4 La Volpe, Nicola, 1 1 5 , 1 1 6 , 118, 177 Lawrence, Saint, 166 Leda, 166-68, i6y, 222 Lemuria, 77 lesbians, 132, 175, 180, 226; liberated women satirized as, 201-4 Levi, Doro, 65—66 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 114 Lewinsky, Monica, 193 liminality, 63—64, 182, 253n6 Ling, Lesley, 2671125 Ling, Roger, 99, 2 6 7 ^ 5 Lipari, 244n4 literacy, visual, 144 Livy, 149, 244n5, 267032 lovemaking, 164; acrobatic, 221—26, 232; of gods, 169—71; humorous, 216—21; idealized, 191—92, 224 Lucretius Fronto, House of (Pompeii), 171, 2 ln 5 7 ludi, 22;scaenici, 31, 238ni8, 2 4 4 ^ Lugdunum (Lyons), 216, 220 Luisa Carlotta, Princess of Naples, 152 Lupercalia, 19,63, 238ni8 Luperci, 184 Lycomedes, King, 179 Lydia, 172—79 Lysippos, 170

Maecenas, 146 Magdalensberg, 113, 115

metatheater, 6, 29 mime, 2 6 — 2 9 , I 2 2 >

Maiuri, Amedeo, 91, 9 9 , 1 3 3 , 1 3 5 , 1 3 7 - 4 0 , 152, 257114, 265113, 2661112, 2691148 Marcus Lucretius, House of (Pompeii), 175-78, I76 Maria Isabella, Queen of Naples, 152 Marquie, Sandrine, 171 Mars, 146, 169-72, iji, 1J2, 189, 2711112 Marsyas, 140,141, 2661112 Martial, 22, 123, 175, 198, 201, 203, 212—13,

nude, 27-28, 224 Minerva, 25, 149, 151; festival of, 31 Minervini, Giulio, 1 1 0 - 1 3 , 117, 261 n4 Mingazzini, Paulino, 1 1 2 - 1 3 , 115 Minos, King of Crete, 168, 266m 1 Minotaur, 135,136, 137, 158, 168, 2 6 5 ^ , plate 14 Modern Times (film), 7 Mols, S.T.A.M., 264^6 monotheism, 165—66 Moorman, Eric M., 2 5 3 ^ 2 , 2 5 6 ^ 3 , 2 5 8 ^ ,

226, 2721128; Liber Spectaculorum, 24 Martineau, William, 4 - 5 , 1 1 , 83, 121 martyrdom, Christian, 166 Marxism, 8 masks, 6 , 1 3 , 14,30-38,41,42,45, 244n2, n4, n5, 245m 2,248n33; ancestor, 1 3 , 3 1 , 4244,245n9; metonymy of, 34-35 Massilia (Marseilles), 27 material body strata, reversal of upper and lower, 129—30, 2 6 4 ^ 0 Mau, August, 79—80, 100—101 McDermott, William, 152-53, 268^4; The Ape in Antiquity, 152 medallions (Rhone Valley), 215—21,2/7-/9, 221, plate 24 megalographic friezes, 140 Melinkoff, Ruth, 67 Melissus, 17 Menander, 35—37, 133, 230, 2 4 4 ^ ; Epitrepontes, 42; Lykomedeios, 41; New Comedy of, 36, 245m 2; Samia, 41; Synaristdsai, 246m 6 Menander, House of the (Pompeii), 45, 97, 99,100,144,146, /57, plates 1, 14-15, '8-19; apotropaic Aethiops in, 75, 89, 195; elite parodies in, 104, 1 3 3 35,135, 136, 1 3 7 - 4 1 , 1 3 8 - 4 1 , 1 5 7 - 6 1 , 166, 169, 230, 233; graffiti in, 48-49,49; portraits of playwrights in, 37—38,38; scenes of masked actors in, 35 Mercury (Hermes), 1 1 5 , 1 1 6 , 117-18, iig, 120, 180, 187-88,187, 256n33, 263n23; Inn on the Street of (Pompeii), 27, 28, 224,225, 226 Messius, C., 243n6i

2

43 n 57> n 59i

27on64,27ini4 Moralist, House of the (Pompeii), 57 mosaics, 9, 141; apotropaic, 68, 69, 75, 77, 78—79, 79; of Egypt as wonderland, 89, go, 91; of exploits of gods and heroes, 135; guard dog, 53-54,55, 56-57,56, 25inio; illusionist, 52; masks represented in, 31, 35; sexual imagery in, 200; small-scale, 142; theatrical, 36, 246ni6; unswept floor, 57, 5 S, 59-60 Mosini, G. A., 45 Mouritsen, Henrik, 99, 259ni7, 269^8 mulier equitans, 218,220 Myron, C. Valerius, 8o, 2 5 6 ^ 3 Mysteries, Villa of the (Pompeii), 45,46, 96, 138, 140, 2.491152,plate 21 mythology, comparative, 114, 119-20 myths, imagery of, 143—44 naivete, 5 Naples Archaeological Museum, 42, 84, 100, 104, n o , 120, 135, 259m5, 273n3o; Cabinet of Obscene Objects, 72, 151—52 Nemean Lion, i n Neptune (Poseidon), 168, 266ml; Baths of (Ostia), 78, 79, 80 Nero, 24, 133, 154, 189, 240n37 New Art History, 120, 131 New Comedy, 3 1 , 3 2 - 3 3 , 36, 245m 2 Nicomedes, 21, 239n27 Nilotic landscapes, 81, 83, 88,91, 93,96, 103-5, 1 0 7> I09> :57> 2 5 8n 4> 2 5 9 n l 5

INDEX

Nîmes Archaelogical Museum, 224 noise, apotropaic, 69—70 nonelite visual humor, 84, 109-32; heteroglossia in, 130—31; making fun of intellectual pretentions in, 125—29; material body lower stratum in, 129—30; scholarly interpretations of, 110—20; slice-of-life, 120—25 nudato mimarum, 27—28, 224

Paquius Proculus, House of (Pompeii), 54,55, 56-57, 141 paradeisos motif, 95 Parentalia, 77 parody, 84; elite, 133—61, 230; of high-art themes, 104—7; philosophy, 125—30 Parrhasios, 52, 2 5 0 ^ Parthenon, 160 Pasiphae, 23, 25, 139,140, 158, 168, 169, 226,

Oceanus, 77, 122—23 Octavian, see Augustus Octavius Quartio, House of (Pompeii), 25, 99, 181,181, 183 Odysseus, 179 Omnes lusero graffito, 48,48 Omphale, Queen of Lydia, 172—79, IJ4, ij6, Ij8, 184, 201, 272n20, n2i, n24, 2 7 3 ^ 1 Oplontis, Villa of (Torre Annunziata), 52, 144, 265M oral purity, 193-94, J97> oratory, humor in, 17, 42, 44, 45, 66, 237nio Orpheus, 24 Ortiz perfume bottle, 211 os, 193 Ostia Antica, 9, 11; tavern clientele in, 84; see also names of architectural settings Other, 87—89, 230; visual representations of, see Aethiops; pygmies Ovid, 169, 173, 180, 184, 189, 255m 9; Heroides, 2721121; Metamorphoses, 165

266ml,plate 20 patriarchal system, atrium as representation of, 39, 44 Perseus, 166 persona, 34, 245m 2 ftters, W. J. T., 2 7 1 m l Petersen, Lauren, 99 Petronius, 62, 252m 3; Satyricon, 51, 52 phallus: of Aethiops, 75, 91, 98, 107; as apotropaion, 14, 54, 68, 69-73, 7°~74' 75, 77, 118; in elite parody, 151, 152; in graffiti, 47; money equated with, 186—88; of protector diety, see Priapus; of pygmies, 78, 80, 91, 98, 103, 107 Pharsalis, m Philaenis, 175, 203 Philogelos, or, the Laughter Lover, see Hierocles philology, 1 1 0 - 1 2 , 119, 120 philosophical theories of humor, 3, 7—9 Philostratus the Elder, Images, 144 physical peculiarities, humor predicated on, 18—19, 45> ' n adultery mime, 27; in graffiti, 45—46, 49; masks and, 34; in Triumph, 20, 2i\see also deformed persons pietas, 36, 40, 149, 154 pilgrims, badges worn by, 67, 68 Pirithous, 158—59, 759 Pithecussa, 268^4 Plautus, 26, 36, 43, 244n2 Pliny, 52, 57, 147, 25on3, 252ni4 Plutarch, ig; Romulus, 149; Vita Antonii, no—11 Polidoros, 248^6 Polimestor, 248^6

Paetus, 16 paintings, 9, 25-26; analysis as sign system of, 236; apotropaic, 80; compendium of pygmy imagery in, 100—105; e r °tic, 164, 192, 194—215; of Hermaphroditus, 182— 84; illusionist, 50-53; masks in, 31,34,35; parodie, 133—61,170; ofPriapus, 185-87, 189; of sexual adventures of gods, 168—71, 176-79; social humor in, 84-85; tavern, 84, 109—28, 133,plate //; theatrical, 36—44, 247n24, 248^6 Palestrina Nile Mosaic, 11, 89, 89, 96, 107 Pan, 182, 184 Pappos, 34, 41

318

INDEX

Pollux, Julius, 34,35,41, 244114, 2481133; Onomasticon, 31,32-33 Polybius, 31, 39 Polydeuces, 167 polytheism, 166, 232 Pompeii, 9, 1 1 , 84-85, 151, 170, 187; antiSemitism at, 105; brothels in, 194, 274^8; defecation control in, 62; earthquake at, 98—99; elite parody in, 1 3 3 - 6 1 ; Forum at, 97, 277n33; graffiti in, 44; ideals of masculine beauty depicted in, 207; phallic apotropaia in streets of, 69-73, P' a n of theater at, 30; pygmy imagery at, 94— 95; resentment of Roman rule in, 153—54; tavern paintings from, 110-25, plate 11; see also names of architectural settings Poppaeus, Quintus, 265M popular art, 2, 84 pornography, 164, 214—15 Porta Nocera, Necropolis of (Pompeii), 47 portraits: of ancestors, 42—43; of playwrights, 37.39 Poseidon, see Neptune postcolonial theory, 83; Other in, 87—88 poststructuralism, 120 Praeneste, 89 Preimos, 227 Priapea, 16, 188 Priapus, 118, 180—82, 184—89,186, 188, 191, 232, 274n47, n^i, plates 21-22; apotropaic power of, 66, 163, 185; Hercules and, 175—76; poems written to, 16; primitive anxieties expressed in, 166 programmatic painting, 169 Prompts fel(l)ator graffito, 47 prostitutes, 192, 209, 277033; black, 15; as characters in comic theater, 42; on stage, 22 psychological theories of humor, 3, 4, 6 public executions, 232; see also executions, farcical Punished Cupid, House of the (Pompeii), 27ini2 puns, 1 3 , 1 5 - 1 9 ; visual, 75, 152, 220,221 pygmies, 83, 87-89, 94-96, 109, 141, 157, 230,

233, 258n4, n5,259ni5,plates 2-10, 15; apotropaic, 74—81, 83, 87, 89, 103, 107, 163, 185; compendium of caricatural roles of, 98—105; incontinent, 91, 93; polite, 96—98; in satire of sacral-idyllic landscape, 106—7 Pygmies, House of the (Pompeii), 106,106, plates g-10 Quadriga, House of the (Pompeii), 259m 5 quadrupeds, women copulating with, 23, 226,227; see also Pasiphae Quintilian, 17,34,45 Rabelais, François, 7, 8; Gargantua and Pantagruel, 129 racial humor, 18 Renaissance, 7—8 Restaurant, House of the (Pompeii), 259m 5 Reynolds, R. W., 26 Richardson, Lawrence, 184 Richlin, Amy, 1 6 - 1 7 , 22 > ' 8 4 , 2 3 9 ^ 1 Robigo, 69, 255m 9 Robigus, 146, 255m 9 role reversal: in battle of the sexes, 218— 19; in comic theater, 36; at Floralia, 22; at Saturnalia, 19—20; at Triumph, 21 Rome, 11 \forum morionum, 66; founding epic of, 85, 146—57; unswept floor mosaic in, 57; see also names of architectural settings Romulus, 146,147,149, /50, 2 6 7 ^ 2 , 268n33; parody of, 151—58, 756, 160, 170, 230, plate 77 Rufus est graffito, 45—46,46, 249^0, n52 Russia, post-World War II, 236ni4 sacral-idyllic landscapes, 95, 95; parody of, 107—8; Priapus in, 184, 186 Salmacis, 180 Salvius, Tavern of (Pompeii), 84, 132, 216, 231, plate 12; slice-of-life humor in, 120— 25,121-24, '34> 233> stereotypical cinaedi in, 205-9, 2 1 2 Sampaolo, Valeria, 2 5 8 ^ , 267029 Sarno Baths (Pompeii), 259m 5 satire, 84

index

319

Saturnalia, 8, 19—20, 216, 233, 2381118 Scagliarini, Daniela, 39 Schefold, Karl, 143 scholarship, modern, 83-84, 109-32; deconstructing, 119—20; folkloric, 112— 15; philological/historical, 1 1 0 - 1 2 ; site specific, 1 1 5 - 1 9 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 7 Schulten, Paul, 16, 238ni7 Scipio, 147 Scrinari, Valnea Santa Maria, 253n25 Sculptor, House of the (Pompeii), 92, 94, 95, 96, 107, 25704, plate 2 sculptures, 9; of ancestors, 38-39; of Hermaphroditus, 179—82; ofPriapus, 181, 182, 188-89, 2 74 n 47> s e e a I S 0 statuettes Second Style, 52, 134, 140-41,144, 154, 258n4, 26504, n7 Segal, Erich, 7,36,39 Senate, 15, 46, 193; use of humor in, 17—18 Seneca, the Elder, 22, 203 Seneca, the Younger, 173; Pumpl{iniftcation of Claudius (Apocolocyntosis), 34 Servilius, P., 247026 Seven Sages, Tavern of the (Ostia), 8, 62, 84, 125,126, 127, 127-34, '97> 229, 230, plate 13 sexist humor, 233 sexual differentiation, 163, 166 sexual intercourse: anal, see anal penetration; animal images mimicking, 114; between gods and humans, 166-68; during group sex, 209-12; pygmies engaged in, 78, 79, 103—4; woman-quadruped, 23, 226; woman-to-woman, 201—3; see lovemaking Siculus, Diodorus, 271021 Silenus, 177, 182, 184 site-specific analysis, 115-20 situation comedies, 121, 122 skeleton wine-steward, House of Vestals (Pompeii), 59—60, 60 slapstick comedy, 26—28 slaves, 39, 249n54; as characters in comic

320

INDEX

theater, 34, 41—42; deformed, 66, 233; former, 99; at Saturnalia, 20; sexual practices with, 121, 196, 208—9; ' n Triumph, 20 slice-of-life humor, 120—25, 233 Snowden, Frank, 75 Sobek, 106 social class, 84, 109-10; conflict of elites and nonelites, 125-30; reading differences in, through context, 131—32; speech and, 130-31; temporary reversal of, 7 - 9 {see also role reversal) social theories, 3—4 Social War (89 B . C . ) , 265 sociological theories of humor, 3—5 Sogliano, Antonio, 100—101 Sol, 23, 271014 Solomon, Judgment of, 101, 102,104,plates 5.8 Solon, 125, 130, 264037 Sosos, 57 Sotericus, Tavern of (Pompeii), 52, 53 Spannagel, Martin, 147 spolia opima, 149, 268033 Ssevera / elasss graffito, 48—49, 49 statio cunnilingiorum, 200—201 Statius, 173, 272024 statuettes, 45; bronze, 141-42; mask, 31, 34

Stephani, L., 26104 street theater, 13 stress reduction, 3 Strocka, Volker Michael, 26507 structuralism, 112, 114 Suburban Baths (Pompeii), 80, 104, 214-15, 224, 226, 231, 232, plate 23; cinaedus in, 209—12, 210; erotic poet in, 213—14,214; taboo sexual vignettes in, 104, 194—205, !95>

'97'

199> 202>

205

Suetonius, 17, 21, 46, 2 3 8 ^ 7 , 2 3 9 ^ 7 , 2 4 5 ^ ; Augustus, no, in Sum Max(imus) graffito, 48,48 superego control; loss of, 3; in Roman culture, 7, 8

superiority theories, 4 survival strategies, 3, 4

Trajan, 220 Trinacria, Baths of the (Ostia), 200,200 Triumph, 2, 5, 8, 16,20-21,63,238ni8,

taboos, sexual, 192-96, 226-27, 231-32; see also specific sexual practices Tavern of Salvius (Pompeii), see Salvius, Tavern of (Pompeii) Tavern of the Seven Sages (Ostia), see Seven Sages, Tavern of the (Ostia) Tavern of Venus (Pompeii), 84 tavern paintings, 84, 109-32,plates 11-13; see also specific taverns temporary reversal, humor of, 17; in Saturnalia, 19—20 Terrace Houses (Ephesus), 37 terra-cotta objects: of Aeneas, 150; masks on, 31, 34; phallic, 71; sexual imagery on, 164, 168, 170, 213-14,2/5, 2 1 6 - 2 1 , 2/7-/9, 2 2 '< plate 24; see also Arretine bowls; lamps Thales, 125, 127, 130-31, 2 6 4 ^ 7 theater, comic, 13—14, 16,238ni8, 246ni6; paintings depicting, 36—44, 51; role reversal in, 36; use of masks in, 13, 30— 36, 245m 2 Theatrical Pictures, House of the (Pompeii), 37.39~4 2 > 4°> 41Theban myths, 144

22

9> 2 47 n 2 4

Theseus, 135, 136, 137,158, 168, 2 5 1 ^ , 2.6$nj, plate 14 Thetis, 179 thiasos, 156 Third Style, 54, 104, 154-55, z ^ m j Thompson, Lloyd, 75 Thoth, 152 Tiberius, 27 Timotheos, 167 tininnabulum, 69-70, 70, 73 Todd, A. E., 132 tombs, 143; pygmy images on, 76—78, 77, 80, 109; warnings against defecation on, 62 tragedies, paintings depicting, 36—39, 4 2 Tragic Poet, House of the (Pompeii), 54, 56-57,56, 247n28

2

45 n 7

trompe l'oeil, 14, 51-59, 134, 142, 185 Turner, Victor, 64 Ululitremulus, Fullonica of (Pompeii), 147, 148 unswept floor, mosaics of, 57,5S, 59 Vaglieri, Dante, 78 Valerius Maximus, 27, 243^9, n6i van Gennep, Arnold, 64,253n6 venationes, 25 Venus, 153, 166, 189, 192, 221; Callipygia, 179; in founding epic, 146, 149, 155-56; Hermaphroditus and, 180; Mars and, 169-72, i j i , ¡J2, 27ini2; Tavern of (Pompeii), 84; see also Aphrodite Vercingetorix, 2 3 8 ^ 7 Verecundus, Shop of (Pompeii), u g veristic portraits, 42-44, 43 Versluys, Miguel, 107, 2 5 8 ^ Versnel, Hendrik S., 2 4 4 ^ Vertumnus, 146 Vespasian, 31; Temple of (Pompeii), 153 Vestals, House of the (Pompeii), skeleton wine-steward, 59-60, 60 Vestorius Priscus, 76; Tomb of (Pompeii), 76 Vettii, House of the, 99, 100, 144, 145, 167, 168, plates 20, 22; Hermaphroditus paintings in, 182, 183, 183; Priapus sculptures and paintings in, 182, 186, 186, 1 8 8 - 8 9 , 1 8 8 Victory, 177; fresco with ass and lion of, 110—20, 152, 2Óin4,plate 11 viewer scenarios, 120 villas, in Pompeii, see under Cicero; Julia Felix; Mysteries Villa under the Farnesina (Rome), 104, 154-56, / 5 5 Vindonissa, 113, 115

INDE

Virgil, 144; Aeneid, 146, 149, 155-56, 245117, 2761132 virgin martyrs, 166 virtus, 149 Vulcan, 169—72 Wallat, Kurt, 269^9 Warren Cup, 211 wax museums, 51 Webster, T. B. L., 31 Wiles, David, 35, 43, 245ni2

Wiseman, T. P., 22 women, status of, 26, 175; sexual humor satirizing, 201-4 world-turned-upside-down phenomenon, 112—15, 118, 120 Zanker, Paul, 99, 173 Zeus, 138—39,139, 256n33; Temple of (Olympia), 159\ see also Jupiter Zeuxis, 52 Zuegma (Turkey), 246ni6

Sponsoring editor: Assistant editors:

Stephanie Fay Sigi Nacson, Eric Schmidt

Project editor:

Sue Heinemann

Editorial assistant:

Lynn Meinhardt

Copyeditor: Indexer: Designer: Production coordinators: Text: Display: Compositor: Printer and binder:

Marian Rogers Ruth Elwell Claudia Smelser Pam Augspurger, Sam Rosenthal 10.75/16 Granjon Granjon Integrated Composition Systems Thomson-Shore