Laughter and Collective Trauma in Aristophanic Comedy

CHAPTER 6 LAUGHTER AND COLLECTIVE TRAUMA IN ARISTOPHANIC COMEDY Pavlos Sfyroeras Among the different yet often overlapping types of Aristophanic laughter (aggressive, subversive, bond-building, celebratory, to name a few), there is one category, not necessarily incompatible with those others, that seems to have gone largely unnoticed: the laughter of suffering. By this I do not mean the hostile mockery directed at a character who is suffering on- or offstage, like Lamachus in Acharnians or a host of other antagonists defeated by the Aristophanic hero. Nor do I point to the joyful reminiscence of past and overcome troubles, as will be later envisioned in Aeneas’ famous ‘forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit’ (Aeneid 1.203). Rather, I refer to the laughter of the audience as it is prompted to recall the still painful memory of a collective trauma. To be fully understood and appreciated, this historically specific laughter which springs from simultaneous or very recent grief presupposes some knowledge of, or at least speculation about, the mental state of the original audience. It also shares certain affinities, to which I shall return, with Demeter’s laughing response to Iambe’s obscene antics in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (202f.) or with the therapeutic prescription of mirth and hilarity in the Hippocratic corpus, or even with the philosopher’s laughter at our existential absurdity.1 Yet its distinct character, ethnographically attested, may also be fruitfully approached from a psychological or neurological angle. One might correlate it, for instance, with the laughter arising, in Freud’s famous account, from the discharge of the surplus psychical energy that would have been expended at the prospect of breaking a taboo, or the laughter that, in Ramachandran’s theory, signals false alarm; both describe situations that create the anticipation of discomfort or danger, only to thwart the expectation.2 For reasons that will emerge below, I prefer to invoke and draw on Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology of laughing and crying and, especially, on the findings of neuroscience that social laughter has analgesic properties, as it elevates the threshold of even physical pain, but also that laughing and crying are subject to analogous neurological pathologies.3 Frogs and Arginusae Frogs provides a prototype for this kind of laughter by boldly thematizing the link between jokes and suffering in the very opening of the play, a scene that has been analysed frequently and perceptively.4 It shows us a character, Dionysus’ slave Xanthias, repeatedly frustrated in his urge to tell jokes that connect the pressure of bowel 36525.indb 69 24/01/2020 08:54 Aristophanic Humour movements with the weight of the luggage he carries on his shoulders (1–11), until it becomes clear that he bears this burden (‘ἄχθος ϕέρων’, ‘bearing a burden’, 9; ‘ταῦτα τὰ σκεύη ϕέρειν’, ‘carrying this luggage’, 125) precisely for the sole purpose of telling such jokes (12–15). Why would his ‘thrice-miserable neck’ (‘τρισκακοδαίμων . . . ὁ τράχηλος’) endure the weight if not for the opportunity to say something funny (19f.)? Yet even the very fact of ‘carrying’ is questioned by Dionysus, who points out that the weight cannot be said to be carried by Xanthias, since it is carried by the donkey carrying Xanthias. Dionysus’ quibbling hinges on semantics and logic; who bears the weight of luggage carried by a slave riding on a donkey?6 The implied concomitant paradox of a weight carried by both slave and donkey and therefore redoubled seems to stump Xanthias, who cannot answer (‘οὐκ οἶδ”, ‘I don’t know’, 30), yet he knows that he bears the luggage ‘weightily’ (‘βαρέως’, 26), that is, with difficulty. The broken verse (note the antilabē of 26) calls attention to the expression ‘βαρέως ϕέρω’, which holds the key, as it blurs the boundary between the literal ‘to carry the weight’ of ‘τὰ σκεύη/ἄχθος ϕέρειν’ (9, 12) and the metaphorical ‘to bear a misfortune’. This wordplay, with its fusion of literal and metaphorical burdens, is of course part of the joke, which, as we will see, functions to acknowledge and ease trauma. It is also at the heart of this opening scene – and of the whole play to a certain extent – especially if we consider the history of the phrases ‘συμϕορὰς ϕέρειν’, ‘βαρέως’ or ‘χαλεπῶς ϕέρειν’ and the like. Such expressions are not as established, generic, and common as their gnomic status might lead one to assume. Indeed, they turn out to be fairly novel, at any rate not going further back than the middle of the fifth century at the earliest. Briefly, ‘βαρέως ϕέρειν’ first appears in Herodotus (3.155.2, 5.19.5, 5.42.11), then returns in Aristophanic comedy, including our passage (Wasps 114, 158; Thesmophoriazousae 385, 474; Frogs 26, 803; Ecclesiazousae 174f.). The semantic cognate ‘χαλεπῶς ϕέρειν’, ‘to bear with difficulty’, first occurs in the late fifth century, mostly in Thucydides (1.77, 2.16, 2.62, 6.56, 8.54), who also uses ‘συμϕορὰς/συμϕορὰν ϕέρειν’ (‘to bear misfortune(s)’, 2.60).7 Some of these Thucydidean passages, especially 2.16 and 2.60–2, are concerned with the psychological effect of the Periclean strategy of abandoning the Attic countryside in the early years of the Peloponnesian War. It is therefore possible that this trope became current with Pericles, whether or not it originated with him, and that it was a familiar marker of his rhetoric, perhaps even of the collective discourse against his plan. Moreover, the frequency of the phrase ‘συμϕορὰς/συμϕορὰν ϕέρειν’ in Plato’s Menexenus (247c–d, 248c, 249c) would also inscribe the idiom within the rhetorical tradition of the funeral oration.8 We can thus correlate the Periclean and the funerary associations; since this phrase is first used by Euripides in the 430s (Alc. 416, Med. 1018, also TrGF 5 F 98), we might even dare pinpoint the occasion of its birth – Pericles’ funeral speech after the Samian War.9 But whether these phrases are part of the Periclean vocabulary or not – we shall return to this question shortly – they certainly belong in a specific thematic area within public discourse; they convey the political connotations of carrying a burden of civic import, not simply individual suffering. More than that, Pericles’ speech to quell Athenian resentment, as recorded by Thucydides (2.60), is especially relevant to the opening of Frogs; in a reformulation of the ‘ship of state’ metaphor, Pericles implies a kind of 70 36525.indb 70 24/01/2020 08:54 Laughter and Collective Trauma in Aristophanic Comedy redoubling similar to that suggested by the comic Dionysus – a citizen is said to be upheld (‘ϕερόμενος’) by a sailing polis which is able to bear that citizen’s private misfortunes (‘πόλις μὲν τὰς ἰδίας ξυμϕορὰς οἵα τε ϕέρειν’).10 The same burden appears therefore to be carried twice, both by the citizen and the polis! We can imagine how a clever poet would be eager to run with the comic, even seemingly absurdist, potential of this idea. The background of the humour in the opening scene is thus partly nautical, and so is the civic context for Xanthias’ ‘theorizing’ about jokes and suffering, as is revealed right away; the slave’s rhetorical and almost incidental question, ‘why didn’t I take part in the naval battle?’ (‘τί γὰρ ἐγὼ οὐκ ἐναυμάχουν;’, 33), points to Arginusae, a very recent and doubly painful memory, resulting both from the indignity that the dead had suffered and from the precipitate execution of the generals, which was instantly regretted. This first allusion is followed by more references in the comedy, not only to the sea-battle itself (49, 190–2, 693–9) but also to the subsequent trial and the prominent role of Theramenes (534–41, 968–70).11 Even Dionysus’ inept rowing keeps the naval atmosphere in the forefront of our consciousness. But, more significantly, the battle of Arginusae is really what generates the very plot of Frogs, since it is on board a ship (52) in connection to the battle (49) that Dionysus reads Andromeda and conceives his longing for Euripides.12 The allusions to Arginusae that, subtly but persistently, punctuate the entire play are thus invested with metadramatic meaning by Xanthias’ programmatic remark; suffering is futile unless one can joke about it (19–32). This is, I argue, the real point of the prologue – the pressure of carrying the symbolic burden and its inevitable explosion into laughter, not the initial scatological jokes, which can be described as simply a fake attempt to procrastinate, a type of prevarication that skirts the issue and pretends to distract, until we citizens become suddenly aware that we are made to laugh about our own trauma. Dicaeopolis and Spartan Raids While Frogs can be viewed as an extended joke about death, earlier comedies also provide instances of laughter born from traumatic experiences that may vary in intensity and temporal proximity to the first staging. The opening of Acharnians is a good example. Dicaeopolis’ enumeration of paltry joys and countless sorrows, evocative and poignant as it is in itself, serves a parallel function that is analogous to the attempts at scatological humour and logical puzzles in Frogs; what can be described (in dramatic terms) as delay tactics creates the pretence of a mock denial (in psychological terms) – when will he finally say what we’re expecting him to, bringing this mental tickling to an end? It takes Dicaeopolis about thirty lines, which culminate in the pathetic exclamation ‘ὦ πόλις πόλις’ (27) and explodes in an unparalleled string of eight unconnected verbs (‘στένω κέχηνα σκορδινῶμαι πέρδομαι/ἀπορῶ γράϕω παρατίλλομαι λογίζομαι’, ‘I groan, gape, yawn, fart,/am at a loss, scribble, pull my hair out, consider’, 30f.), mixing high and low, to spell out what truly vexes the Athenians: the ‘longing’ for his deme (‘ποθῶν’, 33), rendered inaccessible by the repeated (and by now routine) ravaging of the Attic countryside (32f.).13 71 36525.indb 71 24/01/2020 08:54 Aristophanic Humour To be sure, this historical background does not sound as traumatic as the Arginusae affair. Yet if we listen to Thucydides’ account of the initial impact of the Spartan raids in 431 (2.21–2.), but also, a little earlier, of the Periclean strategy to abandon the countryside (2.16), we can appreciate more fully the emotional toll on the Athenians. We can even discern a progression in the intensity of emotion, starting with the two verbal phrases ‘ἐβαρύνοντο δὲ καὶ χαλεπῶς ἔϕερον’ (‘they were weighed down and bore with difficulty’, 2.16.2), near synonyms that convey the quiet distress of being uprooted (cf. 2.14.1f.).14 From the burden of the evacuation, oppressive yet tolerated, we move to the no longer bearable experience of seeing the enemy around Acharnae (‘οὐκέτι ἀνασχετὸν ἐποιοῦντο . . . δεινὸν ἐϕαίνετο’, ‘they no longer considered it endurable . . . it seemed terrible’, 2.21.2). What strikes the Athenians as a terrible sight leads to further escalation of emotion, with violent disagreement, arousal of tempers, and rage against Pericles (‘ἐν πολλῇ ἔριδι’, ‘in much strife’, 2.21.3; ‘ἀνηρέθιστο ἡ πόλις, καὶ τὸν Περικλέα ἐν ὀργῇ εἶχον’, ‘the city had been stirred up, and was angry at Pericles’, 2.21.3).15 His effort to quell those reactions (‘χαλεπαίνοντας’, ‘aggrieved’; ‘ὀργῇ’, ‘in anger’, 2.22.1) is intensified after the second invasion (‘χαλεπαίνοντας’, ‘τὸ ὀργιζόμενον τῆς γνώμης’, ‘the anger of their minds’ 2.59.3), judged the harshest by Thucydides (3.26). That provides the occasion for Pericles’ speech (2.60–4) that will prove to be his last one; it includes, in addition to the familiar diction of emotional trauma (e.g. ‘ὀργῆς’, ‘χαλεπαίνετε’, 2.60.1; ‘ὀργίζεσθε’, 2.60.5; ‘δι᾽ ὀργῆς’, 2.64.1; ‘βαρυνόμενοι’, 2.64.6), the disquisition on civic burden that, as we discussed above, must have left a memorable imprint.16 The concentration of such vocabulary in Thucydides has a cumulative effect and offers undeniable testimony to the real Athenian trauma that is mediated through Dicaeopolis. We should observe, however, that Acharnians is not exactly contemporaneous with the time of ‘raw’ suffering. By 425, Athenians must have become used to the almost annual raids (there was not one in 429 or in 426), so they can even laugh a bit about it, especially since there was no invasion in the summer preceding Acharnians. Overall, as some modern scholars have now recognized, the damage may not have been as severe as the Athenians feared.17 In other words, the repetition develops into a certain routine to become, almost in anticipation of Bergson’s concept of mechanized behaviour, rather comic in itself; it thus stands in sharp contrast to the tragic events preceding Frogs (52– 4). Even so, there is an underlying analogy between the two plays; just as the experience of Arginusae inspires Dionysus and generates the plot of Frogs, so it is the trauma itself that motivates the main character and gives birth to the story line of Acharnians. As a result, every subsequent instance of laughing in the play carries in itself the reminiscence of the wound that is evoked early on. This analogy between the two comedies manifests itself in a formal element. In both Frogs and Acharnians, the reference to the underlying trauma is delayed until lines 32f., after some superficially extraneous material. This may be accidental, of course, but it is equally plausible that the comic poet had worked out a formula of comic psychology; it takes just over thirty lines of seemingly innocuous wit to put the spectators at ease before hitting them with the painful memory. Those thirty lines are intended to relax them and make them receptive to the poignant grief-tinged statement, so that it would elicit the 72 36525.indb 72 24/01/2020 08:54 Laughter and Collective Trauma in Aristophanic Comedy audience’s laughter, or at the very least neutralize the possible discomfort at the mention of their grief.18 The lines that could be described in retrospect as the poet’s intentional hesitation create the conditions, especially with their misplaced anxiety, to absorb the shock, if not with hilarity, at least without excessive vexation. Cleonymus and Delium We may now move on to the rather different case of Cleonymus the ‘shield-thrower’. He is a butt of jokes in every single extant play until Birds. Already in Acharnians (88, 844) and Knights (956–8, 1290–9, 1369–72) he is ridiculed for his obesity, gluttony and aversion to military service; his host of flaws expands to include effeminacy, perjury and suspect political activity. Yet what made him notorious was, beyond any doubt, the act of discarding his shield. The jokes about Cleonymus’ ‘shield-throwing’ are inaugurated in Clouds (353–4) and proliferate in Wasps (15–27, 592, 821–3), Peace (446, 677f., 1295– 1304) and Birds (290, 1473–81).19 What is it that changes with Clouds and results in indelibly attaching to Cleonymus the charge of rhipsaspia? Some scholars have discerned the impact of the battle of Delium (424/3), and I concur.20 Especially given its absence from the two plays that precede the battle (Acharnians and Knights) and its sudden appearance in Clouds, shield-throwing poignantly evokes the resounding defeat and chaotic retreat of the Athenians at Delium, as described in Thucydides (4.96.6–9, 101.2) but also in Plato’s Symposium (220e–221b; cf. Laches 181b).21 It is worth following the timeline and sequence of some of these jokes. The events at Delium took place in the beginning of winter (Thuc. 4.89.1, ‘τοῦ δ᾽ ἐπιγιγνομένου χειμῶνος εὐθὺς ἀρχομένου’, ‘with the coming winter just starting’), only a few months before the Dionysiac festival.22 Therefore, while I acknowledge the complications arising from the revision of Clouds, I suspect that the two-line joke about Cleonymus was inserted in the description of the shape-shifting Clouds shortly before the production. In fact, the phrasing of 353f. is telling; when Socrates explains that his deities single out an objectionable quality of an individual and imitate it in order to mock him, Strepsiades interjects, ‘Ah, that’s why, when they saw Cleonymus the shield-thrower yesterday, since they were looking at a most cowardly man, they turned into deer’ (‘ταῦτ᾽ ἄρα ταῦτα Κλεώνυμον αὗται τὸν ῥίψασπιν χθὲς ἰδοῦσαι,/ὅτι δειλότατον τοῦτον ἑώρων, ἔλαϕοι διὰ τοῦτ᾽ ἐγένοντο’). Strepsiades’ ‘yesterday’ (χθές) is certainly not to be taken literally, but it is clearly meant to convey something from the recent past. The hypothesis that Strepsiades’ two-liner was a last-minute addition might explain why Cleonymus’ other two appearances in the comedy (Clouds 399f., 672–6) make no mention of his hoplitic mishap. By contrast, after Clouds, Cleonymus’ name never comes up without his shieldthrowing, which becomes, we might say, a sort of expected leitmotif. At the same time, there is a new element, which is adumbrated in Clouds, with the need to interpret the allusive appearance of its chorus, but it is only spelled out in the opening of Wasps. The 73 36525.indb 73 24/01/2020 08:54 Aristophanic Humour first of the dreams that the two slaves of Bdelycleon relate and decipher (15–27) features a dizzying sequence: an eagle snatches an ‘ἀσπίς’, which changes from ‘asp’ to its homonym ‘shield’ through the adjective ‘ἐπίχαλκον’, in turn transforming the bird of prey into Cleonymus, who then becomes synonymous to a riddle (‘γρίϕος’)! And a riddle is in fact formulated – ‘the same beast on land, in the air and at sea drops its shield’ (‘τί ταὐτὸν ἐν γῇ τ᾽ ἀπέβαλεν κἀν οὐρανῷ/κἀν τῇ θαλάττῃ θηρίον τὴν ἀσπίδα’, 22f.) – that, like the initial dream, produces a bad feeling.23 A similarly cryptic method shapes Aristophanes’ final reference to Cleonymus near the end of Birds; the exotic marvels that the birds have seen in their travels include a deciduous tree called Cleonymus (1473–81). They describe it in a series of riddling puns and puzzles; it is outlandish and out of the way, ‘far from . . . Heart’ (‘ἔκτοπόν τι Καρδίας’, 1474); it is useless but ‘huge and trem . . . ulous’ (‘δειλὸν καὶ μέγα’, 1477).24 In the spring, it sprouts and brings forth figs – i.e. denunciations (‘συκοϕαντεῖ’, 1479). And the climax – in the winter, i.e. the time of the Delium battle, this tree sheds its foliage of shields (‘ἀσπίδας ϕυλλορροεῖ’, 1481)! This extended fantasy is of course separated from the traumatic events of Delium by a decade, but it is evident that the temporal distance hardly diminishes the potency of the joke, which acquires, we might say, its own autonomy, at least for as long as Cleonymus is alive. What, then, makes it so psychologically compelling? We may first observe that, from the deer-shaped clouds in need of interpretation, through the dream-and-riddle combination in Wasps, to the Birds’ allegorical tree, the references to Cleonymus tend to be wrapped in enigmas. This persistent talk in riddles, in fact, points to the disguised function of the often repeated and ever renewed joke. On the surface, it may poke fun at one individual whose conduct, although fairly typical in the circumstances, might have perhaps stood out for several reasons.25 Yet it has a deeper meaning – a hyponoia –something allegorical underneath, which may explain its theatrical potential and fruitfulness on the comic stage. By enabling the citizens to project their own traumatic recollection and attendant shame onto one particularly embarrassing or otherwise prominent example, the comic poet elicits, time and again, therapeutic laughter about the disastrous routing in Delium, which resulted in the loss of close to one thousand Athenian hoplites but also in disgrace.26 With a wink to his audience, whose collective psyche he gently massages, Aristophanes cryptically alludes also to the very fact of the allusion, the hidden trauma at the root of laughter. Lysistrata and Sicily Last but by no means least, Lysistrata is notoriously reticent about the Sicilian expedition, which it acknowledges explicitly only once (387–98). When the Magistrate storms the stage in response to the women’s occupation of the Acropolis, he begins his tirade by recalling another salient example of female mischief from the past – the excessive ritual cries of the women for Sabazios and Adonis. Apart from a certain anxiety engendered, as is often the case in our sources, by exclusively female cults, these particular instances 74 36525.indb 74 24/01/2020 08:54 Laughter and Collective Trauma in Aristophanic Comedy coincided with the assembly voting on the campaign and happened to disrupt it.27 The mention of Sicily here is only incidental; it simply illustrates the women’s inappropriate but involuntary involvement. Moreover, the focus is not on the ending of the expedition, but on its launching, so that what is not spoken casts a pall on what is. The Magistrate, in other words, makes the insinuation that the ceremonial wailing, perceived as an illomened sound, created the inauspicious beginning that condemned the final outcome, which is however glossed over.28 If this passage were our only source for the Sicilian campaign, we would have had no idea about the disaster, especially as it is quickly overshadowed by other types of female mischief that are sexual in nature, hence trivial by comparison. We find the same pattern later, at the encounter of the Spartan and Athenian ambassadors, both in a state of visible erection. The recently unified chorus (1042) recommends that they cover up their phalloi, in case ‘one of the herm-cutters’ (‘τῶν ἑρμοκοπιδῶν . . . τις’) might catch sight of them (1093f.). This jokingly evokes the mutilation of the herms on the eve of the departure for Sicily (Thuc. 6.27), one of the inauspicious events that marred the beginning of the expedition.29 Although Sicily looms in the background, the occasion keeps our attention elsewhere; the distended figures on stage are playfully warned to avoid the fate of the mutilated herms, whose visual memory they inadvertently suggest. The word ‘ἑρμοκοπίδαι’, possibly an Aristophanic coinage that is however based on pre-existing diction, functions as an unexpected trigger that evokes the Sicilian adventure – its anxious beginning rather than its traumatic end – only to deflate the attendant tension; before the painful memory is given time to take shape, it already vanishes amidst the sexual banter. The silence about Sicily becomes even more deafening when Lysistrata, concluding her wool-working analogy, rejects the Magistrate’s objection that women should have no part in the war (587f.), by claiming that, in fact, their share is double, since they give birth and send their children to be hoplites (‘τεκοῦσαι/κἀκπέμψασαι παῖδας ὁπλίτας . . .’, 589f.). She does not manage to complete her sentence – ‘send their sons . . . to war’ from which they will presumably not return alive – because she is interrupted by the Magistrate: ‘silence, do not remind me of evils’ (‘σίγα, μὴ μνησικακήσῃς’, 590).30 This is a moment of explosive tension, reinforced by the antilabē – the show-stopping broken verse. In what I would term ‘psychological slapstick’, the comedy rushes to suppress even the slightest hint of a memory of the disastrous defeat before it is even brought up. Yet the Magistrate is not the only one prone to censoring unsettling thoughts; Lysistrata herself anticipates this attitude when she invites Calonice, along with the spectators, to supply (‘ἀλλ᾽ ὑπονόησον σύ μοι’, ‘but you can imagine’, 38) the terrifying and unmentionable notion that Athens itself may perish.31 Would then the audience laugh at the Magistrate’s crude attempt to block unpleasant speech, just as they are bound to do both earlier and later, when he is symbolically reduced first to a matron (532–8), then a corpse (599–613)?32 We cannot be sure, of course, but Lysistrata herself seems to offer a model for such a reaction to an emotionally fraught moment. A little earlier, recalling the wives’ subtle efforts to influence their husbands’ political decisions, she described their forced smile that accompanies inner 75 36525.indb 75 24/01/2020 08:54 Aristophanic Humour grief (‘ἀλγοῦσαι τἄνδοθεν . . . γελάσασαι’, ‘grieving inwardly, [but] smiling/laughing’, 512).33 Could this combination of simulated laughter and dissimulated pain also be taken as an allusion to the delicate task confronting the comic poet? At any rate, we may discern, in the interaction between Lysistrata and the Magistrate, the staging of Aristophanes’ own anxiety in attempting to determine what is appropriate speech in a highly charged atmosphere.34 At the same time, we may read this moment of orchestrated tension also as the playwright’s recognition of the different views that created deep divisions in the citizen body, and by extension in the audience, in the aftermath of the Sicilian disaster but especially in the build-up to and in the course of the oligarchic coup.35 Theoretical reflections, ancient and modern These four cases illustrate different strategies that Aristophanes employs as he negotiates the slippery boundary between eliciting laughter and reopening an old but still tender wound. Especially erring in the latter direction, i.e. recalling a traumatic experience, would be fatal for the comedy as a whole, as it would seem to replicate, in front of the assembled citizen body, the inappropriate behaviour captured in the proverbial ‘jesting among mourners’ (‘τὸ ἐν τοῖς πενθοῦσι παίζειν’), as reported by Demetrius (On Style 28).36 We should, however, keep in mind an important difference; the ‘mixture of mirth with tears’ (‘κλαυσίγελως’) that Demetrius condemns represents, in the case of comedy, the reverse process. What Aristophanes attempts, in other words, is diametrically opposed to the proverb, as he brings mourning into comedy, not comedy into mourning. In that light, the advantages of using the past trauma to deepen the spectators’ sense of collective belonging, thereby strengthening his own connection with them and winning them over, must have been too tempting to pass up and certainly worth the attendant risk.37 Aristophanes’ psychological insight is also akin to that of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and of the Hippocratic corpus. The former provides a mythical aetiology for ritual obscenity in the cult of Demeter, as the old servant Iambe, with her mocking and joking (‘χλεύῃς . . ./. . . παρασκώπτουσα’, ‘teasing with jokes’, 202f.), makes the grieving goddess ‘smile and laugh and have a gracious spirit’ (‘μειδῆσαι γελάσαι τε καὶ ἵλαον σχεῖν θυμόν’, 204).38 In a comparable manner, the author of the medical writings prescribes, as a cure for the disturbed and anguished psyche, a short period of rest spent on sights that bring about laughter (‘καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν τραπῆναι πρὸς θεωρίας, μάλιστα μὲν πρὸς τὰς ϕερούσας γέλωτας’, ‘and turn the soul towards spectacles, especially towards those that bring laughter’, On Regimen 4.89).39 Yet there is a crucial distinction between those two instances and Aristophanic comedy; in those texts, the object eliciting the laughter of either the bereaved mother in need of comfort or of the ailing patient in need of healing may not necessarily be the suffering itself. Indeed, in all probability, it is something entirely different: Iambe’s mocking jests in the former case, the reflections that induce laughter in the latter. By contrast, the comic poet does not intend to distract. He rather finds material for laughter by drawing precisely on the very source of pain. 76 36525.indb 76 24/01/2020 08:54 Laughter and Collective Trauma in Aristophanic Comedy Along similar lines, but moving to modern exegetical frames, what we observe in Aristophanes cannot be fully captured in the terms of Freud’s ‘release of the pent-up energy’ or Ramachandran’s ‘false alarm theory’.40 Despite their different starting points – psychological for Freud, ethological and evolutionary for Ramachandran – both theories see in laughter the same basic pattern of an unrealized menace; for both, humour results from a process whereby the expectation of discomfort or danger is raised, only to be thwarted. To be sure, it would be impossible to deny completely a certain affinity of Aristophanes’ jokes with the relief theory of laughter, especially if we consider the use of trauma in Lysistrata, which seems to come closest to Freud’s understanding of jokes; the painful memory of the Sicilian disaster is like a taboo that threatens to come to the surface before it is pushed back again. Yet even here, and of course in the other examples that we discussed, Aristophanes appears more daring than the Freudian type of humour might allow; the poet does not elicit laughter by fully thwarting the expectation that trauma will be mentioned or, at the very least, conjured up in memory – on the contrary, he fulfils that very expectation, however subtly and obliquely. A final reflection on this type of laughter concerns the interplay between its universal and culturally specific elements. Unsurprisingly, some of the universal aspects are rooted in the physiology of the brain. Neuroscientists have found that laughter, especially social laughter, elevates the threshold of pain, even physical pain, and that the analgesic properties of humour are associated with an increased release of endorphins. It is also suggested that endorphins play a critical role in alleviating the effects of physiological and psychological stress on the organism. At the same time, because social laughter is a synchronized physical exertion, the endorphins that it releases promote in turn social bonding and collaboration.41 This very nexus seems to be at work in the Aristophanic examples that we analysed. The psychological stress that springs from a collective trauma is made the focus and source of a laughter that is by definition social, as it is shared by the assembled citizens in the theatre. This laughter, moreover, is also synchronized behaviour, fused with and enhanced by the singing and dancing of the dramatic performance surrounding it. It thus becomes the ideal mechanism to shield the citizen body from the potentially divisive effects of that stress and perhaps even to enhance the social cohesion of the traumatized community. But in addition to the universal characteristics of this type of laughter that are neurologically based, there are historically specific dimensions, which encompass more than the mindframe of a particular audience at a given moment. Let me illustrate by invoking Woody Allen’s formula; in his masterful Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), a not particularly sympathetic character, who however makes some insightful pronouncements about comedy, memorably declares that ‘comedy equals tragedy plus time’.42 The equation may be universal, but different cultures or even different groups within each culture will calibrate it differently: what and how much constitutes tragedy? What part of that tragedy may be made into comedy? And, perhaps most significantly, what is the culturally acceptable length of time following a tragedy that makes public laughter possible or even desirable? In his attempt to solve that conundrum, Aristophanes may have appreciated, for instance, the reported concerns of stand-up comedians in the 77 36525.indb 77 24/01/2020 08:54 Aristophanic Humour United States wondering in the aftermath of 9/11: how long do you have to wait before you are allowed to make jokes about such a tragic event? Or, to extrapolate from Aristophanes’ own method, the right question might not even be about time, but about purpose: what exactly does it take to convert trauma into laughter so as to soothe pain and bring about healing?43 78 36525.indb 78 24/01/2020 08:54