Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note to the reader
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Greek laughter in theory and practice
- 2 Inside and outside morality: the laughter of Homeric gods and men
- 3 Sympotic elation and resistance to death
- 4 Ritual laughter and the renewal of life
- 5 Aischrology, shame and Old Comedy
- 6 Greek philosophy and the ethics of ridicule
- 7 Greek laughter and the problem of the absurd
- 8 The intermittencies of laughter in Menander's social world
- 9 Lucian and the laughter of life and death
- 10 Laughter denied, laughter deferred: the antigelastic tendencies of early Christianity
- Appendix 1 The Greek (body) language of laughter and smiles
- Appendix 2 Gelastic faces in visual art
- Bibliography
- Index of selected authors and works
- Index of selected Greek terms
- General index
3 - Sympotic elation and resistance to death
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note to the reader
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Greek laughter in theory and practice
- 2 Inside and outside morality: the laughter of Homeric gods and men
- 3 Sympotic elation and resistance to death
- 4 Ritual laughter and the renewal of life
- 5 Aischrology, shame and Old Comedy
- 6 Greek philosophy and the ethics of ridicule
- 7 Greek laughter and the problem of the absurd
- 8 The intermittencies of laughter in Menander's social world
- 9 Lucian and the laughter of life and death
- 10 Laughter denied, laughter deferred: the antigelastic tendencies of early Christianity
- Appendix 1 The Greek (body) language of laughter and smiles
- Appendix 2 Gelastic faces in visual art
- Bibliography
- Index of selected authors and works
- Index of selected Greek terms
- General index
Summary
πλεῖ; καὶ Διόνυσος ἐπὶ κῶμον τῆς Ἄνδϱου … τὸν Γέλωτά τε ἄγει καὶ τὸν Κῶμον ἱλαρωτάτω καὶ ξυμποτικωτάτω δαίμονε …
([In the picture] Dionysus himself is coming by sea to take part in a kōmos on Andros … He is bringing with him Laughter and Kōmos, the most exuberant of deities and the most fitting for a symposium …)
Philostratus major, ImaginesDreaming of immortality
Hermes, son of Zeus and Maia, is a deity who has many affinities, even an intimate familiarity, with laughter. In Book 8 of the Odyssey, as we saw in the previous chapter, it was Hermes who told Apollo, amidst the gods' general mirth at the sight of adulterous Ares and Aphrodite ensnared in Hephaestus' trap, that he would consider such a price, and more, well worth paying for the chance to have sex with the goddess of love herself. His remark reignited the laughter of the Olympians, the sullen Poseidon excepted. Hermes' connections with the scope of laughter were of interest also to the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, a work generally assigned to the late sixth century. Twice in this poem Hermes' persona as a sly trickster, the trademark he shows practically from birth, elicits laughter from other gods: first from Apollo (281), whose cattle Hermes has stolen, then from Zeus himself (389), who bursts into loud laughter when his son lies to him shamelessly but with expert guile about the theft of the cattle.
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- Greek LaughterA Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity, pp. 100 - 154Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008