【翻譯】笑看古羅馬
原文來自http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/06/mary-beard-humour-ancient-rome-was-matter-life-and-deat
是篇討論羅馬人幽默感的文章，節錄很多很好笑的羅馬搞笑言談，也討論了一些政治上的「笑」點，是篇值得一看的好文。
本文作者為Mary Beard，是頗富盛名的學者，出過諸多關於古典時期的書籍，在台灣有出版的中譯本為《羅馬大競技場的故事》，她的部落格有許多有趣的文章：http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/
此文是她所出版的《Laughter in Ancient Rome ― On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up》一書的節選。
譯註：標準的全部的字都看的懂，但湊在一起不知道怎麼回事的文章，所以可能會翻譯很多錯，還請大家幫忙指正<(_ _)>
文中使用非常多英國時事梗，查梗查到吐血，關於羅馬的部分有些史料在書上看過，也是一樣能盡量幫大家補充就盡量補充。
Mary Beard: humour in ancient Rome was a matter of life and death
幽默在古羅馬是生死攸關的大事
It has always been bad for your public image to laugh in the wrong way or to crack jokes about the wrong targets, not least in the presence of Caligula…
用錯誤的方式大笑，或開錯玩笑可能會危害你的公眾形象，尤其是在卡利古拉的時代……
One evening at a palace dinner party, in about 40AD, a couple of nervous aristocrats asked the emperor Caligula why he was laughing so heartily. “Just at the thought that I’d only have to click my fingers and I could have both your heads off!” It was, actually, a favourite gag of the emperor (he had been known to come out with it when fondling the lovely white neck of his mistress). But it didn’t go down well.
西元40年，在某個皇宮的晚宴中，一對貴族夫妻緊張地問皇帝卡利古拉：為何他笑的如此開懷？
「只要彈個手指，我就能擁有兩位的頭。」他回答。
他的確是一個熱於惡作劇的皇帝（他每次出現總是撫摸著情婦白皙的頸子），但卻讓人難以有好感。
Laughter and joking were just as high-stakes for ancient Roman emperors as they are for modern royalty and politicians. It has always been bad for your public image to laugh in the wrong way or to crack jokes about the wrong targets. The Duke of Edinburgh got into trouble with his (to say the least) ill-judged “slitty-eyed” quip, just as Tony Abbott recently lost votes after being caught smirking about the grandmother who said she made ends meet by working on a telephone sex line. For the Romans, blindness – not to mention threats of murder – was a definite no-go area for joking, though they treated baldness as fair game for a laugh (Julius Caesar was often ribbed by his rivals for trying to conceal his bald patch by brushing his hair forward, or wearing a strategically placed laurel wreath). Politicians must always manage their chuckles, chortles, grins and banter with care.
古羅馬皇帝和現代皇室及政要一樣，大笑和開玩笑都是高風險的行為。自古以來，用錯誤的方式大笑，或開錯玩笑都可能會造成公眾形象不佳。愛丁堡公爵因為思慮欠週（至少他是這麼說）而陷入譏諷 “（中國人）細縫眼”的麻煩；或如同最近澳總理東尼•艾伯特在廣播節目接到一通長輩CALL IN，表示她需要靠色情電話來維持生計，但總理卻微微一笑并眨了眨眼睛，這樣的行為導致他失去不少支持。對於羅馬人來說，無知─更不用說謀殺威脅 – 是不能開玩笑的禁區，雖然他們對待禿頭是一視同仁地嘲笑（凱撒的對手經常笑他把頭髮往前撥，或帶著勝利桂冠以掩飾自己的禿頂）。政治家必須小心翼翼地管理自己的輕笑，哈哈大笑，露齒而笑和玩笑。
愛丁堡公爵，即英國女王伊莉莎白二世的丈夫菲利普親王。
細縫眼
2011年6月10日是菲利普90歲大壽，英國廣播公司特意拍攝了一部記錄片。片中提到，1986年10月，菲利普親王隨女王訪華。在西安會見一群英國交流學生時，他說：”如果你們在這裡呆太久，也會變得細縫眼的。”不過，親王在片中並未對這段往事表達歉意，反而認為公眾的反應太過激烈。”我已經忘了這件事。但對於一個偶然聽到的記者來說，也不應該說出來。況且，中國人都沒有著急，那其它人為什麼著急呢。”
總理艾伯特的眨眼新聞請見：澳洲總理陷“眨眼門”涉嫌歧視女性引争議
In Rome that entailed, for a start, being a sport when it came to taking a joke, especially from the plebs. The first emperor, Augustus, even managed to stomach jokes about that touchiest of Roman topics, his own paternity. Told that some young man from the provinces was in Rome who was his spitting image, the emperor had him tracked down. “Tell me,” Augustus asked, “did your mother ever come to Rome?” (Few members of the Roman elite would have batted an eyelid at the idea of some grand paterfamilias impregnating a passing provincial woman.) “No,” retorted the guy, “but my father did, often.”
在羅馬，對成為笑柄要有容忍的雅量是首要之務，特別是來自平民的玩笑。
第一位皇帝奧古斯都，甚至要設法容忍羅馬中關於笑話他父親的話題。某天奧古斯都找到一位自來自羅馬行省、長相酷似他的年輕人。
「告訴我，」奧古斯問：「你的母親來過羅馬嗎？」（少數羅馬精英對某些家長讓外省女人懷孕的想法不很在意），「不」這傢伙反駁：「但我的父親經常來。」
Where Caligula might have been tempted to click his fingers and order instant execution, Augustus just laughed – to his lasting credit. The Romans were still telling this story of his admirable forbearance 400 years later. And, later still, Freud picked it up in his book on jokes, though attributing it now to some German princeling. (It was, as Iris Murdoch puts into the mouth of one of her angst-ridden characters in The Sea, The Sea, “Freud’s favourite joke”.)
相比於卡利古拉可能企圖彈個手指，並下令立即執行死刑，奧古斯都只是一笑置之-這給了他永恆的榮譽。羅馬人在之後的400年依然訴說他令人欽佩的克制。而之後也是如此，弗洛伊德把他選入書中，但現在被認為是出自某個德國年輕王子的故事。（默多克在她的《The Sea, The Sea》一書中，透過某個焦慮的角色的口中說出這個“弗洛伊德最喜歡的笑話”。）
《The Sea, The Sea》現在沒有中譯本，裡面的故事原文如下：
“The king meets his double and says, ‘Did your mother work in the palace?’ and the double says ‘No, but my father did.'”
（國王遇到與他酷似的人，問他：你的母親在王宮裡工作嘛？這人回答，不，但我的父親在王宮裡工作。）
It also entailed joining in the give-and-take with carefully contrived good humour and a man-of-the-people air (I suspect Nigel Farage would have gone down horribly well in ancient Rome). The same Augustus once went to visit his daughter and came across her being made up, her maids plucking out the grey hairs one by one. Leaving them to it, he came back later and asked casually, “Julia, would you rather be bald or grey?” “Grey, of course, Daddy.” “Then why try so hard to have your maids make you bald?”
加入細心安排地好幽默和親民氣氛也是必要的（我懷疑Nigel Farage在古羅馬支持度會一路狂跌）。同樣例子，奧古斯都曾去拜訪他的女兒茱莉亞，正好碰到她的女僕正一根一根地拔掉她的白頭髮，奧古斯都任由她們繼續，過了一會兒再回來，然後漫不經心地問朱莉婭：
「你（老了後）比較想選禿頭或滿頭白髮？」
「當然是選滿頭白髮，爸爸。」
「那為何急著讓女僕把你的頭拔禿呢？」
Nigel Farage：英國獨立黨領袖，以誠實敢言出名。
Julia wasn’t usually quite such a pushover. She was one of the few Roman women celebrated for her own quips (which were published after her death, risqué as some of them were). When asked how it was that her children looked liked her husband when she was such a notorious adulteress, she equally notoriously replied, “I’m a ship that only takes passengers when the hold is full”; in other words, risk adultery only when you’re already pregnant.
茱莉亞並非都這樣接受勸告。她是少數幾個因趣聞而出名的羅馬女人。當時她是一個臭名昭著的淫婦，被問說為何她的孩子看起來像她的丈夫，她的回答相當著名：「我是一艘船，裝滿了才允許乘客上船」; 換句話說，懷孕後就能冒著危險通姦。
Unlike Augustus, “bad” politicians repeatedly got the rules of Roman laughter wrong. They did not joke along with their subjects or voters, but at their expense. The ultimate origin of the modern whoopee cushion is, in fact, in the court of the 3rd-century emperor Elagabalus, a ruler who is said to have far outstripped even Caligula in luxury and sadism. He would apparently make fun of his less important dinner guests by sitting them on airbags, not cushions, and then his slaves would let out the air gradually, so that by the middle of the meal they would find themselves literally under the table.
不像奧古斯都，“爛”政客一再以錯誤的羅馬玩笑統治。他們不隨著臣民或選民開玩笑，反而以開他們玩笑為樂。
現代氣墊的起源自第三世紀的皇帝埃拉伽巴路斯，他喜好奢華與虐待別人的程度遠超過卡利古拉。為了取笑晚宴中重要程度不高的客人，皇帝讓他們坐在氣墊上，而非普通的墊子，然後讓他的奴隸慢慢放掉氣墊裡的空氣。這樣吃到一半，這些客人會發現他們簡直要沉到桌子底下了。
The worst imperial jokes were even nastier. In what looks like a ghastly parody of Augustus’s quip about Julia’s grey hairs, the emperor Commodus (now best known as the lurid anti-hero, played by Joaquin Phoenix, of the movie Gladiator) put a starling on the head of a man who had a few white hairs among the black. The bird took the white hairs for worms, and so pecked them out. It looked like a good joke, but it caused the man’s head to fester and killed him.
糟糕皇帝的笑話甚至相當下流。皇帝康茂德（在神鬼戰士電影中，這個著名的反派角色由Joaquin Phoenix飾演）把椋鳥放在某位帶著些許白髮的男子頭上。鳥把那些白髮當成蟲啄出來，像是拙劣地模仿奧古斯都關於茱莉亞白髮的妙語，雖然這像善意的玩笑，卻引起男子頭部潰爛而導致他死亡。
Gladiator：好萊塢電影，台譯《神鬼戰士》
There were issues of control involved, too. One sure sign of a bad Roman ruler was that he tried to make the spontaneous laughter of his people obey his own imperial whim. Caligula is supposed to have issued a ban on laughter throughout the city after the death of his sister – along with a ban on bathing and family meals (a significant trio of “natural” human activities that ought to have been immune to political interference). But even more sinister was his insistence – the other way round – that people laugh against their natural inclinations. One morning, for instance, he executed a young man and forced the father to witness his son’s execution. That same afternoon he invited the father to a party and now forced him to laugh and joke. Why did the man go along with it, people wondered. The answer was simple: he had another son.
這裡也有一個涉及控制例子，一個糟糕的羅馬統治者有個明顯的特色─試圖想使服從他的百姓，對他的心血來潮發自內心的笑。
卡里古拉在她妹妹去世後發佈禁止全城歡笑、洗浴和家人用餐的禁令（“自然”人類的行為受政治干涉的象徵三重奏）。但更陰險的是他極力主張顛覆─人們以笑聲對抗他們的自然行為。例如某天早上，他處決一位年輕男子，並強迫他父親目睹兒子的死刑。當天下午，他邀請父親參加聚會，並強迫他歡笑。眾人感到好奇，為什麼這個男人願意服從卡利古拉？。答案很簡單：他還有另一個兒子。
Self-control also came into the picture. The dear old emperor Claudius (who was also renowned for cracking very feeble – in Latin, frigidus, “cold” – jokes) was a case in point. When he was giving the first public reading from his newly composed history of Rome, the audience broke down at the beginning of the performance because a very large man had caused several of the benches to collapse. The audience members managed to pull themselves together but Claudius didn’t; and he couldn’t get through his reading without cracking up all the time. It was taken as a sign of his incapacity.
自我控制也展示了這樣的圖像：親愛的老皇帝克勞狄烏斯是個很好的例子。當他第一次公開朗讀他新創作的羅馬史，開場時觀眾起了騷動，因為一名巨漢讓幾個長凳坍塌了。觀眾設法回復鎮定，但克勞迪烏斯沒有; 他無法在崩潰的情況下讀完他的著作，這被視為他無行為能力的跡象。
註：皇帝克勞烏斯著有20卷伊特魯里亞、8卷迦太基的歷史作品（但已佚傳）
Roman histories and biographies are full of cautionary tales about laughter, used and misused – told, for the most part, to parade the virtues or vices of emperors and rulers. But just occasionally we get a glimpse from the other side, of laughter from the crowd, from the underlings at court, or laughter used as a weapon of opposition to political power. Romans did sometimes resort to scrawling jests about their political leaders on their city walls. Much of their surviving graffiti, to be honest, concentrates on sex, trivia (“I crapped well here”, as one slogan in Herculaneum reads) and the successes of celebrity gladiators or actors. But one wag reacted to Nero’s vast new palace in the centre of Rome by scratching: “Watch out, citizens, the city’s turning into a single house – run away to Veii [a nearby town], unless the house gobbles up Veii, too.
羅馬歷史和傳記都充滿有關搞笑、二手、誤傳的警世故事，大部分都是展示皇帝和統治者的美德和惡習。但偶爾我們能從另一方面一撇到群眾的、宮廷下層人士的好笑故事。有時搞笑也作為反政治的武器，羅馬人會在城牆上塗鴉以取笑他們政治領袖。大部分倖存下來的塗鴉都顯得坦承，集中在性、無聊瑣事（如赫庫蘭尼姆的一句塗鴉：“我在這大便大的很棒”），還有慶祝角鬥士和演員的成功。 但羅馬城中有個刻字反應了對尼祿的遼闊新宮殿的幽默：「注意啊！市民們，這個城市正轉變成一間房子，快逃去維伊（羅馬附近的城市），除非這房子也把維伊給吃了。」
赫庫蘭尼姆：龐貝城附近的城市，和龐貝一起被火山灰埋沒。
But the most vivid image of the other side of political laughter comes from the story told by a young senator, Cassius Dio, of his own experiences at the Colosseum in 192AD. He’d nearly cracked up, he explains, as he sat in the front row watching a series of gladiatorial games and wild beast hunts hosted by the ruling emperor Commodus.
但政治笑聲的最生動的圖像，來自一個年輕的參議員─卡修斯‧迪歐的經驗談，在西元192年，他在鬥獸場中差點當場大笑，因為他坐在前排看著一系列由康茂德皇帝主持的角鬥士格鬥和野獸狩獵。
Commodus was well known for joining in these performances as an amateur fighter (that’s where Gladiator gets it more or less right). During the shows in 192, he had been displaying his “combat” skills against the wild beasts. On one day he had killed a hundred bears, hurling spears at them from the balustrade around the arena. On other days, he had taken aim at animals safely restrained in nets. But what nearly gave Dio the giggles was the emperor’s encounter with an ostrich.
眾所周知，康茂德以業餘鬥士的身分參加這些表演（「神鬼戰士」電影多少正確地搬上螢幕）。在192年的表演中，他展示了對野獸的「實戰」技巧。某天他殺死了一百隻熊，是從競技場四周的欄杆後猛烈地向他們投擲矛。在另一天，他的目標是被安全控制在網中的動物。但是，差點讓迪奧笑出來的是皇帝與鴕鳥的相遇。
After he had killed the poor bird, Commodus cut off its head, wandered over to where Dio and his friends were sitting and waved it at them with one hand, brandishing his sword in the other. The message was obvious: if you’re not careful, you’ll be next for the chop. The poor young senator didn’t know where to put himself. It was, he claims, “laughter that took hold of us rather than distress” – but it would have been a death sentence to let it show. So he plucked a leaf from the laurel wreath he was wearing and chewed on it desperately to keep the giggles from breaking out.
在殺害了那可憐的鳥後，康茂德切斷其頭，漫步到迪奧和他的朋友們所坐的位置，並向他們揮舞著鴕鳥頭，另一支手則炫耀他的劍。這暗示是顯而易見的：「如果你不小心點，會是下一個被剁掉的人」。這可憐的年輕參議員不知該如何是好。他聲稱：「攫住我們的是笑聲而不是憂慮。」 但笑出來的話必死無疑。於是他從桂冠摘下一片葉子，咀嚼葉子以免自己不小心笑出來。
It’s a nice story, partly because we can all recognise the sensation that Dio describes. His anecdote also deals with laughter as a weapon against totalitarian regimes. Dio more or less boasts that he found the emperor’s antics funny and that his own suppressed giggles were a sign of opposition. What better than to say that the psychopathic tyrant was not scary but silly?
這是個不錯的故事，一方面因為我們都認同迪歐描述的情緒。另一方面則是他的軼事將嘲笑處理成反抗集權制度的武器。迪歐或多或少地吹噓他發現皇帝的滑稽可笑，而他壓抑的笑聲是反抗的象徵。有什麼比描述「精神錯亂的暴君是不可怕的傻子」更棒呢？
Yet it cannot have been quite so simple. For all Dio’s bravura looking back on the incident from the safety of his own study, it is impossible not to suspect that sheer terror as much as ridicule lay behind that laughter. Surely Dio’s line would have been rather different if some burly thug of an imperial guard had challenged him on the spot to explain his quivering lips?
然而事情不是這麼簡單。回顧迪歐著作中那些行徑，很難不相信純粹地恐怖不亞於背後嘲弄的笑聲，如果是身材魁梧的禁衛軍惡霸當場要向他挑戰，迪歐也許會用截然不同的方式去描述他那顫抖的嘴唇？
My guess is that those frightened aristocrats at the court of Caligula would have laughed in terror (or politely) at the emperor’s murderous “joke”. But, back home safely, they would have told a bold and self-congratulatory story, much as Dio did: “Of course, we couldn’t help but laugh at the silly man . . . !”
我的猜測是，那些受驚的貴族在卡利古拉的宮廷中會因為皇帝的「謀殺笑話」的恐懼而笑（或者出於禮貌而笑）。不過平安回家後，他們會述說一個莽撞且洋洋自得的故事，就像迪奧所做的：「當然，我們忍不住要嘲笑這個傻子……！」
The truth is that, in politics as elsewhere, no one ever quite knows why anyone else is laughing – or maybe not even why they themselves are laughing.
事實上，政治和其他地方一樣，沒有人確知為什麼其他人都在笑， 或者可能連他們也不明瞭為什麼連自己都笑了。
“Laughter in Ancient Rome” by Mary Beard is published by University of California Press (£19.95)
瑪麗•比爾德“笑在古代羅馬”加利福尼亞大學出版社（19.95英鎊）
補充：
奧古斯都和茱莉亞有很多妙言妙語，奧古斯都有次與友人討論曾說：「他要忍受兩個寵壞的女兒─羅馬和茱莉亞。」可以看出叱吒風雲的奧古斯都很拿他女兒沒辦法XD，此篇文章對兩人對話摘錄不多，故再補充幾個如下：
1.一日，茱莉亞來到父親跟前，穿著有失莊重，奧古斯都很震驚，但默不作聲。隔天茱莉亞為了取悅父親，故做端莊來問候他，儘管他前一日克制住沒有表達自己的感受，但現在他無法抑制自己的喜悅，說：「這樣的裝扮更符合奧古斯都之女的身分。」，但茱莉亞以有說詞：「是的，今日我是為了滿足父親的眼光而裝扮，昨日是為了我的丈夫。」
2.茱莉亞一次與莉薇亞出行，莉薇亞身邊由諸多著名成年人隨侍，而茱莉亞坐席周圍儘是些不務正業的年輕人而引發議論，奧古斯都寫信建議他女兒注意兩者行為舉止的差別，結果茱莉亞回復：「當我年邁時，我的這些朋友也會變老。」
3.茱莉亞的朋友有次奉勸她，希望她的生活符合她父親的簡樸風格，茱莉亞回答：「他忘記他是凱撒，但我記得我是凱撒的女兒。」
以上純個人心得分享，若有任何問題請留言給我，懇請大家指正（鞠躬）
