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- Title
It All Comes Out: Vomit as a Source of Comedy in Roman Moralizing Texts.
- Authors
Goh, Ian
- Abstract
Retching is important for Roman cultural history and medicine; in this article I assess vomit's appearances in Latin literature. Humor is created by the detailed revelation of habitual, inappropriate, and excessive behaviors by named targets, such as the emperors Claudius and Vitellius, and Mark Antony, accused by Cicero in Philippics 2, especially. Alcohol abuse and gluttony feature in invective against character types who vomit, such as the stock figures of the drunken hostess and faithful wife at sea in Juvenal 6, Martial's lesbian Philaenis, and the cautionary tale of the patient who relapses and dies to which the hungover Stoic student is subjected in Persius 3. I end with the self-mocking visualizations of (bad) poetry as vomit in several Horatian passages alongside Nero's voice-training purges.
- Subjects
COMEDY; CULTURAL history; HISTORY of medicine; ALCOHOLISM; VOICE culture
- Publication
Illinois Classical Studies, 2018, Vol 43, Issue 2, p438
- ISSN
0363-1923
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5406/illiclasstud.43.2.0438