FIRST LECTURE SERIES: GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY
Second Lecture

Georgios Deligiannakis (Open University of Cyprus)

“‘Those who Befriend Death … depart smiling’. Eschatological Laughter in Late Antiquity”

ABSTRACT

According to Jesus’ words to his disciples, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh,” and “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep” (Luke 6:21, 6:25). In their preaching, the Fathers of the Church insist that the Evangelists nowhere report Jesus as laughing or even smiling; consequently, the believer ought to recognise that, during the course of earthly life, there is never an appropriate time for laughter. Nevertheless, a recurrent motif in early hagiographical texts depicts martyrs and confessors in Christ laughing during their interrogation or in the course of their martyrdom. Moreover, in a small number of cases Jesus is shown to smile in apocalyptic visions and divine epiphanies.

This lecture focuses on the interpretation of a funerary epigram from Egypt, which constitutes the sole instance in which both the deceased and Jesus are described as (smiling and) laughing. Attention will also be given to the presence of laughter in funerary inscriptions and to differing conceptions of earthly and post-mortem life in the Late Roman period.

The lecture is organised in collaboration with the Programme “Studies in Hellenic Culture” of the Open University of Cyprus.

Hosting sponsor: Hellenic Bank