A few words on the Γέλως σαÏδάνιος, or Sardonius Risus, so
celebrated in antiquity, may not be amiss, especially as the expression
"a Sardonic smile" is a common one in our language.
We find this epithet used by several Greek writers; it is even as old as
_Homer's_ time, for we read in the _Odyssey_, μείδησε δὲ θυμῷ σαρδάνιον
μάλα τοῖον, "but he laughed in his soul a very bitter laugh."
The word was written indifferently σαρδάνιος and
σαρδόνιος; and some lexicographers derive it from the verb
σαίρω, of σέσηρα, "to show the teeth, grin like a dog:"
especially in scorn or malice. The more usual derivation is from
σαρδόνιον, a plant of Sardinia (Σαρδώ), which was said to
distort the face of the eater. In the English of the present day, a
Sardonic laugh means a derisive, fiendish laugh, full of bitterness and
mocking; stinging with insult and rancour. Lord Byron has hit it off in
his portraiture of the Corsair, Conrad:
"There was a laughing devil in his sneer,
That rais'd emotions both of _rage_ and _fear_."
In Izaak Walton's ever delightful _Complete Angler_, Venator, on coming
to Tottenham High Cross, repeats his promised verse: "it is a copy
printed among some of Sir Henry Wotton's, and doubtless made either by
him or by a lover of angling." Here is the first stanza:--
"Quivering fears, heart-tearing cares,
Anxious sighs, untimely tears,
Fly, fly to courts,
Fly to fond worldlings' sports,
Where strained _Sardonic_ smiles are glosing still,
And Grief is forced to laugh against her will;
Where mirth's but mummery,
And sorrows only real be."
In Sir J. Hawkins's edition is the following note on the word "Sardonic"
in these lines:
"Feigned, or forced smiles, from the word _Sardon_, the name of an
herb resembling smallage, and growing in Sardinia, which, being
eaten by men, contracts the muscles, and excites laughter even to
death. Vide _Erasmi Adagia_, tit. RISUS."
_Sardonic_, in this passage, means "forced, strained, unusual,
artificial;" and is not taken in the worst sense. These lines of Sir H.
Wotton's bring to mind some of Lorenzo de Medici's in a platonic poem of
his, when he contrasts the court and country. I quote Mr. Roscoe's
translation:--
"What the heart thinks, the tongue may here disclose,
Nor inward grief with outward smiles is drest;
Not like the world--where wisest he who knows
To hide the secret closest in his breast."
The _Edinburgh Review_, July, 1849, in an article on Tyndale's
_Sardinia_, says:
"The _Sardonic smile_, so celebrated in antiquity, baffles
research much more than the _intemperie_, nor have modern
physiologists thrown any light on the nature of the deleterious
plant which produces it. The tradition at least seems still to
survive in the country, and Mr. Tyndale adduces some evidence to
show that the _Ranunculus sceleratus_ was the herb to which these
exaggerated qualities were ascribed. Some insular antiquaries have
found a different solution of the ancient proverb. The ancient
Sardinians, they say, like many barbarous tribes, used to get rid
of their relations in extreme old age by throwing them alive into
deep pits; which attention it was the fashion for the venerable
objects of it to receive with great expressions of _delight_:
whence the saying of a Sardinian laugh (vulgo), laughing on the
wrong side of ones mouth. It seems not impossible, that the
phenomenon may have been a result of the effects of 'Intemperie'
working on weak constitutions, and in circumstances favourable to
physical depression--like the epidemic chorea, and similar
complaints, of which such strange accounts are read in medical
books."