Ritual killing by sardonic grin: a new discovery

 The best real-life Gothic story headline this month comes from National Geographic:

Ancient Death-Smile Potion Decoded?

What?  Read on:

By the eighth century B.C., Homer had coined the term "sardonic grin"—"sardonic" having its roots in "Sardinia"—in writings referring to the island's ritual killings via grimace-inducing potion.

Elderly people who could no longer care for themselves and criminals "were intoxicated with the sardonic herb and then killed by dropping from a high rock or by beating to death," according to the new study.

It's Hemlock water-dropwort, apparently.  And it has this additional, Gothic-decadent, lovely property: one researcher thinkgs it

is only the second case I know of a toxic plant that is actually attractive to our senses...

The article then gives horror and science fiction writers this free story idea:

someday that plant might be used to Botox-like effect, perhaps reducing rather than adding smile lines..
.

Cheers!  When will the next Joker story pick it up?

(thanks to LibraryBob!)

Comments

[Chris Francese]

I can pretty much guarantee that this sentence from the article is false:

"By the eighth century B.C., Homer had coined the term "sardonic grin"—"sardonic" having its roots in "Sardinia"—in writings referring to the island's ritual killings via grimace-inducing potion."

Unless it's some other 8th c. BC author named Homer.

[Mark]

Sorry, Chris, but I just can't resist. The reference occurs in Odyssey 20.300-302: ὁ δ᾽ ἀλεύατ᾽ Ὀδυσσεὺς
ἦκα παρακλίνας κεφαλήν, μείδησε δὲ θυμῷ
σαρδάνιον μάλα τοῖον . . .

[Mark]

And this is from the Liddell and Scott entry for σαρδάνιος:

The common expl. given of this laugh was that it resembled the effect produced by a Sardinian plant (Ranunculus Sardoüs, Sardinian crowfoot, called sardanê by Tz. ad Hes. Op.59, sardonion by Ps.-Dsc.2.175, D.Chr.32.99) which when eaten screwed up the face of the eater, Paus.10.17.13, Sch.Pl. l.c., Phot., Serv.ad Verg.Ecl.7.41

P.S. Sorry for my poor formatting above.

[Christopher Francese]

Nice sleuthing, Mark. Problem is that Homer says nothing of the sort. In this passage Odysseus, disguised as a beggar in his own house, has just dodged a cow's hoof thrown at him by one of the suitors. As he did so he "laughed (or smiled) _sardonion_," bitterly (no doubt knowing that he would soon have his revenge). Nothing here at all about Sardinia, plants, potions, or ritual killings. Homer may well have "coined" the term, but that's impossible to know, since there are virtually no contemporary texts, let alone dictionaries. So I would still say that that sentence is an error wrapped in a mistake inside a distortion. The actual source of the info. probably lies in one of the citations you discovered in LSJ, all late Greek texts from the 2nd to the 10th c. AD. I'll try to track down which it is and get back to you . . .

[Mark]

Thanks and excellent points, Chris. I was actually trying to find where the journalist made his mistake (I assumed only a bad translation had been consulted) and then was actually surprised to find _sardanion_ in the text in relation to a smile _meidese_. But you're right--the passage has nothing to do with Sardinia, and there's no proof that Homer coined the term or, if he didn't, would have even been aware of its etymology (assuming the word does actually have anything to do with Sardinia).

[Chris Francese]

Pausanias: "Except for one plant the island (Sardinia) is free from poisons. This deadly herb is like celery, and they say that those who eat it die laughing. Wherefore Homer, and men after him, call unwholesome laughter sardonic. The herb grows mostly around springs, but does not impart any of its poison to the water."

Servius: "In Sardinia a certain herb grows, which according to Sallust is similar to apiaster. When this is eaten, men's jaws contract in pain, and it kills them as while they smile, as it were, whence the common expression, [Greek] 'sardonic smile.'"

Still nothing here about ritual killings via potions. Note that the Greek and Latin texts use the same verb for "laugh" and "smile," so "die laughing" in Pausanias could just as well mean "die smiling," and Odysseus could be just "smiling bitterly."

This whole Nat Geo. article is all too typical of the empty sensationalism of archaeological journalism. I'm not familiar with all the evidence, but the very cavalier treatment of Homer (did the author actually read the passage?) does not inspire confidence. How much of this is simply made up?