Smiling in Ancient Rome
Chapter 3 endnote 18, from How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett.
Some context is:
This is not to say that Romans never curled up the edges of their mouths in a formation that would look to us much like a smile; of course they did. But such curling did not mean very much in the range of significant social and cultural gestures in Rome. Conversely, other gestures, which would mean little to us, were much more heavily freighted with significance.[1]
It’s conceivable that even back in Roman times, smiling was an automatic display of happiness but was deemed socially inappropriate. All cultures have what are called “display rules”—norms for when and how to communicate emotion. But the existence of such rules would not prove the existence of “expressions” that they are purportedly suppressing.
An alternative possibility is that sometime in the last few thousand years, smiling became a universal symbol of happiness, or a stereotyped gesture that all is well in the world.
Does the English word "smile" have a Latin equivalent?
If you search through Latin/English dictionaries online, you may find a word rīsŭs that is variously translated as "laughter," "laugh," "laughing," "jest," "mockery," "a practical joke," "scorn," "derision," and also "smile." The respected reference Cassell's Standard Latin Dictionary defines rīsŭs as laughter, laughing, jeering, or ridicule. It does not include smiling, but since it is possible to smile at someone in a jeering way, it is conceivable that the word could be used for "smile" in a given context. If you look up "smiling" and "smirk" in Cassell's dictionary, rīsŭs also refers to something like fortune "smiling on" a person, and to a smirk.
There is another word, adridere, that I found online which might mean "to smile at" in the sense of trying to flatter someone (although this definition was not in Cassell's dictionary).
The classicist Mary Beard, author of Laughter in Ancient Rome,[1] has said that "there is no sign that Romans ever invested that gesture [a smile] with the significance it has in modern Western culture,"[2] i.e., to signify happiness.