Laudator Temporis Acti

Vergil, Eclogues 4.60-63 (tr. Barbara Hughes Fowler):

Begin, then, little boy, to know your mother
with a smile. Ten long months have left your mother tired.
Begin, little boy: he who has not smiled at his mother
is not worthy of a god's table or a goddess's bed.

Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem
(matri longa decem tulerunt fastidia menses)
incipe, parve puer: qui non risere parenti,
nec deus hunc mensa, dea nec dignata cubili est.

62 qui Quint. 9.3.8: cui PRω, Serv., Quintiliani codd. (corr. Politianus)
parenti Schrader: parentes codd.

Wendell Clausen on line 62:

62. qui non risere parenti: the MSS and Servius have 'cui non risere parentes', which gives the wrong sense; so far from being wonderful, it is natural for parents to smile at a new-born child. Quintilian 9.3.8 evidently read 'qui non risere parentes', but this again gives the wrong sense; rideo with the accusative can only mean 'laugh at' or 'mock', as in Hor. Epist. 1.14.39 'rident uicini glaebas et saxa mouentem'. J. Schrader saw that parenti was wanted; cf. Catull. 61.209-12 'Torquatus uolo paruulus / . . . / . . . / dulce rideat ad patrem' (ad patrem being equivalent to patri). The marvellous child is urged to greet his mother with a smile ('risu cognoscere matrem' )—a recognition of which a new-born child is incapable, except in the fond imagination of his mother—for no god invites to table those who have not smiled at their mother, no goddess to bed. The transition from a generalizing plural to the singular is Greek; P. Maas, Textkritik⁴ (Leipzig, 1960), 23, compares Eur. Herc. 195-7; for other examples see Fraenkel on Aesch. Ag. 1522 ff. (p. 717 n. 3). Schrader also conjectures hos for hunc, but the singular, as Maas remarks, will be intelligible to anyone who thinks of the goddess's bed. See Norden, Die Geburt des Kindes, 62 n. 2.

parenti: for the feminine see TLL s.v. 354.31 , Hofmann-Szantyr 7.

See also Egil Kraggerud, Vergiliana: Critical studies on the texts of Publius Vergilius Maro (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 21-22.

Plutarch, fragment 216(a) (tr. F.H. Sandbach):

That new-born babies do not smile but have a fierce look for about three weeks, sleeping most of the time. But all the same at times in their sleep they often laugh and relax.

Ὅτι τὰ νεογενῆ παιδία ἀμειδῆ ἐστι καὶ ἄγριον βλέπει μέχρι τριῶν σχεδὸν ἑβδομάδων, ὑπνώττοντα τὸν πλείω χρόνον· ἀλλ᾿ ὅμως ποτὲ καθ᾿ ὕπνους καὶ πολλάκις γελᾷ καὶ διαχεῖται.

Id. 217(f):

Whether many babies laugh in their sleep, though they do not yet do so when awake...

Εἰ πολλὰ παιδία ὑπνώττοντα γελᾷ, ὕπαρ δ᾿ οὔπω...

Augustine, Confessions 1.6.8 (tr. Vernon J. Bourke):

Later, I began to smile: first, while sleeping; then, while waking. This was told me about myself and I believed it, since we so observe other babies; of course, I do not remember those things about myself.

post et ridere coepi, dormiens primo, deinde vigilans. hoc enim de me mihi indicatum est et credidi, quoniam sic videmus alios infantes: nam ista mea non memini.

James J. O'Donnell ad loc.:

Modern medicine ascribes the apparent smile of a sleeping newborn to flatulence...

Augustine, Sermons 167.1 (Patrologia Latina, vol. 38, col. 909; tr. Edmund Hill):

Let's question the very babies as they are born, why they begin by crying, though they are also capable of laughing. It's born, and straightaway it cries; after I don't know how many days it laughs.

Istos pueros qui nascuntur, interrogemus, quare a ploratu incipiunt, qui et ridere possunt. Nascitur, et statim plorat; post nescio quot dies ridet.