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Roman jokes have been preserved mainly due to ancient writers. Many of them were born of real stories, which were mentioned by lawyers like Cicero, which is worth adding, over two thousand years ago he was considered a prankster and “playful”.
According to Cicero, the essence of humour is that it is based on: “ambiguity, the unexpected, wordplay, understatement, irony, ridicule, silliness, and pratfalls”. The jokes focused on a selected character type, stereotypes, foreigners, and celebrities who were known in the communities.
One of the oldest jokes that were based on a false story is the one told by Macrobius, a Roman writer from the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries CE, in his work Saturnalia. The joke itself had certainly appeared before:
Some provincial man has come to Rome, and walking on the streets was drawing everyone’s attention, being a real double of the emperor Augustus. The emperor, having brought him to the palace, looks at him and then asks:
– Tell me, young man, did your mother come to Rome anytime?
The reply was:
– She never did. But my father frequently was here.– Macrobius, Saturnalia, 2.3
The ambiguity of the joke is visible, for example, in the joke mentioned by Aulus Gellius (2nd century CE):
A man, standing before a censor, is about to testify, whether he has a wife. The censor asks:
-Do you have, in all your honesty, a wife?
-I surely do, but not in all my honesty.– Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, IV.20
Another interesting example dates back to the 1st century BCE from the work of Cicero:
A runner going to participate in the Olympic games had a dream, that he was driving a quadriga. Early in the morning, he goes to a dream interpreter for an explanation. The reply is:
-You will win, that meant the speed and the strength of the horses.
But, to be sure about this, the runner visits another dream interpreter. This one replies:
-You will lose. Don’t you understand, that four ones came before you?– Cicero, De Divinatione, II.145
Professor Mary Beard, who deals with the world of ancient Romans, says that the Romans probably laughed like us, like: Ha-ha!, interestingly they were not smiling. We will not find any Latin word for a smile by Romans – it only appeared later. The professor relies on the claim of the French historian Jacques le Goff that laughter became an invention of the Middle Ages. According to the professor, the very custom of laying jokes and telling jokes is owed by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Those are two cultures that taught us to laugh.
Naturally, in Rome, as well as today, it was not appropriate to make fun of certain social groups or to “burn” jokes. For example, the Romans believed that a blind person should not be mocked. Moreover, not all the jokes were funny. Some, as we would call them today, were “chestnut”. Some of the historians’ accounts show what could make the ruler laugh:
At one of his more sumptuous banquets he [Caligula] suddenly burst into a fit of laughter, and when the consuls, who were reclining next him, politely inquired at what he was laughing, he replied; “What do you suppose, except that at a single nod of mine both of you could have your throats cut on the spot?”
– Suetonius, Caligula, 32
Ancient Romans, looking for an opportunity to laugh every day, went to theatres, to watch comedies (for example Plautus) or mimes (for example Publilius Syrus).
Philogelos – the oldest book of jokes
The oldest, surviving joke book is Philogelos (from the Greek “Funny”) – a collection of 265 jokes divided into specific fields eg: teachers and sages, eggheads and fools or jokers and drunkards. The book was written in Greek in the 4th century CE1 by an anonymous author.
Antique jokes performed by Jim Bowen
Some of the jokes below:
#27. A Philosopher, falling sick, had promised to pay the doctor if he recovered. When his wife nagged at him for drinking wine while he had a fever, he said: “Do you want me to get healthy and be forced to pay the doctor?”
#43. When a philosopher was told by someone, “Your beard is now coming in,” he went to the rear entrance and waited for it. Another philosopher asked what he was doing. Once he heard the whole story, he said: “I’m not surprised that people say we lack common sense. How do you know that it’s not coming in by the other gate?”
#45. A philosopher during the night ravished his grandmother and for this got a beating f