Do you get the joke?
Just as sex was invented in the 1960s, so many people have an unspoken impression that humour is also of relatively recent origin. Shakespeare, as we all know, had a rather bawdy sense of humour, but for good clean jokes you need to look to the Twentieth Century, or the Nineteenth if you're willing to include humorous writing like that of Mark Twain or Jerome K. Jerome.
The reality is that jokes have been around ever since the first humans sat around their cave fire on a rainy night. Certainly our Greek and Roman ancestors had a lively sense of humour, even if some of it was slightly ponderous. Take, for example, a pun on the Latin phrase "ex animi tui sententia", which means "to your liking" but was also used in courts as "to the best of your knowledge".
A man appears before the censor charged with already being married. The censor asks him, "Do you, ex animi tui sententia, have a wife?" The man, looking glum, replied, "Yes, I do, but not ex animi tui sententia."
Of course the ancients were as fond of a dirty joke as the next civilisation and Macrobius, in his Saturnalia, preserves one for us.
A country bumpkin comes to Rome and strolls around the town gawping at its wonders and at the same time arousing considerable mirth because of his uncanny resemblance to the emperor, Augustus Caesar. Finally someone tells Augustus about his double and the emperor summons the bumpkin before him.
"Tell me, young man," Caesar commands, "did your mother ever come to Rome?"
"N-no," the bumpkin stutters and then, trying to be helpful, adds, "but my father came here often."
Collapse, I presume, of the stout party.
Just recently Professor Mary Beard of Cambridge University came across an ancient manuscript which bore the title "Philogelos", which means "Laughter-lover". (In the same way "philosopher" means "wisdom-lover".) As she was in the middle of writing a book about humour in the ancient world it seemed a promising discovery. The manuscript, which was written by two men called Hierocles and Philogrios, turned out to be a collection of Roman jokes and one-liners which still tickle the funnybone even today. Take this one, for example:
A patient goes to a doctor and complains that when he gets up, he feels dizzy for half an hour, after which he feels fine. The doctor nods his head. "In that case, wait for half an hour before getting up."
Or there is this one:
An athlete takes part in the Millennium Games, held to celebrate a thousand years since Rome's founding, fails to win his contest and is terribly upset. A friend tries to console him by saying, "Never mind. Better luck next time."
The book was written in the late third or early fourth century AD and as it stands contains around 260 jokes, some of which instantly strike a chord with modern readers, others are less obviously funny.
A woman goes to consult an astrologer about her son, who isn't feeling well. The astrologer consults his charts and predicts a long life for the boy, then demands his fee. "I haven't got the money on me, " the woman explains. "I'll pay you tomorrow."
"But what if the boy dies during the night?" the astrologer protests.
We can giggle over the joke, but Romans, who took astrology very seriously, would have been rolling in the aisles - unless, of course, they were astrologers, in which case they would have been gravely offended, thereby adding to the hilarity of the aisle-rollers.
Another joke which may well have had Romans splitting their sides but which seems less funny to us is this one:
A man who had a reputation for exaggerating everything bumps into a friend in the forum. The friend looks startled; "Antony told me you were dead!" he exclaims.
The first man rolls his eyes. "I'm not, I assure you," he says.
The second man looks dubious. "I'd take Antony's word over yours any day."
Sometimes we may think we get the joke but, Professor Beard suggests, we may be missing the point entirely.
An absent-minded professor is about to set off on a trip abroad and a friend asks him to bring back two 15-year old slave girls. The professor nods. "Ok, but if I can't find two 15-year olds, I'll bring back one 30-year old."
We, of course, chortle over the thought that a 30-year old mistress could be the equivalent of two girls half her age, but the Romans, according to Professor Beard, would have been amused by the mathematics of the thing. "I suspect it's a joke about numbers – are numbers real? If so two 15-year-olds should be like one 30-year-old – it's about the strange unnaturalness of the number system."
My personal feeling is that the good professor is being a little too egg-headed herself. It may well be that Cambridge dons chuckle over number theory, but the idea that the Roman mob, used to live sex and real bloodshed as entertainment, would prefer obscure abstract mathematics to a sex-with-young-girls scenario seems ludicrous to me.
However it does underline an interesting point. Some sour-faced Christians claim that there is no humour in the Bible and that Jesus never laughed, appearing to find this adequate justification for their dour view of the world and their own lack of a sense of humour, so how about one final ancient joke?
A clumsy farmer went out to sow. Some of the seed fell on the path, where the birds gobbled it all up. Some of it fell among thorns where the weeds choked it. Some of it fell on rocky ground where it did manage to sprout but because there was no depth to the soil it died as soon as the sun hit it. He only managed to get a little bit onto the fertile ground - though mind you, that produced an abundant harvest.
I can't imagine Morcambe and Wise using that one, but to an agricultural community where sowing by hand was an essential skill, the thought of this dolt of a farmer wasting most of his seed by chucking it in places where it couldn't possibly grow could well have been irresistably funny. They were probably still chuckling over it - and passing it on to others - days after Jesus first told it. One or two of them may even have stopped to ponder on the real message behind the joke.
ancient manuscript There are several copies of Philogelos extant, dating from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, but the style of Greek points to an earlier composition. The alleged authors are otherwise unknown; some suggest that they were an ancient double act like Britain's Morcambe and Wise, while others claim that they are names invented by the real author, a classical "nerd" who made and classified the collection while possibly not seeing the point of any of the jokes. Return
slave girls Actually, the joke says "slave boys", but as boys were commonly used for sexual purposes, I've changed the retelling of the joke to girls to try and make the humour a bit more obvious. Return
© Kendall K. Down 2009
