Ancient Roman jokes, as described by Cicero and Quintilian, are best employed as a rhetorical device.[1] Many of them are apparently taken from real-life trials conducted by famous advocates, such as Cicero.[citation needed] Jokes were also found scrawled upon washroom walls of Pompeii as graffiti.[2] Romans sought laughter by attending comic plays (such as those of Plautus) and mimes (such as those of Publilius Syrus). Jokes from these sources usually depended on sexual themes.[3] Cicero believed that humour ought to be based upon "ambiguity, the unexpected, wordplay, understatement, irony, ridicule, silliness, and pratfalls".[3] Roman jokes also depended on certain stock characters and stereotypes, especially regarding foreigners,[4] as can be seen within Plautus' Poenulus.
Roman culture, which was heavily influenced by the Greeks, had also been in conversation with Greek humour.[1]
Examples
One of the oldest Roman jokes, which is based on a fictitious story and survived alive to this time, is told by Macrobius in his Saturnalia:[5] (4th century AD, but the joke itself is probably several centuries older):
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.
(The modern version is that an aristocrat, having met his exact double, asks: "Was your mother a housemaid in our palace?" "No, my father was a gardener there").
An example of a joke based on double meaning is recorded in Gellius (2nd century AD):[6]
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.
(the pun is in the expression used for in all your honesty - orig. ex animi tui sententia, typically used in oaths - which can also be understood as to your liking).
Some of the jokes are about fortune-tellers and the like. An example (1st century BC):[7]
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?
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