Type of joke | Rhetorical device |
---|---|
Target of joke | Romans |
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 believe 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]
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):
(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]
(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]
The censor was a magistrate in ancient Rome who was responsible for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, and overseeing certain aspects of the government's finances.
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of formal Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play in Latin was performed in Rome. Latin literature flourished for the next six centuries. The classical era of Latin literature can be roughly divided into several periods: Early Latin literature, The Golden Age, The Imperial Period and Late Antiquity.
Titus Maccius Plautus was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by Livius Andronicus, the innovator of Latin literature. The word Plautine refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his.
Year 184 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Pulcher and Licinus. The denomination 184 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
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Catius was an Epicurean philosopher, identified ethnically as an Insubrian Celt from Gallia Transpadana. Epicurean works by Amafinius, Rabirius, and Catius were the earliest philosophical treatises written in Latin. Catius composed a treatise in four books on the physical world and on the highest good. Cicero credits him, along with the lesser prose stylist Amafinius, with writing accessible texts that popularized Epicurean philosophy among the plebs, or common people.
Homosexuality in ancient Rome often differs markedly from the contemporary West. Latin lacks words that would precisely translate "homosexual" and "heterosexual". The primary dichotomy of ancient Roman sexuality was active / dominant / masculine and passive / submissive / feminine. Roman society was patriarchal, and the freeborn male citizen possessed political liberty (libertas) and the right to rule both himself and his household (familia). "Virtue" (virtus) was seen as an active quality through which a man (vir) defined himself. The conquest mentality and "cult of virility" shaped same-sex relations. Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves and former slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia, so they were excluded from the normal protections accorded to a citizen even if they were technically free. Freeborn male minors were off limits at certain periods in Rome.
The Medical community as used in this article refers to medical institutions and services offered to populations under the jurisdiction of the late Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. The Medical services of the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire were adopted from ancient Greece. It was first imported from Greece through Greek colonies in Magna Graecia and the Etruscan civilization. After the Roman conquest of Greece, enslaved Greeks brought more Greek medical knowledge to Rome. In 219 BCE a surgeon named Archagathus traveled from the Peloponnesus to Rome. He became a citizen and purchased a taberna near a crossroads. This became the first officina medica. Previously, the pater familias was responsible for the medical art in early Rome. Physicians in ancient Rome would take the Hippocratic Oath. Doctors would begin their appointments with patients by stating "si vales valeo," which translated to "if you are well I am well." Physicians were often wealthy. Augustus' physician, Antonius Musa, received a salary of 30,000 sesterces. Doctors would also serve in the Roman military and treat injured soldiers.
The Roman magistrates were elected officials in ancient Rome. During the period of the Roman Kingdom, the King of Rome was the principal executive magistrate. His power, in practice, was absolute. He was the chief priest, lawgiver, judge, and the sole commander of the army. When the king died, his power reverted to the Roman Senate, which then chose an Interrex to facilitate the election of a new king.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to classical studies:
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Comedy is a genre of dramatic performance having a light or humorous tone that depicts amusing incidents and in which the characters ultimately triumph over adversity. For ancient Greeks and Romans, a comedy was a stage-play with a happy ending. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a lighter tone. In this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, the Divine Comedy.
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Comedy is a genre that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term originated in ancient Greece: In Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions posing obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses which engender dramatic irony, which provokes laughter.
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