{{Short description|Ancient Roman humour}} {{Infobox joke | image = | caption = | nickname = | type = Rhetorical device | target = Romans | language = }} '''Ancient Roman jokes''', as described by Cicero and Quintilian, are best employed as a rhetorical device.<ref name="auto">{{cite journal |last=Milnor |first=Kristina |date=1 October 2015 |title=Review of: Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up. Sather classical lectures, 71 |url=http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2015/2015-10-22.html |url-status=live |journal=Bryn Mawr Classical Review |language=en |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200909121137/https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2015/2015.10.22 |archive-date=September 9, 2020 }}</ref> Many of them are apparently taken from real-life trials conducted by famous advocates, such as Cicero.{{cn|date=November 2017}} Jokes were also found scrawled upon washroom walls of Pompeii as graffiti.<ref>{{cite web |last=Killgrove |first=Kristina |date=October 4, 2016 |title=Scatological Graffiti Was The Ancient Roman Version Of Yelp And Twitter |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/10/04/scatological-graffiti-was-the-ancient-roman-version-of-yelp-and-twitter/#11cae8e63c3b |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221205222952/http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/10/04/scatological-graffiti-was-the-ancient-roman-version-of-yelp-and-twitter/ |archive-date=December 5, 2022 |website=Forbes}}</ref> 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.<ref name="spectator.co.uk">{{cite web |last=Mount |first=Harry |date=June 7, 2014 |title=What made Romans LOL? - The Spectator |url=https://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/06/laughter-in-ancient-rome-by-mary-beard-review/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220708083717/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-made-romans-lol- |archive-date=July 8, 2022 |website=The Spectator}}</ref> Cicero believed that humour ought to be based upon "ambiguity, the unexpected, wordplay, understatement, irony, ridicule, silliness, and pratfalls".<ref name="spectator.co.uk"/> Roman jokes also depended on certain stock characters and stereotypes, especially regarding foreigners,<ref>{{cite web |last=Flood |first=Alison |date=13 March 2009 |title=Classic gags discovered in ancient Roman joke book |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/13/roman-joke-book-beard |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211003221911/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/13/roman-joke-book-beard |archive-date=October 3, 2021 |website=The Guardian |via=www.theguardian.com}}</ref> as can be seen within Plautus' ''Poenulus''.
Roman culture, which was heavily influenced by the Greeks, had also been in conversation with Greek humour.<ref name="auto"/>
==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'':<ref>Macr. ''Sat.'' 2.3</ref> (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):<ref>Gell. IV 20</ref>
: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):<ref>Cic. ''div.'' II 145</ref>
: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?
==Further reading== *''On the Orator'', Cicero
==See also== *Philogelos, an ancient Greek joke book. *Poetics (Aristotle), Aristotle discusses the nature of tragedy and comedy, but the book on the latter is lost.
==References== {{reflist}}
Category:Jokes Category:Humour Category:Society of ancient Rome