Institutio Oratoria

Resemblance and ambiguity may be used in conjunction: Galba for example said to a man who stood very much at his ease when playing ball,

You stand as if you were one of Caesar's candidates.

I need say no more on this form of humour. But the practice of combining different types of jest is very common, and those are best which are of this composite character. A like use may be made of dissimilarity. Thus a Roman knight was once drinking at tile games, and Augustus sent him the following message,

If I want to dine, I go home.

Yes, but you are not afraid of losing your seat

What shall I say to my father?

Tell him that I fell under your displeasure.

I cannot lend it you, as I am going to stay at home,

You are more lustful than a eunuch,

Some day then he will cease to stink,

But I shall overload this book with illustrations and turn it into a common jest-book, if I continue to quote each jest that was made by our forefathers.

Galba on the other hand made use of partition when he replied to a friend who asked him for a cloak,

It is not raining and you don't need it; if it does rain, I shall wear it myself.

Are not a large number of jests made by means of hyperbole? Take for instance Cicero's [*](cp. de Orat II. lxvi. 267, where the jest is attributed to Crassus. ) remark about a man who was remarkable for his height,

He bumped his head against the Fabian arch,

perish by propagation.

Is not even the most severe form of irony a kind of jest? Afer made a witty use of it when he replied to Didius Callus, who, after making the utmost efforts to secure a provincial government, complained on receiving the appointment that he had been forced into accepting,

Well, then, do something for your country's sake.

Well, for the meantime I shall

v4-6 p.477

make use of the interest.

He also employed allegory in the witticism that he was fond of making about Marcus Caelius, who was better at bringing charges than at defending his client against them, to the effect that he had a good right hand, but a weak left. [*]( The right being the sword arm, the left carrying the shield. ) As an example of the use of emphasis I may quote the jest of Aulus Villius, that Tuccius was killed by his sword falling upon him. [*]( Tuccius was clearly a coward who committed suicide. Villius suggested that he would never have had the courage to fall upon his sword, and that therefore the sword must have fallen on him. )

Figures of thought, which the Greeks call σχήματα διανοίας, may be similarly employed, and some writers have classified jests under their various headings. For we ask questions, express doubts, make assertions, threaten, wish and speak in pity or in anger. And everything is laughable that is obviously a pretence.

It is easy to make fun of folly, for folly is laughable in itself; but we may improve such jests by adding something of our own. Titius Maximus put a foolish question to Campatius, who was leaving the theatre, when he asked him if he had been watching the play.

No,

I was playing ball in the stalls,

Refutation consists in denying, rebutting, defending or making light of a charge, and each of these affords scope for humour. Manius Curius, for example, showed humour in the way in which he denied a charge that had been brought against him. His accuser had produced a canvas, in every scene of which he was depicted either as naked and in prison or as being restored to freedom by his friends paying off his gambling debts. His only comment was,

Did I never win, then?

Sometimes we rebut a

Well, then,

in the days when you and I used to practise declamation together, you were not even born.

That is true, for I have heard it for the last twenty years.

Sometimes too it is effective to add something more biting in place of the charge which is denied, as was done by Junius Bassus when Domitia the wife of Passienus [*](See VI. i. 50.) complained that by way of accusing her of meanness he had alleged that she even sold old shoes.

No,

I never said anything of the sort. I said you bought them.

I thought it was my own,

As regards making light of a charge, there are two ways in which this may be done. We may throw cold water on the excessive boasted of our opponent, as was done by Gaius Caesar, [*](A cousin of the father of C. Julius Caesar.) when Pomponius displayed a wound in his face which he had received in the rebellion of Sulpicius and which he boasted he had received while fighting for Caesar:

You should never look round,

when you are running away.

Well, she will be a woman to-morrow.

Some style this type of jest consequent and, on the ground that both

You will find your exordium easier every day,

Another method of making light of a statement is to suggest a reason. Cicero employed this method against Vatinius. The latter was lame and, wishing to make it seem that his health was improved, said that he could now walk as much as two miles.

Yes,

for the days are longer.

That shows how often you kindle fire upon it.

Cassius Severus showed his wit by transferring a charge made against himself to a different quarter. For when lie was reproached by the praetor on the ground that his advocates had insulted Lucius Varus, an Epicurean and a friend of Caesar, he replied,

I do not know who they were who insulted him, I suppose they were Stoics.

If that is the case, you go into exile

And if it is not the case, you go back into exile.

Cassius Severus baffled an opponent who reproached him with the fact that Proculeius had forbidden him to enter his house by replying,

Do I ever go there?

General, give me your necklet,

I had rather give you the crown of oak leaves.

So, too, one lie may be defeated by another: Galba, for instance, when someone told him that he once bought a lamprey five feet long for half a denarius in Sicily, replied,

There is nothing extraordinary in that: for they grow to such a length in those seas that the fishermen tie them round their waists in lieu of ropes!

namely a feigned confession, which likewise may show no small wit. Thus Afer, when pleading against a freedman of Claudius Caesar and when another freedman called out from the opposite side of the court,

You are always speaking against Caesar's freedmen,

Yes, but I make precious little headway.

Why do you bark so?

I see a thief.

To make jokes against oneself is scarcely fit for any save professed buffoons and is strongly to be disapproved in an orator. This form of jest has precisely the same varieties as those which we make against others and therefore I pass it by, although it is not infrequently employed.