Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

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.

On the other hand scurrilous or brutal jests, although they may raise a laugh, are quite unworthy of a gentleman. I remember a jest of this kind being made by

v4-6 p.485

a certain man against an inferior who had spoken with some freedom against him:

I will smack your head, and bring an action against you for having such a hard skull!

In such cases it is difficult to say whether the audience should laugh or be angry.

There remains the prettiest of all forms of humour, namely the jest which depends for success on deceiving anticipations [*](See IX. ii. 22.) or taking another's words in a sense other than he intended. The unexpected element may be employed by the attacking party, as in the example cited by Cicero, [*](de Or. II. lxx. 281. )

What does this man lack save wealth and—virtue?

or in the remark of Afer,

For pleading causes he is most admirably—dressed.

Or it may be employed to meet a statement made by another, as it was by Cicero [*](cp. § 68. ) on hearing a false report of Vatinius' death: he had met one of the latter's freedmen and asked him,

Is all well?

The freedman answered,

All is well.

To which Cicero replied,

Is he dead, then?

But the loudest laughter of all is produced by simulation and dissimulation, proceedings which differ but little and are almost identical; but whereas simulation implies the pretence of having a certain opinion of one's own, dissimulation consists in feigning that one does not understand someone else's meaning. Afer employed simulation, when his opponents in a certain case kept saying that Celsina (who was an influential lady) knew all about the facts, and he, pretending to believe that she was a man, said,

Who is he?