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 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?

Cicero on the other hand employed dissimulation when Sextus Annalis gave evidence damaging to the client whom lie was defending, and the accuser kept pressing him with the question, Tell me, Marcus Tullius, what have you to say about Sextus Annalis? To which he replied by beginning to recite the Sixth book of the Annals of Ennius, which commences with the line, Who may the causes vast of war unfold? Enn. 174 (with oras for causas ).The question ( numquid, etc.) is treated by Cicero as meaning Can you quote anything from the sixth book of the Annals? ingentis is ace. plural. This kind of jest finds its most frequent opportunity in ambiguity,

as for example, when Cascellius, A famous lawyer mentioned by Horace, A.P. 371. Cascellius pretends to take dividere literally ( i.e. cut in two); his client had meant to sell half his ship, i.e. take a partner in the venture. on being consulted by a client who said, I wish to divide my ship, replied, You will lose it then. But there are also other ways of distorting the meaning; we may for instance give a serious statement a comparatively trivial sense, like the man who, when asked what he thought of a man who had been caught in the act of adultery, replied that he had been too slow in his movements. de Or. II. lxviii. 275.

Of a similar nature are jests whose point lies in insinuation. Such was the reply which Cicero ib. lxix. 278. quotes as given to the man who complained that his wife had hung herself on a fig-tree. I wish, said someone, you would give me a slip of that tree to plant. For there the meaning is obvious, though it is not expressed in so many words.

Indeed the essence of all wit lies in the distortion of the true and natural meaning of words: a perfect instance of this is when we misrepresent our own or another's opinions or assert some impossibility.

Juba misrepresented another man's opinion, when he replied to one who complained of being bespattered by his horse, What, do you think I am a Centaur? The point of the jest, such as it is, is that Juba disclaims forming part of his horse. The reference is to Juba, historian and king of Mauretania, captured by Julius Caesar and restored by Augustus. Gaius Cassius misrepresented his own, when he said to a soldier whom he saw hurrying into battle without his sword, Shew yourself a handy man with your fists, comrade. So too did Galba, when served with some fish that had been partially eaten the day before and had been placed on the table with the uneaten sides turned uppermost: We must lose no time, he said, for there are people under the table at work on the other side. Lastly there is the jibe that Cicero made against Curius, which I have already cited; §73. for it was clearly impossible that he should be still unborn at a time when he was already declaiming.

There is also a form of misrepresentation which has its basis in irony, of which a saying of Gaius Caesar will provide an example. A witness asserted that the accused attempted to wound him in the thighs, and although it would have been easy to ask him why he attacked that portion of his body above all others, he merely remarked, What else could he have done, when you had a helmet and breastplate?

Best of all is it when pretence is met by pretence, as was done in the following instance by Domitius Afer. He had made his will long ago, and one of his more recent friends, in the hopes of securing a legacy if he could persuade him to change it, produced a fictitious story and asked him whether he should advise a senior centurion who, being an old man, had already made his will to revise it; to which Afer replied, Don't do it: you will offend him.

But the most agreeable of all jests are those which are good humoured and easily digested. Take another example from Afer. Noting that an ungrateful client avoided him in the forum, he sent his servant Lit. the slave employed to name persons to his master. to him to say, I hope you are obliged to me for not having seen you. Again when his steward, being unable to account for certain sums of money, kept saying, I have not eaten it: I live on bread and water, he replied, Master sparrow, pay what you owe. Such jests the Greeks style ὑπὸ τὸ ἦθος The meaning is dubious and the phrase cannot be paralleled and is probably corrupt. or adapted to character.

It is a pleasant form of jest to reproach a person with less than would be possible, as Afer did when, in answer to a candidate who said, I have always shown my respect for your family, he replied, although he might easily have denied the statement, You are right, it is quite true. Sometimes it may be a good joke to speak of oneself, while one may often raise a laugh by reproaching a person to his face with things that it would have been merely bad-mannered to bring up against him behind his back.

Of this kind was the remark made by Augustus, when a soldier was making some unreasonable request and Marcianus, whom he suspected of intending to make some no less unfair request, turned up at the same moment: I will no more grant your request, comrade, than I will that which Marcianus is just going to make.

Apt quotation of verse may add to the effect of wit. The lines may be quoted in their entirety without alteration, which is so easy a task that Ovid composed an entire book against bad poets out of lines taken from the quatrains of Macer. Aellilius Macer, a contemporary of Virgil and Horace. The work presumably consisted of epigrams, four lines long. Such a procedure is rendered specially attractive if it be seasoned by a spice of ambiguity, as in the line which Cicero quoted against Lartius, a shrewd and cunning fellow who was suspected of unfair dealing in a certain case, Had not Ulysses Lartius intervened. The author, presumably a tragic poet, is unknown. Lartis= Luertius, son of Laertes. Or the words may be slightly altered, as in the line quoted against the senator who,

although he had always in previous times been regarded as an utter fool, was, after inheriting an estate, asked to speak first on a motion— What men call wisdom is a legacy,Probably from a lost comedy. where legacy is substituted for the original faculty. Or again we may invent verses resembling well known lines, a trick styled parody by the Greeks. A neat application of proverbs may also be effective,

as when one man replied to another, a worthless fellow, who had fallen down and asked to be helped to his feet, Let someone pick you up who does not know you. Hor. Ep. I. xvii. 62, where the passers by reply Quaere peregrinum to an imposter who, having fallen down and broken his leg, implores them to pick him up, crying Credite, non ludo: crudeles, tollite claudum. Or we may shew our culture by drawing on legend for a jest, as Cicero did in the trial of Verres, when Hortensius said to him as he was examining a witness, I do not understand these riddles. You ought to, then, said Cicero, as you have got the Sphinx at home. Hortensius had received a bronze Sphinx of great value as a present from Verres.

Effects of mild absurdity are produced by the simulation of folly and would, indeed, themselves, be foolish were they not fictitious. Take as an example the remark of the man who, when people wondered why he had bought a stumpy candlestick, said, It will do for lunch. Lunch requiring a less elaborate service, but being in broad daylight. There are also sayings closely resembling absurdities which derive great point from their sheer irrelevance, like the reply of Dolabella's slave, who, on being asked whether his master had advertised a sale of his property, answered, He has sold his house. i.e. how can he? he has nothing left to sell. Sometimes you may get out of a tight comer by giving a humorous explanation of your embarrassment,

as the man did who asked a witness, who alleged that lie had been wounded by the accused, whether he had any scar to show for it. The witness proceeded to show a huge scar on his thigh, on which lie remarked, I wish he had wounded you in the side. ac. because then he would have killed you. A happy use may also be made of insult. Hispo, for example, when the accuser charged him with scandalous crimes, replied, You judge my character by your own ; while Fulvius Propinquus, when asked by the representative of the emperor whether the documents which he produced were autographs, replied, Yes, Sir, and the handwriting is genuine, too! Presumably the legatus had been suspected of forgery.

Such I have either learned from others or discovered from my own experience to be the commonest sources of humour. But I must repeat that the number of ways in which one may speak wittily are of no less infinite variety than those in which one may speak seriously, for they depend on persons, place, time and chances, which are numberless.

I have, therefore, touched on the topics of humour that I may not be taxed with having omitted them; but with regard to my remarks on the actual practice and manner of jesting, I venture to assert that they are absolutely indispensable. To these Domitius Marsus, who wrote an elaborate treatise on Urbanity, adds several types of saying, which are not laughable, but rather elegant sayings with a certain charm and attraction of their own, which are suitable even to speeches of the most serious kind: they are characterized by a certain urbane wit, but not of a kind to raise a laugh.