Institutio Oratoria

On the other hand brevity in wit gives greater point and speed. It may be employed in two ways, according as we are the aggressors, or are replying to our opponents; the method, however, in both cases is to some extent the same. For there is nothing that can be said in attack that cannot be used in riposte.

But there are certain points which are peculiar to reply. For remarks designed for attack are usually brought ready-made into court, after long thought at home, whereas those made in reply are usually improvised during a dispute or the cross-examination of witnesses. But though there are many topics on which we may draw for our jests, I must repeat that not all these topics are becoming to orators:

above all doubles entendres and obscenity, such as is dear to the Atellan farce, are to be avoided, as also are those coarse jibes so common on the lips of the rabble, where the ambiguity of words is turned to the service of abuse. I cannot even approve of a similar from of jest, that sometimes slipped out even from Cicero, though not when he was pleading in the courts: for example, once when a candidate, alleged to be the son of a cook, solicited someone else's vote in his presence, he said, Ego quoque tibi favebo. [*]( The pun is untranslatable, turning as it does on the similarity of sound between coque and quoque, so that the sentence might mean either I will support you, cook, or I too will support you. )

I say this not because I object absolutely to all play on words capable of two different meanings, but because such jests are rarely effective, unless they are helped out by actual facts as well as similarity of sound.

I wonder,

why your father, the steadiest of men, left behind him such a stripy gentleman as yourself.

On the other hand, the following instance of the same type of wit is quite admirable: when Milo's accuser, by way of proving that he had lain in wait for Clodius, alleged that he had put up at Bovillae before the ninth hour in order to wait until Clodius left his villa, and kept repeating the question,

When was Clodius killed?

Late!

too, the same word may be used not merely in several senses, but in absolutely opposite senses. For example, Nero [*]( Cic. de Or. II. lxi. 248. Probably C. Claudius Nero victor of the Metaurus. ) said of a dishonest slave,

No one was more trusted in my house: there was nothing closed or sealed to him.

Such ambiguity may even go so far as to present all the appearance of a riddle, witness the jest that Cicero made at the expense of Pletorius, the accuser of Fonteius:

His mother,

kept a school while she lived and masters after she was dead.

A similar form of

This form of jest is as poor as is the invention of punning names by the addition, subtraction or change of letters: I find, for instance, a case where a certain Acisculus was called Pacisculus because of some

compact

sour

Such puns are more successful with things than names. It was, for example, a neat hit of Afer's when he said that Manlius Sura, who kept rushing to and fro while he was pleading, waving his hands, letting his toga fall and replacing it, was not merely pleading, but giving himself a lot of needless trouble. [*]( This pan cannot be reproduced. Watson attempts to express it by doing business in pleading and overdoing it. But overdoing it has none of the neatness of salagere, which is said to have a spice of wit about it, since it means lit. to do enough, an ironic way of saying to overdo it. ) For there is a spice of wit about the word satagere in itself, even if there were no resemblance to any other word.

Similar jests may be produced by the addition or removal of the aspirate, or by splitting up a word or joining it to another: the effect is generally poor, but the practice is occasionally permissible. Jests drawn from names are of the same type. Cicero introduces a number of such jests against Verres, but always as quotations

boar

priest

Sometimes, however, a lucky chance may give us an opportunity of employing such jests with effect, as for instance when Cicero in the pro Caecina [*]( x. 27. The reference must be to the make-up of Phormio on the stage: there is nothing in the play to suggest the epithet black. ) says of the witness Sextus Clodius Phormio,

He was not less black or less bold than the Phormio of Terence.

We may note therefore that jests which turn on the meaning of things are at once more pointed and more elegant. In such cases resemblances between things produce the best effects, more especially if we refer to something of an inferior or more trivial nature, as in the jests of which our forefathers were so fond, when they called Lentulus Spinther and Scipio Serapio. [*]( From their resemblances to Spinther, a bad actor, and to Serapio, a dealer in sacrificial victims. ) But such jests may be drawn not merely from the names of men, but from animals as well; for example when I was a boy, Junius Bassus, one of the wittiest of men, was nicknamed the white ass.

And Sarmentus [*]( Sarmentus, a favourite of Augustus, cp. Hor. Sat. I. v. 56, where the story is given. ) compared Messius Cicirrus to a wild horse. The comparison may also be drawn from inanimate objects: for example Publius Blessius called a certain Julius, who was dark, lean and bent, the iron buckle. This method of raising a laugh is much in vogue to-day.

Such resemblances

Don't hold it out as if you were giving a penny to an elephant.