Institutio Oratoria

Some of these jests turn on similarity of meaning. Of this kind was the witticism uttered by Vatinius when he was prosecuted by Calvus. Vatinius was wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief, and his accuser called attention to the unseemliness of the act. Whereupon Vatinius replied,

Though I am on my trial, I go on eating white bread all the same.

Still more ingenious is the application of one thing to another on the ground of some resemblance, that is to say the adaptation to one thing of a circumstance which usually applies to something else, a type of jest which we may regard as being an ingenious form of fiction. For example, when ivory models of captured towns were carried in Caesar's triumphal procession, and a few days later wooden models of the same kind were carried at the triumph of Fabius Maximus, [*]( Legatus of Caesar in Spain. The wooden models were so worthless compared with those of ivory that Chrysippus said they must be no more than the boxes in which Caesar kept the latter. ) Chrysippus [*]( Probably Chrysippus Vettins, a freedman and architeot. Presumably the poet Pedo Albinovanus. ) remarked that the latter were the cases for Caesar's ivory towns. And Pedo [*]( Probably Chrysippus Vettins, a freedman and architeot. Presumably the poet Pedo Albinovanus. ) said of a heavy-armed gladiator who was pursuing another armed with a net and failed to strike him,

He wants to catch him alive.

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.