Institutio Oratoria
Quintilian
Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.
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
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,
Or the words may be slightly altered, as in the line quoted against the senator who,The author, presumably a tragic poet, is unknown. Lartis= Luertius, son of Laertes.
- Had not Ulysses Lartius intervened.
although he had
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,Probably from a lost comedy.
- What men call wisdom is a legacy,
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. )
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
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.