Ioannis M.

Konstantakos

A brief history of humour and comedy in Greece

from antiquity to modern times
1. History of humour and the comic in ancient Greece

Humour and the comic

Humour in Greece is a very old affair. The very words comedy and comic come
from the ancient Greek, κωμωδία and κωμικός; through Latin they infiltrated
into modern European languages. Comedy and comic, κωμωδία and κωμικός,
come from the Greek word κῶμος, which means revel, celebration, merry feast
with song and dance. The komos was a boisterous and joyous procession, made
by banqueters and revelers, through the streets of the city. After the banquet,
after they had drunk well and come to a state of merry exaltation, the revelers
would exit into the streets and go around, singing merrily, capering and making
all kinds of jokes. Komoidia, comedy, is the song of the komos, the funny and
boisterous song that is performed by the revelers.

The word humour comes from the Latin humor, meaning the fluid of the
body, but again there is a corresponding Greek word, χυμός, for “bodily fluid”, a
cognate of the Latin term; and the concept behind the association of bodily fluids
with humour and laughter also comes from ancient Greek medical theory and
practice. The first and greatest medical school of ancient Greece, that of
Hippocrates (whose oath is still taken today by medical practitioners), developed
the theory that the human body is constituted and governed by four types of
bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, choler and melancholy (black bile). When these
four fluids were in a state of harmony and balance, the body is healthy, free of
disease and in good condition, and the psychological state of the individual is
also sound. However, when one of the fluids is in excess over the others, there is
lack of balance, unhealthiness and disease.
One of the methods developed by ancient physicians to restore the balance
of the four bodily fluids was precisely through laughter. The convulsions and
spasms of the body through laughter were thought to restore the balance of the
fluids and guarantee good health, physically and psychologically. The great
Democritus (father also of the atomic theory, which argued that the universe
consists of atoms) was a proponent of this theory and was branded “the laughing
philosopher” for this.

Origins of comedy
Apart from words, there are also the concepts, notions and genres. The genre of
comedy, comic drama, the fictional or representative work which pictures the
world in a humorous manner and aims at raising laughter or at creating a
ludicrous effect — the genre that survives today under the title comedy, in
theatre, in prose fiction, in cinema and TV, this genre has its origins in ancient
Greece, twenty five centuries and more before our age.

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 Already in a very early age, at the beginning of the first millennium BCE,
there was in the Greek world a kind of popular performance of humorous
character, for the amusement of the public. This performance was originally
connected with religious festivals, great feasts and celebrations in honour of
various deities. Funny shows and performances were part of such religious
celebrations; they contributed to the joyous and merry atmosphere of the festival,
to the good humour and merriment of the faithful; and thus such shows and the
laughter they provoked were considered as a tribute or offering to the god. The
laughter of the people had a sacred dimension, it was their contribution to the joy
of the celebration and their offering to the god.
These popular performances, originally connected with religious festivals,
were then also extended to other contexts, in private banquets or in public feasts.
Such shows went on for a long time in the Greek cities, and we have information
about them from several Greek authors. Sometimes, they consisted in a one-man
show, a performer who appeared in front of the audience, made various jokes,
ridiculed people (including well-known members of the community); or he
played roles, undertook the persona of one or the other comic character and
performed a comic role, to make the audience laugh. Often such shows were
scurrilous, full of invective, which could be directed towards named members of
the community. The performer could ridicule prominent and well-known people
by name, making fun of them for their foibles and failings.
This kind of one-man show later developed into a poetic genre, a kind of
humorous poetry called iambos, iamb. From the 7th century BCE onwards we
find great poets who wrote iambs, developed poetic compositions of comic and
satirical tone, in which they ridicule the foibles of their contemporaries or present
social conditions in a humorous way. But this is a literary development of a kind
of performance which must have existed in Greece from earlier times, on the
popular level. In the 7th century, there was the alphabet, by means of which the
compositions of the iambic performer could be recorded in the form of poems.
Earlier on there was no such writing system, therefore these comic performances
remained exclusively oral, given for the entertainment of the public in great
feasts or banquets.

There were also other early types of comic performance, which involved
more performers. It was these more populous performances that would later give
rise to the theatrical genre of comedy. For example, various kinds of scurrilous
songs, full of invective and obscenity, which were performed in fertility festivals.
Such songs usually performed by a Chorus, a choir of people, celebrate the
deified phallus, the personified or deified male genitals, which is a symbol of the
fertility and the reproductive powers of the earth. The rituals and songs of this
kind aimed at rousing, by a kind of sympathetic magic, the fertility of the land
and ensure good crops.
In primitive Greek societies these scurrilous songs were improvised, on a
popular level, full of obscenity and dirty jokes. Some members of the community
would meet, well drunk and in a state of merriment and exaltation, and improvise
obscene verses full of sexual jokes, singing them all together on the basis of
some old traditional melody.

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 Another kindred type of comic song was performed by choruses of men
disguised as animals. We have representations of such performances on ancient
vases from Athens. The performers dress e.g. as birds, horses, dolphins,
ostriches, or other animals, and sing and dance under the music of a flute-player.
These performances were also part of fertility and religious rituals. They could
also include scurrilous verses, invective against members of the community and
obscene jokes.

Finally, apart from such choral comic songs, there were also little
popular farces in early Greece: brief ludicrous scenes, usually from everyday
life, with themes from common experience, acted by two or three performers. We
have some information about the themes of such early popular farces; they
resembled e.g. the primitive medieval farces which we know from various
western peoples. For example, one favourite character was the trickster, who
steals fruit, vegetables or other foodstuffs. There was also the braggart,
especially the braggart doctor, who talks pompously in outlandish jargon or with
a foreign accent and becomes ridiculous with his boastfulness and gibberish.
Sometimes there was also ridicule of mythological figures, heroes, who
were familiar to folk fantasy: for instance, Heracles, the great hero, who in Greek
folk fantasy was the archetype of the glutton and crass eater. He was presented in
such early popular farces as a great glutton, keen on food; often a trickster, a
cunning personage, stole the food of Heracles or hoodwinked him in some other
way, and the great glutton lost his meal and remained hungry — a situation
which the primitive audience of Greece found exceedingly funny.

All these types of primitive popular comic performance, one-man

scurrilous shows, popular farces, obscene choral songs, existed in Greece from
very early times; we can document their existence from about 800−700 BCE, but
they may have been current even earlier. There are comparable types of comic
performance in other peoples of the Near East, attested from much earlier times,
and the early Greeks could very well have been influenced by their eastern
neighbours in developing similar kinds of shows.
For example, a scurrilous and obscene one-man show, given for
entertainment of the public in religious festivals, is attested in Mesopotamia and
northern Syria from early in the second millennium BCE. The early Greeks, in
the second millennium, were in close contact with the Levant and West Asia,
they may well have been inspired by such spectacles.
All these types of popular humorous performance were carried on into the
historical times, the great acme of the Greek civilization. It was then, at a
particular juncture of time (the fifth century BCE, the classical and golden age
of Greek culture) and in a particular city (Athens, the greatest spiritual and
cultural centre in the Greek world at that period), that all these kinds of popular
humorous show contributed to the creation of the first form of comic literature
and comic art: the κωμωδία, the theatrical play of humorous nature, the first
kind of literary comedy in the western world.
As a developed theatrical genre, comedy arose in Athens during the first
half of the fifth century BCE. Apparently, the various types of popular comic
performance (obscene choral songs, carnivalistic disguises into animals, popular
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farces) were at some point combined or conflated by Attic artists and performers,
who created a more composite form of comic performance; a form that combined
a chorus, who appeared disguised as animals or sung scurrilous songs full of
obscene jokes, and other performers-actors, who played roles and acted out small
comic scenes about funny situations of life (as in the popular farces).
This kind of composite funny performance was called by the Athenians
komoidia, comedy. It must have become very popular with the audiences of
Athens, performed in various occasions, in religious festivals, feasts and
celebrations in the city and in the countryside. Thus, as a response to the
popularity and appeal of the genre, the Athenian state at some point recognized
comedy officially and inaugurated the performances of comedies in the context
of a great religious festival of the city. This memorable event happened in 486
BCE. In the spring of that year, for the first time, comedies were acted as part of
the official programme of the festival of the Great Dionysia.
The Dionysia was a central festival in the religious life of the city, a great
celebration which lasted for many days and included many public rituals and
ceremonies, sacrifices, processions etc. It was dedicated to the god Dionysus, the
god of wine, drunken frenzy and religious ecstasy, the god who incarnated the
vital forces of nature. The Dionysia included dramatic performances from earlier
times: already from 536 BCE, there were performances of tragedies at the
Dionysia every year. In 486 for the first time comedies were also introduced into
the festival, and this marks the official recognition of comedy as a genre from the
Athenian state. This date, spring of 486, is the official date of birth of Greek and
of European comedy, as a literary genre.

History of comedy in ancient Athens

The genre of comedy flourished in Athens in the two centuries that followed. Its
greatest acme fell in the second half of the fifth century, the period between
450−400 BCE, which roughly coincides with what we call the golden age of
Pericles, the peak of the classical civilization of Athens. The Athenian poets of
that time developed a particular kind of comedy, which modern scholars call Old
Comedy, comédie ancienne, to distinguish it from the forms of Middle and New
Comedy, which rose later in the fourth century.
The main characteristics of Old Comedy are:
1) Prominence of political matters and political satire. This is an
inheritance from the early popular performances, which included a lot of
invective against well-known or prominent members of the community. The Old
Comedy of Athens was political comedy, much preoccupied with the political
life of Athens. It included a lot of political satire; the prominent leaders and
politicians of Athens were strongly criticized and mercilessly ridiculed. Above
all, the main themes of the plays were political. They concerned the political life
of the city, the problems of government, the relations between Athens and other
city-states, the corruption or the foibles of the political leaders, the
responsibilities of the Athenian people.
2) The second main element in Old Comedy is the fantastic. Old Comedy
uses fantastic scenarios, full of magical and fairytale elements. For example,
heroes who fly to heaven to bring back the goddess of Peace, or travel to Hades
to bring back great politicians or poets to help the city, or organize the birds into
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a city-state and build a wall in mid-air to put an embargo to the gods and claim
the dominion over the universe. Such fantastic scenarios, full of fairytale,
supernatural and magical motifs, are combined with the political problems and
actualities of Athens, creating a truly unique kind of comic fiction. Old Comedy
is one of the earliest forms of fantastic literature in the world, and at the same
time it is inextricably combined with the reality of Athens, the life in the
Athenian market and streets and the most urgent problems of the city.

Among all the dramatists of Old Comedy, the best known is

Aristophanes. He is the only comic playwright of that period whose plays (some
of them) have survived intact until today, because they were copied incessantly
since antiquity and their text has been preserved in medieval manuscripts.
Aristophanes had a long playwriting career of over forty-five years, wrote 44
comedies between 427 and ca. 380 BCE. Eleven of these plays have survived
intact in the manuscript tradition. This is the largest body of comic texts that we
possess from the ancient world, and they were hugely influential in the formation
of the European comic tradition.
Apart from Aristophanes, there were also a score of other comic
dramatists who made a career in the theatre of fifth-century Athens, but only
fragments have survived from their plays. From early on, in the Roman period,
Aristophanes was considered as the greatest, the emblematic and classical
representative of Old Comedy; so he was favoured in education, schools, and
reading curricula over all the other dramatists of the fifth century. A selection of
his plays became part of the school curriculum, studied by school students in the
Roman and the Byzantine period, and thus they were preserved in manuscripts.
Aristophanes’ work presents all the features of Old Comedy described
above: political satire (with strong ad hominem invective) and fantastic scenarios.
His plays were closely linked to the public life of his contemporary Athens and
regularly treat the political problems of Athens, the leaders of city politics, the
main concerns of Athenian population. At the same time, they are enlivened by a
very vivid flair for fantasy and employ a vast range of magical and fairytale
themes, construct original plots of great inventiveness.

A great part of Aristophanes’ career evolved during the so-called

Peloponnesian War, the great war between Athens and Sparta, the two
superpowers of classical Greece; most of the other city-states of Greece were
involved in the war as allies of one of the great powers. The Peloponnesian War
lasted from 431 to 404 BCE, over 2 decades, and represented for ancient Greece
what World Wars I and II combined were for the modern western world.
Many of Aristophanes’ plays take inspiration from the Peloponnesian war
and the problems it created for Athens. Aristophanes was clearly from the
beginning an opponent of the war; he belonged to the generation of young men
whose youth was overshadowed by the war, he was 19 or 20 years old when the
war began, and spent all his youth in wartime.
Three of his extant plays, Acharnians, Peace and Lysistrata, concern the
war and advocate its termination: Aristophanes wants to give a message to his
audience, that Athens has nothing to gain from the war, the Athenians must

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negotiate and make peace with their adversaries the Spartans, and not follow the
populist radical demagogues who were advocating the war policy.
In Peace an Athenian farmer breeds a huge flying beetle, rides on it in the
air and ascends to the land of gods in heaven, to find the goddess of Peace and
bring her back to earth. He discovers that the god of War has imprisoned Peace
in a deep cave; with the help of farmers from the whole Greek world, he liberates
Peace and brings her back to Greece, amidst great celebrations. In Lysistrata,
another famous comic scenario, the women of Athens go on sex strike, refuse to
satisfy the sexual urges of their husbands, and even leave their houses and
occupy the Acropolis, so as to press men to make peace.
All these anti-war plays contain plenty of satire and criticism against the
militarist politicians of Athens. These were at the time especially the leaders of
the radical populist democracy, who advocated aggressive military policies,
while the conservatives were in favour of negotiating with Sparta and making
peace. Aristophanes ridicules the militarist leaders and accuses them that they
want war because it serves their own personal and political interests; they find
the occasion to be appointed to great military posts, get big salaries from the state
funds, receive bribes from the allied cities, and generally advance their career in
the turmoil of the war, while the city and the people suffer.

Generally, all the plays of Aristophanes are full of satire and invective
against contemporary politicians, especially the populist radical demagogues
(but not only them). All the politicians of Athens are criticized and ridiculed as
corrupt crooks, who accept bribes, steal public funds, practice favouritism and
cronyism, deceive the people with false discourses and make huge profits for
themselves; they are totally incompetent, incapable of solving the true problems
of Athens, and do not care at all for the public good. Often they are also ridiculed
as foreigners or barbarians who have illegally obtained Athenian citizenship; as
low-class men who have risen to power with trickery and deception; and as
passive homosexuals or sexual perverts.
Aristophanes was generally conservative in politics, he viewed with deep
mistrust the populist radicalism that was predominant in Athenian political life in
his time and preferred a kind of more conservative and moderate republic, with
power more concentrated to the upper classes, the well-born and well-educated
citizens, and less rights for the populace. In this he was not unique in the
pantheon of Greek letters; many of the greatest writers of ancient Greece, from
Thucydides to Plato and Aristotle, shared the same conservative views.

Apart from political satire, Aristophanes also cultivates many other types
of humour and comedy in his plays. He was a pioneer of literary parody; he
parodied and travestied for comic purposes most of the genres and modes of
Greek literature of his times: Homeric epics, the ethnographical researches of
Herodotus, the lyric poetry, and above all the great sister genre of the dramatic
stage, tragedy.
His favourite target for tragic parody was Euripides; he repeatedly
parodied the style and the themes of Euripides in a number of plays, turning the
serious or melodramatic adventures of Euripidean heroes into a butt for fun. In
one of his most brilliant plays, the Frogs, Dionysus the god of the theatre
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descends to Hades to bring back to Athens a great tragic poet, who will write
plays to advise the city in the hard times. In Hades, there is a competition
between the old and traditional Greek tragic poet Aeschylus and the neoteric and
avant-garde Euripides. The winner of the competition will rise and follow
Dionysus back to life. This theme gives Aristophanes the occasion to parody
delightfully the poetry and style of both these tragic poets.

Aristophanes also offers delightful comic fantasy, the kind of light

humour that we find in comic folktales, fantastic exuberance, amusing flights of
fancy. Animals talk like men, have human habits and foibles and serve as comic
foil for the human condition. Gods and heroes are travestied, presented like
common mortals with all their failings. Heroes make fantastic journeys on air or
in the underworld, with grotesque adventures. This is the kind of grotesque,
exuberant fantastic humour that we find in Rabelais and Munchausen —
Aristophanes is a prime exponent of it.
Also, Aristophanes is a grand master of comic language. He exploits a
vast repertory of linguistic techniques and effects of humour. His rich comic
language is full of puns and wordplays, comic accumulations, nonsense jokes,
vivid comic images, metaphors and similes, long comic compounds, extravagant
coined words and names. All the resources of verbal humour are employed in a
masterful way. This kind of linguistic inventiveness is the hallmark of all the
strong comic writers of the western world, from Rabelais to Joyce. Aristophanes
is again a pioneer in this.
Finally, there is also a lot of obscenity; Aristophanes delights in dirty
jokes, sexual and scatological humour. This kind of low-brow material is an
inheritance from the early popular performances and the ritual background of
comedy. It comes from religious festivities, where obscenity and invective had an
apotropaic and liberating character. They allowed to say indecent things, strictly
forbidden by decency in ordinary social life, and thus afforded relief from the
pressures of social conformity. The festival is like a carnival, when one may do
and say forbidden things with impunity, and thus get relief from social pressure,
and be more able to tolerate social conventions when one returns to normal social
life. Old Comedy, the Aristophanic type with the plentiful obscene jokes, offers a
literary context for the same psychological function. Obscene humour functions
as liberation from the pressures and taboos of ordinary social existence.

After Old Comedy, with the passage in the fourth century, from 400 BCE
onwards, comedy underwent great changes in form and themes. This is the
period of Middle and then New Comedy, which were close and akin to each
other, New Comedy being a development and refinement of the Middle.
Firstly, the political element declined rapidly. Political themes, the
affairs and the leadership of the city, stopped having a central importance for the
comic plot and fiction. They were ousted from the centre of interest and became
only secondary, peripheral elements, unconnected with the main theme of the
play. Satirical references and jokes at the expense of prominent politicians
continued to be included in many comedies, up to the end of the fourth century.
But political themes and personalities were no longer the central theme of the
comedies. The main plot was unpolitical, e.g. a love story, or a study of comic
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characters, or a myth burlesque, and the references to contemporary politicians
and affairs of the city were only occasional jokes, made at one or another
moment by a character of the play, simply to give topicality to the script.
There was only one major attempt to revive political comedy, during the
two decades of the peak of Macedonian imperialism, the 340s and 330s. It was
then that Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, tried to bring all
Greece under his power. Philip’s expansionist policies provoked a major political
crisis in Athens and in other cities, where the leaders and the people were divided
in two opposing camps, pro-Macedonian and anti-Macedonian, supporters of the
old city-state freedom and independence and adherents of the new idea of the
union of all Greece under a strong monarch-leader.
Because of this political crisis, political passions were rekindled in
Athens, and also found expression on the comic stage. A group of dramatists
rediscovered the plays of Aristophanes and the other fifth-century poets, derived
inspiration from them and created a new kind of political comedy. The comic
poets were also divided in camps: some were pro-Macedonian and harshly
ridiculed the anti-Macedonian politicians of Athens, such as Demosthenes and
his faction. Others were anti-Macedonian and ridiculed Philip and his officers
(e.g. they presented Philip as a miles gloriosus, who boasts that he can eat iron
weapons, crunch javelins and shields with his teeth for dinner, and wear catapults
like wreaths on his head). But this short revival of political comedy was limited
to about fifteen years, practiced only by a small number of poets, and had no
visible legacy. After the decisive victory of the Macedonians and the domination
of Philip over all of Greece, political comedy came to a definitive end.
The decline of political comedy in the fourth century clearly reflects a
change in the preferences of the Greek audience. People no longer want to hear
about politics and public life in comedy. Apparently the severe political and
financial crisis which plagued mainland Greece in the aftermath of the
devastating Peloponnesian war has something to do with this change of attitude.
People were disappointed from politics and civic life. They turn to private life, to
struggle with its problems, the toils and labours of everyday survival; and this
brings a new kind of comedy to the fore, with greater emphasis to the private life
and family matters, the everyday experience of the common man.

Further, the fantastic, fairytale element, the grotesque magical and

supernatural conceptions of Aristophanes and Old Comedy also decline and
disappear in the fourth century. So, what constituted the core of Old Comedy,
political and fantastic matter, declines in the fourth century. Instead, new
themes arise and take central place in comic fiction.
Firstly, for about sixty years, there is a great vogue of mythological
burlesque or myth travesty. The traditional myths of gods and heroes are
travestied comically. The gods and heroes are presented like funny personages,
with all kinds of failings of everyday people. This kind of parody is very old in
Greek literature; it appears already in the Homeric epics, the earliest Greek
poems, where the gods are often involved in humorous or funny episodes, which
make stark contrast with the tragic passions and toils of the human heroes. It was
also practiced by Aristophanes and his colleagues in Old Comedy: e.g.
Aristophanes presents the god Dionysus as a coward, braggart, effete; Heracles
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as a great glutton; Poseidon as a snobbish Athenian oligarch. But in the fourth
century the genre reached its peak and attracted great favour of the audience. In
sixty years, from 400 to 340, it was the most popular form of comedy and
hundreds of myth travesties were presented on stage.

Apart from myth burlesque, the second major theme in fourth-century

comedy is the comedy of private, everyday and family affairs, especially the
love story. From around the middle of the century, almost all comedies have a
love plot, a young man in love with a woman, who meets various obstacles in his
love, devises a scheme to overcome them and get the girl. The romantic comedy
is born, and will have a bright future in the European stage.
Along with this love plot, the comedy of characters also develops.
Instead of specific political personalities and city leaders, now comic theatre
makes fun of general human types and faults of character. The comic writers
develop a large gallery of comic characters, who are characterized by specific
faults or funny idiosyncrasies.
All the stock comic types who will later form the staple of the European
comedy of characters, were developed to fully-fledged from by the comic writers
of this phase of Greek comedy. The braggart soldier who boasts about
imaginary military exploits; the pretentious intellectual or philosopher (the
dottore of European comedy) who speaks in jargon and incomprehensible terms;
the parasite who flatters and serves rich men in exchange for free meals; the
cunning servant who organizes the intrigue and deceives his masters or his
master’s adversaries with his tricks; the lovely but crafty courtesan who employs
her female crafts to seduce her lovers and appropriate their money; the
misanthrope who withdraws from human society to live in a deserted place; the
miserly old man who grumbles about giving his daughter a dowry or wants to
curtail the expenses of his prodigal son; the superstitious man who runs after
omens and divine signs and falls victim to religious impostors; the irascible
usurer who complains about his debtors when they do not pay back — all these
and other comic types were created and developed by the writers of Middle
Comedy, in the time between 400 and 340 or 330 BCE. From the works of these
writers only fragments survive — but hundreds of fragments, which allow us to
form some idea about their production.
In Middle Comedy the main object of laughter is precisely human
character, the human ethical foibles and funny idiosyncrasies. The love plot is
often a pretext or an opportunity for the exploration of comic types. The poet and
the audience laugh at the general failings and errors of humanity. We are on the
way for the ethical and character comedy which will later thrive on the European
stage.
Even in mythological burlesque, character and human foibles is often the
source of the comic effect. The gods and heroes are portrayed as common
mortals, with all the failings of humanity, and often they are caricatured precisely
as stock comic characters of the stage. Heracles becomes a braggart miles
gloriosus, Hermes a cunning servant who helps Zeus with his tricks in love
affairs, Aphrodite a young alluring courtesan, Apollo a stingy moneylender, and
so forth. Character and human foibles, this is the new target of laughter in the
fourth century, superseding the comic fantasy and the political satire of the fifth.
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 In the Hellenistic period, from the 320s onwards, we are in the phase of
New Comedy, which is an evolution and refinement of the Middle. Menander is
the greatest name in this period; fortune has preserved one complete play of his
and major portions of several other plays on papyri. In New Comedy, romantic
plots and love stories predominate, but again the main target of laugher is
character, the general failures and idiosyncrasies of humanity. The playwrights
create exceedingly complex plots, with many intrigues, misunderstandings and
errors, reversals and surprises, which keep the interest of the audience.
Sometimes the plots are so complicated that it is nearly impossible to narrate the
story or give a complete summary of it. The audience of the Hellenistic period
clearly enjoyed such complex plots, just as the French spectators of the rococo
period enjoyed the fabrications of Marivaux and Beaumarchais.
The characters also become more refined. Especially Menander strives to
give some psychological depth to his personages; from the one-dimensional
stock figures of Middle Comedy, dominated by one predominant trait or
idiosyncrasy, Menander creates more complex human figures, multifaceted and
more realistic personalities, which have psychological verisimilitude and depth.
New Comedy, at least of the Menandrian type, is not very funny; it provokes
smile rather than laughter. Even the verbal humour is more refined, reposing
mostly on irony and subtle effects, not the linguistic exuberance and the puns of
Aristophanes.
New Comedy finally dominated the Greek comic stage. Menander and his
contemporaries and epigones wrote comedies of very high quality, thus
overshadowing their predecessors of Middle Comedy. Plays in the style of New
Comedy were produced in Greece until the Roman period, the 1st century CE.
Because New Comedy had universal themes, it did not concern the
political life of a specific city but portrayed general human types and issues, it
could be easily transferred to other lands and cultures. Thus, the Roman comic
playwrights imitated the plays of Menander and the other New Comedy writers.
Then the Roman comedies were copied by the Italian Renaissance comedy, the
commedia erudita, and also inspired Molière, Shakespeare, Marivaux, Goldoni
etc. In this way, the type of New Comedy, with the romantic plot and the
emphasis on character, dominated the western comic stage at least up to the times
of Oscar Wilde.

Other humorous and satirical genres in Greek literature

After the end of comedy, some time in the Roman period, comic and humorous
writing did not cease in Greek literature. It just switched to other genres, literary
genres destined for reading, rather than performance in the theatre.
Already from the early 1st millennium, the 7th and 6th c. BCE, satirical
poetry (the iamb and related genres) flourished in the Greek world. The iambic
and satirical poets mocked their contemporaries, specific personalities of their
community, or general human failings (e.g. the vices of women or foibles of
character) and social or professional types (e.g. the crafty courtesan, the
pretentious philosopher).
This tradition of satirical poetry was carried on in later ages. Especially in
the Hellenistic and Roman age there was much satirical writing of this type, in
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poetry and in prose. Many satirical works were written, which mocked
pretentious philosophers, the various philosophical schools which flourished
in Greece.
Lucian is an important representative of this kind of writing. Lived in 2nd
century CE, in Roman times; he was a Syrian but fully Hellenized, and wrote
some of the most brilliant Greek that have been ever set down in script. He wrote
many works in which he debunks philosophers and makes fun of their jargon,
insipid ideas and pretentiousness. Lucian also wrote satirical works in which he
ridicules failings of character and social types, parasites, flatterers, braggarts
and impostors.
He also revived the fantastic exuberance of Old Comedy, wrote works
with comic fantasy, grotesque elements, voyages in marvelous lands or the
underworld or flights in sky — combining all these motifs with satire of his
contemporary society, of human vanity, superstition and pretentiousness. His
works are usually in prose, meant for private reading or for reading aloud by a
single performer, not drama. But Lucian’s satiric writing is the most genuine
successor of Aristophanes, in the later times of antiquity.

This kind of satirical tradition was carried on in the medieval period of

Greece, when Greece was the main core of the Byzantine Empire. The centre
of the Byzantine Empire was Constantinople, present-day Istanbul in Turkey, but
the official language was Greek and the culture of the empire was largely
Hellenized.
During the Byzantine period, which lasts throughout the Middle Ages up
to the 15th century, there are various satirical works in poetry and in prose. Many
of them, written in an archaizing language, are imitations of the satirical writers
of antiquity, especially Lucian. The writings of antiquity, Aristophanes and
Lucian especially, were popular in Byzantium and studied in schools.
Of particular interest are a series of poems in the vernacular Greek of
medieval times (the poems of the so-called Ptochoprodromos), which portray in
humorous manner the everyday life in the empire, the toils and labours of the
everyday man. This is the kind of social satire that descends from the time of
Middle and New Comedy. We find comic criticism of social problems and social
and professional types, e.g. the poor scholar, or the husband who suffers because
of his tyrannical wife — a comic poem which reminds us of Chaucer’s Wife of
Bath. Ptochoprodromos, in a way, is our Chaucer.

2. Comedy and humour in Modern Greece

We thus come to the modern times, to the Greece of our age. The Greek state is
comparatively young, having been founded in the 1830s, it barely counts two
centuries of life. But during this lifetime, Modern Greece has developed a
distinctive culture of its own, a culture in which humour and laughter play an
important role, and comic works are still produced in abundance, as much as in
antiquity and the medieval period. Greeks have always been and still are fond of
laughter, and especially of satire and invective, in the true spirit of Aristophanes
and ancient comedy.
11
 In this respect, Modern Greece maintains a close connection with the
ancient past; ancient comedy is regularly revived in the theatre and a living
presence in our modern culture. From the 1950s, Aristophanic plays are
performed every year, usually in summer festivals, in the many ancient theatres
which are scattered throughout Greece and restored in good condition
(Epidaurus, the Odeon of Herod in Athens, the theatres of Dodone, Philippi,
Thasus etc.), and in other open-air theatres.
Thus, for over six decades now, Aristophanic performances are a lively
phenomenon in the cultural life of Modern Greece. Performances are attended by
large crowds of people; the ancient and modern open-air theatres can house
thousands of spectators, and Aristophanes is usually performed in full theatres.
Every Greek has witnessed many performances of Aristophanic comedies in his
life; the works of the ancient comic poet are very familiar to the Greek people,
not the property of an intellectual elite but an integral part of Greek popular
culture. The Greeks of today feel Aristophanes as an author very close and very
appealing to our experiences, as a kind of great grandfather of our theatre and
our sense of humour, an emblematically Greek writer who is an integral part
of popular culture.
Of course, Aristophanes also operates as a fountainhead of inspiration for
modern comic artists and satirists. Every form of comedy and satire in Modern
Greece, after World War II, has been strongly influenced by Aristophanes.
Writers, caricaturists, film and television artists borrow ideas and techniques
from Aristophanes for their own satirical creations. Works of Menander are also
occasionally staged, but not as popular as Aristophanes. Although Menander is
the father of European romantic comedy, the Greeks of today clearly feel greater
affinity and taste for the acrid satirical works of Aristophanic theatre, with the
open ridicule of public figures and the flights of comic fantasy.

Generally, theatre and drama is a very important venue for Modern

Greek comic expression. A large part of our present-day comic production is
destined for the theatre, to be acted before a live audience. The Greeks invented
theatre as a form of art, and are still very fond of live performances, they enjoy
the direct experience and response to the actor on stage. Major comic and
satirical genres have flourished in our theatre and become emblematic of Greek
culture.
Probably the most characteristic is the epitheorisi, a word which translates
the French revue. The Greek epitheorisi is an offshoot of the French theatrical
revue, it was developed by artists who wished to transfer the French genre to
Modern Greek reality and acclimatize it to Greek culture. In Greece, the
epitheorisi soon developed into a very popular genre, was fully assimilated to
Greek culture and way of life, and acquired characteristically Greek features,
which distinguish it from the French revue or variété show and brand it as a
unique product of Modern Greek culture.
The epitheorisi is a loose conglomerate of comic and satirical sketches,
divided by musical and ballet sections. Typically, it consists of a series of short
comic scenes or sketches, independent of each other; the individual sketch may
be a monologue delivered by a single actor, or a brief scene between two or three
12
actors. Each sketch has its own theme and is independent of the others, although
sometimes there may be a loose overall conception (a kind of rudimentary plot)
which connects the sketches to each other, in a broad way; for example, a foreign
tourist comes to Greece and witnesses various individual scenes from Greek life
— this is the kind of broad and loose framework used, not a well-constructed
comic plot.
The sketches are satirical in content and tone. Many of them are political,
they make fun of contemporary politicians or present in a humorous way the
political problems of Greece, continuing the tradition that exists in our country
since Old Comedy. Other well-known celebrities, such as intellectuals, actors,
singers and artists, or (nowadays) television presenters are also amply ridiculed.
Other sketches contain more broadly social satire, they present comic
situations from everyday life or general problems of society (the lack of
education among young people, the gap of generations, the struggle of the
common man to make ends meet with his small salary); or they mock particular
social and professional types and foibles of character (the pretentious
intellectual, the stingy miser, the cunning trickster, the gypsy, the small-time
crook, the oppressed husband and his tyrannical wife etc.).
In general, the sketches may make fun of anything in the modern life and
culture of Greece, anything that may be familiar to the audience and liable to be
presented in a humorous way. The sketches often contain acrid invective, they
are aggressively satirical, and many times employ broad humour, even low-brow
comic stuff, often also obscenity and dirty jokes. All these elements are staple
ingredients of the epitheorisi.
In many respects, the epitheorisi continues the ancient tradition of Old
Comedy and Aristophanes, with the acrid invective, the political satire, and the
broad and obscene humour. In a way, the epitheorisi is a crossbreed between
the French revue and the Aristophanic tradition. The French variété, when it
came to be acclimatized to Greece, was conflated with the old Aristophanic
tradition, and the Greek epitheorisi is the product of this amalgamation.
The epitheorisi is a hugely successful form of popular theatre, attracting
large audiences. It seems to have fallen into some decline for the past two
decades, possibly because this kind of form of satire has now been largely
transferred to television shows. But I am optimistic that the genre may overcome
this crisis and flourish again on the stage.

Another form of comic popular theatre, which is emblematic of Greek

culture, is the shadow theatre. We call it Karagiozis, from the name of the
stock central character, the protagonist in all the plays. The shadow theatre is a
form of traditional art, which was developed in 19th-century Greece and still
remains alive, practiced by new generations of artists. Its origins are from
Turkey, the Turkish shadow theatre of Karagöz (which was itself derived from
the shadow theatre of the far east, of Java and Sumatra).
But again, as always, whatever the Greeks borrow from another people,
they transform it, acclimatize it to their own culture, and turn it into something
unique and their own. Thus, the Greek Karagiozis has become as emblematic of
Modern Greek culture and as expressive of the concerns and spirit of the Greek
people as the epitheorisi or the Aristophanic theatre.
13
 The Karagiozis is a form of shadow play; the various characters are all
shadow puppets, wooden or leather figures handled behind a white screen which
is lighted from behind, so that the shadows of the figures-puppets appear on the
screen and are seen by the audience. It is a one-man show, the main performer is
the master puppet-player; he may have assistants who help him move the various
puppets behind the screen, but he alone voices all the characters. Every
character has his standard, traditional kind of voice; the master Karagiozis-
puppet-player must have great versatility and training to imitate all the various
kinds of voices required.
Karagiozis is a popular form of art; in the 19th century it flourished in
coffee-shops and taverns, in all the cities and villages of Greece; the audience
flocked into the coffee-shop, where the screen was put up, to witness the show.
Nowadays, it is usually performed in special theatres, with regular seats for the
audience. But the performance really requires very little space and technical
possibilities, it can even be put up in a private house, e.g. on occasion of a feast,
party or birthday celebration.
The main character, Karagiozis, is a Greek living in utter poverty, in a
kind of shack or cabin, in conditions of destitution. He is constantly hungry and
tries to find various ways in order to acquire money and food, to feed himself and
his large number of children. Each play is supposed to be set in a fictionalized
milieu of Greece under Ottoman occupation — the state of affairs that
prevailed in mainland Greece between the 15th and the early 19th century, when
the land was part of the Ottoman Empire, until we acquired independence and
established the Modern Greek state.
Opposite Karagiozis’ cabin is the seraglio, the palace of the pasha, the
Ottoman official who is ruling the city or area. Karagiozis incarnates the
common Greek man who struggles to survive in conditions of hardship and
poverty; the pasha incarnates the figure of authority, the man of power, and is
often ridiculed or deceived by the artful Karagiozis.
There are also various other characters, who represent local or social
categories of the population of Greece: the shepherd from the mountain areas,
the Italianized man from the Ionian islands (who were for a long time under
Venetian rule and have strong influences from Italian culture), the Jew (usually a
moneylender), the hoodlum, the spoiled mamma’s boy, the obsequious
attendant of the Ottoman officials and others. All these visit Karagiozis in
various episodes during the play and meddle with his adventures, but are
secondary characters.
The main theme is always Karagiozis’ struggle to survive and feed his
family. It is a perennial theme in Greek comedy, present already in the last plays
of Aristophanes. Poverty has been a perennial condition in Greece, large parts of
the Greek population have always lived in hardship and conditions of poverty (a
situation still continued today). So the adventures of Karagiozis, the poor Greek
who tries to make a living and survive, despite the oppression of the hostile
authorities, is always appealing to the Greek audience, in all ages.
Karagiozis is resourceful and ingenious, a trickster, like all the typical
comic heroes of the Greek tradition, like the heroes of Aristophanes or the
resourceful slaves of New Comedy, the masters of intrigue. In every play, he
devises some kind of scheme in order to gain money or food and alleviate his
14
poverty. For example, he performs various kinds of jobs or organizes some
kind of deception or trick; his attempts usually end without much success, and
Karagiozis remains in his state of poverty, although he may gain a few good
meals as a reward for his pains. Often, the intrigues he devises are turned against
the pasha and the Ottoman officials.
The Greek audience regularly recognizes in Karagiozis the common
Greek man, the ordinary Greek who suffers in meagre conditions; the pasha and
the Ottomans represent the figures of authority, the corrupt politicians and men
of power, who are responsible for the plight of the common man. Greek humour
is always derisive of figures of authority and power and takes the side of the
common man. Karagiozis faces his poverty and meagre conditions with a good-
humoured and cheerful attitude; he represents the merry side of Greece, the
people who struggle in difficulties but never lose their humour and the ability to
laugh with their predicament.

Apart from the theatre and its forms, some of the best Modern Greek
humour is to be found in caricatures, comic sketches published in newspapers
and magazines. The art of caricature has always flourished in Greece, since the
19th century and until today, always cultivated by very gifted artists. The best
caricatures in the newspapers are of course political, those that satirize politicians
and public figures. Political ridicule and satire is a staple of Greek humour,
since the age of Aristophanes, and the caricaturist of the modern age carry on
with brio this tradition. But the caricaturists often also touch upon social
problems or present humorously the problems of the common man.

In modern times, there is of course also a plethora of comic shows in the

mass media, as in all countries, especially in television, which is the most wide-
reaching medium, present in all houses. Television comic shows are now well on
the way of becoming the most popular and widely acclaimed form of comic
entertainment, leaving all other forms far behind, superseding by far the popular
theatre, caricature, or other traditional forms of comic production.
This is perhaps to be deplored, because up to a point it distorts one of
the main characteristics of Greek culture and Greek humour: its
communality and public character. In the Greek tradition, since ancient times,
humour and laughter is something that Greeks enjoy communally, in the
company of others, indeed in large groups and audiences, as e.g. in the large
crowd of spectators gathered in a theatre or a cinema. Bergson, the great theorist
of the comic, has written that laughter needs an echo — we can only enjoy it if
our laughter is echoed by the other people who surround us. This axiom finds in
Greek culture its most literal and intense application. Greeks traditionally laugh
communally, in large gatherings, hence the great importance of theatre for the
development and function of Greek humour. Laughter in Greek culture has
always a public and communal dimension; we do not laugh alone, in isolation,
but always in the company of others, the larger the company, the better.
Television threatens this traditional characteristic of Greek merriment.
For the first time in our century-long history, we have a form of comic
performance and entertainment that is not enjoyed communally in large
gatherings in public places, but in the privacy of one’s home, in isolation, at most
15
in the company of one’s small family. The social and communal dimension of
Greek laughter is thus diminished.
Nonetheless, the tradition is still strong and affects even the way that such
comic shows of television are organized. Some of the most popular shows are
actually televised in front of a large gathered audience. Filming takes place in a
theatre or in special large studios, where audience is invited and seats throughout
the making of the show, reacting spontaneously to the words and deeds of the
performers. In this way, even the best television shows recreate the conditions
of public performance in front of large audience. They give the TV spectator
the feeling that he is participating in a large gathering and audience, that he takes
part in their communal enjoyment and laughter. It provides the echo necessary
for the enjoyment of the comic. Thus, this cardinal feature of Greek humour,
communality, persists even through the medium of television.
More generally, television shows have also assimilated many techniques
and modes from the traditional popular genres of Greek humorous entertainment.
For example, many TV comic shows imitate the structure and themes of the
epitheorisi, the theatrical satirical variété which entertained generations of
Greeks for decades. Sometimes, the techniques of political caricature are also
copied, caricatures of modern personalities appear in television shows as comic
puppets or specially disguised actors. Television comic shows owe a lot to the
humour of earlier traditional genres of Greek comedy.

3. Main characteristics of Greek humour

Greek humour presents some salient characteristics, which can be detected

diachronically in the entire history of comic forms in Greek culture, from
antiquity to the present day. A lot of time has passed, there is a huge
chronological gap which divides us from our ancient ancestors, yet the main
features of the Greek comic spirit have been retained through these long
centuries, through the maintenance of popular Greek culture and the survival
of the Greek soul.
The comic spirit of Aristophanes and Old Comedy survives, as we have
seen, in modern popular forms such as the epitheorisi and the Karagiozis shadow
theatre; in fact, it is the influence of that old Greek comic spirit which has
radically metamorphosed the foreign genres-forms, the French revue and the
Turkish Karagöz, which were introduced from other cultures — but under the
influence of the old traditional comic spirit they were radically transformed into
something quintessentially Greek.
Whatever the Greeks borrow from other cultures, they transform it into
something emblematically and characteristically their own, something that
embodies the main features and trademarks of Greek culture. With regard to
comic forms, capital in this respect is the old comic spirit of our people, which
appears in ancient times in Aristophanes and Old Comedy and has persisted in
our popular culture through the ages. This Greek popular spirit has transformed
whichever foreign comic forms we have borrowed into something
emblematically Greek.

16
 Greece is a very old culture, which displays a remarkable continuity
through the ages. The same continuity can be detected in the products of the
Greek comic spirit, and thus Greek humour presents a series of standard and
diachronic characteristics through the ages, characteristics which clearly
correspond to basic elements of the soul of our people, or of our national
character.

Greek humour is aggressive, strong, often offensive. It is strongly and

intensely invective and satirical. Greeks like to make fun of other people, both
their compatriots and the foreigners, both their comrades and their enemies.
Greek humour ridicules its targets, it makes them appear ludicrous and laughable,
it brings out and stresses their foibles and failings in a most derisive manner. It is
often merciless and always competitive. It springs from the need that is inherent
in the soul of every Greek, namely, to surpass others, to reduce them to the
laughable and ridiculous in order to assert his own superiority over them.
Greek laughter is a form of antagonizing the others, a form of social
competition, an agonistic practice, a manner of contest and battle against the
others. We laugh at the others in order to feel superior, to surpass them and win a
victory over them. The agonistic spirit, the agon, the competition, even
quarrelsomeness is a staple ingredient of the Greek character from very ancient
times (the earliest of our poems, Homer’s Iliad, begins with a major quarrel
between two Greek leaders for honour and primacy).
The aggressiveness and competitiveness of Greek humour expresses in
merry terms this trait of the Greek character, which has also had tragic
repercussions on our national destiny, firing off countless civil wars and conflicts
throughout our history. Because of this aggressive, antagonistic character, Greek
humour rarely has room for the benign variety, the good-natured joke of merry
companionship. Mostly, Greek jokes are acrid and malicious, strong and
offensive. We can see this already in the invective of Old Comedy and
Aristophanes, which mercilessy satirizes its targets, publicly ridicules and
shames them. The same spirit survives up to modern epitheorisi, television shows
and caricatures.

The competitiveness and antagonistic spirit also determines another salient

feature of Greek humour. Our humour is very often directed against all those that
stand out, the figures that surpass and excel over the others. The
competitiveness of the Greek soul breeds an element of envy, and often this
Greek envy is expressed through derisiveness and ridicule.
First and foremost, Greeks laugh at figures of authority. They like to
make fun of anyone who possesses power and is generally superior to the
common man. Powerful politicians and men of the state have always been
mercilessly ridiculed in this country. Even the best of them, the most competent
leaders of our nation, from Pericles to Konstantinos Karamanlis, have been the
targets of scathing satire during their public careers. No-one can be involved in
politics and gain public office in Greece without becoming a target of ridicule
and mockery.
Satirists and comic artists, like all citizens, have of course their political
ideology and premises. But usually Greek comic artists satirize and comically
17
criticize politicians from all parties and areas of the political spectrum, left,
centre and right. The need to debunk the figures of authority and power
generally is stronger than political convictions or ideologies.

Next to the figures of power, a perennial theme of Greek humour is the

debunking of conceited and pretentious characters, those who pretend to be
superior to others, to have powers or knowledge inaccessible to the common
man. This is a type of comic personage that is very old in the Greek comic
tradition. Aristotle calls this kind of braggart and conceited character the alazon:
the man who pretends to be more than he is in reality, who claims to have access
to powers, qualities or knowledge that he does not really possess.
There are various types of braggart figures; all of them the Greeks love to
make fun of and ridicule. The braggart military man, the boastful soldier, is a
figure very common especially in ancient Greek comedy. Nowadays, the most
common figure of this type is the pretentious intellectual, the philosopher or
thinker or scientist who pretends to possess vast or secret knowledge and speaks
in jargon incomprehensible for the common people. This is also an ancient type,
already present in the early Greek popular farces. He makes his appearance in
Aristophanes’ Clouds, where Socrates is ridiculed as a conceited philosopher and
scientist who talks gibberish. Today, in theatre and shows, scientists,
philosophers and sociologists are regularly derided for their abstruse jargon and
weird ideas.

Next to these, it may also be said that Greeks generally laugh with anyone
who is visibly different from the norm, anyone who deviates from the common
rule or the usual. Thus, ethnic and cultural stereotypes are rampant in the
Greek comic tradition. Anyone who does not belong to the average Greek norm,
who diverges in any way (ethnic, sexual orientation, colour of skin, strange
habits, manner of dress, bodily impediments or challenges), is liable to be
ridiculed. Gypsies, immigrants from other countries, effete homosexuals, people
who have a handicap or speech impediment etc., all these are favourite figures of
ridicule. Greeks love to laugh at such sorts of people, of every kind.
This also means that Greek humour as a rule is not politically correct, as
generally the Greeks as a people and culture have very little appreciation of
political correctness. Political correctness is a form of Puritanism, after all,
and Puritanism is always an enemy of humour, at least of the boisterous,
aggressive and festive type of humour that appeals to the Greek soul.

On the level of characters and situations, another staple of the Greek

comic tradition are the tribulations and labours of the common man,
comically rendered. The common man is the standard protagonist of Greek
comic popular theatre, as well as its modern offshoots in cinema and television
shows.
The typical comic hero of our tradition (in the Aristophanic plays, in the
Karagiozis, in many sketches of the epitheorisi, in modern films and television
shows) is an average Greek, who lives with little money, in conditions of
poverty, and struggles with everyday problems to make ends meet, find the
money he needs to survive and support his family. The problems of the everyday
18
life of the common man, in difficult conditions, his struggle with the difficulties
of reality, his toils to make a living, these are rendered in a humorous manner and
are a central theme in comic fiction.
Note that, unlike the figures of authority and the pretentious, the common
man, our comic hero, is not a butt of ridicule. The audience recognize
themselves in his person, sympathize with his plight and his difficulties,
because they are facing themselves similar problems in their everyday life.
Comically presenting the common man’s tribulations is a means to offer relief to
the members of the audience, to laugh with the problems they face in their own
existence, to make fun of their own difficulties of life, and thus take them less
seriously and tolerate better the toils of their life.

Another important aspect of Greek humour is the carnival spirit (to use
Bakhtin’s term), the element of celebration and joyous exaltation. As already
said, Greek humour is aggressive and competitive, but this does not exclude the
element of celebration and enthusiasm. Greek humour and laughter always take
place in a celebratory context, while the people are in an exalted mood, in a
boisterous atmosphere; Greek laughter is a public festival, an occasion of
festivity and revel.
This is the connection with the age-old revels, the komoi, the revels and
drunken celebrations in the streets of the village, from which the genre of
comedy sprung. The Greek humour is determined by the Dionysian force. In
Nietzchean terms, Greek humour and laughter belongs to the Dionysian element,
the area of enthusiasm and celebration, reveling and boisterous merriment.
The opposite, counterbalancing element, in Nietzche’s theory, is the
Apollonian, the force of order, balance, rationality, and intellectual activity. This
element has never been especially prominent in Greek humour. In the area of the
comic, the Apollonian element is expressed by means of what we would call
subtle and sophisticated humour: sophisticated wordplay, elaborate linguistic
jokes, paradoxes and euphuistic wit in the manner of Oscar Wilde, subtle irony
and understatement, as in some forms of British jokes. These were never a
favourite with the Greeks.
Greek humour is not particularly subtle. There is no developed tendency
for sophisticated wordplays or fine irony and paradox, we never had writers like
Joyce or Oscar Wilde in our tradition. The Greek humour is usually broad, the
kind of humour and jokes we would find in a popular celebration, appealing
more to the simplest forces of the human soul than to the developed intellect.

For this reason, Greek humour regularly employs all the resources of
broad, popular, even low-brow humour. It is often saucy, ribald, bawdy, it
includes plenty of obscenity, dirty jokes, foul language, insults, sexual and
scatological jests. These were staple ingredients of the humour of Old Comedy,
of Aristophanes and the other great comic writers of the 5th century, an
inheritance from the age-old fertility rituals in which the genre of comedy had its
ultimate origins.
In rituals of Greek folk religion, such elements were present from very
ancient times. In the Dionysian festivals of ancient Athens, such as the Lenaia
and the Anthesteria, groups of people were going about in the streets of the city
19
or the villages on carriages, and were throwing insults and obscene jests to the
passers-by. A similar kind of ritual was included in the revered Eleusinian
Mysteries, one of the most popular form of Mystery cult in the ancient world,
which attracted faithful and initiates from the entire Greek-speaking world and
beyond, from the early archaic age to the end of antiquity. During the large
procession of the faithful from Athens to Eleusis, in the yearly celebration of the
Mysteries in the summer, as the faithful passed over the bridge of the river
Kephisos, to enter into Eleusinian territory, the final part of the procession, some
persons were awaiting them on the bridge and started throwing insults and
obscenities at them.
These elements have a profound ritual and magical significance. They
are apotropaic and avert the evil eye. Also, they function in a celebratory and
liberating manner, allow people to enjoy a ribald kind of jesting and speech
which is strictly forbidden by decency in all the other social occasions of life.
Thus, they afford relief from the pressures of everyday life; they give vent and
liberate the repressed desires of the soul in a special context, which does not
endanger social harmony and the decency of everyday relations.
The same type of obscenity, comic and celebratory, has been retained in
Modern Greek folk rituals, e.g. in the various forms of carnival celebrations all
around the Greek countryside. In many Greek villages, there are celebrations for
the carnival, in which participants, apart from disguising themselves (as in
western carnivals), also indulge in ribald, sexual or scatological humour.
Again, the obscene jokes and the concomitant laughter is a liberating force,
which alleviates the pressures of normal social existence and the repressed
desires of the soul.
From these rituals, which are very much rooted in Greek culture from
ancient times till today and very dear to the soul of our people, the ribald and
obscene humour passes generally into the tradition of Greek comic production
and art. All major forms of Greek comedy and humorous art contain plenty of
such humour, Aristophanes, the epitheorisi, even the present-day television
shows; they revel in obscenity, sexual jokes, low-brow and ribald jests.
The same type of humour also dominates in the popular jokes and
anecdotes which circulate among the Greek people orally, from mouth to mouth.
These often include obscene jokes, comic references to scatology or sexual
matters, jokes about genitalia, ribald tales of illicit love affairs, jests about sexual
abnormality or deviance — Greeks always delight in this kind of dirty and ribald
humour; it forms a large part of the popular anecdotes that are orally transmitted.
Even before ladies or children, some Greeks do not hesitate to narrate such
stories. Greeks generally are not particularly inhibited as a population; their
attitude towards obscenity and sexual matters is relaxed, and this is reflected in
their delight in obscene humour. Strict moralism and Puritanism never took roots
in this country.

We have already referred above to the communality and public character

as an important feature of Greek humour and laughter. Two further dimensions
are crucial and much related in this respect. First, visuality, which is very
important for the Greek people. The Greeks love to see the comic, to perceive it
it with their eyes and ears, as a live spectacle in front of them. They want to
20
directly perceive the ridiculous through visual elements conspicuous before their
eyes.
This accounts for the huge popularity of visual art forms and media,
their predominance and central importance with regard to the Greek comic
tradition. Traditionally, from age-old times, it was theatre that provided the main
and most important venue for Greek humour and comic art. Theatre is a form of
live performance, given before the eyes of gathered spectators, entirely visual
and appealing to the senses. It persists until today in various forms of comic
spectacle.
The more modern media of cinema and television have superseded
theatre up to a point, but they are also distinguished by a very great impact of
visuality. Again the comic is presented before the eyes of the spectators, as a
living spectacle taking place in front of them, directly perceptible by the senses.
The same emphasis on visuality explains the flourishing of comic design and
caricatures in Modern Greece. Greeks love caricatures and humorous comic
strips because they are visual, they can see it with their eyes.

As a result of the emphasis on visuality, the particular types of comedy

which stress the physical are most popular and favourite with the Greek
audiences. Slapstick and physical comedy, with all their artifices and lazzi:
people beating each other or rapidly hunting each other, vigorous comic
movements, splashes into water, comic falls and slips. Also the strange
movement of deviant categories of people: the way a drunken person moves
around dizzily, the effeminate movements of an effete. In general, every kind of
body movement and bodily act which generates comic effect and the
ridiculous, is likely to appeal largely to the Greek audience.
By contrast, purely verbal humour, not supported by the physical aspect,
is rather underdeveloped. As already said above, the subtle humour of
elaborate wordplays and purely linguistic jests, of the Wildean or Joycean or
Lewis Carroll kind, were never deeply rooted in the Greek tradition. For this
reason, there was never in this country a developed tradition of literary
humour, comic writing destined solely for reading; there is no Greek
equivalent of Rabelais or the Pickwick Papers, no Greek tradition of comic novel
or short story. Even in verbal jokes, puns, obscenities, comic discourse, the
Greeks prefer to see these jokes delivered by a performer on stage or in the
screen. They want the comic performer live before them, in theatre, cinema or
television, in order to appreciate and enjoy even his verbal jokes. Purely verbal
humour for reading, without support of bodily performance or visible elements,
does not appeal to the Greeks.

Next to visuality, orality is also important; it is a concomitant of the

Greek flair for public dimension and communality of humour. Greeks love to
hear the jokes, not just read them. And they also love to tell them. The
anecdote, the orally transmitted comic brief story, is a very common folk genre;
it circulates from mouth to mouth widely in the Greek population. Every Greek
loves to hear and retell anecdotes, and many also invent anecdotes and spread
them, putting them in circulation. The oral anecdote is a living form of comic

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tradition in Greece, a communal and popular genre practiced by every Greek, of
every age and social group.

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