ANCIENT COMEDY

AND SATIRE
Ancient Humor
• Philogelos = The
Lover of laughter
– 5th AD
– “Hierocles” and
“Pelagrius”
– Hierocles 5th century
philosopher flogged
for paganism
 Ancient Jokes
• Barber shop
– Barber: “How should I cut your hair?”
– Customer: “In silence”
 Egghead series
• There were two twin brother, one of whom
died. On bumping into the survivor, the
egghead asked:
– “Was it you who died, or was it your brother?”

• A man complained to an egghead…

– “That slave you sold me has died,”.
– “Well, I swear by all the gods, he never did
anything like that when I owned him.”
 One of the world's
greatest scientists…
• took a train. When the conductor came,
he was unable to find his ticket. The
conductor said, "Take it easy. You'll find
it.” When the conductor returned, the
professor still couldn't find the ticket. The
conductor, recognizing the famous
scientist, said, "I'm sure you bought a
ticket. Forget about it.""You're very kind,"
the professor said, "but I must find it,
otherwise I won't know where to get off."
 Another contemporary
egghead joke
• A very absent-minded professor entered
a crowded bus, with no available seats.
Suddenly a little girl raised from her
seat and offered it to the professor. He
was astonished and said to her:
• - You are a very good girl, what's your
name?
• - My name is Eve, daddy ...
 Fool
• A fool, who was involved in a trial heard
that the fairest judges are in Hades.
• So he hanged himself.
 Misogynist
• A misogynist stood in the market and
advertised that his wife was on sale—
without tax.
• “How come?” he was asked.
• “This way I can be sure that they will
confiscate her.“
 Contemporary
• A woman told her friend:
• For eighteen years my husband and I
were the happiest people in the world!
• Then we met.
 Horny women 1
• A man with two horny women on his
hands said to his slaves: “Give one of
them some wine and screw the other”
• The women replied in unison: “I am not
thirsty.”
 Horny women 2
• A man to his young wife:
• “What shall we do, eat or make love?”
• “Whichever you like; there is no bread”
 American, 1950-ies
• An impecunious couple married for love. One
day there is nothing for breakfast in the
morning, so they make love on the kitchen
table; they do the same when the husband
comes home for lunch. In the evening, the
famished husband finds his wife on the
kitchen floor, her feet up on the oven door.
“What are you doing?” he asks. “Just
warming up your supper, darling.”
 The wag
• “I had your wife for nothing,” someone
boasted to a wag
• “More fool you; I have to have the ugly
bitch; you don’t.”
 HUMO(U)R
• Ca. 100 theories used in
– Biology
– Psychology
– Cognitive science
– Anthropology
– Linguistics
– Literary Criticism
 TYPES OF THEORIES
• Superiority (Plato & Aristotle)

• Relief (Freud)

• Incongruity (Bergson)
 Superiority
• Humor depends on the feeling of
superiority regarding the object of the
joke.

• We laugh at someone who slipped on a

banana peel because we did not slip
and feel good about it.
 Example of a joke based on
superiority
• From LaughLabco.uk
• A woman goes into a cafe with a duck.
She puts the duck on a stool and sits
next to it. The waiter comes over and
says: Hey! That's the ugliest pig that I
have ever seen.The woman says: It’s a
duck, not a pig. And the Waiter says: I
was talking to the duck.
 Plato
• Amusement depends on a "mixture of
pleasure [the subject’s] and pain [the
object’s]”
• The object needs to be weak and
ignorant to provoke these feelings
 Aristotle
• The audience of a comedy looks down
upon its characters as “inferior" to them.
• The ridicule is a subcategory the ugly,
something distorted but not quite painful
(Poetics, sections 3 and 7).
• Wit = insolence, abuse
 Cicero
• Humor is about saying something
offensive in an inoffensive manner
 Relief
• When we laugh in situations in which
we expected to feel some emotion, but
—due to some semantic or cognitive
twist—we are spared that emotion.
 Freud
• Three different sources of laughter
– Joking
• the energy that would have been used to repress sexual
and hostile feelings is saved and can be released in
laughter
– The comic
• cognitive energy instead of being used to solve an
intellectual challenge is left over and can be released
– Humor
• what might have been an emotion provoking situation
turns out to be something we should treat non-seriously
 A Freudian joke
• A royal VIP making a tour of the
provinces notices a peasant in the
crowd who bears an uncanny
resemblance to his own exalted person.
He calls him and asks: “My good man,
was your mother at one time in service
at the Palace?”
• “No, your Highness, but my father was.”
 Incongruence
• Humor is born out of mismatch
(incongruity) between two or more
components
• We laugh when we are surprised to find
things “out of place”
 Examples
• Two fish in a tank. One turns to the
other and says: Do you know how to
drive this? (from Laugh Lab)
 Aristotle and Cicero
• We laugh when we expect something,
but something else happens
 Bergson
• The source of humor is the "mechanical
encrusted upon the living"

• “The comic does not exist outside of

what is strictly human.”
 A contemporary modification
• Susan Purdie, 1993
• We all are born to live in a “symbolic
order” (Jacques Lacan)
• We laugh when this order is challenged
• Since this order depends on society,
humor changes in time
 But …
• Philogelos: “The fool broke wind when
sharing his bed with a deaf man; when
the latter complained, the fool was quite
surprised: Come on, how could you
hear it? You are supposed to be deaf!”
• Contemporary (elementary school):
“Why do farts smell?” “So that deaf
people can enjoy them.”
 http://laughlab.co.uk/
• RATED THE FUNNIEST JOKE:
• Two hunters are out in the woods when one of
them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing
and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips
out his phone and calls the emergency services.
He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?".
The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First,
let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence,
then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy
says "OK, now what?"
 Why did the chicken cross the road?

• BILL GATES: I have just released

eChicken2008, which will not only cross
roads, but will lay eggs, file your
important documents, and balance your
check book. internet Explorer is an
integral part of the Chicken...
• BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the
road with THAT chicken! What is your
definition of chicken?
 Why did the chicken cross the road?

• ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain. Alone.

• COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one? Where did
that sucker go?
• DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he
cross it with a toad?Yes, the chicken crossed the
road,But why it crossed I've not been told.
• GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the
chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if
the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The
chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no
middle ground here.
 Goals
• Study ancient Greece and Rome through
ritual and literary manifestations of humor
– Greek ritual
– Greek Old comedy
– Roman Ritual
– Roman comedy
– Roman Satire
– Reception of ancient comedy