SOME ANCIENT JOKES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 641, 7 February 1914, Page 7

SOME ANCIENT JOKES.

Very likely the first jocular utterance had origin in the form of criticism on the personal appearance, dress, manners, or customs of others. A sort of corrective censure, one might say, on those who dared to depart from the accepted rules of the community. The works of the ancient Greek and Roman authors abound in jests. As we read them the antiquity of many of our present-day jokes is brought to light.. For instance, this qu'ip from ancient Greece, how appropriate and full of meaning.to all ages:— Archelaus. asked by a talkative barber how he would like to be shaved, replied—"'ln silence." Two youths, rivals for the favours of Gnathene, fell to settling their differences with a fight. To the one getting the worst of the affair Gnathene cheeringly cried—"Courage, it's not a matter of who is the strongest, but of who is the richest." Anacharsis, the Scythian philosopher, speaking of the laws of Solon, said "They were like the web of a spider, very good for holding the weak, but allowing the strong to escape." A petty thief was being led to prison. Diogenes said to him —"Fool, why didn't you rob on a grand scale; then it would be you who would be sending others to prison." Diogenes, when asked what was the most suitable hour for dining, said — "If you are rich, when you please ; if you are poor, when you can." This same cynical philosopher, in entering a bath in which the water was extremely foul, remarked that he did not see why the people who bathed there shouldn't wash themselves first. Dionysius the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse, wrote poems and tragedies. Once he sentenced Philoxene to hard labour in the quarries for daring to criticise a poetical composition from the Royal hand. Dionysius alter a time sent for Philoxene a nd had read to him the second time this poem. To the first few lines Philoxene listened with patience, but the reading had not gone much further before he rose and dashed for the door. When asked where he was going, he exclaimed—"Back to the quarries, your Majesty." In ! choosing a husband for his daughter the Spartan EuryMades chose one of a good reputation rather than another who was very rich, as he preferred a man without a fortune to a fortune without a man. Simonides, the lyric poet, said that he had often repented of having spoken, but never repented of having held his tongue. Alcibiades cut off the tail of a fi Qe dog which he had accompanying him on a" his promenades. Some friends told him that all Athens was joking about the absurdity of the spectacle of a magnificent dog minus a tail. "That is exactly what I wish," said Alcibiades. "I want the people to so concern themselves about the dog that they will have no time to conjure up slanderous things to say about me." At a call to arms in Sparta, Androclides, who was lame, offered himself as a recruit. When refused on account of his crippled legs, he exclaimed—"l thought you were looking for men to fight, not to run a way !" Cicero, hear'ing the wife of a Roman patrician say that she was but thirty years eld, said —"No doubt 'tis true, for it is twenty years now that I hav.e heard you say it." As to-day, in the days gone by the doctors were made the target of the jester's fling. Pausanias, the Spartan General, when asked by a physician how it was that he was never ill, exultingly answered, "Because I never consult you." At another time Pausanias said that the best physic'ian was the one who despatched his patients with the least possible suffering. Pausanias strongly disapproving ol a certain physician and his methods, and berating him in no mild terms, was asked by a friend how, as he had never consulted that particulax doctor, could he be so sure of his statements. Pausanias answered "Well, had I consulted him would J be living to-day ?"—New Yor "Times."