SOME JOKES DATE A LONG WAY BACK.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 24 December 1907, Page 9

SOME JOKES DATE A LONG WAY BACK.

We moderns find it hard to improve on the ancients, except in such insignificant conveniences as speed in travelling. Even our humour is in large part no more than the retailored mummies of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian humour —which means, of course, that those ancients merely resurrected the jokes of their own dim ancestors. Humour comes before speech. The Greeks had a pretty wit. And how modern the old Greek jokes do sound! Here is a brief and bright saying of King Archelaus, when a talkative barber trimming his beard, asked him,. ‘How shall I cut it?” “In silence,” replied the king. Plutarch tells the following stories, both good in their way, of Philip of Macedon. In passing sentence on two rogues, he ordered one to leave Macedonia, with all speed, and the other to try tocatch him. No less astute was his query as toft strong position he wished to occupy which was reported by the scouts to be almost impregnable. “Is there not,” he asked, “even a pathway to it wide enough for an ass. laden with gold?” Phillip, too, according to Plutarch, is entitled to the fatherhood of an adage which retains its ancient fame about “calling a spade a spade.” Another sample of a witty saying from Plutarch’s mint is one attributed to Themistocles, that his son was the strongest man in Greece. “For,” said he, “the Athenians rule the Hellenes, I rule the Athenians, your mother rules me, and you rule your mother.” And again, there is the repartee of a Laconian to a man of Sparta whotwitted him with being unable to stand as long as himself on one leg. “No!” replied the other, “but my goose can.” An anecdote of Strabo gives a vivid picture of the clashing of a harper’s performances with the sounding of a bell for opening of the fish market. All the audience vanished at once save a little deaf man. The harper expressed himself unutterably flattered at his having resisted the importunity of the bell “What!” cried the deaf man, “has. the fish bell rung? Then I’m off, too. Good-by!”