How to tell a joke with Cicero and Quintilian

Part XX of the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series

[Based on How to Tell a Joke: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Humor, by Cicero, translated by Michael Fontaine. Full book series here.]

I probably don’t need to remind my readers of the accomplishments of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE): public advocate, orator, senator, Consul, savior of the fatherland (pater patriae), philosopher, and occasional poet. But did you know he was also one of the two funniest men of antiquity?

At least, that’s what Macrobius (flourished around 400 CE) says in a literary dialogue entitled Saturnalia:

“The two most eloquent men that antiquity produced—the comedian Plautus and the orator Cicero—were also its two best at telling jokes. … Who doesn’t know that Cicero’s enemies routinely used to call him ‘the stand-up Consul’?” (2.1.10-12)

The stunning phrase “stand-up Consul” is in the original Latin: consularis scurra, and it meant what we mean today: a stand-up comedian!

Macrobius would know, since he had access to a whole collection of Cicero’s jokes, now unfortunately lost, compiled by Cicero’s personal secretary, Marcus Tullius Tiro (died 4 BCE). The latter, by the way, is credited with the invention of one of the earliest systems of shorthand (to keep up with Cicero’s dictations), which was so good as to later be used by monks throughout the Middle Ages.

Tiro’s shorthand system, image from Wikimedia.

Plutarch (46-119 CE), Cicero’s first biographer, agreed with Macrobius’s take on the matter, but added an interesting twist:

“Cicero often got carried away with the ridicule and veered into stand-up comedy.” (Comparison of Cicero and Demosthenes, 1.4)

The problem, according to Plutarch, was that Cicero sometimes enjoyed a good joke too much, and got himself into trouble as a result. People’s sense of humor is notoriously fickle, especially when the humor is at their expense. If we think of humor as a weapon, then we grasp that—like any weapon—it can backfire. And in fact Plutarch goes so far as to count unbridled humor as one factor that eventually led to Cicero’s murder on the order of Mark Antony. Interestingly, Cicero—always the self-aware type—recognized that he at times enjoyed a sick burn a bit too much:

“The hardest thing for quick-witted people to do: to take stock of the people, the circumstances, and to hold back the quips that come to mind even when it would be totally hilarious to say them.” (On the Ideal Orator, 221)

Both Cicero and Quintilian, the second author included in Michael Fontaine’s volume, How to Tell a Joke: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Humor, weren’t interested in humor per se, but in its uses as a political and rhetorical tool. Plutarch, again, makes the point explicitly:

“Cicero would ignore protocol at trials and kid around, using irony to laugh away serious arguments. The point was to win.” (Comparison of Cicero and Demosthenes, 1.4)

Cicero’s aim was to win the crowd (conciliare in Latin), and he knew that humor can be very  effective at doing so. The Roman poet Horace agreed:

“Ridiculum acri fortius et melius magnas plerùmque secat res.” (‘A joke usually cuts through matters of importance more efficiently and effectively than severity,’ Satires, 1.10.14-15)

Cicero’s On the Ideal Orator includes the most extensive treatment of humor coming down to us from antiquity. As Fontaine reminds us, Cicero wrote the book in 55 BCE, eight years after his Consulship and twelve years before he was killed. Interestingly, it is in the form of a dialogue featuring three characters named Julius Caesar, Crassus, and Mark Antony, none of whom are the famous contemporaries (and political antagonists) of Cicero. Rather, the three individuals after whom the characters are fashioned lived more than a century earlier and were, respectively, a famous wit, a great orator, and a Consul. (Yes, Roman names can definitely be confusing!)

As for Quintilian, he was a contemporary of Plutarch, and so lived a century or so after Cicero. His book, The Education of the Orator, built on Cicero’s contribution and became the last word on the subject of humor in Europe for 1,400 years, until the Renaissance. I guess the Dark Ages weren’t that funny.

Quintilian’s statue in Calahorra, Spain. Image from Wikimedia.

The following are some highlights from How to Tell a Joke, with accompanying brief commentaries:

[Antony] “Humor and joking, though, is fun and often wicked effective. Every other aspect [of public speaking] might be teachable by rules, but humor is obviously something you’re born with and rules can’t do anything for it.”

[Caesar] “The thing is, jokes actually come in two forms. The first kind permeate an entire speech, while the other come fast and razor-sharp. The ancients called the first kind ‘shtick’ and the second ‘a sick burn.’ … That said, Antony, you’re right. I’ve often seen humor accomplish a great deal at trial.” (Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, 2.216-219)

This exchange raises the perennial issue of whether humor can be taught or is an innate gift that few people have and most of us don’t. I think the reasonable answer lies somewhere in the middle. First of all, humor is not all or nothing: it comes in degrees. Some people couldn’t be funny if their life depended on it; others are such naturals that their life would be wasted if they were not professional comedians. Most of us are somewhere along that continuum.

Second, as in the case of other skills—from music to athletics—some human beings are naturally particularly good at them, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t improve. It was never in the cards for me to compete at the Olympics or perform at Carnegie Hall. But my soccer and sax playing both improved with practice and exposure to good teachers. I don’t see why humor would be any different.

[Antony] “What we’re actually interested in, though, is how to use [jokes] when we do need them, as for example against an opponent, and especially how to trigger a stupid, eager, lightweight witness when the audience looks receptive to him. In general, our comebacks are more impressive than our unprovoked cut-downs, for two reasons: (1) the quickness of a person’s mind appears greater in a response, and (2) comebacks are indicative of good manners, since they suggest we never would’ve said anything if we hadn’t been attacked.” (On the Ideal Orator, 2.229-230)

Antony is bringing up a number of interesting points here. To begin with, humor can shift the audience’s favor away from our opponent if we manage to expose him for the not-so-bright fellow he actually is, undermining his pretentiousness and exposing his poor intellect.

Moreover, the point about comebacks being more effective than unprovoked cut-downs is very clever, and Antony is right on both counts: a comeback clearly shows that we are quick witted, which is always appreciated, while at the same time implying that we are not nasty. After all, we had to defend ourselves against our opponent, we didn’t go on the attack first!

[Caesar] “How far an orator ought to take the laughs, though, is something to scrutinize with extreme care. … People don’t laugh at making fun of obvious and criminal evil or, again, at obvious misery. People want tough vengeance on crooks, not jokes, and they don’t like punching down on those less fortunate (unless, of course, those people are virtue-signaling.).” (On the Ideal Orator, 2.237)

Humor is an effective weapon, but like all weapons it needs to be deployed when the circumstances make it the preferable choice, and one needs to refrain from using it under circumstances in which it may backfire. It’s a matter of wise judgment, just like on a battlefield.

Note the references to punching up rather than down, to the fact that some situations are inherently not humorous, and the dig to what even then was virtue-signaling, a by now omnipresent phenomenon on social media.

“Yet another skill [that orators should cultivate] is getting the jury to laugh. Doing that breaks up their upset emotions, takes their mind off the facts, and sometimes even snaps them out of it and gives them a fresh start when they’re tired or bored. … Lots of people think that Demosthenes had no ability to do it and Cicero none to resist it.” (Quintilian, The Education of the Orator, 6.3.1-2)

We now shift to Quintilian, writing a century after Cicero and explicitly building on him. Again, the point is well taken: a properly timed joke can snap the audience away from whatever mindset they got themselves into and back where we want them to be. And humor, if carefully deployed, can counter upsetting emotive states in the audience that may be working against us.

The final observation, that the famous Greek orator Demosthenes was incapable of humor while Cicero couldn’t resist it, is not only a faithful description of the contrast between the two men, but invokes the very same comparison between the Athenian and the Roman rhetors that Plutarch (a contemporary of Quintilian) had chosen in his Parallel Lives. Indeed, even Cicero consciously compared himself to Demosthenes: his famous Philippics, the speeches he delivered against Mark Antony (and which eventually got him killed) where so-named after a parallel set of speeches delivered by the Athenian against Philip II of Macedon several centuries earlier.

(Unlike Mark Antony, Philip did not go after Demosthenes for his speeches, and neither did his son Alexander the Great. However, one of Alexander’s successors, Antipater, did, but Demosthenes managed to escape his clutches and commit suicide by poison instead.)

Bust of Demosthenes at the Louvre, Paris. Image from Wikimedia.

“The orator must have absolutely no truck with the exaggerated facial expressions and gestures that street performers get their laughs with. The sneering of stand-up comedians is completely alien to his persona. Obscenity, too, should be absent not only from his language but even from his meaning. … Just as I do want the orator to speak urbanely, I also don’t want him to look like he’s trying too hard. … No one will put up with a prosecutor cracking jokes in the case of a heinous crime or with a defense attorney in a heartbreaking one. … We also must not let a quip we make appear flippant, arrogant, inappropriate, rehearsed, or cooked up in advance, because, as I said earlier, a joke at the expense of those less fortunate is cruel. Moreover, some people command such authority and respect that any flippancy toward them will only harm the speaker. … Generalizations are another bad idea, where you attack whole groups based on ethnic identity, class, status, or activities the masses enjoy. A gentleman will say what he will contingent on maintaining his dignity and self-respect. A laugh is overpriced if it comes at the cost of integrity.” (The Education of the Orator, 6.3.29-35)

Wow, so much good advice for the humor-prone public speaker! The orator is not a clown, so the humor has to be appropriate, well delivered, avoiding certain targets, and most of all, never ever come at the expense of one’s integrity. The latter, unfortunately, seems to be a commodity in very scarce supply among modern politicians. But that’s a whole different, and much less funny, discussion. Better leave it for another time.

[Next in this series: How to Be a Farmer, by various authors. Previous installments: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX.]