''Philogelos'' ( grc, Φιλόγελως, "Love of Laughter") is the oldest existing collection of

joke A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with ...

s. The collection is written in

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

, and the language used indicates that it may have been written in the fourth century AD, according to William Berg, an American classics professor. It is attributed to Hierocles and Philagrius, about whom little is known. Because the celebration of a thousand years of Rome is mentioned in joke 62, the collection perhaps dates from after that event in 248 AD. Although it is the oldest existing collection of jokes, it is known that it was not the oldest collection, because

Athenaeus Athenaeus of Naucratis (; grc, Ἀθήναιος ὁ Nαυκρατίτης or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; la, Athenaeus Naucratita) was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of th ...

wrote that

Philip II of Macedon Philip II of Macedon ( grc-gre, Φίλιππος ; 382 – 21 October 336 BC) was the king ('' basileus'') of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia from 359 BC until his death in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty, founders of the ...

paid for a social club in

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

to write down its members' jokes, and at the beginning of the second century BC,

Plautus Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the gen ...

twice has a character mentioning books of jokes. The collection contains 265 jokes categorised into subjects such as teachers and scholars, and eggheads and fools.

Modern day

In 2008, British TV personality and comedian

Jim Bowen James Brown Whittaker (born Peter Williams; 20 August 1937 – 14 March 2018), known professionally as Jim Bowen, was an English stand-up comedian, actor and television personality. He was the long-time host of the ITV game show ''Bullseye'', ...

tested the material on a modern audience. One of the jokes in ''Philogelos ''has been described as "an ancestor of Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot comedy sketch." Comedian

Jimmy Carr James Anthony Patrick Carr (born 15 September 1972) is a British-Irish comedian, presenter, writer, and actor. He is known for his deadpan delivery of controversial one-liners and distinctive laugh, for which he has been both praised and criti ...

has said that some of the jokes are "strikingly similar" to modern ones. The National Museum of Language showcases a virtual exhibit, ‘‘Philogelos: The First Joke Book,” of cartoons created from translations of the Philogelos collection.

References

External links

Φιλόγελως
Bibliotheca Augustana,

E-text e-text (from "''electronics, electronic text''"; sometimes written as etext) is a general term for any Electronic document, document that is read in digital data, digital form, and especially a document that is mainly text. For example, a compute ...

(Greek)
45 Jokes from The Laughter Lover
translated by Professor William Berg * ttp://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2018/05/18/the-worlds-oldest-surviving-joke-book/ The World's Oldest Surviving Joke Book with discussion of its authorship, context, style, and purpose {{Authority control Ancient Greek works Humour 4th-century books

Modern day

See also

References

Further reading

External links