Were Ancient People Funny? (Or Just Weird?) | Tales From the Bottle

How far has comedy come since the ancient days of early civilisation? You’d be surprised!

“Although the Philogelos is the oldest surviving joke book, there are known to be prior joke books that have since become lost. Athenaeus wrote in the Deipnosophistae that Philip II of Macedon paid for a social club in Athens to write down its members’ jokes for him, and joke books are mentioned by characters in Persa and Stichus, two comedies by the 2nd century BC Roman playwright Plautus.
Authorship of the Philogelos is traditionally attributed to two men, Hierocles and Philagrius (also spelled Hierokles and Philagros), who are otherwise unattested and have no known works. It has been posited that the Hierocles mentioned is Neoplatonist philosopher Hierocles of Alexandria, but there is no evidence to connect the two beyond similarity of name. If Hierocles and Philagrius were indeed the creators of the book, it is more likely that they compiled and edited pre-existing jokes, rather than writing all the jokes themselves.
The Suda, a 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia, attributes authorship to a 5th century BC comic playwright named Philistion of Nicaea, who was allegedly a contemporary of Socrates and a blood relative of Philemon.
The exact time of publication is unknown. According to William Berg, who published an English translation of it in 2008, the language used indicates that it may have been written in the fourth century AD. Joke #62 mentions the Secular Games held by Philip the Arab marking the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of Rome, implying that the jokes were not compiled until after the year 248 AD.”

More on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philogelos

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