"Old as the days of Hierokles!" is the exclamation of the "classical"
reader on hearing a well-worn jest; while, on the like occasion, that of
the "general" reader--a comprehensive term, which, doubtless, signifies
one who knows "small Latin and less Greek"--is, that it is "a Joe
Miller;" both implying that the critic is too deeply versed in
_joke-ology_ to be imposed upon, to have an old jest palmed on him
as new, or as one made by a living wit. That the so-called jests of
Hierokles are _old_ there can be no doubt whatever; that they were
collected by the Alexandrian sage of that name is more than doubtful;
while it is certain that several of them are much older than the time in
which he flourished, namely, the fifth century: it is very possible that
some may date even as far back as the days of the ancient Egyptians! It
is perhaps hardly necessary to say that honest Joseph Miller, the
comedian, was not the compiler of the celebrated jest-book with which
his name is associated; that it was, in fact, simply a bookseller's
trick to entitle a heterogeneous collection of jokes, "quips, and
cranks, and quiddities," _Joe Millers Jests; or, The Wit's Vade
Mecum_. And when one speaks of a jest as being "a Joe Miller," he
should only mean that it is "familiar as household words," not that it
is of contemptible antiquity, albeit many of the jokes in "Joe Miller"
are, at least, "as old as Hierokles," such, for instance, as that of the
man who trained his horse to live on a straw _per diem_, when it
suddenly died, or that of him who had a house to sell and carried about
a brick as a specimen of it.

The collection of facetiæ ascribed to Hierokles, by whomsoever it was
made, is composed of very short anecdotes of the sayings and doings of
pedants, who are represented as noodles, or simpletons. In their
existing form they may not perhaps be of much earlier date than the
ninth century. They seem to have come into the popular facetiæ of Europe