best there is an accumulation of wit, a second and a third point
coming suddenly on the top of the first.[9]

Perhaps the saying, so often repeated, that ancient humour was simpler
than modern, rests on a more sufficient basis than most similar
generalisations; and indeed there is no single criterion of the
difference between one age and another more easy and certain of
application, where the materials for applying it exist, than to
compare the things that seem amusing to them. A certain foundation of
humour seems to be the common inheritance of mankind, but on it
different periods build differently. The structure of a Greek joke is
generally very simple; more obvious and less highly elliptical in
thought than the modern type, but, on the other hand, considerably
more subtle than the wit of the middle ages. There was a store of
traditional jests on the learned professions, law, astrology, medicine
--the last especially; and the schools of rhetoric and philosophy
were, from their first beginning, the subject of much pleasantry. Any
popular reputation, in painting, music, literature, gave material for
facetious attack; and so did any bodily defect, even those, it must be
added, which we think of now as exciting pity or as to be passed over
in silence.[10] Many of these jokes, which even then may have been of
immemorial antiquity, are still current. The serpent that bit a
Cappadocian and died of it, the fashionable lady whose hair is all her
own, and paid for,[11] are instances of this simple form of humour
that has no beginning nor end. Some Greek jests have an Irish
inconsequence, some the grave and logical monstrosity of American
humour.

Naive, crude, often vulgar; such is the general impression produced by
the mass of these lighter epigrams. The bulk of them are of late date;