[2] Romans sought laughter by attending comic plays (such as those of Plautus) and mimes (such as those of Publilius Syrus).
[3] Cicero believe that humour ought to be based upon "ambiguity, the unexpected, wordplay, understatement, irony, ridicule, silliness, and pratfalls".
[3] Roman jokes also depended on certain stock characters and stereotypes, especially regarding foreigners,[4] as can be seen within Plautus' Poenulus.
[1] One of the oldest Roman jokes, which is based on a fictitious story and survived alive to this time, is told by Macrobius in his Saturnalia:[5] (4th century AD, but the joke itself is probably several centuries older): (The modern version is that an aristocrat, having met his exact double, asks: "Was your mother a housemaid in our palace?"
An example of a joke based on double meaning is recorded in Gellius (2nd century AD):[6] (the pun is in the expression used for in all your honesty - orig.