A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Agora. Ancient Greek and Roman 
Humour. By R. DREW GRIFFITH and ROBERT B. MARKS. Kingston, ON: Legacy Books 
Press, 2007. Pp. ii + 234. Paper, $32.95. ISBN 978–0–9784652–0–9.

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A breezy overview of the subject, covering most of the necessary ground 
with verve, but marred by omissions and idiosyncrasies, this book is better 
on Greek than Roman humor.
 
There are three sections, one on theories of humor, laughter and society; 
the largest on character types; and one on genres. Chapters proceed by 
topics (e.g., the quack, the sucker, the ironist) and consist of ample 
excerpts from ancient authors, translated into contemporary colloquial 
English, with helpful connecting discussions. Griffith and Marks examine 
more than just the expected comic authors, such as Aristophanes, by 
offering generous helpings of others such as Homer, Catullus and Petronius. 
They argue that ancient comedy is character-driven: “In modern humour, 
comedy lies in the situation. In ancient humour, it lay in the individual” 
(p. 65). While this may serve as a starting point, it is certainly 
overschematic and cannot be accepted without modifications. The emphasis on 
character does have the virtue of producing a book that goes beyond plot 
summary, and it occasionally yields good insights, as for example the 
discussion of Socrates as both quack and ironist (pp. 107–14).

Some omissions are baffling. The replacement of “forum” with “agora” in the 
title betrays the book’s tendency to slight Roman humor. Although the title 
puns on the Broadway knockoff of Roman New Comedy, only two passages from 
Plautus are cited and discussed, and Terence is entirely absent. A book 
subtitled “Ancient Greek and Roman Humour” that devotes a dozen pages to 
Mesopotamian and Hebrew humor and an entire chapter to Germanic saga should 
offer more than two pages on the Palliata; someone reading this book would 
have no idea of the influence of Roman New Comedy from Shakespeare to 
sitcoms. While Griffith and Marks maintain that Greek and Roman comedy is 
character-driven and invoke Theophrastus for four citations, they avoid 
engagement with Plautus and Terence, the playwrights who gave western 
comedy its most influential instantiations of “stock characters.” Plautus 
is quoted only to illustrate specimens of the boaster and parasite (Miles 
Gloriosus) and the gluttonous cannibal (Mostellaria). Nowhere will a reader 
find a discussion of the clever slave, and there is no mention of his 
victims in the section on suckers. Roman verse satire, meanwhile, is 
ignored. Despite many pages devoted to Petronius, and even a few to 
Apocolocyntosis, there is not a single word on the satires of Juvenal or 
Horace. The claim (p. 185) that “[w]hile Greek poetry was composed orally 
and recited in public for aural consumption, Roman literature (like our 
own) was a literate product, committed to paper and intended for 
consumption by a reading audience” is debatable, and the latter half is 
only tenable if one chooses to ignore comedy and satire, the Romans’ most 
humorous genres. Likewise, there are some 17 pages of illustrations and 
discussions of Egyptian and Greek visual humor, but from the Romans only 
one phallic doorbell from Pompeii, which is presented as if Greek. Readers 
will not see a single graffito or dipinto from Pompeii or Ostia. Too bad, 
for the “Room of the Seven Sages” (Ostia Regio 3, Insula 10: vissire tacite 
Chilon docuit subdolus or ut bene cacaret ventrem palpavit Solon, etc.) 
offers an eloquent example of how Roman bathroom humor could be 
simultaneously lowbrow and a witty spoof of Greek cultural hegemony.

I turn now from omissions to idiosyncrasies. At times the interpretation of 
literary passages as humorous will strike some not as discovery and 
elucidation but as willful imposition, or at least insensitivity to frames 
of genre and culture. For example, the lengthy explication of Genesis 
2:4b–10 and 2:15–3:24—Eden, Adam and Eve, the Serpent—as “amusing” has 
merit for showing how a modern comic might recast the episode as funny; 
think of Bill Cosby’s routine on Noah. But the text as written is not 
amusing. Or consider the assessment of the title character of Prometheus 
Bound as “[t]he most archetypal captive audience … nailed to a rock 
listening to the whining ramblings of Io, the talking cow. Call us 
heartless, but we find this pretty funny” (p. 94). One could wholeheartedly 
agree only if Prometheus Bound were the satyr play in the tetralogy. Again, 
while the Iliad does have its own grim humor, I suspect that comparing the 
steed Xanthus’ fatal prophecy to Achilles with a routine from Mr. Ed and 
Wilbur (p. 159) will appeal only to the sophomoric or the callous. Northrop 
Frye once famously suggested that “[o]ne sometimes gets the impression that 
the audience of Plautus and Terence would have guffawed uproariously all 
through the Passion” (Anatomy of Criticism, 178). Even so, the burden of 
proof is on those who argue that the ancients considered humorous those 
passages whose context and articulation manifestly mark them as serious.

The chatty style suggests presentation in front of a live student or studio 
audience (e.g. p. 171 n. 7: “Woohoo! We’re dealing with sex … we’re dealing 
with sex! Um … er … sorry. We get carried away sometimes. Breasts.”). 
Sometimes you can almost hear a call for a rim shot (e.g. p. 108 n. 6: 
“Less is sometimes more, a point of view we’ve tried—but failed—to have our 
accountant adopt”). Although presumably aimed for a broader audience than 
classicists, the book offers no table of abbreviations and thus presupposes 
some familiarity with professional collections. What will the general 
reading public, for example, make of the reference to “566 F 149 FGrHist. = 
Athen. 2.37b–c” (p. 43)? The bibliography is reasonably full and includes 
many titles in German (and even one in Portuguese). One important addition 
would be John Morreall’s sourcebook, The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor, 
for while Griffith and Marks give good discussion and sources for the 
so-called “Superiority Theory” and “Relief Theory” of the motivation of 
laughter, they barely mention the important “Incongruity Theory.”

In short, the book is pleasant to read, useful for introducing students or 
general readers to the subject, probably helpful for someone constructing a 
course on ancient humor, but cannot be recommended without the reservations 
discussed above.

Fred Franko
Hollins University


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