Dear Classical Wisdom Reader,

The conversation started off harmlessly enough. In fact, it was more of a joke than anything else...

But eventually, it started to get very serious indeed. 

Which, of course, is ironic when talking about humor. 

But more on that in a second.

You see, I thought that perhaps I should take a quick break from the serious topics I’ve been addressing of late. These days it seems the world is complicated enough...sometimes it’s worth contemplating - nay enjoying - the lighter things in life. 

What’s that thing one of those old guys always talked about? Moderation is the key to happiness...? 

So today we’ll take look at the ancient art of comedy. 

The idea came to me while I was knee deep in discourse on the aforementioned topic. The question, as you may have already gathered from today’s subject line, was if the ‘fairer sex’ were, in general, capable of producing the laughs. 

Depending on who you are, you might have very different, immediate reactions. 

Perhaps you are conjuring up the late Christopher Hitchens’ controversial column titled (wait for it) “Why Women Aren’t Funny”.

His theory, if one may call it that, was that men had to evolve to be funny in order to seduce women, who only had to be good looking. 

Obviously we classicists are laughing. Did men use comedy to impress women??? Hmm... I suspect not. 

It seems to me that the only women men were working hard to make laugh back in the ancient days were hetairai (a sort of Ancient Geisha, who were expected to be witty as well as sexually available). 

But obviously their amusement had nothing to do with evolution. 

No, it seems to me that both men and women ‘evolved’ to be funny for their own genders, rather than each other. Let’s call it ‘social survival’. 

Imagine the following scenario, common throughout high schools around the globe: The girls are gathered around a table somewhere, giggling away. Obviously they find each other’s remarks hilarious. 

The boys, meanwhile, are snapping jockstraps or punching each other to great amusement and delight. 

At no point do either of them find each other funny. 

But then again, comedy does appear to be one of those things that is hard to ‘translate’, whether between genders, languages, cultures or, indeed time. 

Now imagine when all the above is combined! 

This brings me to this week’s mailbag question… indeed it was one I asked our Classical Wisdom Members this week with the most recent E-book on Roman Comedy (including Plautus and Terence). Essentially, when considering the translating and historical contexts that have to be done, one has to ask the value of reading ancient comedy in the first place. So I ask you dear reader:

Can the Ancients be Funny?

As always you can write me at [email protected] or reply to this email.

Now, onto a short mailbag edition on the conscience. A difficult topic to investigate to be sure, and a multi-faceted question on top of that, we asked:

Your fellow Classics lovers’ responses below.

All the best,Anya Leonard

Founder and Director

Classical Wisdom

—> Make sure you are registered for our upcoming event, this Wednesday at noon EST. We’ll discuss WHY and HOW we can preserve ancient languages… including the amazing re-discovery of tactics and methods that can make ancient Greek and Latin so much easier to learn.

Make to register in advance to receive the recording. You can do so here:

Monday Mailbag

On Conscience: 

-

-