We may suppose that the humour of Cicero was somewhat hereditary, for he records a saying of his grandfather that “the men of our time are like Syrian slaves; the more Greek they know, the greater knaves they are!” It is fortunate the grandson inherited the old man’s wit without his plebeian prejudices, and became as celebrated for his culture as for his readiness.  In his work entitled “The Orator,” he commends humour as a means of gaining influence, and a vehicle for moral instruction.  “Orators,” he says, “joke with an object, not to appear jesters, but to obtain some advantage.”  But we may feel sure he did not keep this dry and profitable end always in view, for he wrote a jest-book, and was nick-named by his enemies “Scurra Consularis,"[21] the consular buffoon.

A man can scarcely have a talent for humour without being conscious of its fascination, and being sometimes led away by it—­as Cicero says, “it pleases the listeners”—­but he need not therefore descend to buffoonery.  We should not be inclined to accuse a man of that, who tells us that “a regard to proper times, moderation and forbearance in jesting, and a limitation in the number of jokes, will distinguish the orator from the buffoon;” who says that “indelicacy is a disgrace, not only to the forum, but to any company of well-bred people,” and that neither great vice nor great misery is a subject for ridicule.  From all this we may gather that Cicero was full of graceful and clever jocosity, but did not indulge in what was vapid and objectionable.  Both by precept and practice he approved good verbal humour.  The better class of puns was used in the literature of the time, as we find by St. Paul and others, not in levity, but merely as embellishments.[22]

Cicero replied to Vibius Curius, who was telling a falsehood about his age:  “Then when we declaimed at the schools together, you were not born;” and to Fabia, Dolabella’s wife, who said she was thirty, “No doubt, for I have heard you say so twenty years.”  When he saw Lentulus, his cousin—­a little man girt with a big sword:  “Who,” he asked, “has fastened my cousin to that sword?” and on being shown a colossal bust of his brother, who was also small, he exclaimed, “The half of my brother is greater than the whole.”  One day Cicero had supped with Damasippus, and his host had said—­putting some inferior wine before him—­“Drink this Falernian, it is forty years old!” “It bears its age well,” replied Cicero.

We have a most interesting collection of good sayings in “The Orator,” which although not spoken by Cicero himself, were those which he had from time to time noticed, and probably jotted down.  Here is one of Caesar’s (Strabo).  A Sicilian, when a friend made lamentation to him that his wife had hanged herself upon a fig tree:  “I beseech you,” he said, “give me some shoots of that tree that I may plant them.”  Some one asked Crassus whether he should be troublesome if he came to him before it was light.  Crassus said, “You will not.”  The other rejoined, “You will order yourself to be awakened then.”  To which Crassus replied, “Surely, I said that you would not be troublesome.”