Philogelos

The Philogelos ( That which likes to laugh in Greek old) is the oldest collection of Blague S known in Occident. Containing approximately 265 jokes in old Greek, it goes back from the 3rd century or 4th century to our era. It is in any case posterior with 248, because joke 62 refers to the millenium of Rome which was celebrated this year.

Certain jokes return under several different versions, signs that it is indeed a collection drawn mainly from oral sources. Many characters are made fun:

  • the “intellectual” ( scholastichoi ) whose only book formation hides - badly - stupidity but enlarges the claim
  • miserly the
  • the citizens of the cities of Abdère and Cymé
  • the charlatans
  • the women
  • people with the bad breath
  • etc
But one can also find words of children (“  Do dad, people of the other cities have the moon as large as ours?   ”) and the text is of a humor sometimes surprisingly modern. The Philogelos as makes it possible to seize aspects of the daily newspaper of the Antiquité and culture of the Roman empire as the more academic sources evoke much less.

External bonds and references

  • R.D. Dawe (ED.), Philogelos , Bibliotheca scriptorum graecorum and romanorum Teubneriana, 135, smoked K.G Verlag, Munich, 2000,132 pages. (Report of the edition of Dawe)
  • Extracted translated
  • Extracted the Greek text

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