Lampas - Volume 52, Issue 2, 2019

Summary This paper offers a new reading of the longest extant fragment of Hegemon of Thasos’ parodies (fragment 1 Brandt) in the context of Greek parodic literature and ancient conceptions of literary propriety (τὸ πρέπον or decorum). After a brief overview of Hegemon’s life and works and an introduction to the ancient term παρῳδία and the history of Greek parodic literature, the paper suggests that the incongruity bet Read More

Summary In the corpus of apocryphal Cynic letters those attributed to Diogenes stand out: they form the bulk of the letters and they are the most humorous. This corresponds with representations of him as a provocateur elsewhere in imperial Greek literature. This article focuses on the topic of sex in Diogenes’ letters, and answers two main questions: first, whether the sexual humor of the letters is more risqué than what we f Read More

Summary This article aims to assess the humoristic qualities of Plutarch’s Quaestiones Convivales. Although ostensibly a serious piece, the Table Talk, an extensive prose work which treats dozens of subjects suitable for a traditional symposium in the shape of elaborated Q&A, often suggests that its serious nature is not always to be taken at face value. Quite a number of subjects appear to be only mock serious, which yields a Read More

Summary In this article I reassess the figure of Alcumena in Plautus’ Amphitruo in order to shed new light on the interpretation both of her character and of the play as a whole, which is usually called ‘tragicomedy’ after the playful definition given in the prologue. In previous scholarship, Alcumena was seen as a tragic character embedded in a comedy, and as such she was regarded as the embodiment of the tragicomic Read More

Summary The Roman poet Martial is famous for his humorous epigrams, which often poke fun at people or alleged wrongs in contemporary Rome. But there is much more to Martial, as an illustrative analysis of book 1 shows. Roughly half of the book appears to be devoted to themes that are not directly or obviously funny. There are, for instance, metaliterary poems, series of poems developing one theme in ever changing var Read More

Summary Humor, both verbal and visual, is culture-specific. This essay examines humorous visual representations in their original archaeological and social contexts to understand Roman attitude-formation, or acculturation. Social theories of humor that distinguish between humor meant for individuals within a group (intragroup humor) and humor targeting individuals outside one’s group (intergroup humor) help explain the d Read More

Summary Early Christian humour is not well-known and often its mere existence is doubted. However, modern humour research has proven that humour is a universal human phenomenon. This article investigates in which (con)texts early Christian humour can be found, focusing on the fourth century. Several severe judgements by famous Church Fathers are indeed critical about humour and its most directly related physical re Read More