Philogelos is the oldest existing collection of joke

Joke

A joke is a phrase or a paragraph with a humorous twist. It can be in many different forms, such as a question or short story. To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices...

s.

The collection is written in Greek, and the language used indicates that it may have been written in the 4th century AD, according to William Berg, an American classics professor. It is attributed to Hierokles and Philagrios, about whom little is known. Because the celebration of a thousand years of Rome

Founding of Rome

The founding of Rome is reported by many legends, which in recent times are beginning to be supplemented by scientific reconstructions.- Development of the city :...

 is mentioned in joke 62, the collection perhaps dates from after that event in 248 CE. Although it is the oldest existing collection of jokes, it is known that it was not the oldest collection, because Athenaeus

Athenaeus

Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...

 wrote that Philip II of Macedon

Philip II of Macedon

Philip II of Macedon "friend" + ἵππος "horse" — transliterated ; 382 – 336 BC), was a king of Macedon from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC. He was the father of Alexander the Great and Philip III.-Biography:...

 paid for a social club in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 to write down its members' jokes, and at the beginning of the 2nd century BCE, Plautus

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...

 twice has a character mentioning books of jokes.

The collection contains 265 jokes categorised into subjects such as teachers and scholars, and eggheads and fools.

Further reading

• The Philogelos or Laughter-Lover (London Studies in Classical Philology Series, 10) by Barry Baldwin
  Barry Baldwin
  Barry Baldwin is a classicist, journalist and author of mystery fiction. He gained a doctorate at the University of Nottingham and worked in Australia and Canada. For two years he contributed a regular column to the British Communist newspaper The Morning Star...
  
   1983, ISBN 978-9070265458
• Philogelos: Hieroclis et Philagrii facetiae by A. Eberhard (1869) Berlin: H. Ebeling & C. Plahn
• ιεροκλέους και Φιλαγρίου (Hierokles kai Philagrios). G. Pachymeris declamationes XIII quarum XII ineditae, Hieroclis et Philagrii grammaticorum φιλόγελως longe maximam partem ineditus by Jean François Boissonade de Fontarabie
  Jean François Boissonade de Fontarabie
  Jean François Boissonade de Fontarabie was a French classical scholar.He was born at Paris. In 1792 he entered the public service during the administration of General Dumouriez. Driven out in 1795, he was restored by Lucien Bonaparte, during whose time of office he served as secretary to the...
  
   (1848) Paris

External links

• Φιλόγελως, Bibliotheca Augustana, E-text
  E-text
  An e-text is, generally, any text-based information that is available in a digitally encoded human-readable format and read by electronic means, but more specifically it refers to files in the ASCII character encoding.E-text has the broad meaning of something electronic that represents words, a...
  
  (Greek)
• 45 Jokes from The Laughter Lover
• Philogelos: The Laugh Addict translated by Professor William Berg