Cicero on How to Tell a Joke

Today’s episode features a section from Michael Fontaine’s How to Tell a Joke: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Humor published by Princeton University Press and HighBridge audio, a division of Recorded Books. How to Tell a Joke is a modern translation and collection of Cicero and Quintilian’s timeless advice about how to use humor to win over any audience. This episode is brought to you by Policygenius. Policygenius helps you compare top insurers in one place, and it lets you save 50% or more on life insurance. Policygenius will help you find the insurance coverage you need. You can save 50% or more by comparing quotes. And when your life insurance policy is sorted out, you’ll know that your family will be protected if anything happens. Just go to policygenius.com to get started. Policygenius: when it comes to insurance, it’s nice to get it right. This episode is also brought to you by LMNT, the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. Right now you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. Get your FREE Sample Pack now. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, everyone. It's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to a special episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I have raved now many times about one of my favorite series of books, the Princeton University Press's Ancient Wisdom Series. It's the Ancient Wisdom Series for Modern Readers. That's what it's called. And I've read a bunch of these. I've read How to Be Free from Epictetus. I've read How to Die. That's James Rahm's edition of Seneca. I've read their one, How to Be a Bad Emperor, which is a translation of Suetonius. I've read Plutarch's How to Be a Leader. I've read a whole bunch of them.

• 1:29Ryan Holiday?

  I've read the original texts that they pull from as well. But it's kind of a great way to just sort of go back through and get the really important parts of these texts. So if you haven't read Thucydides, if you haven't read Plutarch, if you haven't read Seneca, if you haven't read Epictetus, these are great places to start. And then you can go read the full text. Or if you have read the full text, this is kind of a great booster of those things. Well, they have been kind enough to give us some excerpts. And they have a new edition of Cicero with a funny title. It's called How to Tell a Joke. It's translated with commentary from Michael Fontaine. For most of us, we think of Cicero as this sort of old, dead white guy, which of course he was, but he's this

• 2:10Ryan Holiday?

  But he's also one of the most compelling speakers who ever lived. A real master of his craft, as I write about in Lives of the Stoics. And in this edition, we have Cicero telling us how the ideal order needs a sense of humor. Again, we think of the Stoics, we think of the ancients as being really dry, as not having a sense of humor. But then, as now, one of the best ways to keep an audience is to be funny, to be able to tell a good story, to be able to make them laugh, to be clever. And Cicero was funny, like, really funny. One of my favorite Cicero quotes is, "No man dances when he is sober unless he is a lunatic." And every time I tweet this, it gets a bunch of retweets.

• 2:53Ryan Holiday?

  And I just, I love that 2,000 years later, the joke still works. The Stoics had jokes. The Stoics were funny. I mean, as it happens, Chrysippus, one of the early Stoics, dies laughing. So, this is a good book. I'm excited to bring you this quick excerpt. It's not a step-by-step guide on how to compose jokes, really, but it's more of a guide to how humor can and should be used as a tool to help win an argument, to help make a case for something. This is a great book. You can check out How to Tell a Joke, anywhere books are sold. There's a great physical edition. They come in these perfectly sized hardcovers, which you can check out. And then, of course, you can get the audiobook, anywhere books are sold.

• 3:38Ryan Holiday?

  You can check this one out on Amazon, Audible, you can check it out on iBooks, wherever. And here is a fun excerpt from Cicero's How to Tell a Joke.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  How to Tell a Joke. Cicero on the ideal orator. Humorous Caesar, explain jokes. Caesar takes a stab.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Antony.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Humour and joking, though, is fun, and often wicked effective. Every other aspect of public speaking might be teachable by rules, but humour is obviously something you're born with, and rules can't do anything for it. Caesar, in my view, you're far better than others at this, so you can easily back me up that joking, either, one, isn't a teachable skill, or, two, if it is, then you're the best person to teach it to us. Caesar. Actually, I think a decent funny man can discuss anything with greater wit than wit itself. Let me explain.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  I once saw these Greek books titled on humour and got excited, thinking I'd learn something from them. What I found, though, was lots of Greek quips and jokes, which makes sense, since the people of Sicily, Rhodes, Byzantium, and above all Athens are the leaders in this area. But they were so ridiculous when they tried to schematise, systematise, and teach the rules behind them, that the only thing I could laugh at was how ridiculous they were. And that's why, to me at least, it seems impossible to teach a course in the topic you want. The thing is, jokes actually come in two forms.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  The first kind permeate an entire speech, while the other come fast and razor-sharp. The ancients called the first kind shtick, and the second a sick burn. Both have funny names, which makes sense, since the whole business of making people laugh is winking, funny stuff. That said, Antony, you're right. I've often seen humour accomplish a great deal at trial, but you don't need rules for that first category of ongoing banter, that is, shtick, because people are shaped by their genetics, and it's that, plus some help from their facial expressions and voices

• 6:12Speaker 01

  and manner of speech itself, which makes them funny impressionists or storytellers. And since that's true, then in the second category, that is, sick burns, too, where a zinger has to get fired off and hit its target before anyone could seemingly even think of it, well, how could there be rules? I mean, rules couldn't have helped my brother Barker here when Philip asked him, "What are you howling for?", and he shot back, "I see a thief." And what could rules have done for Crassus? Anywhere in that speech he gave in probate court against Scovilla, or in the one defending Gaius Plancus against Brutus?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Really, Antony, everyone thinks the honor you pay me should go to Crassus, because he's pretty much the only one you'll find who excels at both kinds of wit. That is, in the first category of keeping up the talk and in the second category of snappy comebacks. I mean, his entire speech defending Curius against Scovilla was bursting with good-natured category-one ribbing. It didn't have those category-two zingers because he wanted to spare his opponent's dignity, and in doing that, he kept his own. And that is the hardest thing for quick-witted people to do. To take stock of the people, the circumstances,

• 7:39Speaker 01

  and to hold back the quips that come to mind, even when it would be totally hilarious to say them. Accordingly, and this is pretty funny, some jokers twist these lines of Enius. "When his mouth's on fire, it's easier for a wise man to suppress the flames than a good remark." To say, "When his mouth's on fire, it's easier for a wise ass to suppress the flames than a good wisecrack." They claim the "good" or "helpful" part of Enius's "dicta" obviously has to mean funny, because "dicta," remark, already means wisecrack all by itself.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  But as much as Crassus kept away from those in dealing with Scovilla, and instead made light of the trial and their disagreement with the "other kind", the one that doesn't entail roasting anyone, when it came to Marcus Brutus, who he hated and thought deserved abuse, he unloaded with both kinds.

• 8:45Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  He went crazy on the spa Brutus had recently sold off and the inheritance he'd burned through. And those zingers, such as when Brutus said, "I don't see what I'm up here sweating for", and he snapped back, "No surprise there, you did just get out of the spa." There were countless ones like that, but the continuous banter was just as funny. I mean, Brutus called in a couple readers to quote from a pair of policy speeches Crassus had given to different audiences, and then pointed out sections where Crassus had allegedly flip-flopped. And that's when our friend Crassus here asked, cracking up, it was totally hilarious,

• 9:39Speaker 01

  three people to come read bits from the three books of the dialogue on civil law that Brutus's dad had written. Let me quote Crassus's rebuttal. Caesar quotes from Crassus's rebuttal. Caesar now quotes extracts from Crassus's rebuttal. The first three extracts begin with an inset quotation from Brutus's father's book, followed by Crassus's commentary. First came Book One. "My son Marcus and I once found ourselves at our villa in Prevernum." "Brutus, your father's going on record that he left you an estate in Prevernum."

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Then came Book Two. "My son Marcus and I were at our villa in Alba." This guy's clearly a genius, one of the smartest in the country. He knew, glancing at Brutus, this black hole. He was worried that once Brutus didn't have anything, people would assume he hadn't been left anything. Then came book three, which is the last one, he wrote. I heard Scavella say there are three authentic books by Brutus. My son Marcus and I found ourselves holed up at our villa in Tivoli. Brutus, where are these estates your father left you? The bequest is recorded right here, in this published treatise.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  If he didn't think you were already grown up, I guess your father would have written a fourth book to document that my son and I were having a conversation at our spa. Everyone, everyone would agree that Brutus got brought down by this ribbing and those wise cracks just as effectively as by those tragedies Crassus acted out when, at the same trial, the funeral procession for a distant relative of Brutus's, an old woman, happened to come passing by. Good gods, you should have seen it, his zap, so sudden, so out of nowhere. Crassus fixed his eyes on Brutus, loomed over him with his every gesture and,

• 11:54Speaker 01

  in a torrent of eloquence and tone, Brutus, why are you just sitting there? What do you want that lady to go tell your father? What should she tell all those people whose funeral masks are parading by? What about your ancestors? What about Lucius Brutus, the man who freed this nation from tyranny? What should she say you're doing with your life? What achievements, what accomplishments, what greatness should she say you're working on? Increasing the wealth you inherited? But real nobles don't do that, and even if they did, well, there's nothing left. You partied it all away.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Law school, like your father? Come on, she'll tell them that when you sold the house, you sold your father's barrister chair right along with it. A military career? You've never seen a barracks. Excellence in public speaking? You're no god. Good at it. Besides, you've used what tongue and voice you do have for that most shameful way of making a buck: bad mouthing. Do you really have the nerve to appear in public, to look at these folks here, to show your face in the forum, show it in Rome, show it to your fellow citizens? Don't you panic at the sight of that dead lady, at those

• 13:21Speaker 01

  masks going by? You've left yourself no room, not only to imitate them, but heck, even to display them. It was a majestic performance, out of this world. His endless quips and zingers, though, you can remember from just a single speech of his, because there's never been such an epic display of prowess or public speech more impressive than the one he recently gave attacking his colleague in office, and never one so well-peppered with good humor. And that's why I agree with you, Antony, on both points. One, jokes are often highly

• 14:02Speaker 01

  effective in public speaking, and, two, there's just no way to teach them systematically. I really am surprised you gave me so much credit in this area instead of awarding the crown to Crassus, as in every other area.

• 14:21Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The reviews make a difference, and of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out the crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us, and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.