'Doctor, doctor' jokes date back to ancient Romans

If the tried and tested "doctor, doctor" joke feels a little tired, that's probably because it is.

By Paul Stokes
Academic research suggests the quips date back to ancient Roman times.

The finding is based on the world's oldest surviving joke book, written in Greek and containing 265 gags dating from the Third Century.

Among them is the entry: A doctor was talking to a patient. "Doctor," the patient says, "Whenever I get up after a sleep, I feel dizzy For half an hour, then I'm all right." "Then wait for half an hour before getting up," said the doctor.

Professor Mary Beard, a classicist at Cambridge lecturing in Newcastle University, has been examining the manuscript in a study of humour and jokes in the ancient Roman and Greek world.

She believes the book "Philogelos" or "Laugher of Love" explodes the popular myth of Romans as "toga-wearing bridge-builders".

Prof Beard said: "Why the book was put together is anyone's guess. Some people have suggested that it is a comedian's, but I think it may have been some nerdy academic who collected and classified jokes.

"While the jokes are not side-splitting, it is still possible to see their point and they can be quite funny."

She believes the West inherited the idea of the joke from the classical world, adding: "We have learned how to laugh from the Greeks and Romans. Like tragedy, plays and classical building columns, it has become part of our culture," One of her favourite jokes from the book is about a barber, a professor and a bald man who go one a long journey which involves camping overnight. As the two other men sleep, the barber shaves the professor's head. He wakes the professor who feels his own head and says: "You idiot, you've woken the bald man instead of me!"

Another joke has its origins in 248AD when Rome held what was then billed as the "Millennium Games". A professor meets an athlete who is in tears after losing in his event. "Never mind," says the professor "You can always try again the next Millennium Games."

...and yet more...

From The Guardian March 13 2009


Classic gags discovered in ancient Roman joke book

We may admire the satires of Horace and Lucilius, but the ancient Romans haven't hitherto been thought of as masters of the one-liner. This could be about to change, however, after the discovery of a classical joke book.

Professor Mary Beard has brought to light a volume more than 1,600 years old, which she says shows the Romans not to be the "pompous, bridge-building toga wearers" they're often seen as, but rather a race ready to laugh at themselves.

Written in Greek, Philogelos, or The Laughter Lover, dates to the third or fourth century AD, and contains some 260 jokes which Beard said are "very similar" to the jokes we have today, although peopled with different stereotypes – the "egghead", or absent-minded professor, is a particular figure of fun, along with the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad breath.

"They're also poking fun at certain types of foreigners – people from Abdera, a city in Thrace, were very, very stupid, almost as stupid as [they thought] eggheads [were]," said Beard.

An ancient version of Monty Python's dead parrot sketch sees a man buy a slave, who dies shortly afterwards. When he complains to the seller, he is told: "He didn't die when I owned him."

Beard's favourite joke is a version of the Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman variety, with a barber, a bald man and an absent-minded professor taking a journey together. They have to camp overnight, so decide to take turns watching the luggage. When it's the barber's turn, he gets bored, so amuses himself by shaving the head of the professor. When the professor is woken up for his shift, he feels his head, and says "How stupid is that barber? He's woken up the bald man instead of me."

"It's one of the better ones," said Beard. "It has a nice identity resonance ... A lot of the jokes play on the obviously quite problematic idea in Roman times of knowing who you are." Another "identity" joke sees a man meet an acquaintance and say "it's funny, I was told you were dead". He says "well, you can see I'm still alive." But the first man disputes this on the grounds that "the man who told me you were dead is much more reliable than you".

"Interestingly they are quite understandable to us, whereas reading Punch from the 19th century is completely baffling to me," said Beard.

But she queried whether we are finding the same things funny as the Romans would have done. Telling a joke to one of her graduate classes, in which an absent-minded professor is asked by a friend to bring back two 15-year-old slave boys from his trip abroad, and replies "fine, and if I can't find two 15-year-olds I will bring you one 30-year-old," she found they "chortled no end".

"They thought it was a sex joke, equivalent to someone being asked for two 30-year-old women, and being told okay, I'll bring you one 60-year-old. But I suspect it's a joke about numbers – are numbers real? If so two 15-year-olds should be like one 30-year-old – it's about the strange unnaturalness of the number system."

Beard, who discovered the title while carrying out research for a new book she's working on about humour in the ancient world, pointed out that when we're told a joke, we make a huge effort to make it funny for ourselves, or it's an admission of failure. "Are we doing that to these Roman jokes? Were they actually laughing at something quite different?" .