No laughing matter? what the Romans found funny
I googled around a bit to find some actual Roman jokes [0][1][2]:One man complains to another: "The slave you sold me died!" "By the gods!", the other replies. "During the time he was in my service, he never did such a thing!"A man is attending the burial of his wife, who has just died. When a passerby asks, "Who is it who rests in peace here?", he answers, "Me, now that I'm rid of her!A provincial man has come to Rome, and walking on the streets was drawing everyone's attention, as he was a real double of the emperor Augustus. The emperor, having brought him to the palace, looks at him and then asks: "Tell me, young man, did your mother come to Rome anytime?" The reply was: "She never did. But my father frequently was here."An intellectual came to check in on a friend who was seriously ill. When the man's wife said that he had 'departed', the intellectual replied: "When he comes back, will you tell him that I stopped by?"A misogynist stood in the marketplace and announced: "I’m putting my wife up for sale! Tax-free!" When people asked him why, he said: "So the authorities will impound her."A runner going to participate in a contest had a dream that he was driving a quadriga. Early in the morning he goes to a dream interpreter for an explanation. The reply is: "You will win, the dream meant you have the speed and the strength of horses."
But, to be sure, the runner visits another dream interpreter. This one replies: "You will lose. Don’t you understand that four ones came to me before you?"An intellectual got a slave pregnant. At the birth, his father suggested that the child be killed. The intellectual replied: "First murder your own children and then tell me to kill mine!"A intellectual checked in on the parents of a dead classmate. The father was wailing: "O son, you have left me a cripple!" The mother was crying: "O son, you have taken the light from my eyes!" Later, the student says to his friends: "If he were guilty of all that, he should have been killed while still alive."An incompetent astrologer cast a man's horoscope and said: "You are unable to father children." When the man objected that he had seven kids, the astrologer replied: "Look after them well."A young man said to his libido-driven wife: "What should we do, darling? Eat or have sex?" She replied: "You can choose. But there's not a crumb in the house."An astrologer cast a sick boy's horoscope. After promising the mother that the child had many years ahead of him, he demanded payment. When she said, "Come tomorrow and I’ll pay you," he objected: "But what if the boy dies during the night and I lose my fee?"[0] https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/roman-sense-of-humor/[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_jokes[2] https://aleteia.org/2017/05/23/want-to-hear-an-ancient-roman...