with
riddles. One of them proposed, "What is the strongest of all things?"
Another answered, "Iron, because it is that with which men dig and cut."
The third said, "The blacksmith, for he bends and fashions the iron."
But the first replied, "Love, for it can subdue the blacksmith himself."

The following is from Theadectes, a pupil of Isocrates, who lived about
300 B.C., and wrote fifty tragedies--none of which survive.

"Nothing which earth or sea produces,
Nought among mortals hath so great increase.
In its first birth the largest it appears,
Small in its prime, and in old age again,
In form and size it far surpasses all."[17]

To make a riddle, that is a real test of ingenuity for all, and which
but one answer satisfies, shows an advanced stage of the art. The
ancient riddles were almost invariably symbolical, and either too vague
or too learned. They seem to us not to have sufficient point to be
humorous, but no doubt they were thought so in their day.

It may not be out of place here to advert to those light compositions
called Silli, about which we have no clear information, even with regard
to the meaning of the name. From the fragments of them extant, we find
that they were written in verse, and contained a considerable amount of
poetical sentiment; indeed, all that has come down to us of Xenophanes,
the first sillographer, is of this character. We are told that he used
parody, but his pleasantry, probably, consisted much of after-dinner
jests and stories, for we find that although he praises wisdom, and
despises the fashionable athletic games, he rejoiced in sumptuous
banquets, and said that the water should first be poured into the cup,
then the wine. But the most celebrated sillographer was Timon the
Phliasian--intimate with Antigonus and Ptolemy Philadelphus--who wrote
three books of Silli, two in dialogues, and one in continuous narrative.
He was a philosopher, and the principal object of his work was to bring
other sects into ridicule and discredit. A few reflections of general
application are scattered through it, but they are in general quite
subsidiary and suggested by the subject matter.

PART III.

ROMAN HUMOUR.

Roman Comedy--Plautus--Acerbity--Terence--Satire--Lucilius--Horace--Humour
of the Caesar Family--Cicero--Augustus--Persius--Petronius--Juvenal
--Martial--Epigrammatist--Lucian--Apuleius--Julian the Apostate--The
Misopogon--Symposius' Enigmas--Macrobius--Hier