favour of competitive
examinations, that he determined to give his daughter to the most
proficient and accomplished man. On the appointed day the suitors came
to the examination from every quarter, for the fair Agariste was heiress
to great possessions. Among them was one Hippocleides, an Athenian, who
proved himself far superior to all the rest in music and dissertation.
Afterwards, when the trial was over, desiring to indulge his feelings of
triumph and show his skill, he called for a piper, and then for a table,
upon which he danced, finishing up by standing on his head and kicking
his legs about. Cleisthenes, who was apparently one of the "old school,"
and did not appreciate the manners and customs of young Athens, was much
offended by this undignified performance of his would-be son-in-law, and
when he at last saw him standing on his head, could no longer contain
himself, but cried out, "Son of Tisander, thou hast danced away thy
marriage." To which the other replied with characteristic unconcern:
"It's all the same to Hippocleides,"--an expression which became
proverbial. In this story we see the new conception of humour, though
of a rude kind, coming into collision with the old philosophic contests
of ingenuity, which it was destined to survive if not to supersede.

We have another curious instance about this date of an earnest-minded
man being above the humour of the day, (which, no doubt, consisted
principally of gesticulation), and he was probably voted an unsociable,
old-fashioned fellow. Anacharsis, the great Scythian philosopher, when
jesters were introduced into his company maintained his gravity, but
when afterwards a monkey was brought in, he burst into a fit of
laughter, and said, "Now this is laughable by Nature; the other by Art."
That amusement should be thus excited by natural objects denotes a very
eccentric or primitive perception of the ludicrous, seldom now found
among mature persons, but it is such as Diodorus, quoting no doubt from
earlier histories, attributed to Osiris--"to whom," he says, "when in
Ethiopia, they brought Satyrs, (who have hair on their backs,) for he
was fond of what was laughable."

But a further development of humour was in progress. As people were at
that time easily induced to regard sufferings as ludicrous, the idea
suggested itself of creating mirth by administering punishment, or by
indulging in threats and gross aspersions. A very slight amount of
invention or comp