[57]
We may note therefore that jests which turn on
the meaning of things are at once more pointed and
more elegant. In such cases resemblances between
things produce the best effects, more especially
if we refer to something of an inferior or more trivial
nature, as in the jests of which our forefathers were
so fond, when they called Lentulus Spinther and
Scipio Serapio.1 But such jests may be drawn not
merely from the names of men, but from animals as
well; for example when I was a boy, Junius Bassus,
one of the wittiest of men, was nicknamed the white
ass.
1 From their resemblances to Spinther, a bad actor, and to Serapio, a dealer in sacrificial victims.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1921.
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