Philogelos

Philogelos (The Laughter-Lover) is the only surviving jokebook from antiquity written in ancient Greek. Other traces include the Roman author Fulgentius (5th/6th centuries CE), who mentions liber facetiarum (a jokebook) written by Tacitus, but the book’s existence is most likely to be fabricated by Fulgentius himself, as was noted by Barry Baldwin. Some scholars see a possible predecessor for the Philogelos in a jokebook that may have been produced by a “Group of Sixty,” whose members lived in Athens in the time of Demosthenes and Philip the Macedonian. The title of this jokebook is attested in manuscript tradition and its authorship is sometimes ascribed to Hierocles and Philagrius, a grammatician, but whether these were the actual writers is unknown. Nothing else is known about the identities of Hierocles and Philagrius, despite hypotheses by scholars such as Baldwin and Andreas Thierfelder.

Hierocles has been identified as the famous 5th-century Neoplatonist philosopher by that name, but this seems to be a misconception by the Philogelos’s 17th-century editor. A grammarian called Philagrius is also virtually unknown (although a sophist Philagrius is mentioned in Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus). The Byzantine lexicon Suda credits a mime writer, Philistion, with the authorship of the Philogelos, describing it as the book that is aimed at or brought to the koureus, as suggested by Baldwin. This was interpreted as information that such jokes were common at the barber’s (which is what koureus may mean) or as a corrupt version of the toponym Kurium. The word koureus also was emended, unconvincingly, to Hierocles. A 12th-century scholar, John Tzetzes, mistakenly writes about a book by Philogelos, thus confusing author and title. It is thus impossible to tell with absolute certainty who invented the jokes in the Philogelos (but wouldn't this be equally true for most jokes throughout the centuries?), although it is plausible that Hierocles and Philagrius were indeed the compilers.