Philogelos ( lover of laughter) is a collection of over 260 jokes of imperial and Byzantine vintage. The humor can seem at times surprisingly modern; at other times it seems so feeble as scarcely to deserve the name. In general it is aimed at the stupidity of persons who are variously called "scholastics" or citizens of, e.g., Cyme or Abdera. Many of the anecdotes are transmitted in two different ...