“Having drunk much, eaten much, and spoken much evil, here I lie, Timocreon of Rhodes.” This heathen jester lived nearly five centuries before the Christian era; I might perhaps, had I a right to act “Censor,” suggest that his epitaph would not be unsuitable over many a serious but defunct gentleman, born since that era commenced.
Let me rather do justice to the wit and independence of the old poets, generally. While doing so, I cannot but add my conviction that the philosophers were, on the whole, more independent in their jests than the poets. When Apollonius repaired from Chalcis to Rome, to become the tutor of Marcus Antoninus, he refused to go to the palace at all, saying that it was fitter for the pupil to come to the house of the instructor than for the latter to go to the dwelling of the pupil. The imperial hint, good-humouredly conveyed, that he had himself commenced this latter process by repairing from Chalcis to Rome, could not move him.
It has been usual, and Flögel[A] has done it, among others, to rank the elder Aristippus among the ancient court wits. Inasmuch as that he was the chief flatterer of Dionysius of Sicily, and loved Epicurean voluptuousness, the founder of the Cyrenaic sect may be allowed to pass under that title, but he had little in common with the court jester of more modern times. He was as different from the latter in some respects, as he was from Crassus, the grandfather of Crassus the Rich, who according to Pliny was never known to laugh,—not even when his best friend broke his thigh.
It is certain that Dionysius treated his flatterers as later sovereigns did their official jesters,—allowing for the difference of manners, morals, and customs. The poor jester whose head was placed on the executioner’s block by the sportive order of the ducal sovereign of Ferrara, proved indeed to be even worse off than the parasite Damocles, when Dionysius seated him on his throne, beneath an unsheathed sword suspended from a horse-hair.
Again, the freedom which the court fool subsequently held by right of office, we find fearlessly exercised by the philosophic Demochares, the Athenian ambassador, who being asked, by King Philip of Macedonia, to whom he was sent, what the king could do to most gratify the Athenians, replied, “The most gratifying thing you could do would be to hang yourself.” The courtiers murmured with indignation, but Philip dismissed the envoy, with the remark, that he hoped the Athenians would perceive he had more wit than their representative, seeing that he could take with indifference such a joke as that flung at him by Demochares.
There are two philosophers whose names now occur to me, and of whom some erroneous notions appear to be entertained by their posterity;—Heraclitus and Democritus. We picture them as “Jean qui pleure” and “Jean qui rit,” looking on the first as made up of groans, and the latter of gaiety. The fact however is, that Heraclitus, though given, as any man might be, at any period, who thought of the matter, to weep over the wickedness of the world, made that world laugh heartily by his rough answers to the polite invitations of Darius, who would fain have had him at the Persian court. Heraclitus and Darius remind me of Brusquet and Charles V. Democritus, too, was a different man from what he is generally thought to have been. He laughed, indeed, but it was at the follies of mankind; and he did not disdain, like the weeping Ephesian, to figure at the court of Darius. There is one sample of his wit there, which is better than anything ever uttered by Bertholdo, the philosophic buffoon at the court of Alboin, King of the Lombards. Darius was inconsolable for the loss of his wife, declaring that he was the only man who had ever known real adversity. “And I will raise the queen from the dead in a few minutes,” said Democritus, “if I only——” “If you only, what?” impatiently exclaimed Darius, interrupting him. “If I only can find three individuals who have passed through life without adversity of some sort, and whose names I will engrave on the queen’s monument.” Darius knew the case was hopeless, and mournfully smiled. If he had given a small estate to the witty philosopher, the latter would have deserved it quite as well as the Joculatores of our first William and John, whose wit or wisdom was rewarded by raising them to the very pleasant condition of holders of land.
It is said of some of the German jesters that they occasionally lived on the people of the town, with the lord of which they resided in exercise of their office. A parallel to this may be met with in the annals of the philosophers, in the person of Demonax, who, leaving to his patrons to clothe and lodge him, boarded himself in a very facetious and economical way, by entering the first house, after he felt himself hungry, and there fully satisfying his appetite. But Demonax belonged to a lower class of the order of philosophers, as some later fools did to that of the general order of their profession. There was as much difference between Demonax and Socrates, as there was between Sibilot, as described by Huguenot authors, and our own light and noble-hearted Will Sommers. The happiest idea one can have of Socrates is that of seeing him in the studio of his father Sophroniscus, carving that group of the three Graces, the simplicity and elegance of which excited universal admiration. He was ever the same,—a rough labourer patiently and certainly creating beauty. In him we fail to discern anything of the mere unlicensed jester. The Platonic and the Xenophontic Socrates may be said equally, though in different ways and measures, to challenge admiration. Leaving the philosopher, to encounter him again presently, let us look over antiquity for traces of the fool in people as in individuals.
Among the ancients, perhaps the Tirynthians had the reputation of being the very merriest of fools. Theophrastus is cited by Athenæus in proof of this. Those people of Argolis were so continually merry that they at last got tired of it, and applied to the oracle at Delphos to save them from being any longer such joyous simpletons.
“You shall be cured,” said the oracular authority, “if after sacrificing an ox to Neptune, you can throw the carcase into the sea, without laughing.”
“That will be easy enough,” said the Tirynthians, laughing all the while, “if we can only keep children away from the sacred fire.”