In essaying an Outline of the World’s Humor, the greatest obstacle to our work is the insufficiency of data.
While we are sure there was humor in the early days, we cannot get much of it for publication. The Fables and Folk Tales that come down to us are of uncertain origin and date. Traditions have been traced to their inception but the tracery is of vague and shadowy lines.
Wherefore it is well nigh impossible to formulate or systematize our chronology.
The simple division of Ancient, Middle and Modern must serve for a main arrangement, with the subdivision of the Middle into Greece, Rome, and the Mediæval Ages.
Greece will include generally the time from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D., although its traditions reach farther back into antiquity.
The whole Middle Division must include all from 500 B.C. to about 1300 A.D.
So, we see the boundaries are inevitable if not entirely satisfactory.
Greece was the primeval European civilization, and in the year 500 B.C. it already had its own literature and the Iliad and Odyssey were even then antique.
These, at this time, were traditionally ascribed to Homer as they have ever since remained. But Homer’s individual existence is a matter of doubt, and his history and personality are as unknown as those of the ancient patriarchs of the Old Testament.
Even from this distant viewpoint the humor of antiquity is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder.