Institutio Oratoria

It is most unbecoming for an orator to distort his features or use uncouth gestures, tricks that arouse such merriment in farce. No less unbecoming are ribald jests, and such as are employed upon the stage. As for obscenity, it should not merely be banished from his language, but should not even be suggested. For even if our

Further, although I want my orator to speak with wit, he must not give the impression of striving after it. Consequently lie must not display his wit on every possible occasion, but must sacrifice a jest sooner than sacrifice his dignity.

Again, no one will endure an accuser who employs jests to season a really horrible case, nor an advocate for the defence who makes merry over one that calls for pity. Moreover, there is a type of judge whose temperament is too serious to allow him to tolerate laughter.

It may also happen that a jest directed against an opponent may apply to the judge or to our own client, although there are some orators who do not refrain even from jests that may recoil upon themselves. This was the case with Sulpicius Longus, who, despite the fact that he was himself surpassingly hideous, asserted of a man against whom he was appearing in a case involving his status as a free man, that even his face was the face of a slave. To this Domitius Afer replied,

Is it your profound conviction, Longus, that an ugly man must be a slave?