Institutio Oratoria

On the other hand brevity in wit gives greater point and speed. It may be employed in two ways, according as we are the aggressors, or are replying to our opponents; the method, however, in both cases is to some extent the same. For there is nothing that can be said in attack that cannot be used in riposte.

But there are certain points which are peculiar to reply. For remarks designed for attack are usually brought ready-made into court, after long thought at home, whereas those made in reply are usually improvised during a dispute or the cross-examination of witnesses. But though there are many topics on which we may draw for our jests, I must repeat that not all these topics are becoming to orators:

above all doubles entendres and obscenity, such as is dear to the Atellan farce, are to be avoided, as also are those coarse jibes so common on the lips of the rabble, where the ambiguity of words is turned to the service of abuse. I cannot even approve of a similar from of jest, that sometimes slipped out even from Cicero, though not when he was pleading in the courts: for example, once when a candidate, alleged to be the son of a cook, solicited someone else's vote in his presence, he said, Ego quoque tibi favebo. [*]( The pun is untranslatable, turning as it does on the similarity of sound between coque and quoque, so that the sentence might mean either I will support you, cook, or I too will support you. )

I say this not because I object absolutely to all play on words capable of two different meanings, but because such jests are rarely effective, unless they are helped out by actual facts as well as similarity of sound.

I wonder,

why your father, the steadiest of men, left behind him such a stripy gentleman as yourself.