As Beard engagingly admits, this book was “in some ways an impossible project” (78). The first part (Chapters 1 through 4) is more theoretical, dealing with such questions as, Can nonhuman animals laugh? Do all humans share certain ways of expressing laughter—for example, a sound such as English-language speakers write as “ha ha” or the Roman poet Terence as “hahahae”? Are there universal ways of joking, like puns or deliberate misunderstandings? The second part (Chapters 5 through 8) is a more specific study of particular instances of “Roman laughter.” Beard defines Roman broadly to include the earliest works to survive complete in Latin—the comedies of Plautus and Terence—as well as the writings of Cicero, the second-century African Apuleius, and the late antique or medieval “joke-book” entitled the “Laughter Lover” (Philogelos).
Beard has avoided the double danger of killing the subject by solemnity and cheapening it with excessive quotation...