What’s So Funny?: Laughter and Incest in Invective Humor

What's So Funny?: Laughter and Incest in Invective Humor

Although Roman society held incest to be a serious violation of social custom and religious taboo, punishable even by death, authors of invective humor frequently employed accusations of incest to evoke laughter from their audiences.1 The apparent paradox between the seriousness of this offense and its use as a vehicle for humor makes the topic a thought-provoking subject of inquiry and warrants a more comprehensive study than has yet been undertaken. Past scholarship on humor and invective has touched on the topic of incest in only a summary fashion, simply categorizing it as a common theme.2 Through the use of humor theory and the analysis of individual passages of invective humor, this article takes both a theoretical and philological approach to the issue.