"Finally, all my endeavours to become a funny guy shall not have been in vain for I have found the advice, the theory, that will help me to realise my potential." Or so, I thought when I started to read Cicero's De Oratore about jokes [2.217-252]. However, in the very first line, Cicero's character Caesar exhibits that there's no particular theory or methodology behind being comical: “however, those who have tried to come up and teach some theory or methodology on this subject (i.e. humour), exhibited themselves so unwitty that you cannot laugh at anything else of them but their failure at being funny .” ( Sed qui eius rei rationem quandum conati sunt artemque tradere, sic insulsi exstiterunt ut nihil aliud eorum nisi ipsa insulsitas rideatur. )
