There’s nothing new under the sun, especially in the hackneyed world of comedy. As the BBC reports, a book containing jokes that date back to the 4th century BC riffs on such shopworn topics as farts, sex, ugly wives and a dimwit referred to as ˜a student dunce.’ More surprisingly, the book, which is available in e-book format with embedded multimedia, also includes an early version of Monty Python’s famous dead parrot sketch.

Philogelos: The Laugh Addict, which has been translated from Greek manuscripts, contains a joke where a man complains that a slave he was sold had died.

When he was with me, he never did any such thing! is the reply.

Not all of the jokes are quite so hilarious, it would seem:

Some jokes are likely to baffle modern audiences, however “ especially the ones about lettuce, which only make sense if you share the ancient superstition that the vegetable is an aphrodisiac.