Book 6
3.100
as the man did who asked a witness, who alleged that lie had been wounded by the accused, whether he had any scar to show for it. The witness proceeded to show a huge scar on his thigh, on which lie remarked, I wish he had wounded you in the side. ac. because then he would have killed you. A happy use may also be made of insult. Hispo, for example, when the accuser charged him with scandalous crimes, replied, You judge my character by your own ; while Fulvius Propinquus, when asked by the representative of the emperor whether the documents which he produced were autographs, replied, Yes, Sir, and the handwriting is genuine, too! Presumably the legatus had been suspected of forgery.
3.101
Such I have either learned from others or discovered from my own experience to be the commonest sources of humour. But I must repeat that the number of ways in which one may speak wittily are of no less infinite variety than those in which one may speak seriously, for they depend on persons, place, time and chances, which are numberless.
