Kitap 6
3.92
Best of all is it when pretence is met by pretence, as was done in the following instance by Domitius Afer. He had made his will long ago, and one of his more recent friends, in the hopes of securing a legacy if he could persuade him to change it, produced a fictitious story and asked him whether he should advise a senior centurion who, being an old man, had already made his will to revise it; to which Afer replied, Don't do it: you will offend him.
3.93
But the most agreeable of all jests are those which are good humoured and easily digested. Take another example from Afer. Noting that an ungrateful client avoided him in the forum, he sent his servant Lit. the slave employed to name persons to his master. to him to say, I hope you are obliged to me for not having seen you. Again when his steward, being unable to account for certain sums of money, kept saying, I have not eaten it: I live on bread and water, he replied, Master sparrow, pay what you owe. Such jests the Greeks style ὑπὸ τὸ ἦθος The meaning is dubious and the phrase cannot be paralleled and is probably corrupt. or adapted to character.
