It has long been held that the capacity for laughter is a peculiarly human characteristic. The witty Lucian of Samosata (2nd century A.D.) noted that the way to distinguish a man from a donkey is that one laughs and the other does not. In all societies humor is important not only in individual communication but also as a molding force of social groups, reinforcing their norms and regulating behavior. “Each particular time, each era, in fact each moment, has its own condition and themes for laughter . . . because of the major preoccupations, concerns, interests, activities, relations, and mode prevailing at the time.” The ultimate goal of anyone who studies another culture, such as ancient Greece, is to understand the people themselves who were more than the sum total of monuments, historical incidents, or social groupings. One way to approach this goal directly is to study the culture’s humor. As Goethe aptly observed: “Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.”