A Funny Thing Happened <br>On The Way To The Forum

No, The Flintstones, prehistoric as they were, did not originate comedy as we know it.

Maybe some caveman did have a good yuck when another slipped on a banana peel. Maybe there was some Cro-Magnon custard cream pie fight. Maybe there was a comedian named Stonefeld. But as far as we know, comedy, like so many things, began with the ancient Greeks.

The word "comedy" in fact, comes from the Greek "komos," meaning "revels." It is believed to have come from the playful celebrations held honoring Dionysus, the god of (you can't make this stuff up, folks) wine.

Early Greek comedy ("Old Comedy") was the beginning of slapstick and raunchy humor. On the one hand, it had a comic fantasy element; on the other, it looked at problems of Greek society and even proposed solutions. In the Aristophanes satire Lysistrata, Athenian women protest an ongoing war with Sparta by staging a sex strike.

Later on, the Greek "New Comedy" went in a different direction, with Menander as its star playwright (there had also been a "Middle Comedy" but no works survived). Typically a comedy of errors, the characters would operate under false information or assumptions, leading to misjudgment of someone. In modern times, we call this as an episode of Three's Company.

Eventually, ancient Greece gave way to ancient Rome. And, of course, ancient Rome, as it was wont to do, stole from the Greeks – in this case, borrowing the comedic stylings of the Greeks' "New Comedy." In this way, you might consider ancient Romans to be the first Milton Berles.

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Written by Rob Medich