joke

A well-known Roman encountered his diminutive son-in-law wearing a notably long sword and quipped, "quis generum meum ad gladium alligavit?" ("who tied my son-in-law to a sword?). Did that make us laugh? Maybe, but if not, perhaps it is the Latin. Nothing kills a joke quite like the prospect of having to use a dictionary.

The father in-law was, in fact, Marcus Tullius Cicero, antiquity's most famous joker until he was reinvented in the nineteenth century as a stentorian bore.

--Roy Gibson, "Spreading, shredding and laughing," The Times Literary Supplement (August 15, 2014), p. 13