Da iocosus a consularis scurra. Rappresentazioni del Cicerone umorista

This chapter focuses on reconstructing the portrait of Cicero as a humorist. Through a literary path from Seneca the Elder to Francesco Petrarca this paper will deal with a contrast: the opposition perceived by some authors between the ideal of wit declared by Cicero in his works and the irony displayed outside theoretical and programmatical contexts of his rhetorical corpus. An irony dangerously close to the kind of jesters and mimes.