In the brilliant penultimate chapter she meditates on an ancient compendium of jokes, the philogelos. Admittedly, i'm a cultural relativist, but still i think that some of the examples she cites are still funny--funnier than she thinks.

Mary beard's book shows that romans applied humor more broadly than greeks. The romans found many things that we find humorous today, humorous in the olden times. Beard is a well-regarded historian with a long beard.