From politeness and to start conversation, they asked him a few questions about the army and the battle, and then the talk went off into merry jests and gossip.
A Texet'ij (" initiatory ceremony ") of women by a woman also took place at Eleusis, characterized by obscene jests and the use of phallic emblems. The sacramental meal on this occasion consisted of the produce of land and sea, certain things (pomegranates, honey, eggs) being forbidden for mystical reasons.
Charles entered Florence on the 17th of November 1494, and the citizens' fears evaporated in jests on the puny exterior of the "threatened scourge."
In Plutarch's Symposium of the Seven Sages, at which Aesop is a guest, there are many jests on his original servile condition, but nothing derogatory is said about his personal appearance.
The Apophthegms, though hardly deserving Macaulay's praise of being the best collection of jests in the world, contain a number of those significant anecdotes which Bacon used with such effect in his other writings.
