One thing that really impressed me about Book II of De Oratore was Caesar's thoroughness in his explanation of humor. We read Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric a couple of weeks ago and it seems like the idea of funny in oratory really took a hit between second century Rome and 18th century Scotland.
Blair defines wit as a combination of opposites, either conceptually or linguistically, and humor as that which ridiculed because of its concurrent pettiness and projected importance. He runs through subsets of these two kinds of funny, but they seem generally pretty limited and repetitive.
Julius Caesar, on the other hand, runs the gambit of all kinds of humor from juxtaposition, to irony, the morose, bodily humor, puns, and downright cruelty. His examples of each kind of humor seem to come from a broader range of social and literary situations, too. He draws paradigms from things said in law courts, the senate, things said at funerals, things said in casual conversation, and stuff from literature and drama.
I want to draw some conclusions about the difference between Roman and pre-Victorian Britain. It seems like the British rhetors were set on narrowing their perception of social phenomenon to that contained in a particular Christian discourse. The Romans are willing to be realistic about the possibilities in social transactions and mine those situations for paradigms in their rhetoric. So their rhetoric seems a lot fuller, human, and representative.
I agree, Josh, there does seem to be a fuller, more representative rhetoric with the Romans. I'm interested in your comment about the Romans as "willing to be realistic about the possibilities." Where would we place Cicero and his contemporaries on the physis/nomos chart Rick keeps putting on the board? Do we see their reality as shifting, like the Sophists? In some places, I feel like the Romans are realistic, but other places (especially in their discussion of eloquence) it feels a little idealistic...