What is "philogelos"

Philogelos is the oldest existing collection of jokes.

The collection is written in Greek, and the language used indicates that it may have been written in the 4th century AD, according to William Berg, an American classics professor. It is attributed to Hierokles and Philagrios, about whom little is known. Because the celebration of a thousand years of Rome is mentioned in joke 62, the collection perhaps dates from after that event in 248 AD. Although it is the oldest existing collection of jokes, it is known that it was not the oldest collection, because Athenaeus wrote that Philip II of Macedon paid for a social club in Athens to write down its members' jokes, and at the beginning of the 2nd century BC, Plautus twice has a character mentioning books of jokes.

The collection contains 265 jokes categorised into subjects such as teachers and scholars, and eggheads and fools.