In this concluding chapter, a number of discussions are regrouped under two main headings. Thefirst is centred on vases, painters, and iconography, and the second on humour and social cohesion.The first discussion is partly based on querying an extensive database of comic vases, which Ideveloped during my doctoral research, from different angles. For example, the comparison betweencomic scenes depicted in Athenian black-figure to those in Athenian red-figure. Why are some scenesfound more often or are rarer than others? Are some painters more interested in painting humorousscenes than others? Which types of vases present the most or least humorous scenes? Is there such athing as regional humour? Iconography is then discussed, and a justification given for establishinga future theory of visual humour. I shall also briefly discuss what I have coined ‘visualimmediacy’. The second part contains a series of discussions under the heading of humour andsocial cohesion. For some time, I had thought that only certain comic categories, such as parody,caricature, and situation comedy, were transposable in time and space from culture-to-culture. Butthere is at least one other fundamental aspect of humour that seems commonplace among most cultures– and that is the need for humour as a channel for social cohesion.

It has been underlined on a number of occasions that humour gives us an insight into ancientGreek life, and that, for better or for worse, what we see is a mirrored vision of society. Let ussee, then, in spite of all its distortions and aberrations, what humour reveals.