I recently checked out an article regarding ancient Greek laughter -I have no idea why - perhaps I was just intrigued by the joke that was on offer. I was more intrigued that somebody a few thousand years ago wrote a joke book in Greece and had it published. A Greek comedian called Laupheis Histeriopolous was the first comedian of note to be recognised as the founder of comedy or laughter as a form of formal entertainment in ancient Greece.
The story goes that he used to observe what was going on in his local community and then mimic things and turn them into something funny. While the ancient Greeks were incredibly civilised they lacked laughter and humour. Histeriopolous became the ancient version of Robin Williams or Chris Rock and took great delight in taking the absolute mickey out of Greek society.
From what I have read I believe he accumulated quite a lot of wealth and was actually sponsored by a Greek nobleman called Givitonomy. Givitonomy literally gave away money to people in need and then learned that he could give money to people and get back in return quite a lot of recognition, which meant he could make more money to give away. So the early version of sponsorship was created and by all accounts it was very profitable.
Histeriopolous used to promote Givitonomies business. Givitonomy was is the business of teaching farmers and herdsman how to better manage their herds -and eventually branched out into all forms of agriculture. He would be paid mostly in goods, of which he would keep what he needed and sell the rest to other people. Because of Givitonomies advice the farmers looked after their farms better, grew more and harvested more and so Givitonomy became quite famous(and rich) and gathered more clients. This is where it all gets quite interesting; because his business grew, he had to employ and teach others to do the same job as him and it is recorded that one of Givitnomies employees was a man called Consultiopolous who went on to establish his own teaching school and so the word consultant was born into business language.
It just keeps getting better because Consultiopolous thought a better way to do business was to get others to do it and he would have a share in their business - basically the equivalent of a modern day franchise. While the word franchise was not used in ancient Greece - Consultiopolous first franchise holder was a man called Levaria who was very successful with his franchise. Consultiopolous told new franchise holders that they to could teach and earn money 'Levaria's Way' - or by what we now refer to as Leverage.
So a chain of events 2-3000 years ago was the set up for a modern business language, a chain of events set in motion by a man called Laupheis Histeriopolous who got some financial help from a Greek entrpreneur.
Fact or Fiction???
