This erudite list of precedents is not merely pedantic, although its humour is learned. It was a fairly well-known catalogue, repeated with various additions and subtractions by a number of Renaissance satirists, but in Erasmus it also constitutes a semi-serious bid to protect himself against the inevitable charge of irreverence, and it fits in well with the technique of exploiting great learning in the interests of amusement, a technique in which Erasmus was to be followed and superseded by Rabelais. The number of relatively short additions shows the meticulous care which Erasmus actually bestowed on his joke.