The BBC has a piece on Punch and Judy which makes an interesting claim:

The famous British puppet Mr Punch could have been made foul tempered as a result of a medical condition, according to new research.

University of Derby's David Bryson said the icon famed for beating wife Judy with a stick could have been suffering from acromegaly.

The teaching fellow said the puppet, who can be traced back to Roman times, resembles a sufferer of the condition.

... scattered references to 'Roman clowns' all over the web, but does anyone know of a genuine link to ancient Rome for the famous puppet?

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Comments:

I'm not a scholar, but it's pretty well understood that "Punch", both
the character and the name, derive from "Punchinello", the usual English
form of "Pulchinella", one of the characters of the Commedia dell'arte,
and it is a commonplace (I know not how well founded) that the Commedia
has a heritage going back to classical times. (The grotesquery certainly
strikes me as more characteristic of the Roman than the medieval or
early modern aesthetic.)

John W. Kennedy