No laughing matter? what the Romans found funny
antigonejournal.com
antigonejournal.com
It turns out that centuries later over in Rome there was a public latrine in the town of Ostia Antica that has some graffiti that reference a few of the sages, including Thales, and provide advice for those using the facilities:
* “To shit well, Solon rubbed his belly {Ut bene cacaret, ventrum palpavit Solon}.”
* “Thales admonished those shitting to strain hard {Durum cacantes monuit ut nitant Thales}.”
* “Sly Chilon taught to fart silently {Vissire tacite Chilon docuit subdolus}.”
Below these there are some other pieces of advice, though not from the sages:
* “shake yourself about so you’ll go faster {agita te celerivs pervenies}”
* “you’re sitting on a mule-driver; I’m hurrying up {mvlione sedes, propero}”
* “friend, the proverb escapes you: shit well and fuck the doctors {amice fvgit te proverbivm: bene caca et irrima medicos}”
* “no one talks to you much, Priscianus, until you use the sponge on a stick {verbose tibi nemo dicit dvm priscianvs utaris xylosphongio}”
An interesting article with more details: https://www.purplemotes.net/2014/01/19/seven-sages-ostia/
[0]: Shameless plug: https://songofurania.com/
My ancestors might've been barbarians but they knew to use leaves and water :D
One man complains to another: "The slave you sold me died!" "By the gods!", the other replies. "During the time he was in my service, he never did such a thing!"
A man is attending the burial of his wife, who has just died. When a passerby asks, "Who is it who rests in peace here?", he answers, "Me, now that I'm rid of her!
A provincial man has come to Rome, and walking on the streets was drawing everyone's attention, as he was a real double of the emperor Augustus. The emperor, having brought him to the palace, looks at him and then asks: "Tell me, young man, did your mother come to Rome anytime?" The reply was: "She never did. But my father frequently was here."
An intellectual came to check in on a friend who was seriously ill. When the man's wife said that he had 'departed', the intellectual replied: "When he comes back, will you tell him that I stopped by?"
A misogynist stood in the marketplace and announced: "I’m putting my wife up for sale! Tax-free!" When people asked him why, he said: "So the authorities will impound her."
A runner going to participate in a contest had a dream that he was driving a quadriga. Early in the morning he goes to a dream interpreter for an explanation. The reply is: "You will win, the dream meant you have the speed and the strength of horses." But, to be sure, the runner visits another dream interpreter. This one replies: "You will lose. Don’t you understand that four ones came to me before you?"
An intellectual got a slave pregnant. At the birth, his father suggested that the child be killed. The intellectual replied: "First murder your own children and then tell me to kill mine!"
A intellectual checked in on the parents of a dead classmate. The father was wailing: "O son, you have left me a cripple!" The mother was crying: "O son, you have taken the light from my eyes!" Later, the student says to his friends: "If he were guilty of all that, he should have been killed while still alive."
An incompetent astrologer cast a man's horoscope and said: "You are unable to father children." When the man objected that he had seven kids, the astrologer replied: "Look after them well."
A young man said to his libido-driven wife: "What should we do, darling? Eat or have sex?" She replied: "You can choose. But there's not a crumb in the house."
An astrologer cast a sick boy's horoscope. After promising the mother that the child had many years ahead of him, he demanded payment. When she said, "Come tomorrow and I’ll pay you," he objected: "But what if the boy dies during the night and I lose my fee?"
[0] https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/roman-sense-of-humor/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_jokes
[2] https://aleteia.org/2017/05/23/want-to-hear-an-ancient-roman...
Edit: I think your interpretation below is the correct one!
"An incompetent astrologer cast a man's horoscope and said: "You are unable to father children." When the man objected that he had seven kids, the astrologer replied: "Look after them well.""
It's also possible that this is a bad translation from Latin, and the original punchline was along the lines of "take a good look at them" (i.e., implying that he's not the biological father).
That’s the punchline I expected when I was reading the joke. It makes much more sense and it is more stinging.
Although I could imagine a modern joke about an astrologer making grand predictions that are whittled down as the person corrects them.
> An astrologer cast a sick boy's horoscope. After promising the mother that the child had many years ahead of him, he demanded payment. When she said, "Come tomorrow and I’ll pay you," he objected: "But what if the boy dies during the night and I lose my fee?"
So if they look down on astrologers as being opportunistic charlatans (at least the bad ones), they are mocking that they will say one thing and when confronted about how wrong they are slide right into their next statement.
I guess a good example of this style of joke would be a used car salesman confronted how the roof has been torn off of the car and immediately switching to upselling it as a convertible.
An astrologer predicts no kids, then switches to advising on the future that he should watch over his kids.
This is pretty unlikely as a mistranslation from Latin, where those would be radically different verbs.
I've basically run out of new movies to watch, which are good. Yet some movies over the years, maybe a few every year, are quite good.
The further back I go, the more nuanced (from my perspective) the comedy or comments can become. And further, the more I may "miss" without looking deeply into topical, timely events.
Some stuff literally makes zero sense, then you google, learn something about that specific time, and "oh, I get it". And I'm just talking the 60s or 50s here.
And that's what I can google, which 100% doesn't even remotely give the feeling, the nuance, of actually living in that time. All the quirks, all the jokes, all the in humour.
Words become slang, meaning changes, then that slang falls out of favour.
My point in all of this?
I don't think we have proper, 100% accurate nuance of latin, with properly mapped slang and meanings of words, over 1000s of years.
(And this joke may have been greecian too, but who knows)
The other two explanations others have given [so far] are very interesting: make sure you read them.
My $0.02.
I had no idea Rodney Dangerfield was a Stand Up Philosopher[0].
OK, that's quite good. I can easily imagine one along those lines in a standup set today (probably more along the lines of "So, the other night my boyfriend asked...").
> I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum and I'm all out of bubblegum.
Reference: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/111729/
Solid burn. Being based on the emperor not only sets the joke up (being someone well recognized), but make the comeback sharper/funnier.
This implies that the emperor may not be heir to the throne. Or, may not be 'high born'. This was 2000-2500 years ago, perhaps.
Legitimacy came from the male in these times.
So, having a shared father means nothing bad for the emperor. Having a shared mother means his title, his lands, his bloodline may be entirely false, and thus, his legitimacy.
(Even if the emperor rose and claimed his place by blood/conflict, the above all still counts in many ways.)
Did you make the choice to leave it out (since it doesn't translate well), or did your links?
Makes me think of Life of Brian - https://youtu.be/0lczHvB3Y9s
It's kind of a shame that you don't see a lot of this in popular Western media.
Biggus Dickus.
It seems that there could be many somewhat "generic" Western European jokes about despots which date back to Roman times. But without more information I can't think of any jokes at or about Hitler specifically that could possibly date back to the Romans.
> Urbani, servate uxores, moechum calvum adducimus.
> Aurum in gallia effutuisti, hic sumpsisti mutuum.
> Gallias caesar subegit, nicomedes caesarem, ecce caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit gallias.
> Nicomedes non triumphat, qui subegit caesarem.
> Gallos caesar in triumphum ducit, idem in curiam, galli bracas deposuerunt, latum clavum sumperunt.
hastily translated:
> Hide your wives, we bring the bald adulterer to our city.
> You fucked away all our gold in Gaul, then you borrowed more.
> Caesar is beneath the Gauls, Nicomedes is beneath Caesar, behold Caesar who is beneath the Gauls now triumphs.
> Nicomedes does not triumph, who is beneath Caesar.
> Caesar leads the Gauls in triumph, the same in the senate, the Gauls remove their trousers, they picked up his purple toga to carry it.
https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-p...
The stories are obvious, direct correspondences to Greek stories about Zeus, perhaps accompanied by Hermes, doing the same thing.
However, since the Brothers Grimm collected their stories from aristocrats, it isn't clear whether the Greek stories passed down naturally through time (while mutating into a slightly more Christian theme), or whether the narrators learned the stories in their original Greek as part of a classical education and then rethemed them as "native German" stories for the benefit of the Grimms.
Sowwy, couldn't wesist!
That film has so many absolutely classic scenes with the Romans. My personal favourite is the "romanes eunt domus" scene!
“People called Romanes they go the house?!”
What I completely forgot were the scenes with Stan transitioning into Loretta. What seemed like an eccentric joke at the time (more than 40 years ago!) proved fairly prescient. Funny yet handled with kindness.
So I think it's at least difficult to object to? Yes that behaviour is correct but it's not allowed in a comedy? Stop laughing (so it can still be in the script, it's just not a joke?)?
I think the whole film is far more thoughtful than it is unkind, to any group. The main contemporary objection was from religious groups of course, but just watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeKWVuye1YE.
"Never Be Rude to an Arab" is Islamaphobic on its face, as well as normalizing other racial slurs.
"I like Chinese" is full of pretty gross stereotypes as well.
The troop claims they harbor no ill intent, and that may be true, but it's easy to say "We're not here to offend" about someone else but not acknowledging the power differences here and why someone might be offended.
Would it be an acceptable sketch today? Probably not, and that's not really a bad thing given that improvements to the rights and recognition of transgender people is one of the more positive things to come out of the last couple of decades in my opinion. Should Monty Python be cancelled over this sketch though? Not in a million years.
There's definitely a lens of "the history of the world as it's presented in high-school" that makes the Life of Brian so funny.
The way people represent the joke, as if they had no reason to oppose the Romans is a joke by itself.
(The "let's interrupt our program because the Queen has just started watching" is the best.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxfDIV1f0R4
(subtitles available)