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Comment by V-2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this 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.""

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The Astrologer is pointing out that since the guy can't have any (more) children, he should take good care of the ones he has.

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).

> 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.

It’s a joke at the expense of the astrologer. Rome had Augurs with official responsibilities for predicting the future, so maybe these kind of jokes were more subversive at that time.

Although I could imagine a modern joke about an astrologer making grand predictions that are whittled down as the person corrects them.

> Although I could imagine a modern joke about an astrologer making grand predictions that are whittled down as the person corrects them.

https://www.newsfromme.com/pov/col054/

first possibility wouldn't be a joke imo

The other astrologer one:

> 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.

oh I see. didn't read that one! is it possible that the joke conveyed both meanings?

Who knows? Generally speaking it's hard to get two meanings to both translate -- especially over 2000 years.

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.

Or maybe the incompetent astrologer is also mean and going to try to make their statement right by killing the children, so the father should better look after them.

This joke is actually in ancient Greek (it's in a book called «Philogelos»), but the translation looks right to me. I think your interpretation is spot on.

> 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"

This is pretty unlikely as a mistranslation from Latin, where those would be radically different verbs.

Maybe you'll never read this, but a thought...

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)

This one made me laugh out loud and I don't think any of the other replies understood it correctly. The astrologer has gone way out on a limb by telling the man that he is infertile without first ascertaining whether he has children. Then, when cornered, he desperately tries to cover his error by implying that the man is now infertile. "Look after them (because you won't be able to replace them.)"

I assume it’s word play and look after them also stands for look at them, as in to confirm resemblance.

Apparently I interpreted it differently from everyone else. I thought it meant that he couldn't father them in the sense that he was a shitty dad, not that he couldn't have kids.

Haha I also had a different interpretation, that his kids are very likely to die in order to support the astrologer's prediction. Too dark?

I'm pretty sure that a people that watched people hack each other to pieces for entertainment would not be impressed by what we consider 'dark'.

The astrologer says "you are unable to father children". It is ambiguous whether the astrologer is implying that the man cannot conceive children or whether he has no ability to be a father. When the man reveals that he has seven kids, the astrologer's reply of "look after them well" could be interpreted as sarcasm. I think initially you're supposed to think that the man cannot have kids, but the joke is that he's implying he's a terrible father.

My $0.02.

I had a completely different interpretation to everyone else. I read it as the astrologer doubling down on his assertion despite the evidence staring him in the face. The guy can't have kids, so he should look after the ones he has! (Even though they prove that he CAN have kids)

I understood this as a play on fatherhood - he is unable to father children as in he is a bad father. Thus the look after them well as in do better.

The other two explanations others have given [so far] are very interesting: make sure you read them.

Not very funny one. The astrologer says only that he won't be able to produce any more children in the future. There is the implication that the kids might die and he will be childless as the initial prediction implies.

I think it can be understood in two ways: the other one is that the astrologer hints that the children may not be his.

Yes, I agree. In those situations the usual punchline is "I hope that you will take care of them as if they are yours." and that's why I didn't think of that interpretation.

I took it to mean that the astrologer is bad at his job and shifts the goalposts so he’s “right”, like “you won’t have any more kids AFTER THIS!” As psychics and astrologers have been known to do for thousands of years apparently.

I understood that as in they're not his heh

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