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No laughing matter? what the Romans found funny
- lqet 5y agoI googled around a bit to find some actual Roman jokes [0][1][2]: 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/ https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/article/roman-sense-of-humor/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_jokes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_jokes [2] https://aleteia.org/2017/05/23/want-to-hear-an-ancient-roman-joke-heres-a-collection/ https://aleteia.org/2017/05/23/want-to-hear-an-ancient-roman...
- nononolaughs 5y agoHey, hey, hey, watch it - this is HN not reditt. No jokes or laughs allowed. Like they say, when in Rome, do as the romans do.
- belter 5y agoI think anti jokes are allowed: - You don’t need a parachute to go skydiving. - You need a parachute to go skydiving twice.
- BrandoElFollito 5y agoThat's a good one. One of my kids is still thinking it out, I expect an eureka moment any time
- hutzlibu 5y agoWell, my by far highest karma scoring post, was a joke. But it added to the conversation. So it was welcome. Like those jokes here very much are. But a lame OT joke about Trump, or Biden, or comparing US to Rome in late stage etc. no thank you.
- wvh 5y agoHow Trojan of you.
- ant6n 5y agoCareful, nononolaughs, you're making jokes and spelling imstakes!
- goto11 5y agoWhat are the source?
- lqet 5y agoAdded them above.
- OJFord 5y agoBaffling that this piece manages to mention so much modern comedy, in discussing Romans, without referencing the centurion scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian, with Caesar's friend (he had a wife you know)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U&t=1m18s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U&t=1m18s
- belter 5y ago"And about you? Do you find it risible...when I say the name...Biggus..."
- fartingflamingo 5y agowisible! Sowwy, couldn't wesist!
- HarHarVeryFunny 5y agoOrphelia Buttocks
- BoxOfRain 5y agoNice one, centurion! That film has so many absolutely classic scenes with the Romans. My personal favourite is the "romanes eunt domus" scene!
- dugmartin 5y agoI recently watched a great "explainer" video on why that scene was even funnier at a deeper level if you had been classically educated in Latin (as John Cleese was): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfH6gjxTTgE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfH6gjxTTgE
- switch007 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_ite_domum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_ite_domum “People called Romanes they go the house?!”
- Radim 5y ago
- heikkilevanto 5y agoI don't have any reference, but I heard once that someone looked at the jokes they told about Hitler, and was able trace more than half of them back to the Romans.
- ojnabieoot 5y agoMaybe a reference would help - I'm not sure how this is a meaningful statement. 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.
- ben_w 5y agoPart of me really wants to believe that ancient Rome’s plebeians sang “Ceaser unum testiculum habuit, Augustus duo sed parvae sunt” (or whatever it would be: please excuse my use of Google translate).
- Y_Y 5y agoSuetonius records the following as being sung by the troops at one of Caesar's triumphs: > 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.
- GravitasFailure 5y agoI would be completely unsurprised if that were true. If you look at the graffiti in Pompeii it's a parade of dick drawings, boasts about virility, and generally would look quite at home in the modern era. https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-pompeii-and-herculaneu https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-p...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- captainpiggies 5y agoI highly recommend anyone who's interested in funny stories of Roman life to read the Satyricon from Gaius Petronius Arbiter (eBook available on Project Gutenberg)
- knodi123 5y agohttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5225 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5225
- kook_throwaway 5y agoThank you.
- peter303 5y agoPlay Funny Thing Happened on Way to Forum used lots of these jokes. Still funny.
- abruzzi 5y agoI'm surprised that the author doesn't see modern usage of coined names, maybe we read different things. It is very common in almost all of Pynchon's novels. Vonnegut used it often as well."Benny Profane", "Oedipa Maas", "Pierce Inverarity", "Malachi Constant", and half of the characters in Gravity's Rainbow: https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Gravitys-Rainbow/characters/ https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Gravitys-Rainbow/characters/
- robotresearcher 5y agoThe author gives an example of modern use from Family Guy. It works as a tic for Vonnegut because it's not common.
- bitwize 5y agoA lot of anime characters have highly unusual but descriptive names. Ex.: Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia is a narcissist preoccupied with proving he's the best, and has explosion based powers. His name incorporates the kanji for "self", "win", and "bomb". Many of the other MHA characters are so named according to their traits, superpowers, and even signature colors. It's kind of a shame that you don't see a lot of this in popular Western media.
- kook_throwaway 5y agoHiro Protagonist
- brazzy 5y agoAhem. Biggus Dickus.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoYou might like Stephen Erikson's Malazan Books of the Fallen series. It's a noteworthy feature there, albeit only in some of the cultures he invented.
- marton78 5y agoThe same is true for Bond Girls and for the Batman's romantic interests.
- antognini 5y agoI've been doing some research in the last couple of weeks about the astronomer Thales of Miletus for an upcoming episode of a podcast I host about the history of astronomy that I run [0]. I had known that Thales was one of the Seven Sages of Greece, but I didn't quite appreciate the extent to which the Seven Sages had entered the popular consciousness. 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/ https://www.purplemotes.net/2014/01/19/seven-sages-ostia/ [0]: Shameless plug: https://songofurania.com/ https://songofurania.com/
- bserge 5y agoSponge on a stick. Reusable. Shared. Sometimes deadly.
- antognini 5y agoThere's even a Wikipedia page about the xylospongium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylospongium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylospongium
- bserge 5y agoOh dear God, they actually used sea sponges? Why did I need to know that... My ancestors might've been barbarians but they knew to use leaves and water :D
- bitwize 5y agoThe bit about Romans dressing and acting like Greeks reminds me of the Gilbert and Sullivan play The Mikado, which satirized British life but was set in a comical version of Japan. When the Crown Prince of Japan visited Great Britain, all exhibitions of the play in London were cancelled so as to avoid giving offense. Unfortunately, His Highness had wanted to see The Mikado while he was in town...
- asveikau 5y agoRomans and Greeks were a little cosier than British and Japanese though. In addition to Greece not being far, southern Italy was called Magna Graecia for its Greek population, and it's my understanding that Roman aristocrats and politicians often spoke Greek.
- malwarebytess 5y agoAll of the apologies for the blue comedy are grating. We get it, making fun of women isn't socially acceptable. You don't need to preface every single description of an off-color joke.