9 ms·
Shameless plug: a few months ago I was frustrated by a similar article's lack of jokes and compiled some funny jokes from antiquity: https://news.ycombinator.c
by lqet 5y ago
Shameless plug: a few months ago I was frustrated by a similar article's lack of jokes and compiled some funny jokes from antiquity:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28468098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28468098
A favorite:
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."
- NicoJuicy 5y agoHe's suggesting that Augustus is his father? Or have the same father. And his non-biological father is the one that regularly went out to the city ( not to cheat) Correct? So more like a brainteaser than a joke, i guess.
- bjackman 5y agoI read an epigram by Martial when I was at school, it translated to: You shave your head to conceal your baldness. How will you conceal your impotence?
- jvanderbot 5y agoNow that's comedy. I love that people haven't changed that much in 1000s of years.
- stavros 5y agoI don't get it :/ Can someone explain? EDIT: Apparently the emperor is asking to see if they share parents, and not to see whether the emperor is his father, as I originally thought.
- JackGreyhat 5y agoIt suggests they have the same father
- glaucon 5y agoThe question implies that his Mother may have had sex with the father of Augustus. The answer suggests that it was his Father that had sex with the mother of Augustus. It's funny because there's a lot more tension associated with the current Emperor having been fathered by the "wrong" person than, under the original assumption, that some rube from the country was fathered by the Emperor's father.
- Ekaros 5y agoIf it was first Augustus it really would not have mattered too much. His father was rich true, but mother being Caesar's sister's daughter.
- lqet 5y agoThe emperor makes a joke at the cost of the peasant's mother - that she was in Rome at some point and was impregnated by the emperor's father. The peasant's clever answer implies that his own (peasant) father had sex with the emperor's mother and that the emperor is therefore the son of a peasant.
- jll29 5y agoDoes anyone have the original version in Latin? I want to check if it's funny. (The only Latin that ever made me laugh - cry, in fact - was 'Romani eunt domus' in Monty Python's "Life of Brian"...)
- ithkuil 5y agoOk this is not a joke but it may make you laugh too: https://youtu.be/PbEKIW3pUUk https://youtu.be/PbEKIW3pUUk
- jan_Inkepa 5y agohttp://www.antiquitatem.com/en/a-joke-2000-years-old-augustus/ http://www.antiquitatem.com/en/a-joke-2000-years-old-augustu... has a bunch of recorded versions. > Soleo in Augusto magis mirari quos pertulit iocos quam ipse quos protulit, qui maior est patientiae quam facundiae laus, maxime cum aequanimiter aliqua etiam iocis mordaciora pertulerit. Cuiusdam provincialis iocus asper innotuit. Intraverat Romam simillimus Caesari et in se omnium ora converterat. Augustus perduci ad se hominem iussit, visumque hoc modo interrogavit: Dic mihi, adolescens, fuit aliquando mater tua Romae? Negavit ille, nec contentus adiecit: Sed pater meus saepe.
- pmoriarty 5y agoGoogle translates this as: In August I am always more surprised at those jokes he bore than those he himself uttered, who has greater praise for patience than for eloquence, especially when he bore with equanimity even some of the more biting jokes. A rough joke of a provincial became known. He had entered Rome, most like Caesar, and had turned the mouths of all on him. Augustus ordered the man to be brought to him, and it seemed as if he asked in this manner: Tell me, young man, was your mother at any time in Rome? He denied it, nor was content with it, but added, "But my father often."
- korse 5y agoIt is a 'yo momma' joke you uncultured swine. Nah man... Your Dad (Emperor) didn't bang my Mom (Plebian). My Dad (Plebian) BANGED YOUR MOM!!! (Empress probably)
- epmos 5y ago> (Empress probably) Augustus' parents were not emperor/empress--he was the first person to have that title.
- ithkuil 5y agoAnd technically his family, the gens Octavia, was a plebeian family, albeit his branch was rather wealthy by the time of his birth. Speaking of his mother Atia though, she was the niece of the Gaius Julius Caesar, himself from a patrician family. The formal distinction between the family orders waned in significance over the centuries preceding the fact. That said, people always find new ways to feel superior to other people so it's not like there were no class distinctions, but the term plebeian was quite more complicated and nuanced than our modern re-interpretation of the word.
- taneq 5y agoIt starts as a 'yo momma' and turns into 'NO U'.
- tshaddox 5y agoThe joke as presented here doesn’t work at all due to the emperor addressing him as “young man,” which makes it impossible to avoid the interpretation that the emperor is concerned that he himself could be the father of the young man.
- stavros 5y agoAh right, thank you. I thought that I had misinterpreted that he was older, but now that you point it out I realize that's why I thought that.
- danielmarkbruce 5y agoI think the "young man" part throws it off. Re-read without it, and the joke seems clearer.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gibspaulding 5y agoI have that comment favorited and was just about to link it here; it's a good list!
- kadoban 5y agoI cannot figure out how this one is funny, or even a joke: > 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!" The rest are fairly amusing, or I can at least appreciate what the joke is, but this one I have nothing. I guess it must be something about the intellectual being among the father's children, but that doesn't really seem to add anything? (thanks for the list by the way, really interesting)
- Digory 5y agoFrom a 1922 translation: A father advised a pedant who had a child born to him of a slave woman to do away with the child. He replied "First bury your own children before you advise me to do away with mine." You could probabaly make it a little more sarcastic: "Why don't you bury..." I assume the pedant is an adult, and cannot be killed lawfully, so burial is way off in the future. And once the pedant is buried, he cannot kill his own child. It rings a little like a more vulgar versions of the saying of Jesus, "remove the plank from your own eye..."
- mcv 5y ago> The intellectual replied: "First murder your own children and then tell me to kill mine!" Sounds like a clever way to say: "Over my dead body." Considering he's saying this to his own father.
- mimconpoon 5y agoIt's funny because it's a mindless application of a standard reply to someone asking one to do something difficult: ``first do it yourself, then ask others to do it.'' The intellectual, the stereotypically absent-minded ``scholastic'', hasn't considered that in this particular case he is asking to be killed. And I suppose it's a bonus that he can't possibly do anything when he's dead.
- mrighele 5y agoI think that the joke is that the intellectual himself, and all of his siblings, were born from a slave.
- 5y ago
- labster 5y agoWould be slightly funnier if you add English double entendre: “But my father came here frequently.”
- mimconpoon 5y agoI don't think that would work in Greek.
- CoastalCoder 5y agoNow THAT is one heck of a double entendre!
- ben_w 5y agoCan you elaborate? I’m afraid my Greek is just about at the level of “Ενα τσαι, παρακαλώ” followed by the Athenian responding in English to correct my pronunciation.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago(Disclaimers: crude content ahead; also, explaining a joke makes it unfunny.) Ancient Greece is sometimes associated with pederasty [0], where adult men have sex with younger (teen-aged) boys. GP wrote: > I don't think that would work in Greek. IIUC, GP's point was that commenting the word "came" is ambiguous in English, but not in the joke's original language. My pun was that there are two ways to interpret "that wouldn't work in Greek". The first being what GP meant. The second being that if a Greek man were to ejaculate when in Rome, it "wouldn't work" to father anyone, because it would be anal sex, and therefore unlikely to impregnate their partner. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece
- novaleaf 5y agoI took the joke to imply that they both had the same fathers (to different mothers)