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Talk about “old jokes”…here’s some knee-slappers from ancient Rome

  ROMAN SOLDIERS

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  [25]Daniel Esparza - published on 05/23/17

Heard any good bad breath jokes lately? They were big in 400 A.D.

    A student goes to town, and one of his friends asks him a favor:
    would he buy two 15-year-old slaves for him? “With pleasure,” the
    student responds. “If I can’t find two 15-year-olds, I’ll bring you
    one who’s already 30.”

  Maybe the joke wasn’t funny at all. That’s not surprising – our sense
  of humor has changed quite significantly since the 5th century. The
  cultural context of the joke, as well as the 16 centuries that separate
  us from it, doesn’t help make this joke attractive for today’s
  audiences, accustomed as we are to sitcoms, stand-ups and Hollywood
  comedies.

  But it’s also possible that you’ve heard the joke (or a variant of it)
  before: in fact, it’s one of the oldest jokes documented. It is about
  1,600 years old, just like this other one:

    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!”

  Apparently  people liked to make jokes about “intellectuals” in Ancient
  Rome. Here are a few gems:

    An intellectual, falling sick, had promised to pay the doctor if he
    recovered. When his wife nagged at him for drinking wine while he
    had a fever, he said: “Do you want me to get healthy and be forced
    to pay the doctor?” An intellectual had been at a wedding-reception.
    As he was leaving, he said: “I pray that you two keep getting
    married so well.” 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 arrives back, will you tell him
    that I stopped by?”

  And in the days before modern oral hygiene, jokes about bad breath were
  sure to get the yuks:

    A man with bad breath asked his wife: “Madame, why do you hate me?”
    And she said in reply: “Because you love me.”

  These, and 250 other jokes, are part of the Philogelos, a Roman
  anthology of jokes which dates back to 4th or 5th century, written in
  Greek, with references to the different cultures that cohabited in the
  Mediterranean during the end of the Republic and the beginning of the
  Empire.

  [26]A complete edition of the Philogelos, in English, is available at
  this link. Of course, we do not guarantee you’ll laugh.
  Tags:
  [27]History[28]Vatican

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