A Garnering of Old Jokes from the Classics Impresses the Reader with the
Fact that Modern Wit Isn't as New as It Ought to Be.
We moderns find it hard to improve on the ancients, except in such
insignificant conveniences as speed in traveling. Even our humor is in
large part no more than the re-tailored mummies of Roman, Greek, and
Egyptian humor--which means, of course, that those ancients merely
resurrected the jokes of their own dim ancestors. Humor comes before
speech.
The Greeks had a pretty wit. And how modern the old Greek jokes do sound!
A truly didactic saying is attributed by Aelian to the
Spartan magistrates. "When certain persons from Clazomenae
had come to Sparta and smeared with soot the seats on which
the Spartan magistrates sat discharging public duties; on
discovering what had been done and by whom, they expressed
no indignation, but merely ordered a proclamation to be
made, 'Let it be lawful for the people of Clazomenae to make
blackguards of themselves.'"
A number of apothegms, proverbs, or sayings of more or less wit occur in
the collected works of Plutarch, although Schneidewin does not hesitate to
attribute most of them to some impostor usurping his name. At any rate,
they are handily classified, and form a bulky addition to Mr. Paley's
translated specimens.
Here is a brief and bright saying which this writer attaches to King
Archelaus, when a talkative barber, trimming his beard, asked him, "How
shall I cut it?"
"In silence," replied the king.
The anecdote recalls one of Charles II's bragging barbers, who boasted to
him he could cut his majesty's throat when he would--a boast for which he
was only dismissed; though for a like rash vaunt, according to Peter
Cunningham, the barber of Dionysius was crucified.
To return to Plutarch, he tells the following stories, both good in their
way, of Philip of Macedon.
In passing sentence on two rogues, he ordered one to leave Macedonia with
all possible speed, and the other to try to catch him.
No less astute was his query as to a strong position he wished to occupy,
which was reported by the scouts to be almost impregnable.
"Is there not," he asked, "even a pathway to it wide enough for an ass
laden with gold?"
Philip, too, according to Plutarch, is entitled to the fatherhood of an
adage which retains its ancient fame about "calling a spade a spade."
Another story tells how Philip removed a judge, because he discovered that
the man's hair and beard were dyed.
"I could not believe," Plutarch reports the king as saying, "that one who
was false in his hair could be honest in his judgments."
Another sample of a witty saying from Plutarch's mint is one attributed to
Themistocles, that his son was the strongest man in Greece.
"For," said he, "the Athenians rule the Hellenes, I rule the Athenians,
your mother rules me, and you rule your mother."
Yet another is a retort attributed to Iphicrates, the celebrated Athenian
general. Harmodius, a young aristocrat who bore a name famous in the early
history of Athens, had reproached Iphicrates, who was the son of a
cobbler, with his mean birth.
"My nobility," the soldier replied, "begins with me, but yours ends with
you."
Another Athenian general, Phocion, was a man who preferred deeds to words.
He compared the eloquent speeches of one of his political opponents to
cypress-trees.
"They are tall," he said, "but they bear no fruit."
Elsewhere Plutarch tells of a man who plucked the feathers from a
nightingale, and, finding it a very small bird, exclaimed:
"You little wretch, you're nothing but voice!"
And again, the repartee of a Laconian to a man of Sparta who twitted him
with being unable to stand as long as himself on one leg.
"No," replied the other, "but any goose can."
An anecdote of Strabo gives a vivid picture of the clashing of a harper's
performances with the sounding of a bell for opening of the fish-market.
All the audience vanished at once save a little deaf man.
The harper expressed himself unutterably flattered at his having resisted
the importunity of the bell.
"What!" cried the deaf man, "has the fish-bell rung? Then I'm off, too.
Good-by!"