WIT OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS.
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 Clazomenæ 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 Clazomenæ 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.