Four Bits Of Ancient Wordplay
We look at the past through a very serious lens. When we look back at ancient people, thinking about wars and tragedies, we ignore the more fun side of ancient life. This is a grave error. The ancients were often humorous and light, just like we are today.
Humor and comedy played a major role in ancient society. Aristophanes, a Greek playwright who wrote comedies held great status in ancient Greek society. He is included in Platonic dialogues such as the Symposium as a serious player. Aristophanes was not purely making high-brow humor either. In his play, Frogs he writes:
Xanthias: Look, master, an audience! Shouldn’t I say something? Tell them one of those jokes they always fall for?
Dionysus: O, all right — say what you like. Only no jokes about how you’re dying to piss. I can’t stand those — they’re all so stale.
Xanthias: What about my other jokes?
Dionysus: Go ahead — just `nothing about your bladder, about how it’s going to burst.
Xanthias: What? You mean I can’t tell that really funny one . . .
Dionysus: I suppose so — but don’t say anything about the bit.
Xanthias: What bit?
Dionysus: The bit about how you need to shift your load to take a piss.
Xanthias: Not even this one — “Here I am transporting such a load if I get no relief I may explode.” 1
He also writes in his play, Clouds
Student: All right. Chaerephon of Sphettus once asked Socrates whether, in his opinion, a gnat buzzed through its mouth or through its anal sphincter.
Strepsiades: What did Socrates say about the gnat?
Student: He said that the gnat’s intestinal tract was narrow—therefore air passing through it, because of the constriction, was pushed with force towards the rear. So then that orifice, being a hollow space beside a narrow tube, transmits the noise caused by the force of air.
Strepsiades: So a gnat’s arse hole is a giant trumpet! O triply blessed man who could do this, anatomize the anus of a gnat! A man who knows a gnat’s guts inside out would have no trouble winning lawsuits2. 3
Both these plays received prizes at the Lenia festival, 3rd and 1st place, respectively.4 It’s clear that the ancients had the same stupid jokes that we do. Hence, it only makes sense that they also enjoyed their fair share of wordplay and puns. Thus, in this article, we will examine a few of these ancient puns in sources from the Bible to the Aeneid.
Pun #1: The Aeneid
The first spoken sentence in the Aeneid reads as follows:
“Am I having been defeated, not able to cease from what has begun?”
However, the original Latin text includes a bit of wordplay. Because Latin word order is more fluid, Virgil therefore is able to place the word for “Am I?”, mēne next to the word for begun, inceptō. Further, Latin poetry has special rules for pronouncing words to keep rhythm. In Latin poetry, if a word ends with a vowel, and is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, the two vowels get pronounced together (EX: ille et is pronounced as illet). Thus, mēne inceptō becomes mēnenceptō. If we isolate the beginning mēnen we get the opening word of the Illiad, μῆνιν meaning “Rage”. This pun further connects the Latin Aeneid to the Greek epics.
Pun #2: Judges
In the famous story of Samson, we find another pun within the Hebrew Bible. Samson, after being tied up, is taken as a slave by the Philistines. Then, the text reads:
“As their spirits rose, they said,
“Call Samson here and let him entertain us.” Samson was fetched from the prison, and he entertained them. Then they put him between the pillars.”
The word for entertain here is rendered as “וִישַֽׂחֶק” (Vayischak) by the Masoretic tradition. However, the letter ש can change its sound depending on how it is pointed. If the dot on top of the letter is on the left, it makes a s sound as in sound and becomes the letter Sin. If the dot is on the right, it makes a sh sound as in Shush, and becomes the letter Shin.
In this case both pointings of the word work. וִישַֽׂחֶק with a sin means “to entertain” as explained above. That being said if you replace the sin with a shin the word becomes “וִישַֹחֶק” which is read as “Vayishchack” and means “to crush”. The Masoretic pointing is far more common. The alternative pointing only appears four times in the Hebrew Bible and a few attestations in inscriptions. Both readings do work though. They are calling on Samson to entertain them, and he is about to crush them. This leaves the question, which reading is correct?
Charles Halton suggests that both readings are correct. The author here is employing wordplay, using these two similar letters, sometimes not distinguished between, to convey two different meanings. The first reading displays the Philistines, who are festive and ready to enjoy their new captive. However, the other reading mockingly hints that all the Philistines are doing is inviting Samson to crush them. Halton also notes that this kind of humor, against the Philistines is common in Tannakh.5
Pun #3: Matthew
In Matthew 2, there’s a strange quotation. In Matthew 2:23 Matthew quotes,
“There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazarene”
This ‘prophecy’, “He will be called a Nazarene”, is found nowhere in the Old Testament. Therefore, Dr. W. Barnes Tatum holds this quotation to be an indirect quotation of what Matthew believed prophecies to say, as opposed to what a specific prophecy says. There’s good backing in the text to support Tatum’s reading. Typically, when Matthew quotes a prophecy he has a very particular way of doing so. He mentions the “προφήτου, λέγοντος”, meaning “the prophet saying”. In Matthew 2:23 though, the singular προφήτου becomes the plural προφητῶν. Putting prophet in the plural implies that this is not the quotation of a prophet, but a general idea shared among prophets. Further, Matthew drops the participle of saying, λέγοντος, implying that no one in particular is saying this quote.
Tatum also notes that Matthew spells Nazarene strangely. This creates a play between a נזיר (Nazir) meaning Nazerite, which refers to someone who takes the vow described in Numbers 6, and a Ναζαρηνός (Nazarinos) referring to someone from Nazareth. When Matthew mentions a Nazarene he opts to spell the word as Ναζωπαιος (Nazoraios), switching the alpha for an omega for a word that Tatum translates as Nazorean. This spelling creates a wordplay that allows Matthew to assimilate the Nazerite, who takes the vow of Numbers 6 and is referred to in the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible, and the Nazarene, who lives in Nazareth and is what Jesus becomes to fulfill those prophecies of the Hebrew Bible.6
Pun #4: Aristophanes
The aforementioned Aristophanes also enjoyed the use of puns. Being a writer of comedies, he has many puns to choose from, which are discussed in Dimitrios Kanellakis’s article “Translating Aristophanes Puns”. Specifically, though, I want to focus on a specific type of puns, comic names. I say this because comic names were incredibly common in ancient literature and therefore deserve some coverage. Sometimes this meant names that were made up to be funny. For example, χαυνοπολῖται means “citizens of Simpletonia” as translated by Jeffery Henderson, a translator of Aristophanes. Some comic names are plays on other names. For example, in the Clouds, Strepsiades is worried about getting bitten by οἱ Κορίνθιοι (Oi Korinthioi), a pun between the words bugs and Corinthians. Translators have had some fun translating this name. For example, Jeffery Henderson translates the phrase as “Cootie-rinthians”.
Aristophanes included a lot of comic names that relied on what we would now call potty humor. For example, Kοπρεαῖος is a cross between the name of a town and the word for excrement. Henderson renders the word as “Dungstown”7 .
Conclusion
The ancients were not all marble statues and philosophers. They put their togas on two legs at a time and enjoyed much of the same wordplay we do today. When we forget the humanity of people in antiquity, we risk viewing history with blinders. Therefore, it’s important to stress the less majestic, more human aspects of antiquity.
Aristophanes, and Ian Johnston. Aristophanes’ Frogs. Oxford, Ohio, Faenum Publishing, 2015.
Likely a slide at Socrates for being executed
Aristophanes, and Ian Johnston. Aristophanes’ Clouds. Oxford, Ohio, Faenum Publishing, 2017.
Aristophanes, and Stephen Halliwell. Frogs and Other Plays. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016
Halton, Charles. “Samson’s Last Laugh: The ‘Ś/ŠḤQ’ Pun in Judges 16:25-27.” Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 128, no. 1, 2009, pp. 61–64. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/25610165. Accessed 6 Oct. 2024.
Tatum, W. Barnes. "Matthew 2.23—Wordplay and Misleading Translations." The Bible Translator 27.1 (1976): 135-138.
Kanellakis, Dimitrios. “TRANSLATING ARISTOPHANES’ PUNS.” Greece and Rome 69.2 (2022): 238–253. Web.