Jokes about a student who dies

A especially interesting group of Philosopher jokes includes three anecdotes (77, 257, and 258) in which the student dies and therefore does not attend school. In anecdote 77, a father apologizes to the teacher for his dead son missing class:

Σχολαστικὸς ἐκκομίσας τὸν υἱόν, ἀπαντήσας τῷ διδασκάλῳ αὐτοῦ· Σύγγνωθι, ἔφη, ὅτι οὐκ ἦλθεν ὁ υἱός μου εἰς τὴν σχολήν· ἀπέθανε γάρ.

An idiot was accompanying his son’s coffin when he came across his teacher and said, “I'm sorry my son did not go to class: he passed away!”

We should not argue about taste, but the content of the joke sounds perhaps too gruesome for our refined preference. It is basically an example of dark humor. The “idiot” (scholastikos) is not offering a pathetic excuse for his son’s absence. The use of the verb ekkomizô reveals, in fact, a funeral procession and shows the truth of a father’s remark. What makes it funny is his concern to justify, for the “teacher” (didaskalos), the absence of a deceased child. The word scholê, which I translated as “class”, also means “school”. Technically, it meant “leisure” or “free time”. In the sense of school, it was an abbreviation of scholastêrion, that is, a “place for leisure”. The presence of the word scholê in the anecdote points, firstly, to the intimate association between the “pedantic or idle man” (scholastikos) with the school environment. Secondly, it suggests that the school was not seen in antiquity as a place of boredom and dull intellectual exercises, but a space for pleasure. On that account, maybe we should ask ourselves, “have we changed or has the school?”

Despite its bad taste, anecdote 257 shows a similar anxiety concerning children not attending school:

Σχολαστικὸς υἱὸν θάψας καὶ συναντήσας τῷ διδασκάλῳ αὐτοῦ εἶπεν· Προ<ς>ῆλθεν ὁ παῖς; ὁ δέ φησιν· Οὔ. καὶ ὁ σχολαστικός· Λοιπὸν οὖν, καθηγητά, τέθνηκεν.

After burying his son, an idiot happened to come across his teacher and asked him, “Has the child come to class?” He answered, “No.” To which the idiot said, “Well, boss, he has died!”

Humor here certainly does not come only from the father’s absurd question, but also from the fact that, even in the worst of times, the father still worried about what a teacher might think of his child’s absence. In the anecdote, the father uses two distinct words to refer to the educator: the terms “teacher” (didaskalos) and “boss” (kathêgêtês), which are respectful enough to be used in the Gospels in reference to Christ (Matthew 8:19 and 23:10, for example).

Anecdote 258 is a bit longer and more elaborate:

Σχολαστικὸς παιδοτρίβης ἀκούσας περὶ μαθητοῦ, ὅτι νοσεῖ, τῇ δὲ ἑξῆς, ὅτι πυρέττει, ὕστερον δὲ παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀκούσας, ὅτι ἀπέθανεν, ἔφη· Οὕτω προφασιζόμενοι οὐκ ἐᾶτε τοὺς παῖδας μανθάνειν.

When an idiotic physical education teacher heard a parent speaking that a student was sick; soon after, that he had a fever; and, finally, that he had died, he said: “With so many excuses, you are not letting your children learn”.

This anecdote differs from the previous ones because, in this case, we are not entirely sure whether the excuses proceed. At least in the eyes of the “idiotic” teacher, the paidotribês, the ancient personal trainer who helped students (mathêtai) practice physical exercises in the Greek gyms, parents were used to lie shamelessly to protect their children. Despite this fact, the story suggests that, at least in this case, the father was telling the truth.

Anecdotes about a student’s death show that the absence from school activities was considered so serious that it required justification from the parents. They also show that student attendance was a constant concern for parents and teachers alike.

Jokes about an untalented grammar teacher

The Philogelus contains a group of jokes that tease some grammar teachers for their lack of talent. Thus, anedocte 140 takes us to this unpleasant situation in which an unskilled teacher tries to teach grammmar:

Εὐτράπελος ἰδὼν γραμματοδιδάσκαλον ἀφυῆ διδάσκοντα προσελθὼν ἠρώτα, διὰ τί κιθαρίζειν οὐ διδάσκει; Τοῦ δὲ εἰπόντος· Ὅτι οὐκ ἐπίσταμαι - εἶπε· Πῶς οὖν γράμματα διδάσκεις οὐκ ἐπιστάμενος;

A prankster saw an untalented grammar teacher lecturing, then approached him and asked, “Why don’t you teach the harp instead?” He replied, “Because I do not know how to play it!” “How come, then, you teach grammar without knowing it?”

“A prankster saw” (eutrapêlos idôn) is a formula that initiates three anecdotes (140, 147, and 151) in the Philogelus. In anecdote 140, the “prankster” sees “an untalented grammar teacher” (grammatodidaskalon aphyê). This grammar teacher has no natural inclination for his job, and this is shown by the adjective aphyês, which has precisely that meaning, although ^{Crompton (2013}, p. 94) prefers to call him “teaching apprentice”. Because of this negative way to see him, the “prankster” suggests that he should “teach the harp” (kitharizein), a practice in which his imposture would soon become evident. This reminds us of Xenophon’s account in Memorabilia 1.7.1-2 (^{MARCHANT, 1921}), in which he states that Socrates argued that someone who pretends to be a flute-player must imitate a genuine flute-player in every respect except one: they should never play it. If they did that, they would be unmasked. Even a simple “grammar teacher” knows it, and - for that reason - abstains from teaching the harp, the flute, or any other musical instrument. Despite the fact that many people think that anyone can become a school teacher, the “prankster” does not: “how come, then, you teach grammar without knowing it?” This question sounds so current, doesn’t it? According to anecdote 196, a teacher may not have any talent, but still show some wit:

Ἀφυὴς γραμματικὸς ἐρωτηθείς· Πῶς δεῖ λέγειν, τοῖς δύο ἢ τοῖς δυσί; ὁ δὲ τὴν χεῖρα προτείνας τοὺς δύο ὑπεδείκνυε δακτύλους.

They asked a certain untalented grammar teacher: “Is it better to say two or both?” He stretched out his hand and showed them two fingers.

The grammatical qualm of the question has to do with the declension of numerals in Greek. People want to know if number “two” (dyo) should be declined to follow the case of the article or not. It would be impossible to reproduce this question exactly in English, a language in which words are not declined. Even so, the words “two” and “both” conveniently fit the joke because these two expressions are close enough to mimic the intimate relationship that exists between the nominative case of the numeral (dyo) and its dative case (dysi). Unfortunately, the question of the anecdote in English does not require a grammatically correct answer and depends on the context in which these words are used, whereas the correct answer in Greek would be tois dysi (and not tois dyo), since the numeral “two” does in fact follow the declension of the article. Yet, both the Greek anecdote and its English translation exempt the “grammar teacher” (grammatikos) from answering the question, since the display of the two fingers can be interpreted as ambiguous. At least, however, he did not show one finger only!

Anecdote 197 is about a literature class:

Ἀφυὴς γραμματικὸς ἐρωτηθείς· Ἡ μήτηρ Πριάμου τίς ἐκαλεῖτο; ἀπορῶν ἔφη· Ἡμεῖς κατὰ τιμὴν κυρίαν αὐτὴν καλοῦμεν.

They asked an untalented grammar teacher a question: “How was Priam’s mother called?” Seeing that he was in trouble, he replied, “It is more polite to call her madam.”

The verb “to be in trouble” (aporeô) appears often in Plato’s dialogues when Socrates cross-examines one of his conservation partners until his incisive questions leave him wordless. We cannot help but feel sympathy, however, for the teacher who was in trouble, since this “madam” (kyria) whom Heracles killed and who was married to Priam, the king of Troy, is not only an obscure figure in epic literature, but she also receives several names. In his fragment 6.1, Scamon (^{MÜLLER, 1851}), a Greek historian from the fourth century B.C., son of the historian Hellanicus, comments the passage of the Iliad (3.250) in which Priam is called “son of Laomedon” (Laomedontiadês), and states that Porphyry, in a lost work titled On the names omitted by the poet, calls him by that name; while Alcman calls her Leuxippe; Hellanicus calls her Estimo; and Estamis calls her Toasa. Hekabe, Priam’s wife, also had an obscure genealogy (^{FOWLER, 2013}, v. 2, p. 527). In fact, according to Suetonius (Tiberius 70.3), Emperor Tiberius used to select teachers depending on their answer to the question on who Hekabe’s mother was. He would hire only those who gave the correct answer as Evagore (cf. Hesiod, Theogony 257). If the teacher of this joke did not know who Priam’s mother was, he would probably not know who his mother-in-law was! He would not, therefore, be hired. The anecdote then points to the importance that Greek literature continued to have, even at a time when Christianity had already established itself as the official religion of the empire.

Jokes about an incompetent student

There are also in the Philogelus a few jokes about incompetent students. In anecdote 199, a student gets in trouble while his classmates get ready for physical exercises:

Ἀφυὴς μαθητὴς κακῶς τινα κείρας καὶ παρωνυχίδας ποιήσας καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὑπὸ τοῦ ὀνυχιζομένου ἀπωσθεὶς ἀνεβόησεν· Ἐπιστάτα, τί οὐκ ἀφίης<ί> με μαθεῖν;

An incompetent student cuts a student’s hair very badly and then causes a whitlow on another. For this reason, he is pushed away by the one whose nails he was trimming, and complains: “Coach, why won’t he let me learn?”

The fact that the student calls his teacher “coach” (epistatês) suggests a gym context. In spite of this, the word has the sense of “supervisor”, too, and can therefore set the occasion in a classroom. The practicing student cuts his friend’s nails to the finger pulp. The use of the expression parônychidas poiêsas suggests that the student reached the finger pulp or nail fold, thus hurting the person in whom he practiced. The humor of the joke lies in the fact that the incompetent student is surprised by the attitude of his victim, demanding from the coach an opportunity to learn.

It seems that the issue of learning how to trim someone else’s nails was an important part of the curriculum, since anecdote 200 refers to a similar situation:

Ἀφυὴς μαθητὴς ὑπὸ τοῦ ἐπιστάτου κελευσθεὶς ὀνυχίσαι οἰκοδεσπότην ἐδάκρυσε. τοῦ δὲ τὴν αἰτίαν ἐρωτήσαντος ἔφη· Φοβοῦμαι καὶ κλαίω· μέλλω γὰρ τραυματίσαι σε, καὶ παρωνυχίδας ποιήσεις, καὶ τύψει με ὁ ἐπιστάτης.

An incompetent student started to cry when his coach told him to trim a certain man’s nails. When the latter asked him why, he replied, “I am crying because I am afraid. I’m going to hurt you; I’m going to cause a whitlow, and the coach will hit me.

Anecdotes about incompetent students and teachers show that the vocation for teaching and learning has always been relative, contingent to personal interests, disposition and natural abilities. Anecdote 200 also speaks of the reality of physical punishment in case of unsatisfactory performance.

Anedoctes about one’s school life

Another group of jokes in the Philogelus refer to one’s school life but are not limited to a specific theme. Anecdote 61 reads as follows:

Σχολαστικὸς χαμαιδιδάσκαλος ἄφνω ἀποβλέψας εἰς τὴν γωνίαν ἐβόησε· Διονύσιος ἐν τῇ γωνίᾳ ἀτακτεῖ. εἰπόντος δέ τινος, ὅτι οὔπω πάρεστιν, ὁ δὲ ἔφη· Ὅταν ἔλθῃ.

An idiotic primary teacher suddenly looks to the corner and shouts: Dionysus is reigning in the corner! When they say that he is not yet present, the teacher replies: - He will certainly reign when he arrives!

In this anecdote, the educator is identified as a “primary teacher” (chamaididaskalos). The term literally means “the one who teaches on the ground,” a likely reference to the fact that this teacher deals with young children who are still involved in playful activities rather than in a more challenging pursue of knowledge. The teacher is the object of the joke; therefore, his identification as “idiotic” (scholastikos). This master wants to punish a student named Dionysus, a perfect name for the joker’s intentions, since it refers to the god of drunkenness and unruly life. The professor complains that Dionysus is “reigning” in a corner of the room. The verb atakteô, translated as “reigning”, means “to start a rebellion”, “to act subversively” or “to lead a disorderly life”. The word seems too dramatic for the situation and reveals the pedantic nature of the teacher’s speech. Although the teacher wished to scold the student, he comes up against the fact that the boy was not present yet. And that is why the joke is so funny.

Anecdote 61 reveals that, like today, teachers faced in late antiquity the bad behavior of some insubordinate and difficult students who refused to engage in the educational process. In anecdote 136, however, the context deals with stereotypes:

Σιδόνιος γραμματικὸς ἠρώτα τὸν †διδάσκαλον· Ἡ πεντακότυλος λήκυθος πόσον χωρεῖ; ὁ δὲ εἶπεν· Οἶνον λέγεις ἢ ἔλαιον;

A primary teacher from Sidon once asked his master, “How many liters in a one-liter bottle?” He responded: “Are we talking about wine or olive oil?”

The Philogelus contains several anecdotes about the Sidonians, that is, the inhabitants of Sidon, one of the cities of Phoenicia. In fact, The Suidas informs us that the ancient Greeks used to refer to any Phoenician as a “Sidonian.” Many Sidonians appear as objects of ridicule in our joke book, including an “orator” (rhêtôr) in anecdote 129, a “sophist” (sophistês) in anecdotes 130 and 131, a “businessman” (pragmateutês) in anecdote 133, a “centurion” (hekatontarchos or kentouriôn) in anecdotes 134 and 138, and a physician (iatros) in anecdote 139. In fact, there is in the book a whole section dedicated to the stupidity of these foreigners whose intelligence the Greeks underestimated. In the case of anecdote 136, our Sidonian is a “grammar teacher” (grammatikos). The Greek term, from which the word “grammar” originated in English, refers to teachers who taught students how to write and read (grammata). Therefore, we are talking about a “literacy teacher”. He engages another teacher in the conversation who seems to have enjoyed a superior status. The latter does not come from Sidon and is identified by the pompous title of “master” (didaskalos). The bottle in question is the lêkythos, a vessel usually designed to contain perfumes and ointments. The measure used is the kotylê, equivalent to quarter of a liter. Five kotylai total 1.25 liters. The question asked by the Sidonian is foolish enough to stir up some good laughter; by means of a comic reversal, however, his very master shows himself to be equally foolish. In the end, the one who is the object of stereotyping is not much different from the pedantic Greek master with whom he talks. But we are otherwise allowed to imagine that they are both Sidonians and that their performance occurs in a school in Sidon, although this is not explicitly stated in the anecdote. The term scholastikos does not appear here in reference to either one of the two characters, suggesting that, potentially, both become the object of the joke. In any case, the joke reveals that, even in the cradle of education, there were forms of stratification much similar to the ones that, to this day, cause some educators to become subordinate to others.

Jokes about the pedagogue

In the anecdotes that I have mentioned thus far, there were no references to the pedagogue. I chose to leave the few jokes that deal with this enigmatic figure for this last section. In general, they are situations related to food or drink. In anecdote 79, wine is the subject:

Σχολαστικῷ ὑπερζέουσαν κύλικα ὁ οἰνοχόος ὤρεξεν. ὁ δὲ ἐπὶ τῆς τραπέζης αὐτὴν θείς· Οὕτω μενέ<τω>, ἔφη, μέχρι ὁ παιδαγωγός σου ἐλθὼν εὕρῃ αὐτὴν ζέουσαν.

A butler fills a cup to the brim and holds it out to an idiotic boy. He then puts it on the table, and the butler tells him, “Let it stay there so your pedagogue comes and finds it full.”

Ancient custom required that a “pedagogue” (paidagôgos) chaperoned his pupils to their destination, leave them there and return later, in order to escort them back home. In ancient Greece, wine was diluted in water. To get drunk, a guest needed a large amount of drink. In our joke, however, a butler explicitly requires the boy not to drink much. He should not empty the cup filled to the brim (hyperzeousan kylika) until his chaperone would return. The joke helps us realize that, at the end of antiquity, by the fourth and fifth centuries, a pedagogue still retained his traditional role as an escort.

In the Philogelus, there are some anecdotes about hungry people. In anecdote 221, such hungry person is a “physician” (iatros); in 222, a “patient” (arrôstos); and in 226, an “actor” (hypokritês). Anecdotes 219 and 223-225 do not mention any such specifications. Generally, someone has just baked a loaf of bread, and set it to cool down at a place where it is safely stored away from the reach of wild animals but also where our hungry characters could see it. In anecdote 223, a starving man sees a loaf of bread cooling on a “doorway” (hypertyros). In anecdote 221, a hungry physician sees the loaf of bread cooling in a “hole” (trypê).

But anecdote 220 is the one that should capture our interest here, since it makes fun of a hungry pedagogue. It is common, in the Philogelus, for the same joke to have two versions. This is exactly what happens with the anecdote of the hungry pedagogue. In the first version of this joke, the name of the pedagogue is replaced by a reference to the “physical education teacher” (paidotribês).

{A:} Λιμόξηρος παιδοτρίβης ἰδὼν ἄρτον κρεμάμενον εἶπε· Καταβαίνεις; ἀπαγγέλλεις; ἢ ἀναβαίνω καὶ ἀπαρτίζω σε.

{A:} A hungry gym teacher saw a loaf of bread up high, and said, “Are you coming down? Is that a promise? Or should I go up to grab a hold of you?”

Urged by his appetite, the gym teacher of joke 220 initiates a dialogue with the object of his desire. In that conversation, he tries to seduce the loaf of bread to come down in order to meet him. If this does not happen, there is a clear threat that the hungry man will go up in order to grab a hold of such snack. One way or another, someone else’s bread will end up in a hungry man’s stomach.

In the second version of anecdote 220, we have a pedagogue instead of a gym teacher:

{β:} Λιμόξηρος παιδαγωγὸς ἰδὼν ἄρτον ἔν τινι ὕψει κρεμάμενον εἶπε· Καταβαίνεις καὶ ἀπαγγέλλεις; ἢ ἀναβαίνω <καὶ> ἀπαρτίζω σε.

{B:} A hungry pedagogue saw a loaf of bread up high, and said, “Are you coming down? Is that a promise? Or should I go up to grab a hold of you?”

A gym teacher, a physician, an actor, a pedagogue and other ordinary people whose occupation is not revealed, all appear in jokes about starving people. That fact points to the servile condition of all these characters, including the physician (^{TORRES, 2008}, pp. 179-181). In this group of anecdotes, starving people want to steal a loaf of bread that belongs to someone else, and they do that in order to slake hunger. Of course, they therefore cannot be aristocrats.

Conclusion

A close reading of a few anecdotes about the pedagogue and school life from the fourth or fifth century A.D. does not reveal that there had been any noteworthy change in the social condition or in the appreciation the pedagogue enjoyed in Greco-Roman society. He begins his career as a slave and until that moment in history continues to enjoy an unfavorable social standing. For this reason, we cannot assume that contemporary society chose him to represent the art and science of youth and child education because he enjoyed a better social status that the growth of Christianity had conferred on him. Bien au contraire, I would like to suggest that the pedagogue was chosen to represent education mainly because his social status was low or at least in tandem with that which teachers themselves enjoyed in late antiquity. I am not referring here to the great masters and philosophers, under whose responsibility the education of aristocratic children fell, but to the teachers who dealt with the education of common children and young people on a daily basis. Paladas of Alexandria, for example, was a fourth-century A.D. poet who dedicated himself to that career. His poems are part of the so-called Greek anthology, a collection of more than six thousand poems written by about 300 different poets over a period of more than a thousand years (PATON, 1916-1918). Endowed with a remarkable sense of humor, the poet makes the following statement, in epigram 72 of book 10:

Σκηνὴ πᾶς ὁ βίος καὶ παίγνιον· ἢ μάθε παίζειν

τὴν σπουδὴν μεταθεὶς ἢ φέρε τὰς ὀδύνας.

Life is all stage and comedy;

Whoever does not learn how to play, pays the bill.

That was his philosophy of life, and he is true to it when in epigram 169 of book 9 he humorously refers to the financial difficulties that he faced as a grammar teacher, which is why he regards his occupation as equivalent to a pledge to poverty:

Thus, in epigram 171 of book 9, he talks about his decision to abandon his teaching career in order to search for a more financially rewarding occupation:

The poet is selling his “wretched books” (ta polystona biblia), which he calls “antique”, that is, “the tools of the Muses” (organa mousaôn). Of course, it took him a lot of effort to master the literary and grammatical aspects of paideia, ancient Greek education. Despite the commitment it required from him, the reward was not worth it. Then he takes leave of the “Muses” (Pierides) and the “letters” (logoi), and sets out for “another office” (heteras technês). He concludes that syntax was not enough to give him the lifestyle he wanted.

It seems, therefore, that it was an almost servile condition enjoyed by teachers in the Greco-Roman era that made the pedagogue, a slave in charge of escorting children and young people to school and other places, as a model for teachers, thus lending his name to the art of education. Although this is a sad observation, it suggests that teaching has traditionally been undervalued, implying that our society is yet learn and recognize the importance of pedagogues and their formidable contribution to educational theory, despite their own social and economic discomfort.

Apart from the most pressing and immediate considerations woven here, the relationship between philosophy, irony and pedagogy points us to the fact that a “pedagogical dimension of irony” contributes to the development of an “ascending process” in which “the critical-emancipating dimension of irony asserts itself as hegemonic in the dialogical relationship among educational agents” (^{ZUIN, 2008}, p.14). There are philosophical and ironic dimensions intrinsic to the word “pedagogue”, since Socrates gave “irony” a positive sense of a “stimulus to the elaboration of new meanings” (ZUIN, 2008, p.17). Therefore, the servile origin of pedagogues and their millennial trajectory can inspire them beyond presenting students with a quality-filled education above questioning. In fact, there are no pedestals on which pedagogues can step up. After all, their historical origin and the history of education both demand from them a necessarily philosophical and ironic poise.