zinricky

Studying ancient Greek during high school wasn’t a mistake, after all: I still get to appreciate the sublime works of hundreds of clever people from ~2000 years ago. This becomes particularly useful when designing jokes for people who graduated in History, like a friend of mine.

First of all, let me introduce the Greek Anthology, a collection of a specific type of poems (epigrams). Then, you should know that Book V contains only erotic poems (not homoerotic, as they have a Book of their own). Finally, here is the riddle (5.192)

Γυμνὴν ἢν ἐσίδῃς Καλλίστιον, ὦ ξένε, φήσεις·
ἤλλακται ‘διπλοῦν γράμμα Συρηκοσίων’.

Which means “If you see Kallistion naked, my friend, you will say the Syracusian symbol for 2 has been altered”. The symbol for 2 is a “Χ”, and changing the “τ” in the name makes it sound like “beautiful flanks”. It may be important to say that Kallistion was probably a prositute.