Can you elaborate? I’m afraid my Greek is just about at the level of “Ενα τσαι, παρακαλώ” followed by the Athenian responding in English to correct my pronunciation.
(Disclaimers: crude content ahead; also, explaining a joke makes it unfunny.)
Ancient Greece is sometimes associated with pederasty [0], where adult men have sex with younger (teen-aged) boys.
GP wrote:
> I don't think that would work in Greek.
IIUC, GP's point was that commenting the word "came" is ambiguous in English, but not in the joke's original language.
My pun was that there are two ways to interpret "that wouldn't work in Greek". The first being what GP meant. The second being that if a Greek man were to ejaculate when in Rome, it "wouldn't work" to father anyone, because it would be anal sex, and therefore unlikely to impregnate their partner.
After a little more reading, I get the impression that while pedastry may have been common for ancient Greek philosophers, it may have taken a form other than anal sex.
IIUC, in their society, anal sex (with anyone, including women) was considered vulgar. At least according to their surviving writings; no idea about common practice.
Disclaimer: Not my area of expertise. I'm just going from a few additional resources I found on the topic.
Ah that makes sense, I was coming at this from the wrong direction and assumed it was supposed to be an assonance rather than a reference to one of the oldest contraceptive :)
Oh naturally. I tried to stuff in as many puns as possible, so I when I looked up synonyms and learned a new word that looked like a perfect fit, I just had to experiment. :)
