+++
title = "A lewd riddle from the Ellenosphere"
date = 2023-08-10T10:30:00Z
[taxonomies]
categories = ["Media"]
tags = ["Books", "Poetry"]
+++
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.<!-- more --> 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Anth.+Gr.+5.192&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0472))

> 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.