Of the [Greek: Asteia], or facetiae, of Hierokles, twenty-eight
only are appended to his Commentary on Pythagoras and the fragments of
his other works edited, with Latin translations, by Needham, and
published at Cambridge in 1709. A much larger collection, together with
other Greek jests--of the people of Abdera, Sidonia, Cumae, etc.--has
been edited by Eberhard, under the title of _Philogelos Hieraclis el
Philagrii Facetia_ which was published at Berlin in 1869.
In attempting to classify the best of these relics of ancient wit--or
witlessness, rather--it is often difficult to decide whether a
particular jest is of the Hibernian bull, or blunder, genus or an
example of that droll stupidity which is the characteristic of noodles
or simpletons. In the latter class, however, one need not hesitate to
place the story of the men of Cumae, who were expecting shortly to be
visited by a very eminent man, and having but one bath in the town, they
filled it afresh, and placed an open grating in the middle, in order
that half the water should be kept clean for his sole use.
But we at once recognise our conventional Irishman in the pedant who, on
going abroad, was asked by a friend to buy him two slave-boys of fifteen
years each, and replied, "If I cannot find such a pair, I will bring you
one of thirty years;" and in the fellow who was quarrelling with his
father, and said to him, "Don't you know how much injury you have done
me? Why, had you not been born, I should have inherited my grandfather's
estate;" also in the pedant who heard that a raven lived two hundred
years, and bought one that he should ascertain the fact for himself.
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