ABSTRACT
Jokes that we find disturbing are often a clue of a cultural difference worth paying attention to. Take, for instance, the following joke from a late antique Greek collection: “An intellectual during the night ravished his grandmother and for this got a beating from his father. He complained: ‘You’ve been mounting my mother for a long time, without suffering any consequences from me. And now you’re mad that you found me screwing your mother for the first time ever!’”2 What is striking about this joke is the sense that family members would possess a casual familiarity with each others’ sex lives. It brings home the fact that in antiquity, as in much of history, beds and bedrooms were crowded places, where parents, children, and servants would sleep near one another.3
