Carl Fink sends this in, and asks “I think the joke is just that Horace is stabbing the salad, but then shouldn’t there be several Senators with him?”
14 Comments
I suppose he should have some help. Thing is, the Caesar salad isn’t named for Julius Caesar. It was created by and named for a restaurateur/hotelier in Tijuana back in the 1920s. At the time, TJ was a hot spot for the Hollywood set. Booze was legal, you could watch the bullfights and bet on jai alai. The casino and race track at Agua Caliente came along a couple years after the salad, which meant the town remained popular after the end of Prohibition.
The joke would have worked better if there had been no knife at all in the first panel. Who in the world would eat a normal salad with a knife? And yes, a few supporting senators might have helped, but Dark Side of the Horse is pretty much a solo strip.
We tried but were unable to cast this as part of a synchronicity, looking for a recent cartoon that was just a bottle of salad dressing pierced by a knife. But why would these come up at similar times? This isn’t the Ides of March or anywhere near. Was there a recent prominent production of the Shakespeare play?
Anyhow, does anybody else recall seeing that prop-photo joke recently?
Performing an image search on “caesar salad dressing and a knife” produces several possible candidates, but they are all photos (no comics). One of them (a bowl of romaine lettuce with several knives in it) looks suspiciously familiar.
And, of course, if you’re going for the Julius Caesar instead of the one who invented the salad, IIRC forks as tableware didn’t exist in 44BC.
Suetonius has Caesar’s last words as “καὶ σὺ, τέκνον” (though he claims it merely as a spurious rumor), which has been reconstructed as a reference to a quotation from a lost poem of the time, the full quote being:
“καὶ σὺ, τέκνον, ποτὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἡμῶν παρατρώξῃ” — “And you, child, will someday have a taste of our power”. ( https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2017/03/25/caesars-real-last-words/ )
So then the Caesar salad is our chance to taste Caesar’s power…
“but then shouldn’t there be several Senators with him?”
Not for just a salad.
Thanks for doing that scholarship!
The horse is a brute.
Et tu, horse?
joel says Et tu, horse?
I guess this was what the editors similarly wanted to capture with the post title Tu quoque, Equo?.
If they added senators it would be incitatment.
Knives only.
One problem is that having hooves instead of hands, it is difficult for Horace to show the difference between how you hold a knife when you are cutting food and how you hold a knife when you are stabbing someone.
Here is the DSOH on GoComics for 7 January, not long after the one in this post:
Comics I Don't Understand 
I suppose he should have some help. Thing is, the Caesar salad isn’t named for Julius Caesar. It was created by and named for a restaurateur/hotelier in Tijuana back in the 1920s. At the time, TJ was a hot spot for the Hollywood set. Booze was legal, you could watch the bullfights and bet on jai alai. The casino and race track at Agua Caliente came along a couple years after the salad, which meant the town remained popular after the end of Prohibition.
The joke would have worked better if there had been no knife at all in the first panel. Who in the world would eat a normal salad with a knife? And yes, a few supporting senators might have helped, but Dark Side of the Horse is pretty much a solo strip.
We tried but were unable to cast this as part of a synchronicity, looking for a recent cartoon that was just a bottle of salad dressing pierced by a knife. But why would these come up at similar times? This isn’t the Ides of March or anywhere near. Was there a recent prominent production of the Shakespeare play?
Anyhow, does anybody else recall seeing that prop-photo joke recently?
Performing an image search on “caesar salad dressing and a knife” produces several possible candidates, but they are all photos (no comics). One of them (a bowl of romaine lettuce with several knives in it) looks suspiciously familiar.
And, of course, if you’re going for the Julius Caesar instead of the one who invented the salad, IIRC forks as tableware didn’t exist in 44BC.
Suetonius has Caesar’s last words as “καὶ σὺ, τέκνον” (though he claims it merely as a spurious rumor), which has been reconstructed as a reference to a quotation from a lost poem of the time, the full quote being:
“καὶ σὺ, τέκνον, ποτὲ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἡμῶν παρατρώξῃ” — “And you, child, will someday have a taste of our power”. ( https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2017/03/25/caesars-real-last-words/ )
So then the Caesar salad is our chance to taste Caesar’s power…
“but then shouldn’t there be several Senators with him?”
Not for just a salad.
Thanks for doing that scholarship!
The horse is a brute.
Et tu, horse?
joel says
Et tu, horse?I guess this was what the editors similarly wanted to capture with the post title Tu quoque, Equo?.
If they added senators it would be incitatment.
Knives only.
One problem is that having hooves instead of hands, it is difficult for Horace to show the difference between how you hold a knife when you are cutting food and how you hold a knife when you are stabbing someone.
Here is the DSOH on GoComics for 7 January, not long after the one in this post: