business, the pompous man will tell you that he will meet you after
dinner on his walk. If he has done you a favor, he reminds you of it.
When elected to office he declines, saying under oath he has no leisure.
He is not disposed to make the first call on anybody. Tradesmen and hired
men he orders to come to him by daybreak.
As he passes along the street, he does not greet the men he meets; he
lowers his eyes and when it suits him raises them again. If he entertains
friends he does not dine with them, but instructs some of his underlings
to attend to the duties of entertainment.
He sends a messenger ahead when he makes a call, to say that he
approaches. He allows no one to enter while he is at his oil-rub, his
bath, or his dinner. When he is casting an account, he instructs a slave
to set down the items, foot up the total, and arrange it in a statement
for him. He does not write in a letter: “You would do me a favor,” but
“I want this done,” and “I have sent for this and wish to have it,” and
“See to it that my orders are followed precisely,” and “Have this done
immediately.”
XXV _The Braggart_
(Ἀλαζονεία)
Bragging is pretending to have excellences that one does not really
possess. The braggart is the man who stands on the wharf and tells the
bystanders how much capital he has invested in ships at sea, and tells
how extensive is his business of loaning money, and how much he has made
and lost by different ventures. As he talks thus magnificently, he sends
his slave to his banker, where he has—exactly one shilling to his credit.
On a journey he imposes on his travelling companion by telling him that
he once served with Alexander, and how intimate were their relations, and
how many jewelled cups he brought back from his campaigns.
As regards the Asiatic artists, he counts them better than those
in Europe. And all this he tells you without having once set foot
outside his native city. He claims further to have three letters from
Antipater[32] bidding him come to Macedonia; but he declares that, though
he has been guaranteed the privilege of exporting wood free of duty, he
has refused to go, simply to avoid being suspected by his fellow-citizens
of foreign leanings. The Macedonians, he says, in urging him so to come,
ought to have considered this point.
In time of famine, he says, his expenditures for the poor amounted to
over five talents; for he hadn’t the heart to refuse. When he’s with
strangers, he often bids some one place the reckoning counters on the
table, and computing by six hundreds and by minae, glibly mentioning the
names of his pretended debtors, he makes a total of twenty-four talents,
saying that the whole sum had gone for voluntary contributions, and that,
too, without including subscriptions for the navy or for other public
objects.
At times he goes to the horse-market where blooded stock is for sale, and
makes pretence of wanting to buy; and stepping up to the block, he hunts
his clothes for two talents, upbraiding his servant for coming along
without any money. Though he lives in a rented house, he represents it to
those who do not know as the family homestead; yet adds that he thinks of
selling it as being too small for the proper entertainment of his friends.
[32] A general of Alexander. Upon Alexander’s death he became king of
Macedonia.
XXVI _The Oligarch_
(Ὀλιγαρχία)
Oligarchy is a love of power that clings tightly to personal advantage.
The oligarch rises in the people’s councils, when assistants to the
archon are elected for the management of a fête, and says: “These men
must have absolute control.” And although others have suggested ten, he
insists that _one_ is enough, but he must be a _man_. The only line of
Homer that stays in his memory is: “A crowd’s rule is bad; let there be
one ruler.” He knows no other verse. He is, however, an adept at such
phrases as this: “We must hold a caucus and make our plans; we must cut
loose from mob and market; we must throw aside the annoyance of petty
office and of insult or honor at the masses’ whim; we or they must rule
the state.”
At midday he goes out with his mantle thrown about him, his hair dressed
in the mode and his nails fashionably trimmed; he promenades down Odeon
Way ejaculating: “Sycophants have made the city no longer habitable. What
outrages we endure in court from our persecutors! Why men nowadays go
into office, is a marvel to me. How ungrateful the mob is! although one
is always giving, giving.”
If, at the Assembly, a naked, hungry vagabond sits next to him, he
complains of the outrage. “When,” he asks, “is a stop to be put to this
ruin of our property by taxation for fêtes and navy? How odious is this
crew of demagogues! Theseus,” he says, “was the forefront of all this
offending, for out of twelve cities, he brought the masses into one, to
overthrow the monarchies. He met his just reward,—he was the first to
fall a victim at their hands.” This is the way he talks to foreigners and
to citizens of his own temper and party.
XXVII _The Backbiter_
(Κακολογία)
Backbiting is a disposition[33] to vilify others. When the backbiter is
asked “Who is so and so?” he begins, like the genealogists, with the
man’s ancestry. “His father’s name was originally Sosias,[34] but amongst
the soldiers it became Sosistratus, and upon registration in the deme, it
was again changed to Sosidemus. His mother was a Thracian,—gentle blood!
you see. At any rate this jewel’s name was Krinokoraka. Women of that
name _are_ of gentle blood in Thrace, so people say! The man himself,
with an ancestry like that, is a foul fellow fit for the whipping-post.”
In a company where his companions are maligning a man, he of course takes
up the attack and says: “For my part I hate him of all men. He is a bad
character, as one may see from his face, and as for his meanness, it has
no parallel and here is a proof: His wife brought him a dowry of talents
of money and yet after the birth of their first child, he gave her but
three pence a day for household expenses and forced her to bathe in
cold water on the festival of Poseidon in midwinter.” When he is seated
with a group, he loves to talk about an acquaintance who has just risen
and gone, and his biting tongue does not spare even the man’s kinsfolk.
Of his own relatives and friends, he says the vilest things and even
maligns the dead. Backbiting is what he calls frankness of speech,
democracy, and freedom; and there is nothing he enjoys so much.
[33] “Scandal, like other virtues, is in part its own reward, as it gives
us the satisfaction of making ourselves appear better than others, or
others no better than ourselves.” Benj. Franklin, _Works_, ed. Sparks,
II., p. 540.
[34] Apparently a slave’s name.
XXVIII _The Avaricious Man_
(Αἰσχροκέρδεια)
Avarice is greedy love of gain. When the avaricious man gives a dinner,
he puts scant allowance of bread on the table. He borrows money of a
stranger who is lodging with him. When he distributes the portions
at table, he says it is fair for the laborer to receive double and
straightway loads his own plate. He engages in wine traffic, and sells
adulterated liquors even to his friend. He goes to the show and takes
his children with him, on the days when spectators are admitted to the
galleries free. When he is the people’s delegate, he leaves at home the
money provided by the city, and borrows from his fellow commissioners.
He loads more luggage on his porter than the man can carry, and provides
him with the smallest rations of any man in the party. When presents are
given the delegates by foreign courts, he demands his share at once, and
sells it. At the bath he says the oil brought him is bad, and shouts:
“Boy, the oil is rancid;” and in its stead takes what belongs to another.
If his servants find money on the highway, he demands a share of it,
saying: “Luck’s gifts are common property.” When he sends his cloak to be
cleaned, he borrows another from an acquaintance and keeps it until it is
asked for. He also does this sort of thing: he uses King Frugal’s measure
with the bottom dented in, for doling out supplies to his household and
then secretly brushes off the top. He sells underweight even to his
friend, who thinks he is buying according to market standard.
When he pays a debt of thirty pounds, he does so with a discount of four
shillings. When, owing to sickness, his children are not at school the
entire month, he deducts a proportionate amount from the teacher’s pay;
and during the month of Anthesterion he does not send them to their
studies at all, on account of the frequent shows, and so he avoids
tuition fees. If he receives coppers from a slave who has been serving
out, he demands in addition the exchange value of silver. When he gets a
statement from the deme’s[35] administrator, he demands provision for his
slaves at public cost.
He makes note of the half-radishes left on the table, to keep the
servants from taking them. If he goes abroad with friends, he uses their
servants and hires his own out; yet he does not contribute to the common
fund the money thus received. When others combine with him to give a
banquet at his house, he secretly includes in his account the wood,
figs, vinegar, salt, and lamp-oil,—trifles furnished from his supplies.
If a marriage is announced in a friend’s family, he goes away a little
beforehand, to avoid sending a wedding present. He borrows of friends
such articles as they would not ask to have returned, or such as, if
returned, they would not readily accept.
[35] The deme was a local division.
XXIX _The Late Learner_
(Ὀψιμαθία)
The late learner has a fondness for study late in life. He commits whole
passages of poetry to memory when sixty years of age; but when he essays
to quote them at a banquet his memory trips. From his son, he learns
“Forward march!” “Shoulder arms!” “’Bout face!” At the feast of heroes he
pits himself against the boys in the torch-race; and of course when he is
invited to the temple of Hercules, he throws aside his mantle, and makes
ready to lift the steer, that he may bend back its neck. He goes to the
wrestling-grounds and joins in the matches.
At the shows he stays one performance after another until he has learned
the songs by heart. If he is dedicated to Sabazius, he is eager to be
declared the fairest; if he falls in love with some damsel, he makes an
onset on her door, only to be assaulted by a rival and hauled before
the court. He makes a trip to the country on a mare he has never before
ridden, and, essaying feats of horsemanship on the road, he falls and
breaks his head.
He joins a boys’ club too, and entertains the members at his house; he
plays “ducks and drakes” with his servant, and competes at archery and
javelin-throwing with his children’s tutor, and he expects the tutor, as
though ignorant of these sports, to learn them from him. He wrestles at
the baths, turning a bench nimbly about to create the impression that
he has been well trained in the art; and if women happen to be standing
near, he trips a dance, whistling his own music.
XXX _The Vicious Man_
(Φιλοπονηρία)
Viciousness is love of what is bad. The vicious man is one who associates
with men convicted in public suits, and who assumes that, if he makes
friends of these fellows, he will gain in knowledge of the world, and so
will be more feared.
Of upright men, he declares that no one is by nature upright, but that
all men are alike, and he even reproaches the man who is honorable. The
bad man, he asserts, is free from prejudice, if one will but make the
trial, and, while in some respects he admits that men speak truly of such
a man, in others he refuses to allow it. “For,” says he, “the fellow is
clever, companionable, and a gentleman;” in fact, he maintains that
he never met so talented a person. He supports him, therefore, when he
speaks in the assembly or is defendant in court, and to those sitting in
judgment he’s apt to say that one must judge not the man, but the facts;
and he declares that his friend is the very watch-dog of the people, “for
he watches out for evil-doers”; and he adds: “We shall no longer have men
to burden themselves with a care for the common weal, if we abandon men
like him.”
It’s the vicious man’s way to constitute himself the patron of all
worthless scamps and to support them before the court in desperate cases;
and, when he passes judgment, he puts the worst construction on the
arguments of the opposing counsel.