THE SYCOPHANT.
SECOND YEAR OF THE 89TH OLYMPIAD (423 B.C.)
THE SYCOPHANT.
I.
Callippides was universally detested in Athens. Every one knew him to be one of the most dangerous informers, who lived by extorting money from people by threatening them with some ruinous impeachment.
When he entered a workshop, a hair-dresser’s, or a lesche,[C] any of the places where the citizens met to discuss the incidents of the day or to drive a bargain, one after another stole away till he was left alone. If he bought a fillet from one of the pretty perfume dealers in the market-place, she put his copper coins aside that they might not become mixed with the other money and so bring ill-luck to the day’s receipts; if he spoke in the street to a female slave who knew the residents of the city she hurried off, and if he had merely laid the tips of his fingers on her arm, she rubbed it with the palm of her hand as though some poisonous reptile had touched her. If he was seen in any one’s company more than once, that person was known to be a timid man who was trying to flatter and cajole him in order to be safe from him. In other respects he led so solitary a life that a well-known jester, the parasite Meidias, said of him that “the only thing that stood near him was his shadow.”
[C] A sort of portico, supplied with seats, and free to all.
Yet there was one person in Athens who valued him. This was Pyrrhander, the Ildmand,[D] to whom he was inestimable in tracking the hetaeriae or secret societies and who, when Callippides was mentioned, used to say: “He’s the best sleuth-hound in our pack.”
[D] Ildmand—the red-haired, seems to have been a nickname for Cleon, who at this time was treasurer. (Aristophanes, equites v. 901.)
The sycophant was by no means frightful in his external appearance. On the contrary, he was a stately man. Of noble lineage, he had belonged in his youth to the select circle of the “gilded youth” of Athens, and in the company of the young Eupatridae, Proxenides and Theagenes, he had squandered his ancestral property in a few years upon horses and chariots. At every horse and chariot race he was seen among the most excited spectators. No one could say how often he had been thrown from his chariot while swinging around the race-course, or how frequently a snorting, foaming team of four horses had been driven over him. The last time this had happened he had been kicked so violently on the head by one of the steeds that he always bore the mark of it. He was so severely injured that the physician, Pittalus, had already sent a messenger for the wailing women.