When Callippides regained his health, his passion for horses and chariots was at an end. His fortune was expended and, like so many Athenians of rank before him, he now sold his last Samphora steed and bought the sandals of a sycophant. With this foot-covering, which made every step noiseless, he stole around the market-place like a snake or a scorpion, listened to backbiters, came behind whispering couples, questioned slaves and soon became as full of unsavory secrets as a marsh is full of croaking frogs. These secrets he used for his own profit and the ruin of others.
In his almost deserted house in the street of the Potters not far from the Pnyx, the market, and the Prytaneum he had a strange, dismal room, whose like was not to be found in Athens, and which he jestingly called his Opisthodomus, treasure-chamber. The name was no pious one and showed no deep reverence for the gods; for the real Opisthodomus, the apartment where the treasures of the state were kept, was a sacred place behind the Parthenon and was placed under the protection of Athene Polias, the defender of the city. But Callippides only used this title when he was talking to his faithful old Manes, a slave nearly seventy years old who, like the house, had been a legacy to him from his ancestors.
Whoever had expected to find gold and silver in Callippides’ treasure-chamber would have been greatly mistaken.
The apartment was almost empty, the only furniture it contained being an old arm-chair, a sort of high seat with a foot-stool beside a little table. The riches of the chamber consisted of the notes which covered its white walls—all written in a firm, elegant hand. They were found by the score, were as tersely composed as possible, and were all accurately marked with the day, month, and Archon’s year. Over the door leading to the peristyle were the following inscriptions:
“POLYCLES, SON OF STRATON. Accused of deserting from the military service. Sentenced to the LOSS OF THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENSHIP, THOUGH WITHOUT FORFEITURE OF PROPERTY.”
“MANTITHEUS, SON OF CTESIPHON. Accused of secret understanding with the Spartans. Ran away. Punished by the erection of a pillar of infamy INSCRIBED WITH HIS NAME.”
These and a number of other notes were written with charcoal; but directly over the entrance, in the most conspicuous place in the room, there were a large collection written with red chalk and embracing the most severe and terrible punishments. The first and second of these inscriptions ran as follows:
“STEPHANUS, SON OF EUCTEMON. Accused of treason. Sentenced TO DRINK THE HEMLOCK.
“NAUSICRATES, SON OF GLAUCUS. Accused of having tempted his step-mother to commit adultery. HURLED INTO THE GULF.”
Yet in his way Callippides seemed to be an honest man, for, little as it might have been expected, here and there appeared a sentence whose result had gone against him, as for instance:
“POLEMARCHUS, SON OF CALLIAS. Accused of fraud. Sentenced by the Forty to loss of the rights of citizenship and forfeiture of property. The decree DECLARED INVALID by the dicasts of the people because founded on the deposition of a false witness.”
True, this inscription was placed in the darkest corner, where no one would easily seek it, and what the record did not relate was that the affair had almost proved a bad one for Callippides—so bad that Pyrrhander, the Ildmand, had required all his influence to save him. But this concealment must be regarded as an allowable military stratagem.