The anecdote recalls one of Charles II's bragging barbers, who boasted to him he could cut his majesty's throat when he would—a boast for which he was only dismissed; though for a like rash vaunt, according to Peter Cunningham, the barber of Dionysius was crucified.
To return to Plutarch, he tells the following stories, both good in their way, of Philip of Macedon.
In passing sentence on two rogues, he ordered one to leave Macedonia with all possible speed, and the other to try to catch him.
No less astute was his query as to a strong position he wished to occupy, which was reported by the scouts to be almost impregnable.
"Is there not," he asked, "even a pathway to it wide enough for an ass laden with gold?"
Philip, too, according to Plutarch, is entitled to the fatherhood of an adage which retains its ancient fame about "calling a spade a spade."
Another story tells how Philip removed a judge, because he discovered that the man's hair and beard were dyed.
"I could not believe," Plutarch reports the king as saying, "that one who was false in his hair could be honest in his judgments."
Another sample of a witty saying from Plutarch's mint is one attributed to Themistocles, that his son was the strongest man in Greece.
"For," said he, "the Athenians rule the Hellenes, I rule the Athenians, your mother rules me, and you rule your mother."