Yet another is a retort attributed to Iphicrates, the celebrated Athenian general. Harmodius, a young aristocrat who bore a name famous in the early history of Athens, had reproached Iphicrates, who was the son of a cobbler, with his mean birth.
"My nobility," the soldier replied, "begins with me, but yours ends with you."
Another Athenian general, Phocion, was a man who preferred deeds to words. He compared the eloquent speeches of one of his political opponents to cypress-trees.
"They are tall," he said, "but they bear no fruit."
Elsewhere Plutarch tells of a man who plucked the feathers from a nightingale, and, finding it a very small bird, exclaimed:
"You little wretch, you're nothing but voice!"
And again, the repartee of a Laconian to a man of Sparta who twitted him with being unable to stand as long as himself on one leg.
"No," replied the other, "but any goose can."
An anecdote of Strabo gives a vivid picture of the clashing of a harper's performances with the sounding of a bell for opening of the fish-market. All the audience vanished at once save a little deaf man.
The harper expressed himself unutterably flattered at his having resisted the importunity of the bell.