professors of the art of conversation have been reported to do. "I will go in and have a look at my commonplace-books, and learn up some better jokes," says Gelasimus in the 'Stichus' of Plautus, when he is afraid of being superseded by some new pretenders. There was, again, the mere toady and flatterer, of whom we shall see a specimen presently in one of the fragments of Menander, as well as in the comedies of Plautus;[1] and of whom we have some historical examples fully as ludicrous as any inventions of the stage, if the biographers of Philip and Alexander of Macedon are to be trusted. We are told, that whenever King Philip ate anything sour or acid, and made wry faces at it, his flatterer Cleisophos went through exactly the same grimaces; when the king hurt his leg, Cleisophos immediately put on a limp; and when the king lost his right eye by the arrow at Methone, the courtier appeared next morning with the same eye bandaged up. It is also said that to wear the head a little on one side became quite the fashion in the court of Alexander, because he himself had a slight deformity of the kind. Another variety of the parasite was the still meaner humble companion, who carried messages and did little services of all kinds, sometimes worse than menial, for his richer patron.
An amusing soliloquy of one of these hungry guests who is waiting for his dinner (having possibly found no entertainer, and therefore no dinner at all, the day before) has been preserved for us by Aulus Gellius out of a lost comedy which he attributes to Plautus,—
- ↑ See p. 44.
