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‘And to make a profit of mean and trifling things, or of things base and vile, or from the helpless and impotent, as the poor or the dead; whence the proverb to rob (even) a corpse of its winding-sheet; for this arises from sordid greediness and meanness’. Hor. Ep. I 1. 65, Rem facias; rem Si possis recte; si non, quocunque modo rem.

κερδαίνειν ἀπ᾽ αἰσχρῶν] is illustrated by the well-known story of Vespasian, Sueton. Vesp. c. 23, Reprehendenti filio Tito, quod etiam urinae vectigal commentus esset, pecuniam ex prima pensione admovit ad nares, sciscitans, num odore offenderetur? et illo negante, at qui, inquit, e lotio est’. Erasm. Adag. p. 199, ‘e turpibus, velut ex lenocinio quaestuque corporis.’ Another illustration of profit derived from a disgraceful source was (in the opinion of the Athenians of the 4th cent. B.C.) the practice of the λογογράφος, or δικογράφος, (δικογραφία, Isocr. ἀντίδοσις § 2,) the rhetorician who wrote speeches for the use of parties in the law-courts. The amount of discredit which this employment brought upon those who practised it may be estimated from the following passages. Antiphon commenced this practice (Müller, Hist. Gr. Lit. c. xxxiii. § 1. Westermann, Geschichte der Beredtsamkeit, 40. 10), and thereby brought upon himself the assaults of the Comic poets; καθάπτεται δ᾽ κωμῳδία τοῦ Ἀντιφῶντος ὡς...λόγους κατὰ τοῦ δικαίου συγκειμένους ἀποδιδομένου πολλῶν χρημάτων. Plat. Phaedr. 257 C, διὰ πάσης τῆς λοιδορίας ἐκάλει λογογράφον. Stallbaum ad loc. In Legg. XI 937 D ad fin., it is solemnly censured and denounced: a prohibitory law is enacted, and the penalty is death to the citizen, and perpetual banishment to the alien, who shall presume thus to pervert the minds of the administrators of justice. See also Stallbaum, Praef. ad Euthydem. p. 46. Dem. de F. L. § 274, λογογράφους τοίνυν καὶ σοφιστὰς ἀποκαλῶν; where Shilleto cites other examples from the Orators. Isocrates, περὶ ἀντιδόσεως, is obliged to defend himself from the imputa-tions of his enemies and detractors, who charged him with making money by this employment, § 2, βλασφημοῦντας περὶ τῆς ἐμῆς διατριβῆς καὶ λέγοντας ὡς ἔστι περὶ δικογραφίαν—which is much the same, he continues, as if they were to call Phidias a dollmaker, or Zeuxis and Parrhasius signpainters. And again § 31, ἐκ δὲ τῆς περὶ δικαστήρια πραγματείας εἰς ὀργὴν καὶ μῖσος ὑμᾶς καταστήσειν. Lastly, the author of the Rhet. ad Alex. 36 (37), 33, has this topic, for meeting a calumnious charge, ἐὰν δὲ διαβάλλωσιν ἡμᾶς ὡς γεγραμμένους λόγους λέγομεν λέγειν μελετῶμεν ὡς ἐπὶ μισθῷ τινὶ συνηγοροῦμεν κ.τ.λ. I will only add that this sense of the word is not to be confounded with the other and earlier one of prose writers and especially of the early ‘chroniclers’, antecedent to and contempora-ries of Herodotus; in which it is employed by Thucyd. I 21 and Rhet. II 11.7, III 7. 7, 12. 2.

κἂν ἀπὸ νεκροῦ φέρειν] Prov. “contra avaros ac sordidas artes exer-centes dicebatur.” Victorius.

Other proverbs of the same tendency are quoted by Erasmus, Adagia, p. 199. Auaritia et rapacitas. ἀπὸ νεκροῦ φορολογεῖν ‘to take tribute of the dead’. αἰτεῖν τοὺς ἀνδρίαντας ἄλφιτα, ‘to beg of the very statues’, κυαμότρωξ, Aristoph. Equit. 41, ‘a skinflint’. And Appendix to Adagia, s. v. auaritia, p. 1891.

αἰσχροκερδείας...ἀνελευθερίας] Eth. N. IV 3, 1122 a 2, 8, 12; ἀνελευθερία, Ib. c. 3, is the extreme, in defect, of the mean or virtue in the expenditure of the money, the excess being ἀσωτία, reckless prodigality: it is therefore undue parsimony, meanness, stinginess in expense. αἰσχροκερδεία is one of Theophrastus' Characters, λ́.

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