On the journey two attendants followed him, carrying sacks of bedding; in one of the sacks, he assured us, was a talent of silver; so that his colleagues were reminded of those old nicknames of his; for the boys used to call him “Batalos,” he was so vulgar and obscene then when he was growing out of boyhood and was bringing against his guardians big lawsuits of ten talents each, he was called “Argas”;1 now, grown to manhood, he has got also the name that we apply to rascals in general, “Blackmailer.”
1 “Batalos” has been thought to mean “stammerer,” or perhaps “mamma-baby” （see Aeschin. 1.126 and 131）, but that explanation would hardly fit this passage. We really have no knowledge as to the derivation of the word. “Argas” was the name of a venomous snake.
Aeschines. Aeschines with an English translation by Charles Darwin Adams, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1919.
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