Simon SOPHISTA
20. SOPHISTA. Aristophanes (
Nubes, 350) has adverted to Simon as guilty of robbing the public treasury, but without mentioning of what city.
According to Eupolis (
Apud Scholiast. in Aristophan. l.c.) he robbed the treasury of the city of Heraclaea.
The rapacity thus held up by two of the great comic dramatists of Athens passed into a proverb,
Σίμωνος ἁρπακτικώτερος. Suidas, who gives the proverb (
s. v. Σίμων adds the information that Simon was a sophist, and the Scholiast on Aristophanes (
Nubes, l.c.) adds that he was one of the persons then conspicuous in political affairs (
τῶν ἐν πολιτείᾳ διαπρεπόντων τότε), we may presume at Athens. Aristophanes also brands Simon, apparently the same person, as guilty of perjury (
Nubes, 398). (Allatius,
De Simeonibus, pp. 196, 197; Fabric.
Bibl. Graec. vol. xi. p. 301.)
