ARETA´LOGI
ARETA´LOGI a class of persons whose conversation
formed one of the entertainments of the Roman dinner-tables (Suet.
Octav. 74). The word literally signifies
persons who discourse about virtue; and the class of
persons intended seem to have been poor philosophers, chiefly of the Cynic
and Stoic sects, who, unable to gain a living by their public lectures,
obtained a maintenance at the tables of the rich by their philosophical
conversation. Such a life would naturally degenerate into that of the
parasite and buffoon; and accordingly we find these persons spoken of
contemptuously by Juvenal, who uses the phrase
mendax
aretalogus: they became a sort
of
scurrae. (Juv.
Sat. 15.16; cf. Casaubon.
ad Suet. l.c.; Mayor,
ad Juv. l.c.）
[
P.S] [
A.S.W]
