Clement gives some examples of borrowings or appropriations on the part of writers and orators, and his list is so considerable as to leave the impression that the public opinion to which he refers was either not very active in discovering the practice, or was not a little remiss in characterizing and in condemning it. Isocrates copies an entire oration from Gorgias; Æschines makes free use in his discourses of those of Lysias and Andocides. Even Demosthenes, the chief of orators, occasionally yielded to the temptation; and among other instances, Clement cites extracts from orations against _Aphobos_ and _Pantænetos_ which are identical with passages in the _Discourses on Ciron_ by the old instructor of Demosthenes, Isæus. Rozoir tells us that an anonymous work of six volumes (rolls) was published under the title _Passages in the Writings of Menander which are Not the Work of Menander_, and that Philostrates of Alexandria accused Sophocles of having pillaged Æschylus, Æschylus of having permitted himself to draw too much inspiration from Phrynichus, and, finally, Phrynichus of having taken his material from the writers who preceded him. Such charges become, of course, too sweeping to be pertinent, and can probably in large part be dismissed with the conclusion that each generation of writers ought to familiarize itself with the work of its predecessors, and may often enough with propriety undertake the reinterpretation for new generations of readers of themes similar to those which have interested their fathers and grandfathers. One evidence that the subject of plagiarism was a matter which in later days engaged public attention is given by the Fable of Æsop on the Jay masquerading in the plumes of the Peacock. Clement points out that in connection with the fierce competition between the poets of Athens for dramatic honors, no means were neglected by the friends of each writer to bring discredit upon the productions of his rivals, and that very many of the charges of plagiarism can be traced to such an incentive. Aristophanes, who amused himself by utilizing for his comedies the strifes between his literary contemporaries, puts into the mouth of Euripides, whom he makes one of the characters in _The Frogs_, the following biting words, addressed to Æschylus: “When I first read over the tragedy which you placed in my hands, I found it difficult and bombastic; I at once made a severe condensation, freeing the play from the weight of rubbish with which you had overloaded it; I then enlivened it with bright sayings, with pointed philosophic subtleties and with an abundance of brilliant witticisms drawn from a crowd of other books; and finally I added some pithy monologues, which are in the main the work of Ctesiphon.”[33]