one supported by Σελληείς. There is another curious and instructive case, in which we have the older form of the word Σελλοὶ still remaining: besides that of Προσέληνοι, to which allusion has already been made in considering the case of the Pelasgian Arcadians. In the Birds of Aristophanes, the dramatist satirizes Athens and the Sicilian Expedition, under the name of a city in the clouds, called Νεφελοκοκκυγία; the object being to expose the arrogance of great pretensions, without adequate means to support them. There, he says, lie most of the goods of Theagenes, and all those of Æschines. This Theagenes was called κάπνος, smoke, because he promised much, and did nothing. Æschines was a pauper, who pretended to wealth. The Scholiast adds, ἦν δὲ Αἰσχίνης Σελλοῦ. Ἔλεγον δὲ ἐκ μεταφορᾶς τοιούτους Σελλούς· καὶ τὸ ἀλαζονεύεσθαι δὲ, σελλίζειν[513]. Cary thinks the term σελλίζειν came from a Sellus, the father of this Æschines. But in the first place, it seems difficult to rely on the Scholiast for knowing, still less for recording with accuracy, the name of the father of an obscure person, who had lived in the age of Aristophanes. In the second place, if Æschines was an obscure fellow, it is most improbable that his father’s name should have become the root of a Greek word descriptive of a particular habit or propensity. Such words (for example) as hectoring and rhodomontading presuppose a great celebrity in the person on whose name they are based. Lastly, the derivation from the ancient Σελλοὶ seems a perfectly natural one, and also adequate to the case. It is in some degree characteristic of those who in reduced circumstances trace back their lineage to a very ancient stock, instead of relying simply on the substantial honour of their descent, still to affect the possession of the wealth which has passed away from them: to play for themselves the part, which Caleb Balderstone desires to play, on behalf not of himself, but of the Master of Ravenswood, in Scott’s ‘Bride of Lammermoor’; and altogether to be sensitive, or what is called touchy on the subject, and to lean on the whole towards a certain boastfulness, in common with the νεοπλοῦτοι at the other extremity of the scale. There is a broad distinction between treating the Scholiast as a witness to the existence and force of a current phrase, and the taking his word for the parentage of a nobody, like this Æschines, who had lived long before him. It may, however, not be necessary to construe σελλίζειν solely, or even specially, with reference to a pride in wealth which had passed away. If we shall hereafter show for the Selli[514] a Persian ancestry, then, even without any regard to change of circumstances, the phrase at once leads us back to the description given by Herodotus of the Persians their forefathers. Πέρσαι, φύσιν ἐόντες ὑβρισταὶ, εἰσὶν ἀχρήματοι[515]. I shall also have occasion to notice hereafter one or two other words apparently akin to Σελλοί. FOOTNOTES: