They say that once there was a man at Athens, A πλάνος, named Cephisodorus, who Devoted all his life to this pursuit; And he, whenever to a hill he came, Ran straight up to the top; but then descending Came slowly down, and leaning on a stick. And Nicostratus also mentions him in his Syrian— They say the πλάνος Cephisodorus once Most wittily station'd in a narrow lane A crowd of men with bundles of large faggots, So that no one else could pass that way at all. There was also a man named Pantaleon, who is mentioned, by Theognetus, in his Slave devoted to his Master— Pantaleon himself did none deceive (ἐπλάνα) Save only foreigners, and those, too, such As ne'er had heard of him: and often he, After a drunken revel, would pour forth All sorts of jokes, striving to raise a laugh By his unceasing chattering. [Sidenote: JESTERS.] And Chrysippus the philosopher, in the fifth book of his treatise on Honour and Pleasure, writes thus of Pantaleon:—"But Pantaleon the πλάνος, when he was at the point of death, deceived every one of his sons separately, telling each of them that he was the only one to whom he was revealing the place where he had buried his gold; so that they afterwards went and dug together to no purpose, and then found out that they had been all deceived." 6. And our party was not deficient in men fond of raising a laugh by bitter speeches. And respecting a man of this kind, Chrysippus subsequently, in the same book, writes as follows:—"Once when a man fond of saying bitter things was about to be put to death by the executioner, he said that he wished to die like the swan, singing a song; and when he gave him leave, he ridiculed him." And Myrtilus having had a good many jokes cut on him by people of this sort, got angry, and said that Lysimachus the king had done a very sensible thing; for he, hearing Telesphorus, one of his lieutenants, at an entertainment, ridiculing Arsinoe (and she was the wife of Lysimachus), as being a woman in the habit of vomiting, in the following line— You begin ill, introducing τηνδεμουσαν,[64]— ordered him to be put in a cage (γαλεάγρα) and carried about like a wild beast, and fed; and he punished him in this way till he died. But if you, O Ulpian, raise a question about the word γαλεάγρα, it occurs in Hyperides the orator; and the passage you may find out for yourself. And Tachaos the king of Egypt ridiculed Agesilaus king of Lacedæmon, when he came to him as an ally (for he was a very short man), and lost his kingdom in consequence, as Agesilaus abandoned his alliance. And the expression of Tachaos was as follows:— The mountain was in labour; Jupiter Was greatly frighten'd: lo! a mouse was born.