The scene in which Callias’s eunuch-porter is introduced to us is painted in Plato’s liveliest manner. This ancient Bababalouk exhibits all the crabbedness of the keeper of an oriental harem; and as we listen to him bawling at Socrates through the door, we appear to be transported to the establishment of the Emir Fakreddin. Δοκεῖ οὖν μοι, ὁ θυρωρός, εὐνοῦχός τις, κατήκουεν ἡμῶν· κινδυνεύει δὲ διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν σοφιστῶν ἄχθεσθαι γοῦν ἐκρούσαμεν τὴν θύραν, ἀνοίξας καὶ ἰδων ἡμᾶς, Ἔα, ἔφη, σοφισταί τινες· οὐ σχολὴ αὐτῷ. Καὶ ἁμα ἀμφοῖν τοῖν χεροῖν τὴν θύραν πάνυ προθύμως ὡς οἷός τ᾽ ἦν ἐπήραξε. Καὶ ἡμεῖς πάλιν ἐκρούομεν. καὶ ὃς ἐγκεκλῃμένης τῆς θύρας ἀποκρινόμενος εἶπεν, Ὦ ἄνθρωποι, ἔφη, οὐκ ἀκηκόατε ὅτι οὐ σχολὴ αὐτῷ; Ἀλλ᾽ ὠγαθέ, ἔφην ἐγώ, οὔτε παρὰ Καλλίαν ‘ἀλλ᾽ ὠγαθέ,’ ἥκομεν οὔτε σοφισταί ἐσμεν, ἀλλὰ θάῤῥει· Πρωταγόραν γάρ τι δεόμενοι ἰδεῖν ἢλθομεν. εἰσάγγειλον οὖν. Μόγις οὖν ποτὲ ἡμῖν ἄνθρωπος ἀνέωξε τὴν θύραν. Protag. t. i. p. 159, seq. ----- The directions, as Mitford justly observes, which Penelope’s housekeeper gives to the menial servants for the business of the day, might still serve in the East without variation: “Go quickly,” she said, “some of you sweep the house, and sprinkle it, and let the crimson carpets be spread upon the seats; let all the tables be well rubbed with sponges, and wash carefully the bowls and cups. Some of you go immediately to the fountain for water.”[146] ----- Footnote 146: Odyss. υ. 149. Hist. of Greece, i. 186. Cf. Athen. iii. 73. ----- Besides working at the mill, and fetching water, both somewhat laborious employments, we find that female slaves were sometimes engaged in offices still more unfeminine; that is, in woodcutting upon the mountains, where the impudent old fellow, in Aristophanes, takes advantage of Thratta.[147] Events of this kind, however, could only happen among the peasant girls. In the city both mistresses and maids were too domestic to meet with adventures in forest or on mountains. Towards the decline of the commonwealth, it became a mark of wealth and consequence to be served by black domestics, both male and female, as was also the fashion among the Romans and the Egyptian Greeks. Thus Cleopatra[148] had negro boys for torch-bearers; and the shallow exclusive, in Cicero,[149] is anxious to make it known that he has an African valet. Juvenal, in his sarcastic style, alludes to this practice.[150] Tibi pocula cursor Gætulus dabit aut nigri manus ossea Mauri. ----- Footnote 147: