There was at Athens, in later times, a class of men who resembled the bone-grubbers and dung-hill scrapers of London and Paris. These were the grain-pickers of the Deigma and Agora, who hovering about where the farmers and corn-chandlers meted their grain, and collecting what dropped from the sacks,[371] or was spilled in measuring, thus earned a miserable subsistence. Persons of this description might eke out their livelihood by appropriating to themselves the coarse brown bread which pious and charitable persons placed in the propylæa of temples for their use.[372] Here Diogenes, the Cynic, who, carrying about provisions in his wallet, was independent of these offerings, sometimes dined; and, for the sake of uttering a _bon mot_, threw out the loaves that might have been useful to others; observing, that nothing coarse[373] should be allowed to enter the temples of the gods. ----- Footnote 371: Eustath. ap. Casaub. Char. p. 197. In the Acts of the Apostles the Epicureans and Stoics contemptuously denominate St. Paul a σπερμολόγος, xvii. 18. Footnote 372: The Alexandrians placed loaves in the temple of Chronos for the poor. Athen. iii. 74. Among the Ethiopians there was an institution called the Table of the Sun, which we may suppose to have been designed to supply the poor with food. In a meadow close to the suburbs of the capital a plentiful entertainment was laid out during the night, which as soon as day broke every person had permission to partake of. This feast the natives affected to regard as a gift bestowed upon them incessantly by the earth. Herod. iii. 18. Cf. Pausan. i. 33. 4. vi. 26. 2. Footnote 373: Diog. Laert. vi. 2. § 64. Ῥυπαρὸς, alone, signifies as the French translator has rendered it, “mal-propres,” t. i. p. 358. But ῥυπαρὸς ἁρτὸς, means _du pain bis_, as Menage long ago observed, ad loc. ii. 146. b. c. Diogenes, as the reader will perceive, meant to pun upon the word ῥυπαρὸς. ----- Religion has everywhere been favourable to the poor. On the festival of the new moon, when the great and opulent offered up costly sacrifices to the gods, as to Hecatè, for example, on cross-roads,[374] their more indigent brethren seized the occasion when their hearts were thus softened, to ask them for something. Thus Homer, according to the legend attributed to Herodotus, went in Samos to the houses of the wealthy, chanting his Eiresione, for which he received a consideration.[375] ----- Footnote 374: