expression which would be more properly rendered "men of the
market-place." Such centres of trade do not seem to have been improving
to the manners, for we read of people "railing like bread-women," and of
the "rude jests" of the young men of the market.[15] Lysistratus was
one of these fellows in Aristophanes' days, and his condition seems to
have been as miserable as his humour, for his garment had "shed its
leaves,"[16] and he was shivering and starving "more than thirty days in
the month."

By degrees, as wealth increased, there came a greater demand for
amusement. Jesters obtained patrons, and a distinct class of men grew
up, who, having more humour than means were glad to barter their
pleasantries for something more substantial. Wit has as little tendency
to enrich its possessor as genius--the mind being turned to gay and idle
rather than remunerative pursuits, and into a destructive rather than a
constructive channel. Talent does not imply industry, and where the
stock in trade consists of luxuries of small money value, men make but a
precarious livelihood. One of them says that he will give as a fortune
to his daughter "six hundred _bon mots_--all pure Attic," which seems to
suggest that they were to be puns. No doubt it was the demand that led
to the supply, for jesters were in request at convivial meetings, and
the jealousy of their equally poor, but less amusing neighbours, not
improbably led to some of the ill-natured reflections upon them. Society
was to blame for encouraging the parasite, who seems to have become an
institution in Greece. He is not mentioned by Aristophanes, but figures
constantly in the plays of later writers, where he is a smooth-tongued
witty varlet, whose aim is to make himself agreeable, and who is ready
to submit to any humiliation in order to live at other people's expense.
Thus Gelasimus--so called, as he avers, because his mother was a
droll--laments the changed times. He liked the old forms of expression,