Shamelessness may be defined as contempt for decency, joined with meanness of purpose. Your shameless fellow is one who robs a man and then returns to borrow money of him. He sacrifices a victim to the gods, and instead of making his supper from it, he salts the meat down and then gets a meal at the house of a friend. He calls a servant, and, taking bread and meat from the table, says in a voice that all can hear: “Try that, Tibios!”
When he goes to market, he reminds the butcher of all the patronage he has given him, and as he stands by the scales, throws in an extra piece, if he can, or if not, a soup-bone. If he secures these, he rests content. If he fails, he snatches a piece of tripe from the bench and makes off with it laughing. He buys theatre tickets for friends that are staying in town and goes along with them to the performance, but does not contribute his share of the expense; and the next day you’ll find him taking his children and their tutor, too.
When anybody has found a bargain in any line, he demands to have a share. He goes to the neighbors and borrows barley, or sometimes even bran, and actually endeavors to make those who lend him these articles deliver them at his house. A favorite trick of his is to march up to the tubs in a private bath-house, draw a bucket of warm water, dash it over his head, despite the loud protests of the attendant, and then say, as he leaves: “That’s a good bath; no thanks to you!”
Newsmaking is the concoction of false stories of what people say and do, at the gossip’s caprice. The newsmonger is one who straightway strikes an attitude and assumes a smiling air when he meets a friend, and asks: “Where have you been? What news? How is the situation? Have you any fresh word about it?” and then going straight on, he asks: “Is there no later report? Well! the current rumors are good.”
And without letting his friend reply, he keeps right on: “What! you haven’t heard a word about it! Then I think I have a feast of news for you.” He always has in readiness some unheard-of soldier or a slave belonging to one Asteus, a piper, or Lycon, an obscure contractor, just back from the battle-field; and it is from one of these that he has heard the tidings. The authorities for his reports are of the sort that you can never get hold of. Such are the men he quotes when he tells how Polyperchon and the king carried the day and Cassander was taken prisoner.