There was the mean man, too, who, if his servant broke a pot or plate, deducted its value from the poor fellow’s rations. “He permits no one to take a fig from his garden or cross his field, or even to pick up windfalls under his fruit trees. He forbids his wife to lend salt or lamp-wicks or a pinch of cummin, marjoram, or meal, observing that these trifles make a large sum in a year.”
There was also the thankless man whose pessimism is so gloomy as to cloud all view of his blessings. “When a friend has sent him something from his table, he says to the servant who brings it: ‘He grudged me a dish of soup and a cup of wine, I suppose, and so couldn’t invite me to dinner.’” “If he secures a slave at a bargain after long dickering with the owner, he says: ‘I imagine I haven’t got much at this price.’ And to the person who brings him the glad tidings that a son is born to him, he retorts, ‘If you only add: “And half your fortune’s gone,” you’ll hit it.’”
Then we have the man who is ostentatious in trivial things. “When he has sacrificed an ox, he winds the head and horns with fillets, and nails them up, opposite the entrance of his house.” “When he parades with the cavalry he gives all his accoutrements to his squire to carry home, and throwing back his mantle stalks proudly about the market-place in his spurs.” When he is master of the prytany, he craves the privilege of announcing to the people the result of the sacrifice; and as soon as he has delivered to the people the momentous intelligence that the sacrifice has resulted well, he hies him home and recounts his triumph to his wife in an ecstasy of joy.
The foregoing are but illustrations of the happy skill with which Theophrastus has delineated a number of character-types which are as universal as human nature and know no limits of age or of country. Here and there we meet a type in the Greek for which we have no exact counterpart in our customary modern modes of thought. Such a type may be seen in Theophrastus’s “The Disagreeable Man,” a person who seems a sort of general nuisance with a touch of the bore and the braggart. As a rule, however, the types are singularly like those we know to-day, and it is not difficult at once to provide them with appropriate modern labels. The treatment, though almost invariably brief, is invariably vigorous and trenchant. With a few bold strokes the character is drawn. There is absolutely no pretense of style, as we ordinarily understand it; yet each type is in its way a gem. Through them all runs that fidelity to truth which was the unfailing inspiration of all Greek art. It is this which makes _The Characters_ a unique creation and vindicates their position as a part of the world’s literature.