Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. III. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1931 (printing).

When Aristodemus, [*](Possibly the son of Eutropion, Moralia, 11 A.) one of his friends, who, it was whispered, was the son of a cook, advised him to curtail his expenditures and his giving of presents, he said, Aristodemus, your words have the stink of a kitchen apron.

When the Athenians admitted to citizenship a slave of his, held in much esteem, and enrolled him as a free man, he said, I could wish that one Athenian had not been flogged by me !

A young man, one of the pupils of Anaximenes the orator, pronounced before him a very carefully prepared oration, and he, wishing to gain some further information, asked a question. But when the young man relapsed into silence, he remarked, What is your answer ? Or

Is this the content of the written page ?
[*](Euripides, Iphigeneia among the Taurians, 787.)

Hearing another orator say that the season had been snowy [*](This could hardly refer (as some think) to the unseasonably cold weather in the spring (of 307 B.C.?) recorded in Plutarch’s Life of Demetrius, chap. xii. (894 C).) and so had caused a lack of herbage in the land, he said, Please stop treating me as you treat a common crowd.

When Thrasyllus the Cynic asked him for a shilling, he said That is not a fit gift for a king to give. And when Thrasyllus said, Then give me two hundred pounds, he retorted, But that is not a fit gift for a Cynic to receive. [*](The story ist old more fully in Moralia, 551 E, and by Seneca, De beneficiis, ii. 17. 1.)