A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Ἰσχόμαχος), an Athenian, whose fortune, according to Lysias, was supposed during his life to amount to more than seventy talents (above 17,000l.), but on his death he was found to have left less than twenty, i. e. under 5,000l. (Lys. pro Arist. Bon. p. 156.) It appears, however, that he squandered his money on flatterers and parasites. (Heracl. Pont. apud Athen. xii. p. 537c.) The union of meanness and prodigality is so common as to furnish no reason against supposing this Ischomachus to have been the same person whose stingy and grasping character we find attacked by Cratinus (apud Athen. i. p. 8a.). We can, however, hardly identify him with the Ischomachus whom Xenophon introduces (Oecon. 6, &c.) as holding a most edifying conversation with his newly-married wife on the subject of domestic economy, of which he is represented as a bright example. Whether either of these was the Ischomachus whose daughter was married to the notorious CALLIAS, is again a doubtful point. (Andoc. De Myst. p. 16.) The Ischomachus mentioned in the Hymenaeus of Araros (apud Athen. p. 237a.) was perhaps, says Meineke (Fragm. Com. Graec. vol. ii. p. 176), a grandson of the man who is satirised by Cratinus. But the name was possibly used by Araros as the representative of a class, and in that case is no other than the mean feeder of parasites in the older poet.

[E.E]