The Shabby Profiteer is the kind who does not provide enough bread when he entertains. He borrows money from a visitor who is staying with him. When he is serving out helpings he says that it is right and proper that the server should be given a double helping and so he proceeds to give himself one. When he has wine for sale he sells it to a friend watered down. He takes his sons to the theatre only when there is free admission. When he goes abroad on public service he leaves his official travel allowance at home and borrows from the other delegates, loads his attendant with more baggage than he can carry and provides him with shorter rations than anyone else, and asks for his share of the presents and then sells them. When he is oiling himself in the baths he says to his slave ‘The oil you bought is rancid’ and he uses someone else’s. If his slaves find a few coppers in the street he is liable to demand a portion of them, saying ‘Fair shares for all’. He takes his cloak to the cleaner’s and borrows one from an acquaintance and puts off returning it for several days until it is demanded back. [And the like.] He measures out the rations for the household in person, using a measuring jar set to the old Pheidonian standard, that has had its bottom dinted inwards, and rigorously levels off the top. ******************. And you can be sure that when he repays a debt of thirty minae he pays it back four drachmas short. When his sons do not attend school for the full month because of illness he deducts a proportion of the fees, and he does not send them for lessons during Anthesterion, to avoid the expense, because there are so many shows. When he collects his share of a slave’s earnings he charges him for the cost of exchanging the copper coin; and when he gets an account from <                        >. When he entertains members of his phratry he asks for food for his slaves from the communal meal, but he has an inventory made of the radish-halves left over from the table, so that the slaves waiting at the table won’t get them. When he is abroad with acquaintances he uses their slaves and lets his own slave out for hire and doesn’t put the proceeds towards the joint account. And, needless to say, when the dining club meets at his house he charges for the firewood, beans, vinegar, salt and lamp-oil that he is providing. When a friend is getting married or marrying off a daughter he leaves town some time before, so that he won’t have to send a present. And he borrows from acquaintances the kinds of thing which nobody would demand back or be in a hurry to take back if offered.

XII: The Tactless Man