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Furthermore, there are three kinds of answers to questions: the barely necessary, the polite, and the superfluous. For example, if someone asks, Is Socrates at home? one person may reply, as it were unwillingly and grudgingly, Not at home. And if he wishes to adopt the Laconic style, he may omit the At home and only utter the bare negative. So the Spartans, when Philip wrote to ask if they would receive him into their city, wrote a large No on the paper and sent it back. Another will answer more politely, He is not at home, but at the bank, and if he wants to give fuller measure may add, waiting there for some guests. But your over-officious and garrulous man, particularly if he happens to have read AntimachusThe epic poet, a by-word for longwindedness: thus Catullus (95. 10) calls him tumidus. of Colophon, will say, He is not at home, but at the bank, waiting for some Ionian guests on whose behalf he has had a letter from Alcibiades who is near Miletus staying with Tissaphernes,Cf.Life of Alcibiades, xxiv. (204 b-c). the satrap of the Great King, who formerly used to help the Spartans, but now is attaching himself to the Athenians because of Alcibiades. For Alcibiades desires to be restored to his native country and therefore is causing Tissaphernes to change sides. And he will run on, reciting at full stretch the whole eighth book of Thucydides, and deluge the questioner until, before he has done, Miletus is at war again and Alcibiades exiled for the second time.
