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And yet surely in the case of despots,Cf. Aristotle, Politics, v. (viii.) 9. 3 (1313 b 12 ff.). who have to know everything, it is the tribe of socalled Ears and Jackals that makes them most detested. It was Darius Nothus, who had no confidence in himself and regarded everyone with fear and suspicion, who first instituted Listeners; and Jackals were distributed by the DionysiiCf. Life of Dion, xxviii. (970 b-c). among the people of Syracuse. Consequently when the revolution came, these were the first persons whom the Syracusans arrested and crushed to death. And in fact the tribe of informers is from the same clan and family as busy bodies. But while informers search to see whether anyone has planned or committed a misdemeanour, busy bodies investigate and make public even the involuntary mischances of their neighbours. And it is said that the person called aliteriosTransgressor, or outlaw; Plutarch rejects this explanation in Moralia, 297 a. first acquired his name from being a busybody. For it appears that when there was a severe famine at Athens and those who possessed wheat would not contribute it to the common stock, but groundThe verb ἀλεῖν, from which ἀλιτήριος is here derived. it in their houses secretly by night, some persons went about listening for the noise of the. mills, and so acquired the name aliterioi. It was in the same way, they say, that the sycophantInformer; cf. Life of Solon, xxiv. (91 e); Athenaeus, 74 e-f. won his name. Since the export of figsσῦκα. was prohibited, men who revealedφαίνειν, from which the noun -φάντης. and gave information against those who did export them were called sycophants. So it is well worth the while of busybodies to consider this fact also, that they may be ashamed of the resemblance and relationship of their own practice to that of persons who are very cordially hated and loathed.
