HANDOUTS AT DINNER

The listeners who follow them are like performers, hired and bought. They huddle together with a middleman; in the middle of a basilica sportulae are handed out as openly as in a triclinium. They run from one court to another for the same wage. Hence these people are called not without humour "Sophocleses" from sophos and kaleisthai; in Latin the name given them is laudiceni. Sherwin-White in his commentary on this passage deals only with the explanatory words in Greek in the manuscripts, which he would delete as a gloss.2 One could add that Pliny would have known that kalein and not kaleisthai was required as an explanation, since the parasites shout "Sophos," i.e., kalein sophos-"Hoorayshouters," while sophos kaleisthai s not meaningful at all; kaleisthai seems to be a mistake prompted by the word vocantur. But it is unclear, despite Sherwin-White, why we need the Latin variant. The whole explanation looks like a grammarian's gloss, since "Hooray-shouters" are obviously the claqueurs wanted in a law court, while "Dinner-praisers" interrupts the argument. There is a more interesting problem. Why does Pliny find it obvious that handing out sportulae as bribes in a basilica should be compared to handing them