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He was hunch-backed; his shoulders were higher than his ears; his body was supported by legs of different lengths; his rolling eyes flashed, from beneath his matted hair. From his throat issued a hoarse voice and strident laughter; he smelt of the cow-shed. However, to her he was beautiful. "A plant," as Gnatho says, "has been loved by one, a stream by another, a beast by a third."
But as there are many like Gnatho, who stand higher than he did in place, fortune, and reputation, then subserviency is the more offensive, because then position gives weight to their falsehood. But a flattering friend may be distinguished and discriminated from a true friend by proper care, as easily as everything disguised and feigned is seen to differ from what is genuine and real.
See whether wisdom and temperance in Ulysses and Diomedes, valour in Achilles, friendship in Nisus and Euryalus, even to an ignorant man, carry not an apparent shining: and contrarily, the remorse of conscience in Odipus, the soon repenting pride of Agamemnon, the self-devouring cruelty in his father Atreus, the violence of ambition in the two Theban brothers, the sour-sweetness of revenge in Medea, and to fall lower, the Terentian Gnatho and our Chaucer's Pandar, so expressed, that we now use their names to signify their trades.
These two are inferior in comic action and the peculiar sweetness of Menander to the Andria, the Adelphi, the Heautontimorumenus, and the Eunuchus: but Phormio is a more dashing and amusing convivial parasite than the Gnatho of the last-named comedy.
"He gives a birthday fête in his garden: to whom, I wonder? I will name no one. To Phormio, perhaps, or Gnatho, or Ballion? Oh, incredible baseness; lust and impudence not to be borne!" These were the vile knaves of the Roman comedy the Nyms. Pistols, and Bobadils. "Your Consulship no doubt will be salutary; but mine did only evil!
If one says "No," I answer "No"; if "Yes," I answer "Yes." In fine, I've laid this task upon myself To echo all that's said to quote my old friend Terence again. But he puts these words into the mouth of a Gnatho. To admit such a man into one's intimacy at all is a sign of folly.
This sin is nearer allied to the devil than to mankind. Gnatho acts his part in the comedies, but Sycophanta in the tragedies. Phormio, in Terence, is a very honest person, nothing, or very little, stained with the other two vices. Cacoethes is a wicked villain, that wittingly and wilfully prepareth mischief. Of the Wealth and Treasure of the World.
Colax, in my opinion, is he that in Terence they name Gnatho, an ear-scratcher, a dissembler, a trencher-licker, one that talketh for his belly's sake, and is altogether a man-pleaser. This is a sin of mankind, whose intent is to get all they can though others are hurt thereby. Sycophanta is such a dissembler, traitor, and backbiter that would earn a grey coat.
But there are many people like Gnatho, and it is when they are superior either in position or fortune or reputation that their flatteries become mischievous, the weight of their position making up for the lightness of their character.
This despicable toady was his lordship's double; he was a living type of the Gnatho of Terence; and I never saw him without remembering the passage that ends "si negat id quoque nego." Black was white, and white was black with toady, if his lordship pleased; he messed in the cabin, did much mischief in the ship, and only escaped kicking, because he was too contemptible to be kicked.
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