"SYCOPHANT "—A CORRECTION.
rTo TRH EDITOR 01 THE ..31•847TATOR.1 8m,—I find that in my letter of June 8th my memory played me false in attributing to Professor Skeet a derivation of sycophantes, which I must have read elsewhere, and am now unable, in the absence of books, to identify. Professor Skeet maintains the traditional explanation,—an informer against importers of figs from Attica or robbers of sacred fig-trees; but he allows, with Liddell and Scott, that there is no trace of the primitive sense in any Greek author. It seems to me highly improbable that there should not be even an allusion to the original meaning ; and I would throw out for what it is worth a conjecture which at any rate is not open to the same objection. Theocritus, I think, uses °kiwi fwSpes for men as rotten as the wood of the fig-tree, or, as we should phrase it, men not worth a fig. May not sycophantes have been the colloquialism for a rotten informer ? This would be a case of Greek slang with a vengeance. Might not the coiner of such a word be appropriately dubbed a classical gangster 2-1 am, Sir, he., LIONEL A. Tom.sissous. Hotel Moorlands, Hindhead.
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