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The Characters

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Thirty short sketches of human types — the flatterer, the chatterbox, the penny-pincher, the man of petty ambition — each drawn in a few precise, witty strokes. The first work of character writing, it shaped comedy and the essay for two thousand years.

The Flatterer is one who will say, as he walks with another: Do you observe how people look at you? This happens to no man in Athens but you. And while he speaks, he picks a loose thread from the man's cloak, or removes a speck of chaff from his hair, and says with a laugh: See, because I have not been with you for two days, your beard is full of grey hairs, though no man has hair blacker for his years than you.

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