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Bragging is pretending to have excellences that one does not really possess. The braggart is the man who stands on the wharf and tells the bystanders how much capital he has invested in ships at sea, and tells how extensive is his business of loaning money, and how much he has made and lost by different ventures. As he talks thus magnificently, he sends his slave to his banker, where he has—exactly one shilling to his credit. On a journey he imposes on his travelling companion by telling him that he once served with Alexander, and how intimate were their relations, and how many jewelled cups he brought back from his campaigns.

As regards the Asiatic artists, he counts them better than those in Europe. And all this he tells you without having once set foot outside his native city. He claims further to have three letters from Antipater[32] bidding him come to Macedonia; but he declares that, though he has been guaranteed the privilege of exporting wood free of duty, he has refused to go, simply to avoid being suspected by his fellow-citizens of foreign leanings. The Macedonians, he says, in urging him so to come, ought to have considered this point.

In time of famine, he says, his expenditures for the poor amounted to over five talents; for he hadn’t the heart to refuse. When he’s with strangers, he often bids some one place the reckoning counters on the table, and computing by six hundreds and by minae, glibly mentioning the names of his pretended debtors, he makes a total of twenty-four talents, saying that the whole sum had gone for voluntary contributions, and that, too, without including subscriptions for the navy or for other public objects.

At times he goes to the horse-market where blooded stock is for sale, and makes pretence of wanting to buy; and stepping up to the block, he hunts his clothes for two talents, upbraiding his servant for coming along without any money. Though he lives in a rented house, he represents it to those who do not know as the family homestead; yet adds that he thinks of selling it as being too small for the proper entertainment of his friends.