Βωμολόχος

Notes (4)

1. This entry is noticeably more uncompromising about the humor of "altar-ambushers" than all other related entries in the Suda: beta 486, beta 487, beta 488, beta 489, chi 296. The word seems, in the writers cited here, to have lost its visual image and to have become a dead metaphor for deceitful words and acts that a politician or other person uses to ingratiate himself into the favor of others.
1. 1From Aristophanes, Frogs 358, cited more fully at theta 583 (web address 1). The scholiast ad loc. translates the clause in which the words appear as "or who takes pleasure in ill-timed foolish loquaciousness, polulogi/ais flua/rois, i.e. acting the altar-ambusher." ↩
2. 2Agathias [alpha 112], Histories p.26.24-25 Keydell (1.19 Niebuhr). This work is a continuation of Procopius (pi 2479) and covers the years 553-59 AD, during which Narses (nu 42), the Persian-Armenian eunuch, was reconquering Italy. The passage describes the generosity and magnanimity of Narses. He here denies that he speaks and acts to importune the Lucanians, whom he addresses, with unrealistic promises merely for self-serving political ends. The sentence with its high-sounding words and condensed thought is probably designed as a pastiche of Narses' style of speaking. ↩
3. 3Damascius, Life of Isidore fr. 311 Zintzen. For Isidore of Alexandria, see iota 631. ↩
4. 4For the two senses of eu)tra/pelos, 'the socially adept wit who can turn a witty phrase, the tricky and self-serving jester', see beta 489, note 4; cf. on the very similar adjective a)stei=os, Beta 488 and notes 1, 5.