By degrees, as wealth increased, there came a greater demand for amusement.  Jesters obtained patrons, and a distinct class of men grew up, who, having more humour than means were glad to barter their pleasantries for something more substantial.  Wit has as little tendency to enrich its possessor as genius—­the mind being turned to gay and idle rather than remunerative pursuits, and into a destructive rather than a constructive channel.  Talent does not imply industry, and where the stock in trade consists of luxuries of small money value, men make but a precarious livelihood.  One of them says that he will give as a fortune to his daughter “six hundred bon mots—­all pure Attic,” which seems to suggest that they were to be puns.  No doubt it was the demand that led to the supply, for jesters were in request at convivial meetings, and the jealousy of their equally poor, but less amusing neighbours, not improbably led to some of the ill-natured reflections upon them.  Society was to blame for encouraging the parasite, who seems to have become an institution in Greece.  He is not mentioned by Aristophanes, but figures constantly in the plays of later writers, where he is a smooth-tongued witty varlet, whose aim is to make himself agreeable, and who is ready to submit to any humiliation in order to live at other people’s expense.  Thus Gelasimus—­so called, as he avers, because his mother was a droll—­laments the changed times.  He liked the old forms of expression, “Come to dinner—­make no excuse;” but now it is always, “I’d invite you, only I’m engaged myself.”  In another place a parasite’s stomach is called a “bottomless pit,” and they are said to “live on their juices” while their patrons are away in the country.  Their servility was, of course, exaggerated in comedy to make humorous capital, but as they were poor and of inferior social standing to those with whom they consorted, they were sure occasionally to suffer indignities varying in proportion to the bad taste and insolence of their patrons.  Thus we read that they not only sat on benches at the lower end of the table, but sometimes had their faces daubed and their ears boxed.  In the ambiguous position they occupied, they were no doubt exposed to temptations, but we are not to suppose that they were generally guilty of such short-sighted treachery as that attributed to them by the dramatists.  Still, they certainly were in bad repute in their generation, and hence we are enabled to understand Aristotle’s observation that he who is deficient in humour is a boor, but he who is in culpable excess is a bomolochos, or thorough scoundrel.  He would connect the idea of great jocosity with unprincipled designs.