Plutarch's life of Solon also has this passage:

Of the products of the soil, he allowed oil only to be sold abroad, but forbade the exportation of others; and if any did so export, the archon was to pronounce curses upon them, or else himself pay a hundred drachmas into the public treasury. His first table is the one which contains this law. One cannot, therefore, wholly disbelieve those who say that the exportation of figs also was anciently forbidden, and that the one who showed up, or pointed out such exporters, was called a "sycophant," or fig-shower.

http:// http://makeashorterlink.com/?D1FB26D94

In Greek sycophant meant an informer rather than what we mean by it today. Quinion pooh-poohs Plutarch's idea that originally it was someone who shopped fig-smugglers but does draw our attention to the OED definition of sycophant as "A mean, servile, cringing, or abject flatterer; a parasite, toady, lickspittle".

http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-syc1.htm



Bingley

Bingley