De Abusu linguae Graecae

"Whoever, having invited a friend or a stranger to dinner, then exacts symbolas contributions, may he be a fugitive, having taken nothing from his own house."
These two iambics, which immediately precede in the same place, are also elegant; from which their sense can be clearer:
"The man who first invented dining on what belongs to others, was, it seems, a man of common manners."
I think these five Greek verses can not badly be rendered into these five Latin ones, nearly word for word, and indeed by retaining the Greek word symbolas, which is now under discussion, but by writing it in Latin letters:

Who first discovered how to dine on others,
Was, I think, possessed of a common mind.
But he who demands contributions from guests
Or friends invited to his own dinner,
May he be a fugitive, carrying nothing from home.

As we see this word pleased the Greek comic poets, so too we see it pleased the Latin ones, especially in palliatis cloak-wearing/Greek-style comedies. Plautus in Stichus:
--I agreed to a contribution
For dinner, and for his fellow servant Sagarinus the Syrian.
And three verses later,
Now, by Hercules, I will cross through the garden to my friend,
Occupied with this night: I will give the same contribution,
And I will order dinner to be cooked for Sagarinus.