Two walking-sticks

These poems by Hellenistic poets both begin with a rare-ish word for walking-stick, leading me to think they may be in conscious dialogue. Leonidas is third century BC; Phanias, maybe second? All we really know is that he is early enough to make it into the Garland of Meleager, in the first century BC.

6.293 (on YouTube)

LEONIDAS <OF TARENTUM>

His walking-stick, and yes, those little shoes —

These spoils of victory adorn your shrine,

Cyprian queen, taken from Sōchares,

The Cynic; and his grubby oil-flask too,

And tattered wallet that had gone to holes

But used to bulge with wisdom. Nevermore:

For Rhodōn, young and handsome, set them high

Amid the garlands of your vestibule

To mark how he was victor in the chase,

Snaring the elder who had seemed so wise.

As Francis Cairns points out in Hellenistic Epigram: Context of Encounter, the ‘little shoes’ subtly establish that the lifelong Cynic fell hard for Rhodōn: after a symposium he processed in kōmos to stand outside the young man’s door and serenade him, making a scene and publicly acknowledging his helplessness against Aphrodite’s power. The rest of Sōchares’ gear is the stereotypical uniform of the Cynic philosopher who professes indifference to society’s comforts and pretences. Often in epigram these Cynic gurus have trouble sticking to their principles, if they even try.

Leonidas wrote a kind of companion epigram, 6.298, in which he presents an alternate outcome: that Sōchares persists in his austerity till he starves to death. As events unfold in 8.294, though, the philosopher's mask of virtue has fallen aside. Sōchares' antics in party-slippers are the talk of the town. Tauta ta blautia; 'those little shoes'. 

6.294 (on YouTube)

PHANIAS

The walking-stick that kept him on his feet;

The leather tawse and giant fennel-stalk

That lay beside it, and that used to smite

The brows of infants, and the pizzle too,

That flexed so readily and sang so sweet;

The slipper with a single rigid sole;

The skull-cap, from a head devoid of hair.

Gifts for lord Hermes. Callōn set them here,

The keepsakes of a teacher in a school.

His limbs are fettered now by grizzled toil.

A pizzle is a dried bull's penis. They had a long history as a flogging instrument, though now they mostly become dog chews. Naturally there is a Wikipedia page.