EPICURES. the same Diocles had also eaten up his land through gluttony, and was one day, while bolting down some hot fish, complaining that his palate ([Greek: ouranos]) was burnt, Theocritus, who was present, said to him—"Then it only remains for you to drink up the sea, and then you will have got rid of the three greatest things in the world,—earth, and sea, and heaven ([Greek: ouranos])." And Clearchus, in his Lives, describing some person who was fond of fish, says—"Technon, one of the old flute-players, when Charmus the flute-player died, (and he, too, was very fond of fish,) sacrificed to the dead man a large dish of every sort of fish on his tomb." Alexis the poet, also, was a great epicure in fish, as Lynceus the Samian tells us; and being once ridiculed by some chattering fellows on account of his epicurism, when they asked him what he liked most to eat, Alexis said, "Roasted chatterers."
33. Hermippus mentions also Nothippus the tragic poet, in his Tales, thus—
But if such a race of men
Were to wage a present war
With those who now exist on earth,
And if a roast ray led them on,
Or a fine side of well-fed pork,
The rest might safely stay at home,
And trust Nothippus by himself,
For he alone would swallow up
The whole Peloponnesus:—
and that the man meant here was the poet, Teleclides shows plainly, in his Hesiods.
Myniscus, the tragic actor, is ridiculed by Plato, the comic writer, in his Syrphax, as an epicure in respect of fish; where he says—
A. Here is an Anagyrasian orphus for you,
Which e'en my friend Myniscus the Chalcidean
Could hardly finish.
B. Much obliged to you.
And for a similar reason, Callias, in his Pedetæ, and Lysippus, in his Bacchæ, ridicule Lampon the soothsayer. But Cratinus, in his Female Runaways, speaking of him, says—"Lampon, whom nothing which men said of him could keep away from any banquet of his friends;" and adds, "But now again he is belching away; for he devours everything which he can see, and he would fight even for a mullet."
