SARDANAPALUS.
The time that men do live on earth was brief,
And liable to many sudden changes,
Reverses, and calamities. Now others
Will have th' enjoyment of my luxuries,
Which I do leave behind me. For these reasons
I never ceased one single day from pleasure.
But Clitarchus, in the fourth book of his History of Alexander, says that Sardanapalus died of old age after he had lost the sovereignty over the Syrians. And Aristobulus says—"In Anchiale, which was built by Sardanapalus, did Alexander, when he was on his expedition against the Persians, pitch his camp. And at no great distance was the monument of Sardanapalus, on which there was a marble figure putting together the fingers of its right hand, as if it were giving a fillip. And there was on it the following inscription in Assyrian characters—
Sardanapalus
The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes,
In one day built Anchiale and Tarsus.
Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth e'en this,—
by "this" meaning the fillip he was giving with his fingers.
40. But Sardanapalus was not the only king who was very luxurious, but so was also Androcotus the Phrygian. For he also used to wear a robe embroidered with flowers; and to adorn himself more superbly than a woman, as Mnaseas relates, in the third book of his History of Europe. But Clearchus, in the fifth book of his Lives, says that Sagaus the king of the Mariandyni used, out of luxury, to eat, till he arrived at old age, out of his nurse's mouth, that he might not have the trouble of chewing his own food; and that he never put his hand lower than his navel; on which account Aristotle, laughing at Xenocrates the Chalcedonian, for a similar preposterous piece of laziness, says—
His hands are clean, but sure his mind is not.
And Ctesias relates that Annarus, a lieutenant of the king of Persia, and governor of Babylon, wore the entire dress and ornaments of a woman; and though he was only a slave of the king, there used to come into the room while he was at supper a hundred and fifty women playing the lyre and singing. And they played and sang all the time that he was eating. And Phœnix of Colophon, the poet, speaking of Ninus, in the first book of his Iambics, says—
