The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Philosophy
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
And Xanthus, in his Account of Lydia, says that Cambles, who was
the king of the Lydians, was a great eater and drinker, and also an
exceeding epicure; and accordingly, that he one night cut up his own
wife into joints and ate her; and then, in the morning, finding the
hand of his wife still sticking in his mouth, he slew himself, as
his act began to get notorious. And we have already mentioned Thys,
the king of the Paphlagonians, saying that he too was a man of vast
appetite, quoting Theopompus, who speaks of him in the thirty-fifth
book of his History; and Archilochus, in his Tetrameters, has accused
Charilas of the same fault, as the comic poets have attacked Cleonymus
and Pisander. And Phœnicides mentions Chærippus in his Phylarchus in
the following terms—
And next to them I place Chærippus third;
He, as you know, will without ceasing eat
As long as any one will give him food,
Or till he bursts,—such stowage vast has he,
Like any house.
[Sidenote: VORACITY OF MITHRIDATES.]
9. And Nicolaus the Peripatetic, in the hundred and third book of his
History, says that Mithridates, the king of Pontus, once proposed
a contest in great eating and great drinking (and the prize was a
talent of silver), and that he himself gained the victory in both; but
he yielded the prize to the man who was judged to be second to him,
namely, Calomodrys, the athlete of Cyzicus. And Timocreon the Rhodian,
a poet, and an athlete who had gained the victory in the pentathlum,
ate and drank a great deal, as the epigram on his tomb shows—
Much did I eat, much did I drink, and much
Did I abuse all men; now here I lie;—
My name Timocreon, my country Rhodes.
And Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, in one his Prefaces, says that Timocreon
came to the great king of Persia, and being entertained by him, did
eat an immense quantity of food; and when the king asked him, What he
would do on the strength of it? he said that he would beat a great many
Persians; and the next day, having vanquished a great many, one after
another, taking them one by one, after this, he beat the air with his
hands; and when they asked him what he wanted, he said that he had
all those blows left in him if any one was inclined to come on. And
Clearchus, in the fifth book of his Lives, says, that Cantibaris the
Persian, whenever his jaws were weary with eating, had his slaves to
pour food into his mouth, which he kept open as if they were pouring
it into an empty vessel. But Hellanicus, in the first book of his
Deucalionea, says that Erysichthon, the son of Myrmidon, being a man
perfectly insatiable in respect of food, was called Æthon. And Polemo,
in the first book of his Treatise addressed to Timæus, says that among
the Sicilians there was a temple consecrated to gluttony, and an image
of Ceres Sito;[40] near which, also, there was a statue of Himalis,[41]
as there is at Delphi one of Hermuchus,[42] and as at Scolum, in
Boeotia, there are statues of Megalartus[43] and Megalomazus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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