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
19. And Hegesander, in his Commentaries, says this of him—"Dorion,
the great fish-eater, once, when his slave had neglected to buy fish,
scourged him, and ordered him to tell him the names of the best fish;
and when the boy had counted up the orphus, and the sea-grayling, and
the conger, and others of this sort, he said—'I desired you to tell me
the names of fishes, and not of gods.'" The same Dorion, ridiculing the
description of a tempest in the Nautilus of Timotheus, said that he had
seen a more formidable storm in a boiling saucepan. And Aristodemus,
in the second book of his Memorials of Laughable Circumstances and
Sayings, says—"Dorion the musician was club-footed; and once, in some
entertainment, he lost the slipper of his lame foot; on which he said,
'I will not wish anything more to the thief than that the slipper may
fit him.'" But that this Dorion was notorious for his epicurism in
fish, is plain from what Mnesimachus the comic poet says in his drama
called Philip—
No, but all night Dorion the dish-piper
Does stay indoors with us.
20. I know, too, the sportive sayings which Lasus of Hermione has
uttered about fishes; which Chamæleon of Heraclea has recorded in
writing, in his book on this very Lasus, where he says—"They say that
Lasus called raw fish ὀπτὸς (which means roasted or visible); and when
many people wondered why he did so, he thus began to prove what he
had said; arguing thus: 'As whatever a person can hear (ἀκοῦσαι) is
properly called ἀκουστὸν, and as whatever a person can understand by
his intellect (νοῆσαι) is properly called νοητὸν, so whatever any one
can see (ὄπτεσθαι) is clearly ὀπτόν; as therefore it was possible to
see the fish, he evidently was ὀπτός.' And once, in a joke, he stole
a fish from a fisherman, and having taken it, he gave it to one of
the bystanders; and when the fisherman put him to his oath, he swore
that he had not got it himself, and that he had not seen any one else
take it; because, in fact, he himself had taken it, but some one else
had got it. And then he prompted the other man, on the other hand, to
swear that he had not taken it himself, and that he was not acquainted
with any one else who had it; for, in fact, Lasus had taken it, and he
himself had it." And Epicharmus jests in the same way; as, in his Logus
and Logina,—
[Sidenote: FISH.]
_A._ Jupiter 'tis who did invite me, giving
A feast (γ̓ ἔρανον) to Pelops.
_B._ 'Tis a sorry food,
That crane (γέρανος), to my mind.
_A._ But I did not say
A crane (γέρανον), but a feast (ἔρανόν γε), as you might well
have heard.
21. And Alexis, in his Demetrius, ridicules, in his comic manner, a man
of the name of Phayllus, as very fond of fish, in these lines:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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