30. But Melanthus the tragic poet was a person of the same sort; and he also wrote elegies. But Leucon, in his Men of the same Tribe, cuts his jokes upon him in the fashion of the comic writers, on account of his gluttony; and so does Aristophanes in the Peace, and Pherecrates in his Petale. But Archippus, in his play called The Fishes, having put him in chains as an epicure, gives him up to the fishes, to be eaten by them in retaliation. And, indeed, even Aristippus, the pupil of Socrates, was a great epicure,—a man who was once reproached by Plato for his gluttony, as Sotion and Hegesander relate. And the Delphian writes thus:—"Aristippus, when Plato reproached him for having bought a number of fish, said that he had bought them for two obols; and when Plato said, 'I myself would have bought them at that price,' 'You see, then,' said he, 'O Plato! that it is not I who am an epicure, but you who are a miser.'" And Antiphanes, in his Female Flute-player, or the Female Twins, laughing at a man named Phœnicides for his gluttony, says— Menelaus warr'd for ten whole years against The Trojan nation for one lovely woman. Phœnicides, too, attacks Taureas For one fine eel. 31. But Demosthenes the orator reproaches Pherecrates, because, with the gold which he received for his treason, he bought himself courtesans and fish, and charges him with debauchery and gluttony. But Diocles the epicure, as Hegesander says, when a man once asked him which of the two fish was the best, the conger or the pike, said—"The one when it is boiled, and the other when it is roasted." And Leonteus the Argive also was an epicure: he was a tragedian, and a pupil of Athenion, and a slave of Juba, king of Mauritania; as Amarantus relates, in his treatise on the Stage, saying that Juba wrote this epigram on him, because he had acted the character of Hypsipyle very badly:— If you should wish to see the genius Of that devoted artichoke-devourer Leonteus the tragedian, don't regard The sorrow-stricken heart of Hypsipyle. I once was dear to Bacchus, and his taste Is ne'er perverted by base bribes t'approve Untuneful sounds. But now the pots and pans, And well-fill'd dishes have destroyed my voice, While I've been anxious to indulge my stomach. 32. And Hegesander tells us that Phoryscus, the fish-eater, once, when he was not able to take exactly as much fish as he wished, but when a greater part of it was following his hand, as he was helping himself, said,— But what resists is utterly destroy'd, and so ate up the whole fish. And Bion, when some one had been beforehand with him, and had already taken the upper part of the fish, having turned it round himself, and eating abundantly of it, said, after he had done,— But Ino finish'd all the rest o' the business. [Sidenote: EPICURES.]