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 in-doors 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 [Greek: optos] (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 ([Greek: akousai]) is properly called [Greek: akouston], and as whatever a person can understand by his intellect ([Greek: noêsai]) is properly called [Greek: noêton], so whatever any one can see ([Greek: optesthai]) is clearly [Greek: opton]; as therefore it was possible to see the fish, he evidently was [Greek: optos].' 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,—
