HYPERIDES.
And I commit them to the guardianship
Of my dear foster-sisters, the Nine Muses,
And join to them both Bacchus and fair Venus.
This is my will. But now, since Charon gives
No time, but, as in the Niobe of Timotheus,
Keeps crying out, 'Now cross;' and deadly fate
Calls me away, who can't be disobey'd,
That I may go below with all my goods,
Bring me the relics of that polypus."
And in another part he says—
Philoxenus of Cythera, as men say,
Wished that he had a throat three cubits long;
"That I might drink," said he, "as long as possible,
And that my food may all at once delight me."
And Diogenes the Cynic, having eaten a polypus raw, died of a swelling in the belly. But concerning Philoxenus, Sopater the parodist also speaks, saying—
For, between two rich courses of fine fish,
He pleased himself by looking down the centre
Of Ætna's crater.
27. And Hyperides the orator was an epicure in fish; as Timocles the comic writer tells us, in his Delos, where he enumerates all the people who had taken bribes from Harpalus: and he writes thus—
A. Demosthenes has half-a-hundred talents.
B. A lucky man, if no one shares with him.
A. And Mœrocles has got a mighty sum.
B. He was a fool who gave them; lucky he
Who got them.
A. Demon and Callisthenes
Have also got large sums.
B. Well, they were poor,
So that we well may pardon them for taking them.
A. And that great orator Hyperides.
B. Why, he will all our fishmongers enrich;
An epicure! Gulls are mere Syrians,
Compared to him.
And in the Icarians, the same poet says—
Then cross Hyperides, that fishy river,
Which with a gentle sound, bubbling with boasts
Of prudent speeches, with mild repetitions
And hired, bedews the plain of him who gave it.
And Philetærus, in his Æsculapius, says that Hyperides, besides being a glutton, was also a gambler. As also Axionicus, in his Lover of Euripides, says that Callias the orator was;
