EPICURES.
Phœnicides too, and my friend Taureas,
Such great inveterate epicures that they
Would swallow all the remnants in the market;
They at this sight seem'd almost like to die.
And bore the scarcity with small good humour;
But gather'd crowds and made this speech to them:—
"What an intolerable thing it is
That any of you men should claim the sea,
And spend much money in marine pursuits,
While not one fin of fish comes to this market!
What is the use of all our governors
Who sway the islands? We must make a law
That there should be copious importation
Of every kind of fish. But Matron now
Has carried off the fishermen; and then
There's Diogeiton, who, by Jove, has brought
The hucksters over to keep back for him
All the best fish; and he's not popular
For doing this, for there is mighty waste
In marriage feasts and youthful luxury."
But Euphron, in his Muses, says,—
But when at some fine banquet of young men
Phœnicides perceived a smoking dish
Full of the sons of Nereus, he held back
His hands, with rage excited. Thus he spoke:—
"Who boasts himself a clever parasite
At eating at the public cost? who thinks
To filch the dainty dishes from the middle?
Where's Corydus, or Phyromachus, or Nillus?
Let them come here, they shall get nought of this."
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
