ARCADION. have mentioned." And in his twenty-third book, speaking of Charidemus of Oreum, whom the Athenians made a citizen, he says: "For it was notorious that he spent every day in the greatest intemperance, and in such a manner that he was always drinking and getting drunk, and endeavouring to seduce free-born women; and he carried his intemperance to such a height that he ventured to beg a young boy, who was very beautiful and elegant, from the senate of the Olynthians, who had happened to be taken prisoner in the company of Derdas the Macedonian."
48. A man of the name of Arcadion, too, was a very great drinker, (but it is uncertain whether this is the same man who was at enmity with Philip,) as the epigram shows which Polemo has preserved in his treatise on the Inscriptions existing in different Cities—
This is the monument of that great drinker,
Arcadion; and his two loving sons,
Dorcon and Charmylus, have placed it here,
At this the entrance of his native city:
And know, traveller, the man did die
From drinking strong wine in too large a cup.
And the inscription over some man of the name of Erasixenus says that he also drank a great deal.
Twice was this cup, full of the strongest wine,
Drain'd by the thirsty Erasixenus,
And then in turn it carried him away.
Alcetas the Macedonian also used to drink a great deal, as Aristos the Salaminian relates; and so did Diotimus the Athenian: and he was the man who was surnamed the Funnel. For he put a funnel into his mouth, and would then drink without ceasing while the wine was being poured into it, according to the account of Polemo. And it has been already mentioned that Cleomenes the Lacedæmonian was a great drinker of unmixed wine; and that in consequence of his drunkenness he cut himself to pieces with a sword, is related by Herodotus. And Alcæus the poet also was very fond of drinking, as I have already mentioned. And Baton of Sinope, in his essay on Ion the poet, says that Ion was a man fond of drinking and amorous to excess; and he himself, too, in his Elegies, confesses that he loved Chrysilla the Corinthian, the daughter of Teleas, with whom Teleclides, in his Hesiods, says that the Olympian[1] Pericles also was in love. And Xenarchus the
- ↑ This was a name given to Pericles by Aristophanes, Acharn. 531.
