There was, besides, a man of the name of Lityerses, a bastard son of Midas, the king of Celænæ in Phrygia, a man of a savage and fierce aspect, and an enormous glutton; and he is mentioned by Sositheus the tragic poet, in his play called Daphnis or Lityersa; where he says—
He'll eat three asses' panniers, freight and all,And the man mentioned by Pherecrates, or Strattis, whichever was the author of the play called The Good Men, was much such another the author says—
Three times in one brief day; and what he calls
A measure of wine is a ten-amphoræ cask;
And this he drinks all at a single draught.
A. I scarcely in one day, unless I'm forced,And Xanthus, in his Account of Lydia, says that Cambles, who was the king of the Lydians, was a great eater and drinker, and also an exceeding epicure; and accordingly, that he one night cut up his own wife into joints and ate her; and then, in the morning, finding the hand of his wife still sticking in his mouth, he slew himself, as his act began to get notorious. And we have already mentioned Thys, the king of the Paphlagonians, saying that he too was a man of vast appetite, quoting Theopompus, who speaks of him in the thirty-fifth book of his History; and Archilochus, in his Te- trameters, has accused Charilas of the same fault, as the comic poets have attacked Cleonymus and Pisander. And Phœni- cides mentions Chærippus in his Phylarchus in the following terms—
Can eat two bushels and a half of food.
B. A most unhappy man! how have you lost
Your appetite, so as now to be content
With the scant rations of one ship of war?
And next to them I place Chærippus third;[p. 655]
He, as you know, will without ceasing eat
As long as any one will give him food,
Or till he bursts,—such stowage vast has he,
Like any house.
