However, Archestratus, as I was saying before this long digression, whom you praise as equal to Homer, because of his praises of the stomach—though your friend Timon says of the stomach,
Than which no part more shameless can be found—when speaking of the Sea-dog, writes as follows:—
There are but few so happy as to knowBut this Diodorus was by birth an Aspendian; but desiring to be thought a Pythagorean, he lived after the fashion of you Cynics, letting his hair grow, being dirty, and going barefoot. On which account some people fancied that it was an article of the Pythagorean creed to let the hair grow, which was in reality a fashion introduced by Diodorus, as [p. 263] Hermippus asserts. But Timæus of Tauromenium, in the ninth book of his Histories, writes thus concerning him- "Diodorus, who was by birth an Aspendian, introduced a novel fashion of dress, and pretended to resemble the Pythagoreans. Stratonicus wrote and sent a messenger to him, desiring him who carried the message to seek out a disciple of Pythagoras who kept the portico crowded by his insane vagaries about dress, and his insolence. And Sosicrates, in the third book of the Succession of Philosophers, relates that Diodorus used to wear a long beard, and a worn-out cloak, and to keep his hair long, indulging in these fashions out of a vain ostentation. For that the Pythagoreans before him wore very handsome clothes, and used baths, and perfumes, and hair of the ordinary length.
This godlike food, nor do men covet it
Who have the silly souls of common mortals.
They fear because it is an animal
Which living preys on man. But every fish
Loves human flesh, if it can meet with it.
So that 'tis fit that all who talk such nonsense
Should be confined to herbs, and should be sent
To Diodorus the philosopher
And starve, and so pythagorize with him.
