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 ad 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 th t price,' 'You see, then,' said he, '0 Plato! that it is not I who am an epicure, but you who are a miser.'” And Antiphanes, in [p. 542] his Female Flute-player, or the Female Twins, laughing at a man named Phoinicides for his gluttony, says—
Menelaus warr'd for ten whole years against
The Trojan nation for one lovely woman.
Phoinicides, too, attacks Taureas
For one fine eel.
