Deipnosophistae

Myrtilus, hearing this conversation, said,—And I too, being very fond of salt-fish, my friends, wish to drink snow, according to the practice of Simonides. And Ulpian said,— The word φιλοτάριχος, fond of salt-fish, is used by Antiphanes, in his Omphale, where he says—

1. I am not anxious for salt-fish, my girl.

But Alexis, in his Gynæcocracy, speaks of one man as ζωμοτάριχος, or fond of sauce made from salt-fish, saying—

1. But the Cilician here, this Hippocles,
2. This epicure of salt-fish sauce, this actor.

But what you mean by

according to the practice of Simonides,

I do not know. No; for you do not care, said Myrtilus, to know anything about history, you glutton; for you are a mere lickplatter; and as the Samian poet Asius, that ancient bard, would call you, a flatterer of fat. But Callistratus, in the seventh book of his Miscellanies, says that Simonides the poet, when feasting with a party at a season of violently hot weather, while the cup-bearers were pouring out for the rest of the guests snow into their liquor, and did not do so for him, extemporised this epigram:—

1. The cloak with which fierce Boreas clothed the brow
2. Of high Olympus, pierced ill-clothed man
3. While in its native Thrace; 'tis gentler now,
4. Caught by the breeze of the Pierian plain.
5. Let it be mine; for no one will commend
6. The man who gives hot water to a friend.

So when he had drunk, Ulpian asked him again where the word κνισολοῖχος is used, and also, what are the lines of Asius in which he uses the word κνισοκόλαξ? These, said Myrtilus, are the verses of Asius, to which I alluded:—

1. Lame, branded, old, a vagrant beggar, next
2. Came the cnisocolax, when Meles held
3. His marriage feast, seeking for gifts of soup,
4. Not waiting for a friendly invitation;
5. There in the midst the hungry hero stood,
6. Shaking the mud from off his ragged cloak.

And the word κνισολοῖχος is used by Sophilus, in his Philar- chus, in this passage,—

1. You are a glutton and a fat-licker.

And in the play which is entitled, The Men running together, he has used the word κνισολοιχία, in the following lines:—

1. That pandar, with his fat-licking propensities,
2. Has bid me get for him this black blood-pudding.

Antiphanes too uses the word κνισολοῖχος, in his Bombylium.

Now that men drank also sweet wine while eating is proved by what Alexis says in his Dropidas—

1. The courtesan came in with sweet wine laden,
2. In a large silver cup, named petachnon,
3. Most beauteous to behold. Not a flat dish,
4. Nor long-neck'd bottle, but between the two.