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 'Tetrameters,' has accused Charilas
of the same fault, as the comic poets have attacked Cleonymus and
Pisander. And Phoenicides mentions Chaerippus in his 'Phylarchus' in the
following terms:--

"And next to them I place Chaerippus third;
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."

And Nicolaus the Peripatetic, in the hundred and third book of his
'History,' says that Mithridates, the king of Pontus, once proposed a
contest in great eating and great drinking (the prize was a talent of
silver), and that he himself gained the victory in both; but he yielded
the prize to the man who was judged to be second to him, namely,
Calomodrys, the athlete of Cyzicus. And Timocreon the Rhodian, a poet
and an athlete who had gained the victory in the pentathlum, ate and
drank a great deal, as the epigram on his tomb shows:--

"Much did I eat, much did I drink, and much
Did I abuse all men; now here I lie:--
My name Timocreon, my country Rhodes."

And Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, in one of his prefaces, says that
Timocreon came to the great king of Persia, and being entertained by
him, did eat an immense quantity of food; and when the king asked him,
What he would do on the strength of it? he said that he would beat a
great many Persians; and the next day having vanquished a great many,
one after another, taking them one by one, after this he beat the air
with his hands; and when they asked him what he wanted, he said that he
had all those blows left in him if any one was inclined to come on. And
Clearchus, in the fifth book of his 'Lives,' says that Cantibaris the
Persian, whenever his jaws were weary with eating, had his slaves to
pour food into his mouth, which he kept open as if they were pouring it
into an empty vessel. But Hellanicus, in the first book of his
Deucalionea, says that Er