18. But whence is it, O you wisest of men, that Dorion, who wrote a list of fish, has been mentioned as if he were the writer of some valuable history?—a fellow who, I know, has been named a musician and a fish-devourer, but certainly not a historian. Accordingly Machon, the comic poet, speaks of him as a musician, saying—
Dorion the musician once did come
To Mylon, all in vain; for he could find
No resting-place which he could hire at all;
So on some sacred ground he sat him down,
Which was by chance before the city gates,
And there he saw the keeper of the temple
Prepare a sacrifice.—"I pray thee, tell me,
In chaste Minerva's name, and all the gods',
What deity is it that owns this temple?"
The keeper thus replied: "This is, O stranger,
Of Jupiter-Neptune the sacred shrine."
"How then," said Dorion, "could any man
Expect to find a lodging in a place
Which in one temple crowds a pair of gods?"
And Lynceus the Samian, the pupil of Theophrastus, and the brother of Duris, who wrote the Histories, and made himself tyrant of his country, writes thus in his Apophthegms— "When a man once said to Dorion the flute-player, that the ray was a good fish, he said—'Yes, about as good as if a man were to eat a boiled cloak.' And once, when some one else praised the entrails of tunny-fish, he said—'You are quite right, but then a man must eat them as I eat them;' and when the man asked him how that was, he said—'How? why willingly.' And he said that crawfish had three good qualities,—exercise, good food, and contemplation. And once, at Cyprus, when he was supping with Nicocreon, he praised a goblet that there was there; and Nicocreon said—'Whatever there is here that you fancy, the artist will make you another like it.' 'Let him make that,' he replied, 'for you; but do you give me this one.'" And this was a clever speech of the flute-player; for there is an old saying that—
'Tis not that God denies a flutist sense,
But when he comes to blow it flies away.
19. And Hegesander, in his Commentaries, says this of him—"Dorion, the great fish-eater, once, when his slave had neglected to buy fish, scourged him, and ordered him to tell him the names of the best fish; and when the boy had counted up the orphus, and the sea-grayling, and the conger, and others of this sort, he said—'I desired you to tell me the names of fishes, and not of gods.'" The same Dorion, ridiculing the description of a tempest in the Nautilus of Timotheus, said that he had seen a more formidable storm in a boiling saucepan. And Aristodemus, in the second book of his Memorials of Laughable Circumstances and Sayings, says—"Dorion the musician was club-footed; and once, in some entertainment, he lost the slipper of his lame foot; on which he said, 'I will not wish anything more to the thief than that the slipper may fit him.'" But that this Dorion was notorious for his epicurism in fish, is plain from what Mnesimachus the comic poet says in his drama called Philip—
No, but all night Dorion the dish-piper
Does stay indoors with us.
20. I know, too, the sportive sayings which Lasus of Hermione has uttered about fishes; which Chamæleon of Heraclea has recorded in writing, in his book on this very Lasus, where he says—"They say that Lasus called raw fish ὀπτὸς (which means roasted or visible); and when many people wondered why he did so, he thus began to prove what he had said; arguing thus: 'As whatever a person can hear (ἀκοῦσαι) is properly called ἀκουστὸν, and as whatever a person can understand by his intellect (νοῆσαι) is properly called νοητὸν, so whatever any one can see (ὄπτεσθαι) is clearly ὀπτόν; as therefore it was possible to see the fish, he evidently was ὀπτός.' And once, in a joke, he stole a fish from a fisherman, and having taken it, he gave it to one of the bystanders; and when the fisherman put him to his oath, he swore that he had not got it himself, and that he had not seen any one else take it; because, in fact, he himself had taken it, but some one else had got it. And then he prompted the other man, on the other hand, to swear that he had not taken it himself, and that he was not acquainted with any one else who had it; for, in fact, Lasus had taken it, and he himself had it." And Epicharmus jests in the same way; as, in his Logus and Logina,—
FISH.
A. Jupiter 'tis who did invite me, giving
A feast (γ̓ ἔρανον) to Pelops.
B. 'Tis a sorry food,
That crane (γέρανος), to my mind.
A. But I did not say
A crane (γέρανον), but a feast (ἔρανόν γε), as you might well have heard.
21. And Alexis, in his Demetrius, ridicules, in his comic manner, a man of the name of Phayllus, as very fond of fish, in these lines:—