Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists
C. D. Yonge, B.A., Ed.

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Archestratus the Syracusan or Geloan, in his work to which Chrysippus gives the title of Gastronomy, but Lynceus and Callimachus of Hedypathy, that is Pleasure, and which Clearchus calls Deipnology, and others Cookery, (but it is an epic poem, beginning,

Here to all Greece I open wisdom's store;)

says,

A numerous party may sit round a table,
But not more than three, four, or five on one sofa;
For else it would be a disorderly Babel,
Like the hireling piratical band of a rover.

But he does not know that at the feast recorded by Plato there were eight and twenty guests present.

How keenly they watch for a feast in the town,
And, asked or not, they are sure to go down;

says Antiphanes; and he adds—

Such are the men the state at public cost
Should gladly feed;

and always

Treat them like flies at the Olympic games
And hang them up an ox to feast upon.