The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-09-28
GREAT EATERS OF OLD.
BY A. E. cAFFEE.

~ r politics, we have all had enough
 the epic sweep of my eloquence
 9 disdains it.. but of banquets and big dinners. in which every fibre of my soul dwells. I shall write.
 Hercules was not less famous as voracicus eater than as q strangler of lions and cleanser of stables. for him Epicharmus in his Busiris says: For if you were to see him eat, you
 would
 Be frightened cen to death, his jaws do
 ereak.
 His throat with long deep-sounding
 thunder rolls
 His large teeth rattle, and his dog teeth
 crash.
 His nostrils hiss. his ears with hunger
 tremble.'
 And Ion. in his omphale. having men tioned his voracity, adds: And then, excited by the applause, he And swallowed all the logs and burning
 coals."
 Homer. too, represents Ulysses as great eater. and a very voracious man, when he says:
 What histories of toll could declare, But still long-wearied nature wants Spent with fatigue and shrunk with pin Ing fast,
 My craving stomach still requires repast; Howe CT the noble suffering mind may
 grieve
 It's load of anguish and disdain to live, Necessity demands our daily bread; Hunger is insolent anl will be fed" His hunger in these lines must ap- pear prodigious, when on so unreasonable an occasion, it induces him to utter | 1,t, ,1, f.o ought had he been ever so hungry, to have endured it, or at all events. to have been moderate. The following passage at- tests his extreme and ungovernable gluttony:
 For all my mind is overwhelmed with
 care,
 But hunger is the worst of griefs to
 bear
 stin does my stomach bid me eat and
 drink,
 Lest on my sorrows I too deeply think Food makes me all my sufferings forget And fear not those which may surround
 me yet.'
 Even the notorious Sardanapalus would hardly have ventured uttering such senti- ments as the following from Ulysses in his old age:
 'evoraciously he endless dishes ate, And quaffed rnceasing cups of wine.' But Theagines of Thoas, the athlete, ate a bull single-handed. as Posidippus tells us in his Epigrams: ''And as I'd undertaken, l did eat, l A Tfiracion bull. My poor native land Of Thoas could not have purvey'd
 meal
 ! Sufficient for the hunger of ,Theagines. That singular fellow Athnaeus tells us that Milo of Crotena, as told by Theo- dorus once at Olmpia, took a four year old bull on his shoulders and carried IL around the course, and after that Killed it. cut 1t up and ate it all by himself | in one day He also tells us of Astyda- mus the Milesian having gained the Yic- l tory at O1mpfa three times, being once Invited to supper by Ariobarzanes, the Persian when he had come offered to eat everything that had been prepared for nine persons. It was the custim of all ancient athletes to consume great quantities of food, for our great Eurip- ides says in his Antolyeus; ''For when there are ten thousand ills in
 Greece.
 There's none that's worse than the
 whole race of athletes"
 Many of these statements made by Athenaeus seem marvellous, but they have never been disputed by the his torians who covered the period of which he writes He says that Nicholous, the Peripatetic. in the 10Srd book of his his- tory says that Mithridates, the King of Pontus. once prepared contest in great eating and rinking and the prize tal- ent in silver (s50OO). and that he him self gained the victory in both.
 All of the ancient writers accredit to the Roeotians the palm as enormous eaters, and very likely it is because of this that Eratothenes in his Episties, says, Pempelus, when he was asked: What sort of people the Boeotians ap- peared to him?p answered That they only spoke as vessels might be expected to speak if they had voice, of how much each of them could hold" And | Polybius, in the twentieth book or his histories, says, "The Boeotians. having gained great glory at the battle Of Leuo- tra. after that relaxed their courage again, and turned to feasting and drunk ness and to making parties for eating among friends, and many of them, even of those who had children, spent the | greater part of their substance in feasts; so that there were greater number of 1 Boeotians who had more invitations to supper than there were days in the | month."
 The people of Pharsolus were also ridiculed by the ancient comic poets as being enormous eaters; Mnesimachus in his Phillip says:
 A. Has any man of the Pharsalians come
 That he may eat up cen our very
 tables?"
 B. There's no one come at all. A. So much the better:
 Perhaps they have all gone somewhere
 else to eat
 Some city of Achaia ready roasted And that 1t was the general imputation on all the Thessalians that they were great eaters, Crates tells us in his La- mia, that:
 Great words three cubits long,
 Cut into Thessalian slices"
 Alluding to the Thessalians cutting their meat into overgrown slices. They used to speak of a Thessalan mouth ful as something awful; Hermippus says in his Fates:
 But Jupiter, considering naught of this