This lowly ditch now holds Phuromachus,
     Who used to swallow everything he saw,
     Like a fierce carrion crow who roams all night. 
     Now here he lies wrapped in a ragged cloak. 
     But, O Athenian, whosoe’er you are,
     Anoint this tomb and crown it with a wreath,
     If ever in old times he feasted with you. 
     At last he came sans teeth, with eyes worn out,
     And livid, swollen eyelids; clothed in skins,
     With but one single cruse, and that scarce full;
     Far from the gay Lenaean Games he came,
     Descending humbly to Calliope.

Amarantus of Alexandria, in his treatise on the Stage, says that Herodorus, the Megarian trumpeter, was a man three cubits and a half in height; and that he had great strength in his chest, and that he could eat six pounds of bread, and twenty litrae of meat, of whatever sort was provided for him, and that he could drink two choes of wine; and that he could play on two trumpets at once; and that it was his habit to sleep on only a lion’s skin, and when playing on the trumpet he made a vast noise.  Accordingly, when Demetrius the son of Antigonus was besieging Argos, and when his troops could not bring the battering ram against the walls on account of its weight, he, giving the signal with his two trumpets at once, by the great volume of sound which he poured forth, instigated the soldiers to move forward the engine with great zeal and earnestness; and he gained the prize in all the games ten times; and he used to eat sitting down, as Nestor tells us in his ‘Theatrical Reminiscences.’  And there was a woman, too, named Aglais, who played on the trumpet, the daughter of Megacles, who, in the first great procession which took place in Alexandria, played a processional piece of music; having a head-dress of false hair on, and a crest upon her head, as Posidippus proves by his epigrams on her.  And she too could eat twelve litrae of meat and four choenixes of bread, and drink a choenus of wine, at one sitting.

There was besides a man of the name of Lityerses, a bastard son of Midas, the King of Celaenae, in Phrygia, a man of a savage and fierce aspect, and an enormous glutton.  He is mentioned by Sositheus, the tragic poet, in his play called ‘Daphnis’ or ‘Lityersa’; where he says:—­

     “He’ll eat three asses’ panniers, freight and all,
     Three times in one brief day; and what he calls
     A measure of wine is a ten-amphorae cask;
     And this he drinks all at a single draught.”

And the man mentioned by Pherecrates, or Strattis, whichever was the author of the play called ‘The Good Men,’ was much such another; the author says:—­

     “A.—­I scarcely in one day, unless I’m forced, Can eat two bushels
          and a half of food. 
      B.—­A most unhappy man! how have you lost
          Your appetite, so as now to be content
          With the scant rations of one ship of war?”