[p. 277] assert that he was an Athenian, still others, an Egyptian; and Aristotle declares 1 that he was from the island of los. Marcus Varro, in the first book of his Portraits, placed this couplet under the portrait of Homer: 2
This snow-white kid the tomb of Homer marks;
For such the Ietae 3 offer to the dead.
XII
[12arg] That Publius Nigidius, a man of great learning, applied bibosus to one who was given to drinking heavily and greedily, using a new, but hardly rational, word-formation.PUBLIUS NIGIDIUS, in his Grammatical Notes, 4 calls one who is fond of drinking bibax and bibosus. Bibax, like edax, I find used by many others; but as yet I have nowhere found an example of bibosus, except in Laberius, and there is no other word similarly derived. For vinosus, or vitiosus, and other formations of the kind, are not parallel, since they are derived from nouns, not from verbs. Laberius, in the mime entitled Salinator, uses this word thus: 5
Not big of breast, not old, not bibulous, not pert.
XIII
[13arg] How Demosthenes, while still young and a pupil of the philosopher Plato, happening to hear the orator Callistratus add ressing the people, deserted Plato and became a follower of Callistratus.HERMIPPUS has written 6 that Demosthenes, when quite young, used to frequent the Academy and
