Archestratus Biography | Poet

ARCHESTRATUS, of Syracuse or Gela, a Greek poet, who flourished about 330 b.c. After travelling extensively in search of foreign delicacies for the table, he embodied the result in a humorous poem called Ήδυπάθεια, afterwards freely translated by Ennius under the title Heduphagetica. About 300 lines of this gastronomical poem are preserved in Athenaeus. The writer, who has been styled the Hesiod or Theognis of gluttons, parodies the style of the old gnomic poets; chief attention is paid to details concerning fish.