“Two sayings of Diogenes in Comedy (D. L. 6.51). Juan L.

López Cruces
248: “The association of the stomach with the Homeric Charybdis through their common
voracity comes from the iambic tradition”
249: “The metaphor was extended in Comedy from food and drink to rapacity” Ar. Eq. 248.
“Diogenes inherited the metaphor from Old Comedy as Comedy had done from early Iambus”.
250: “the dictum, exactly as Diogenes Laertius preserves it and without the need for any
tampering, consists of the last metron of a iambic trimester and the first two of a second, which
exhibits a penthemimeral caesura”
251: “There is a second instance in Diogenes Laertius where I have been able to identify a
iambic pattern as clear as this. It is another saying of Diogenes, precisely the one immediately
preceding the Charybdis saying, which only needs a banal supplement”. “The adjective
μελίτινος-η-ον, first attested in this Diogenic χρεία…”