died in his 90s (according to a statement in Lucian, he died at ninety-seven). Diogenes Laërtius records that there was a bronze statue dedicated to him in Syracuse, by the inhabitants, for which Theocritus composed the following inscription:As the bright sun excels the other stars,As the sea far exceeds the river streams:So does sage Epicharmus men surpass,Whom hospitable Syracuse has crowned.Theocritus' Epigram 18 (AP IX 60; Kassel and Austin Test. 18) was written in his honour. The cosmopolitan scientist and traveler Alexander von Humboldt turned Epicharmus into the protagonist of the only literary text he ever published; it appeared 1795 in Friedrich Schiller's journal Horen under the title "Die Lebenskraft oder der Rhodische Genius" [The Vital Force or the Rhodian Genius]. Epicharmos figures here as a natural philosopher and interpreter of art. Works Epicharmus wrote between thirty-five and fifty-two comedies, though many have been lost or exist only in fragments. Along with his contemporary Phormis, he was alternately praised and denounced for ridiculing the great mythical heroes. At the time it would have been dangerous to present comedies in Syracuse like those of the Athenian stage, in which attacks were made upon the authorities. Accordingly, the comedies of Epicharmus are calculated not to give offence to the ruler. They are either mythological travesties or character comedies. His two most famous works were Agrōstīnos ("The Country-Dweller," or "Clodhopper"), which dealt humorously with the rustic lifestyle, and Hebes Gamos ("The Marriage of Hebe"), in which Heracles was portrayed as a glutton. He also depicted Odysseus as an unheroic figure of burlesque by parodying the Homeric image for comic effect in his Odysseùs Autómolos (Ulysses the Deserter). Additional works include Alkyon Amykos ("Amycus") Harpagai Bakkhai Bousiris ("Busiris") Ga Kai Thalassa ("Earth and Sea") Deukalion ("Deucalion") Dionysoi ("The Dionysuses") Diphilus Elpis ("Hope"), or Ploutos ("Wealth") Heorta kai Nasoi Epinikios Herakleitos ("Heraclitus") Thearoi ("Spectators") Hephaistos ("Hephaestus"), or Komastai ("The Revelers") Kyklops ("The Cyclops") Logos kai Logeina Megaris ("Woman From Megara") Menes ("Months") Odysseus Nauagos ("Odysseus Shipwrecked") Orya ("The Sausage") Periallos Persai ("The Persians") Pithon ("The Little Ape" or "Monkey") Seirenes ("Sirens") Skiron Sphinx Triakades Troes ("Trojan Men") Philoktetes ("Philoctetes") Choreuontes ("The Dancers") Chytrai ("The Pots") Reproducing a mid-4th century BC accusation from Alcimus, Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers conserves a late opinion that Plato plagiarized several of Epicharmus's ideas. "[H]e [Plato] derived great assistance from Epicharmus the Comic poet, for he transcribed