[Meaning someone] distributing miniscule portions to those feasting. For thus they used to feast apportioning both the sheep and the drink. Hence [Homer] says: "of an equal banquet."[1] [Meaning] of equally distributed food. Or 'apportioner', [meaning simply] the one dividing up and apportioning the meat.
Timaeus[2] "says that poets and prose writers betray their own natures by their excessive repetitions. He says that by [depicting] carving so often in his poetry the poet [Homer] showed himself to be a glutton; and that Aristotle, by [depicting] seasoning, [revealed himself] to be an epicure and voracious;[3] and that Dionysius the tyrant[4] was an arranger of dining couches[5] and was constantly busy with the eccentricities of fabrics and their varieties. Our opinion [of Timaeus] is bound to follow from this, and to be displeased [with him] on the basis of his own predilections."