In some accounts, Themistocles also ended up visiting the Persian king, following his ostracism and spectacular fall from public favour in Athens. Rumours that he was medizing offered Timocreon a chance for revengesee Fragment 728 and Fragment 729. Timocreon was also known as a composer of "scolia" (drinking-songs) and, according to the "Suda", wrote plays in the style of Old Comedy. A famous drinking song of his was about the god Plutus, which seems to have inspired imitation by Aristophanessee Fragment 731. Nothing however is known of his comedies and it is probable that he was not a dramatist but simply composed mocking lyrics. In an account by Philodemus ("On Vices" 10.4), he is presented as a conceited singer at a festival competition, where he performed a song about Castor. Diogenian mentions two proverbs that Timocreon employed in his verses. One was a Cyprian fable about doves escaping from a sacrificial fire only to fall into another fire later on (demonstrating that wrong-doers eventually get their just deserts), and the other was a Carian fable about a fisherman who espies an octopus in the winter sea and wonders whether or not to dive after it, since this is a choice between his children starving or himself freezing to death (i.e. you're damned if you do and damned if you don't). The latter proverb was also used by Simonides, whose rivalry with Timocreon seems to have inspired the abusive 'epitaph' quoted earlier and the epigrammatic reply from the Rhodian poet in A.P. 13.31.