Sillier than Morychus

Explanation

this proverb is used among the Sicilians of those doing some foolish thing, as Polemon says in his Letter to Diophilus. It runs thus: "Sillier than Morychus, who, leaving the inside of his house, sits outside it." Morychus was an epithet of Dionysus, from his face being defiled (molynesthai) at vintage time with the must from the grapes and the green figs — for moryxai means "to defile." He was reckoned a fool because his statue stands outside his temple, by the entrance, in the open air. It was made of so-called phellata-stone by Simmias son of Eupalamus.