Laudator Temporis Acti

Demosthenes 54.39 (tr. Norman W. DeWitt):

The contempt, however, which this fellow feels for all sacred things I must tell you about; for I have been forced to make inquiry. For I hear, then, men of the jury, that a certain Bacchius, who was condemned to death in your court, and Aristocrates, the man with the bad eyes, and certain others of the same stamp, and with them this man Conon, were intimates when they were youths, and bore the nickname Triballi; and that these men used to devour the food set out for Hecatê and to gather up on each occasion for their dinner with one another the testicles of the pigs which are offered for purification when the assembly convenes, and that they thought less of swearing and perjuring themselves than of anything else in the world.

Greek text and selected apparatus from the Oxford Classical Text edition of M.R. Dilts, Demosthenis Orationes, Vol. IV (Oxonii: E Typographeo Clarendoniano, 2009), p. 225:

τὴν δὲ τούτου πρὸς τὰ τοιαῦτ' ὀλιγωρίαν ἐγὼ πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἐρῶ· πέπυσμαι γὰρ ἐξ ἀνάγκης. ἀκούω γάρ, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, Βάκχιόν τέ τινα, ὃς παρ' ὑμῖν ἀπέθανε, καὶ Ἀριστοκράτην τὸν τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς διεφθαρμένον καὶ τοιούτους ἑτέρους καὶ Κόνωνα τουτονὶ ἑταίρους εἶναι μειράκι' ὄντας καὶ Τριβαλλοὺς ἐπωνυμίαν ἔχειν· τούτους τά τε Ἑκαταῖα κατεσθίειν, καὶ τοὺς ὄρχεις τοὺς ἐκ τῶν χοίρων, οἷς καθαίρουσιν ὅταν εἰσιέναι μέλλωσιν, συλλέγοντας ἑκάστοτε συνδειπνεῖν ἀλλήλοις, καὶ ῥᾷον ὀμνύναι καὶ ἐπιορκεῖν ἢ ὁτιοῦν.

κατεσθίειν A: del. Baiter: κατακαίειν SF: κατήσθιε Prol.: κλέπτειν Westermann

The passage is discussed, with one of his rare conjectures, by Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 26.2 (1905) 237-243 (at 241-242):

The scene of LIV is Aristophanic. We are consorting with ἰθύφαλλοι and αὐτολήκυθοι, and our feet are in the mire of the Athenian streets. Cf. Vesp. 259 with D. LIV 8. In § 39 we are told of the feats of the Τριβαλλοί, and their own language is used in the telling. We are told among other things how they 'devour' the Ἑκαταῖα. Cf. Ran. 366. This impious proceeding has many Biblical and even modern analogies, but what of the text? The best MSS have κατακαίειν, a corruption for which we find in inferior authorities κατεσθίειν, clearly a gloss on the original word, whatever that was, in spite of the ingenious system of permutations and combinations, by which Professor Sandys has elicited κατακαίειν from an original κατεσθίειν. Schaefer suggested κατακάπτειν, a word bonae notae, says he, which has not found its way into the dictionaries. καταπίνειν is not bad, but there is another word that is still nearer κατακαίειν, and that is καταπαίειν. Standing in the aforesaid mire, I hear the Acharnian say to his pigs in a poke, Ach. 834: ὦ χοιρίδια πειρῆσθε κἄνις τῶ πατρὸς παίειν ἐφ' ἁλὶ τὰν μᾶδδαν, αἴκα τις διδῷ. Here παίειν means ἐσθίειν (Hesych.), like κόπτειν, like σποδεῖν, like φλᾶν. See the commentators on Ar. Pax 1306. In the mouth of these precious Mohocks of antiquity, καταπαίειν might well have been used for κατεσθίειν. καταπαίειν is to κατεσθίειν as 'gobble' to 'devour'. The change from π to κ is very slight, and will remind every good American of the change of 'c' to 'g' in the show-bill of the Franco-American bar, where 'sherry cobblers' appear as 'sherry gobblers'.

Gildersleeve's Biblical analogy must be 1 Samuel 21:1-6 (cf. Matthew 12:4), where David ate the shewbread.

I don't have access to R. Drew Griffith, "Prairie Oysters and Perjured Roisterers: Demosthenes 54.39," Mnemosyne 74.4 (2021) 677-681.