of pots and pans;
and, if I am not mistaken, he nowhere mentions sweet sauces. Sicilian
cookery and Attic confections and Corinthian courtezans, which are
to gymnastic what Lydian and Ionian melodies are to music, must be
forbidden. Where gluttony and intemperance prevail the town quickly
fills with doctors and pleaders; and law and medicine give themselves
airs as soon as the freemen of a State take an interest in them. But
what can show a more disgraceful state of education than to have to go
abroad for justice because you have none of your own at home? And yet
there IS a worse stage of the same disease--when men have learned
to take a pleasure and pride in the twists and turns of the law; not
considering how much better it would be for them so to order their lives
as to have no need of a nodding justice. And there is a like disgrace in
employing a physician, not for the cure of wounds or epidemic disorders,
but because a man has by laziness and luxury contracted diseases
which were unknown in the days of Asclepius. How simple is the Homeric
practice of medicine. Eurypylus after he has been wounded drinks a
posset of Pramnian wine, which is of a heating nature; and yet the
sons of Asclepius blame neither the damsel who gives him the drink, nor
Patroclus who is attending on him. The truth is that this modern system
of nursing diseases was introduced by Herodicus the trainer; who,
being of a sickly constitution, by a compound of training and medicine
tortured first himself and then a good many other people, and lived
a great deal longer than he had any right. But Asclepius would not
practise this art, because he knew that the citizens of a well-ordered
State have no leisure to be ill, and therefore he adopted the 'kill
or cure' method, which artisans and labourers employ. 'They must be
at their business,' they say, 'and have no time for coddling: if they
recover, well; if they don't, there is an end of them.' Whereas the rich
man is supposed to be a gentleman who can afford to be ill. Do you know
a maxim of Phocylides--that 'when a man begins to be rich' (or, perhaps,
a little sooner) 'he should practise virtue'? But how can excessive
care of health be inconsistent with an ordinary occupation, and yet
consistent with that practice of virtue which Phocylides inculcates?
When a student imagines that philosophy gives him a headache, he never
does anything; he is always unwell. This was the reason why Asclepius
and his sons