ts in great
abundance, and of incomparable sweetness. Add to this, strength and
health, as the consequence of this abstemious way of living. Now compare
with this, those who sweat and belch, being crammed with eating, like
fatted oxen: then will you perceive that they who pursue pleasure most,
attain it least: and that the pleasure of eating lies not in satiety, but
appetite.

XXXV. They report of Timotheus, a famous man at Athens, and the head of
the city, that having supped with Plato, and being extremely delighted
with his entertainment, on seeing him the next day, he said, "Your suppers
are not only agreeable whilst I partake of them, but the next day also."
Besides, the understanding is impaired when we are full with over-eating
and drinking. There is an excellent epistle of Plato to Dion's relations,
in which there occurs as nearly as possible these words: "When I came
there, that happy life so much talked of, devoted to Italian and Syracusan
entertainments, was no ways agreeable to me; to be crammed twice a day,
and never to have the night to yourself, and the other things which are
the accompaniments of this kind of life, by which a man will never be made
the wiser, but will be rendered much less temperate; for it must be an
extraordinary disposition that can be temperate in such circumstances."
How, then, can a life be pleasant without prudence and temperance? Hence
you discover the mistake of Sardanapalus, the wealthiest king of the
Assyrians, who ordered it to be engraved on his tomb,

I still have what in food I did exhaust,
But what I left, though excellent, is lost.

"What less than this," says Aristotle, "could be inscribed on the tomb,
not of a king but an ox?" He said that he possessed those things when
dead, which, in his lifetime, he could have no longer than whilst he was
enjoying them. Why, then, are riches desired? And wherein doth poverty
prevent us from being happy? In the want, I imagine, of statues, pictures,
and diversions. But if any one is delighted with these things, have not
the poor people the enjoyment of them more than they who are the owners of
them in the greatest abundance? For we have great numbers of them
displayed publicly in our city. And whatever store of them private people
have, they cannot have a great number, and they but seldom see them, only
when they go to their country seats; and some of them must be stung to the
heart when they consider how they came by th