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which we have described is the genuine and, so to speak, healthy city. But if you wish us also to contemplate a city that is suffering from inflammation, there is nothing to hinder us. Some people will not be satisfied, it seems, with the fare or the mode of life which we have described, but must have, in addition, couches and tables and every other article of furniture, as well as viands. … Swineherds again are among the additions we shall require—a class of persons not to be found, because not wanted, in our former city, but needed among the rest in this. We shall also need great quantities of all kinds of cattle for those who may wish to eat them, shall we not?’

      “ ‘Of course we shall.’

      “ ‘Then shall we not experience the need of medical men also to a much greater extent under this than under the former régime?’

      “ ‘Yes, indeed.’

      “ ‘The country, too, I presume, which was formerly adequate to the support of its then inhabitants, will be now too small, and adequate no longer. Shall we say so?’

      “ ‘Certainly.’

      “ ‘Then must we not cut ourselves a slice of our neighbours’ territory, if we are to have land enough both for pasture and tillage? While they will do the same to ours if they, like us, permit themselves to overstep the limit of necessaries, and plunge into the unbounded acquisition of wealth.’

      “ ‘It must inevitably be so, Sokrates.’

      “ ‘Will our next step be to go to war, Glaukon, or how will it be?’

      “ ‘As you say.’

      “At this stage of our inquiry let us avoid asserting either that war does good or that it does harm, confining ourselves to this statement—that we have further traced the origin of war to causes which are the most fruitful sources of whatever evils befall a State, either in its corporate capacity or in its individual members.” (Book II.)[17]

      Justly holding that the best laws will be of little avail unless the administrators of them shall be just and virtuous, Sokrates, in the Third Book, proceeds to lay down rules for the education and diet of the magistrates or executive, whom he calls—in conformity with the Communistic system—guardians:—

      “ ‘We have already said,’ proceeds Sokrates, ‘that the persons in question must refrain from drunkenness; for a guardian is the last person in the world, I should think, to be allowed to get drunk, and not know where he is.’

      “ ‘Truly it would be ridiculous for a guardian to require a guard.’

      “ ‘But about eating: our men are combatants in a most important arena, are they not?’

      “ ‘They are.’

      “ ‘Then will the habit of body which is cultivated by the trained fighters of the Palæstra be suitable to such persons?’

      “ ‘Perhaps it will.’

      “ ‘Well, but this is a sleepy kind of regimen, and produces a precarious state of health; for do you not observe that men in the regular training sleep their life away, and, if they depart only slightly from the prescribed diet, are attacked by serious maladies in their worst form?’

      “ ‘I do.’

      “ ‘In fact, it would not be amiss, I imagine, to compare this whole system of feeding and living to that kind of music and singing which is adapted to the panharmonicum, and composed in every variety of rhythm.’

      “ ‘Undoubtedly it would be a just comparison.’

      “ ‘Is it not true, then, that as in music variety begat dissoluteness in the soul, so here it begets disease in the body, while simplicity in gymnastic [diet] is as productive of health as in music it was productive of temperance?’

      “ ‘Most true.’

      “ ‘But when dissoluteness and diseases abound in a city, are not law courts and surgeries opened in abundance, and do not Law and Physic begin to hold their heads high, when numbers even of well-born persons devote themselves with eagerness to these professions?’

      “ ‘What else can we expect?’

      “ ‘And do you not hold it disgraceful to require medical aid, unless it be for a wound, or an attack of illness incidental to the time of the year—to require it, I mean, owing to our laziness and the life we lead, and to get ourselves so stuffed with humours and wind, like quagmires, as to compel the clever sons of Asklepios to call diseases by such names as flatulence and catarrh?’

      “ ‘To be sure, these are very strange and new-fangled names for disorders.’ ” (Book III.)

      Elsewhere, in a well-known passage (in The Laws), Plato pronounces that the springs of human conduct and moral worth depend principally on diet. “I observe,” says he, “that men’s thoughts and actions are intimately connected with the threefold need and desire (accordingly as they are properly used or abused, virtue or its opposite is the result) of eating, drinking, and sexual love.” He himself was remarkable for the extreme frugality of his living. Like most of his countrymen, he was a great eater of figs; and so much did he affect that frugal repast that he was called, par excellence, the “lover of figs” (φιλόσυκος).

      The Greeks, in general, were noted among the Europeans for their abstemiousness; and Antiphanes, the comic poet (in Athenæus), terms them “leaf-eaters” (φυλλοτρῶγες). Amongst the Greeks, the Athenians and Spartans were specially noted for frugal living. That of the latter is proverbial. The comic poets frequently refer, in terms of ridicule, to what seemed to them so unaccountable an indifferentism to the “good things” of life on the part of the witty and refined people of Attica. See the Deipnosophists (dinner-philosophers) of Athenæus (the great repertory of the bon-vivantism of the time), and Plutarch’s Symposiacs.

      

      It has been pointed out by Professor Mahaffy, in his recent work on old Greek life, that slaughter-houses and butchers are seldom, or never, mentioned in Greek literature. “The eating of [flesh] meat,” he observes, “must have been almost confined to sacrificial feasts; for, in ordinary language, butchers’ meat was called victim (ἱερεῖον). The most esteemed, or popular, dishes were madsa, a sort of porridge of wheat or barley; various kinds of bread (see Deipn. iii.); honey, beans, lupines, lettuce and salad, onions and leeks. Olives, dates, and figs formed the usual fruit portion of their meals. In regard to non-vegetable food, fish was the most sought after and preferred to anything else; and the well-known term opson, which so frequently recurs in Greek literature, was specially appropriated to it.

      Contemporary with the great master of language was the great master of medicine, Hippokrates, (460–357) who is to his science what Homer is to poetry and Herodotus to history—the first historical founder of the art of healing. He was a native of Kōs, a small island of the S.W. coast of Lesser Asia, the traditional cradle and home of the disciples of Asklepios, or Æsculapius (as he was termed by the Latins), the semi-divine author and patron of medicine. And it may be remarked, in passing, that the College of Asklepiads of Kōs were careful to exercise a despotism as severe and exclusive as that which obtains, for the most part, with the modern orthodox schools.

      Amongst a large number of writings of various kinds attributed to Hippokrates is the treatise On Regimen in Acute Diseases (περὶ Διαίτης Ὀξέων), which is generally received as genuine; and On the Healthful Regimen (περὶ Διαίτης Ὑγιεινῆς), which belongs to the same age, though not to the canonical writings of the founder of the school himself. He was the author, real or reputed, of some of the most valuable apophthegms of Greek antiquity. Ars longa—Vita brevis (education is slow; life is short) is the best known, and most often quoted. What is still more to our purpose is his maxim—“Over-drinking is almost as bad as over-eating.” Of all the productions of this most voluminous of writers, his Aphorisms (Ἀφορισμοί), in

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