never failed him._’ [Sidenote: *] Fifth Cleobulus: ‘_If he trusted none of those about him._’ Sixth Pittacus: ‘_If the ruler could get his subjects to fear, not him, but [Sidenote: B] for him._’ Next Chilon said that ‘_the ruler’s conceptions should never be mortal, but always immortal_‘.
After hearing these dicta, we claimed that Periander himself should express an opinion. With anything but cheerfulness, and pulling a serious face, he replied: ‘Well, the opinion I have to add is that every one of the views stated practically disqualifies a man of sense from being a ruler.’ Whereupon Aesop, as if in a spirit of reproof, said, ‘You ought, of course, to have discussed this subject by yourselves, and not to have delivered an attack upon rulers under pretence of being their advisers and friends.’ [Sidenote: C] ‘Don’t you think,’ said Solon, taking him by the head and smiling, ‘that one can make a ruler more moderate and a despot more reasonable by persuading him that it is better to decline such a position than to hold it?’ ‘And pray who,’ he replied, ‘is likely to follow you in the matter rather than the God, whose opinion is given in the oracle delivered to yourself: _Blessèd the city that hearkens to one commander’s proclaiming._’ ‘True,’ said Solon, ‘but, as a matter of fact, the Athenians, though with a popular government, do listen to one proclaimer [Sidenote: D] and ruler in the shape of the law. You have a wonderful gift at understanding ravens and jackdaws, but your hearing of the [Sidenote: *] voice of modesty is indistinct. While you think that a state is best off when it listens, as the God says, to “one”, you believe that the best convivial party is that in which everybody talks on every subject.’
‘Yes,’ said Aesop, ‘for you have not yet legislated to the effect that “_a slave shall not get tipsy_” is to stand on the same footing with those Athenian ordinances of yours which say “_a slave shall not indulge in love or in dry-rubbing with oil_”.’[29] At this Solon broke into a laugh, and Cleodorus the physician remarked: ‘But, in one respect, talking when the wine is taking effect does stand on the same footing with dry-rubbing—it is very pleasant.’ ‘Consequently,’ [Sidenote: E] broke in Chilon, ‘it is the more to be avoided.’ ‘Yes,’ said Aesop again,[30] ‘Thales did appear to recommend getting old as quickly as possible.’ Periander laughed, and said: ‘Aesop, we have been properly punished for dropping into other questions before bringing forward the whole of those from Amasis, as we proposed. Pray look at the rest of the letter, Niloxenus, and take advantage of the gentlemen being all here together.’ ‘As for that,’ replied Niloxenus, ‘whereas the command sent by the Ethiopian can only be called a “doleful [Sidenote: F] dispatch”—as Archilochus would say—your friend Amasis has shown a fine and more civilized taste in setting such problems. He bade him name the oldest thing, the most beautiful, the greatest, the wisest, the most universal, and—not stopping there—the most beneficent, the most harmful, the most powerful, and the easiest.’ ‘Well, and did his answers give the solution in each case?’ ‘His replies were these,’ said Niloxenus. ‘It is [Sidenote: 153] for you to listen and judge; for the king is very anxious neither to be guilty of pettifogging with the answers, nor to let any slip on the part of the answerer escape without refutation. I will read you the replies as given. _What is the oldest thing?_—_Time._ the most beautiful?_—_Light._ _What the most universal?_—_Death._ _What the most beneficent?_—_God._ _What the most harmful?_—_Evil genius._ _What the strongest?_—_Fortune._ _What the easiest?_—_That which is pleasant._’ Well, Nicarchus, after the reading of this second passage there was a silence. Then Thales asked Niloxenus if Amasis was satisfied with the solutions. Upon his replying that he had [Sidenote: B] accepted some, but was dissatisfied with others, Thales said, ‘And yet not one of them is unassailable. There are great blunders and signs of ignorance all through. For instance, how can Time be the oldest thing, seeing that, while some of it is past and some present, some of it is future? Time which is to come after us must be regarded as younger than the events and persons of the present. Again, to call Truth wisdom appears to me as bad as making out that the light is the eye. Next, if he considered Light beautiful—as indeed it is—how came he to ignore the sun? As for the rest, the answer concerning gods and evil spirits is bold and dangerous, while in that [Sidenote: C] concerning Fortune the logic is exceedingly bad. Fortune would not be so readily upset if it was the strongest and most powerful thing in existence. Nor yet again is Death the most universal thing, for in the case of the living it has no existence. However, to avoid seeming merely to criticize the work of others, let us express views of our own and compare them with his. I am ready to be the first to be questioned point by point, if Niloxenus so desires.’
In relating the questions and answers I will put them exactly as they occurred. _What is the oldest thing?_ ‘_God_,’ said Thales: ‘for He is without birth.’ _What is greatest?_ ‘_Space_: for [Sidenote: D] while the universe contains everything else, it is space that contains the universe.’ _What is most beautiful?_ ‘_The cosmos_: for everything duly ordered is part of it.’ _What is wisest?_ ‘_Time_: for it is Time that has either discovered things or will discover them.’ _What most universal?_ ‘_Expectation_: for those who have nothing else have that.’
_What most beneficent?_ ‘_Virtue_: for it makes other things beneficent by using them rightly.’ _What most harmful?_ ‘_Vice_: for most things suffer from its presence.’ _What most powerful?_ ‘_Necessity_: for it is invincible.’ _What most easy?_ ‘_The natural_; not pleasure, for people often fail to cope with that.’
The whole company being satisfied with Thales and his [Sidenote: E] acumen, Cleodorus observed: ‘It is questions and answers of this kind, Niloxenus, that are proper for kings. On the other hand, the barbarian who gave Amasis the sea to drink, required the short answer made by Pittacus to Alyattes, when he wrote the Lesbians a letter containing an arrogant command. The reply was merely a recommendation to eat onions and hot bread.’[31] Here Periander joined in; ‘I may remind you, Cleodorus, that even in old times the Greeks had a habit of posing each [Sidenote: F] other with similar difficulties. We are told, for instance, that there was a gathering at Chalcis of the most distinguished poets among the wise men of the day, in order to celebrate the funeral of Amphidamas—a great warrior who had given much trouble to the Eretrians and had fallen in the fighting for Lelantum. The verses composed by the poets were so well matched, that it became a difficult and troublesome matter to judge between them, and the reputation of the competitors—Homer and Hesiod—caused the jury much diffidence and [Sidenote: 154] embarrassment. Thereupon they had recourse to questions of the present kind, and Homer—as Lesches tells us—propounded the following: _Tell me, Muse, of such things as neither before have befallen, Nor shall hereafter befall?_ To which Hesiod instantly replied: _When in eager pursuit of the prize the chariots, one ’gainst the other Are dashed by the ringing-hoof’d steeds round the tomb where Zeus lieth buried._ This answer, it is said, won particular admiration and secured him the tripod.’
‘But pray what is the difference,’ asked Cleodorus, ‘between such questions and Eumetis’s riddles? It is no doubt right [Sidenote: B] enough for her to set women such puzzles by way of amusement, constructing them as other women plait their bits of girdles or hair-nets. But for sensible men to treat them with any seriousness is absurd.’ Eumetis would apparently have liked to make some retort, but she was too shy, and checked herself, her face mantled with blushes.
‘Nay,’ said Aesop, by way of championing her, ‘it is surely more absurd to be unable to solve them. Take for example the one she set us just before dinner: _I saw a man glue bronze on a man; with fire did he glue it._ Can you tell me what that means?’ ‘No, and I don’t want [Sidenote: C] to be told either,’ answered Cleodorus. ‘And yet,’ said Aesop, ‘no one is so familiar with the thing, or does it so well, as you. If you deny it, cupping-glasses[32] will bear me out.’ At this Cleodorus laughed, for he made more use of cupping-glasses than any medical man of the day, and the estimation in which that remedy is held is especially due to him. ‘I beg to ask, Periander,’ said Mnesiphilus the Athenian, a close friend and admirer of Solon, ‘that the conversation, like the wine, shall not be limited to wealth or rank, but shall be put on a democratic footing and made to concern all alike. In what has just been [Sidenote: D] said about wealth and kingship there is nothing for us commoners. We think, therefore, that you should take a government with equal rights, and each of you again contribute some opinion, beginning once more with Solon.’
It was decided that this should be done. First came Solon. ‘Well, Mnesiphilus, you, like every other Athenian, have heard what opinion I hold about such a government. But if you desire to hear it again now, it seems to me that a community is in the soundest condition, and its popular government most securely maintained, _when the wrongdoer is accused and punished quite as much by those who [Sidenote: E] have not been wronged as by the man that has_.’ The second to speak was Bias, who said that the best popular government is ‘_that in which every one fears the law as he would a despot_.’ Next came Thales with ‘_that in which there are no citizens either too rich or too poor_.’ Anacharsis followed with ‘_that in which, while everything else is treated as equal, superiority is determined by virtue and inferiority by vice_.’ In the fifth place Cleobulus affirmed that a democracy is most soundly conducted ‘_when its public men are more afraid of blame than of the law_‘. Sixth, Pittacus: ‘_Where the bad are not permitted to hold office and the [Sidenote: F] good are not permitted to decline it._’ Last of all Chilon expressed the view that the best free government is ‘_that which pays least attention to the orators and most to the laws_.’
Periander once more summed up at the end by saying that they all appeared to him to be praising ‘that democratic government which most resembled an aristocratic.’
Upon the conclusion of this second discussion I begged that they would also tell us the proper way to deal with a household; ‘for while there are few who are at the helm of a kingdom or a commonwealth, we all play our parts in the hearth and home.’ [Sidenote: 155] At this Aesop said with a laugh: ‘No! not if in “all” you include Anacharsis. He has no home, but actually prides himself on being homeless, and on using a wagon—in the same way as they tell us the sun roams about in a chariot, occupying first one and then another region of the sky.’ ‘Yes,’ retorted Anacharsis, ‘and that is why, unlike any other—or more than any other—god, he is free and independent, ruling all and ruled by none, but always playing the king and holding the reins. You, however, fail to realize the surpassing beauty and marvellous [Sidenote: B] size of his car, otherwise you would not have tried to raise a laugh by jocosely comparing it with ours. It seems to me, Aesop, that to you a home means those coverings of yours made by clay and wood and tiles. You might as well regard a “snail” as meaning the shell instead of the animal. It is therefore natural that you should find cause to laugh at Solon, when he beheld all the costly splendour in the house of Croesus and yet refused to declare off-hand that its possessor was happy and blessed in his home; “for”—he argued—“I am more desirous of looking at the fine things in the man than at those in his house.” It appears, moreover, that you have forgotten your own fox. That animal, when she and the leopard were engaged in a dispute as to which was the more “cunningly marked”, begged the judge to examine her on the inside, inasmuch as she would be found to possess more “marks of cunning” from that point of view. But you go inspecting the productions of carpenters [Sidenote: C] and stone-masons, and regarding those as the “home”, instead of the inward and domestic constituents in the case—the children, wife, friends, and servants. If these have good sense and good morals, a man who shares his best means with them possesses a good and happy home, even if it be but an ant-hill or a bird’s-nest.’ ‘That,’ he continued, ‘is my answer to Aesop and my contribution to Diocles. But it is only fair that each of the others should express his own views.’
Thereupon Solon said that in his opinion the best household was ‘_that in which the resources are acquired without dishonesty, [Sidenote: D] watched over without distrust, and expended without repentance_‘.
According to Bias it was ‘_that inside which the master behaves for his own sake as well as he does outside for the law’s sake_‘. According to Thales, ‘_that in which the master can find most time to himself_‘.
According to Cleobulus, ‘_where the master has more who love than fear him_.’ Pittacus would have it that the best house is ‘_that which wants no luxury and lacks no necessity_‘. Chilon’s view was that the house should be ‘_as like as possible to a state ruled by a king_‘, and he went on to observe that when some one urged Lycurgus to establish a republic at Sparta, he [Sidenote: E] answered: ‘You begin by creating a republic at home.’
This topic also having been dealt with, Eumetis left the room in company with Melissa. Periander then pledged Chilon in a capacious goblet, and Chilon in turn pledged Bias. At this Ardalus got up, and, addressing Aesop, said: ‘Perhaps you will be good enough to pass yonder cup on to us, seeing that these gentlemen are passing theirs to each other, as if it were a Bathycles’s goblet,[33] and are giving no one else a turn.’
‘Nay,’ [Sidenote: F] replied Aesop, ‘there is to be nothing democratic about this cup either, for Solon has been keeping it all to himself for quite an age.’ Thereupon Pittacus, addressing Mnesiphilus, asked why Solon, by not drinking, was testifying against the verses in which he had written _Now do I welcome the tasks of the Cyprus-born goddess and Bacchus, And tasks of the Muses that bring cheer to the heart of mankind._ ‘Because,’ said Anacharsis, before Mnesiphilus could speak, ‘he is frightened at that cruel law of your own, Pittacus, where the words run, _If any one commit any offence when drunk, the penalty to be double that paid by a man who was sober._’ ‘And you,’ retorted Pittacus, ‘showed such wanton contempt of the law that last year, when you had got intoxicated at that [Sidenote: 156] party at Delphi, you asked for a prize and a victor’s wreath.’ ‘And why not?’ asked Anacharsis. ‘A prize was offered to him who drank most, and, since I was the first to get tipsy, I, of course, claimed the reward of victory. Otherwise will you gentlemen tell me what is the end and aim of drinking a large quantity of unmixed wine, if it is not to get intoxicated?’ Pittacus laughed, while Aesop told the following story. ‘A wolf, having seen some shepherds eating a sheep in a tent, came close up to them, and said: “What a to-do you would have made if _I_ had been doing that!”’ At this Chilon remarked, ‘Aesop has properly taken his revenge. A moment ago we put the muzzle on him, and now he sees that others have taken the words out of Mnesiphilus’ mouth. It was Mnesiphilus who was requested to answer on behalf of Solon.’ ‘Well, in doing so,’ said Mnesiphilus, ‘I speak with knowledge. In Solon’s opinion [Sidenote: B] the concern of every art and faculty of man or God is with results rather than with agencies, the end rather than the means. A weaver, I take it, would consider his object to be a cloak or mantle rather than the arrangement of his shuttle-rods or the picking-up of his straightening-stones. To a blacksmith it is rather the welding of iron and putting an edge on an axe than any of the processes necessary thereto, such as the kindling of his charcoal or the preparation of lime. Still more would a master-builder object if, instead of a ship or a house, we declared his object to be the boring of wood or the mixing of mortar. The Muses would utterly scout the notion that their [Sidenote: C] concern is with a harp or flute, instead of with the cultivation of character and the soothing of the emotions of their votaries by means of melodies properly attuned.
So—to come to the point—the object of Aphrodite is not sexual intercourse, nor that of Dionysus wine and tipsiness, but the friendly feeling, the longing, the companionship, and the close mutual understanding which they produce in us by those agencies. These are what Solon calls divine “tasks”, and he means that these are the objects which he appreciates and cultivates in his old age. Of reciprocal affection between men and women Aphrodite is the creator, using pleasure as the means of melting and commingling their souls at the same time with their bodies; while in ordinary cases, where persons are not very intimate or particularly acquainted, Dionysus uses wine as a kind of fire to soften and supple their dispositions, and so provides a starting-point towards a blending in mutual friendship.
‘But when such men meet together as Periander has invited in your persons, there is no need, I take it, of the goblet and the wine-ladle.
The Muses set before you all, in the form of conversation, a mixing-bowl containing no intoxicant and yet abundance of pleasure, grave or gay. In this they stir friendly feeling, blend it, and pour it forth, while for the most part the [Sidenote: E] ladle is allowed to lie undisturbed “above the bowl”—a thing which Hesiod forbids where the company is better qualified for drinking than for conversation.’
‘As for pledging one another,’ he continued, ‘I gather that with the ancients the ceremony consisted of one large goblet going the round, each man drinking a measured “allowance” (as Homer tells us), and then letting his neighbour take his share, as he would do with a sacrificial portion.’
When Mnesiphilus had finished, the poet Chersias—who had ceased to be under censure and had lately been reconciled to [Sidenote: F] Periander through Chilon’s intercession—remarked, ‘Are we also to understand that, when the gods were the guests of Zeus and were pledging each other, he poured in their drink by measure, as Agamemnon did for his chieftains?’
‘And pray, Chersias,’ said Cleodorus, ‘if Zeus has his ambrosia brought—as you poets say he does—by doves which find the greatest difficulty in flying over the Clashing Rocks, don’t you think [Sidenote: 157] that his nectar is also scarce and hard to get, and that consequently he is sparing of it and doles it out economically?’
‘Perhaps so,’ replied Chersias. ‘Since, however, the question of household economy has again been mooted, perhaps some one will deal with the remainder of the question. And that, I take it, is to discover what amount of property will be sufficient to meet all needs.’ ‘To the wise man,’ said Cleobulus, ‘the law has supplied the standard; but in reference to weak characters I will repeat a story which my daughter told her brother. The Moon, she said, asked her mother to weave a tunic to fit her; whereat the mother answered, “How can I possibly [Sidenote: B] weave one to fit? At one time I see you as a full moon, at another as a crescent, and at another gibbous.” Similarly, my dear Chersias, there is no way of determining the amount of means requisite for a weak and foolish person. His wants vary with his appetites and experiences, his case being that of Aesop’s dog, of whom our friend says that in winter he huddled and curled himself up with the cold, and contemplated making a house; but in summer it was different; he stretched himself out when he slept, thought himself a big fellow, and decided that it was both a laborious and an unnecessary task to build so large a house to cover him. Don’t you observe, Chersias’—he went on—‘that even insignificant people, though they will at one moment draw themselves into a very modest compass, with the idea of living a close and simple Spartan life, at another [Sidenote: C] time will fancy they are going to die of want unless they have all the money in the world—all the king’s and all the private people’s?’
Chersias having nothing to say, Cleodorus joined in. ‘Well, but,’ he said, ‘I perceive that there is no equal distribution in the properties which even you sages respectively possess.’ ‘Yes, my dear sir,’ said Cleobulus, ‘because the law, like a weaver, allots us the amount which properly and reasonably fits each case. In your own profession, substituting reason for law, you feed [Sidenote: D] and diet and physic the sick by prescribing, not the same quantity for everybody, but the proper quantity for each case.’ Here Ardalus interposed. ‘I suppose, then,’ he asked, ‘it is at the bidding of some law that Epimenides—the friend of you gentlemen and the guest of Solon—abstains from other kinds of food and passes the day without breakfast or dinner by merely putting in his mouth a little of that “anti-hunger essence” which he makes up for himself?’ This remark having arrested the attention of the party, Thales mockingly observed that Epimenides was a sensible man for refusing to be troubled—as [Sidenote: E] Pittacus was—with grinding and cooking his own food. ‘You must know,’ he said, ‘that when I was at Eresus, I heard my hostess singing to the mill: _Grind, mill, grind; For Pittacus is grinding, As he kings it over great Mytilene._’ Then Solon expressed his surprise that Ardalus had not read the law ordaining the diet in question, seeing that it was written in the verses of Hesiod. ‘For it is he who first supplied Epimenides with hints for that form of nourishment, by teaching him to make trial [Sidenote: F] _How great and sustaining the food that in mallow and asphodel lieth._ ‘Nay,’ said Periander, ‘do you imagine Hesiod conceived of anything of the kind? Don’t you suppose that, with his habitual praise of economy, he is merely urging us to try the most frugal dishes as being the most agreeable? The mallow makes good eating, and asphodel-stalk is sweet; but I am told that anti-hunger and anti-thirst drugs—for they are drugs rather than foods—include among their ingredients some sort of foreign honey and cheese, and a large number of seeds which are difficult to procure. Most certainly, therefore, Hesiod would find that the “_rudder_” hung “_above the smoke_” and _The works of the drudging mules and the oxen’s labour would perish_, [Sidenote: 158] if all that provision is to be made. I am surprised, Solon, if your guest, on recently making his great purification of Delos, failed to note how they present to the temple—as commemorative samples of the earliest form of food—mallow and asphodel-stalk along with other cheap and self-grown produce. The natural reason for which Hesiod also recommends them to us is that they are simple and frugal.’
‘Not only so,’ remarked Anacharsis, ‘but both vegetables bear the highest possible character for wholesomeness.’ ‘You are quite right,’ said Cleodorus. ‘That Hesiod possessed medical knowledge is manifest from the careful and well-informed manner in which he speaks about diet, the mixing of wine, good quality in water, [Sidenote: B] bathing, women, and the way to seat infants. But it seems to me that there is more reason for Aesop to declare himself a pupil of Hesiod than there is for Epimenides. It is to the speech of the hawk to the nightingale that our friend owes the first promptings to his admirably subtle wisdom in many tongues. But for my part I should be glad to hear what Solon has to say.
We may assume that, in his long association with Epimenides at Athens, he asked him what motive or subtle purpose he had in adopting such a diet.’
‘What need was there to ask him that question?’ replied Solon. ‘It was self-evident that the next best thing to the [Sidenote: C] supreme and greatest good is to require the least possible food. You allow, I suppose, that the greatest good is to require no food at all?’ ‘Not I, by any means,’ answered Cleodorus, ‘if I am to say what I think, especially with a table in front of us. Take away food, and you take away the table—that is to say, the altar of the Gods of Friendship and Hospitality. As Thales tells us that, if you do away with the earth, the whole cosmos will fall into confusion, so the abolition of food means the dissolution of house and home. For with it you do away with the hearth-fire, the hearth, the wine-bowl, all entertainment and hospitality—the most humanizing and essential elements in our mutual relations. Or rather you do away with the whole of life, if life is “_a passing of the time on the part [Sidenote: D] of a human being involving a series of actions_”, most of those actions being evoked by the need, and in the acquirement, of food. Of immense importance, my good friend, is the question [Sidenote: *] of mere agriculture. Let agriculture perish, and the earth that it leaves us becomes unsightly and foul, a corrupt wilderness of barren forest and vagabond streams. The ruin of agriculture means the ruin of all arts and crafts as well; for she takes the lead of them, and provides them with their basis and their [Sidenote: E] material. Do away with her, and they count for nothing.
There is an end also to our honouring the gods. Men will thank the Sun but little, and the Moon still less, for mere light and warmth. Where will you find altar or sacrifice to Zeus of the Rain, Demeter of the Plough, or Poseidon the Fosterer of Plants? How can Dionysus be Boon-Giver, if we need nothing that he gives? What sacrifice or libation shall we make? What offering of firstfruits? All this means the overthrow and confounding of our most important interests. Though to cling to every pleasure in every case is to be a madman, to avoid every pleasure in every case is to be a block. By all means let the soul have [Sidenote: F] other pleasures of a superior kind to enjoy; the body can find no pleasure more right and proper than that derived from taking food. All the world recognizes the fact, for this pleasure people take openly, sharing with each other in the table and the banquet, whereas their amorous pleasure is screened by night and all the darkness possible. To share that pleasure with others is considered as shameless and brutelike as it is not to share in the case of the table.’
Here, as Cleodorus paused for a moment, I joined in: ‘And is there not another point—that in discarding food we also [Sidenote: 159] discard sleep? If there is no sleep, there is no dreaming either, and we lose our most important means of divination. Moreover, life will be all alike, and there will be practically no purpose in wearing a body round our soul. Most of its parts, and the most important, are provided as instruments to feeding—the tongue, teeth, stomach, and liver. None of them is without its work, and none has other business to attend to.
Consequently any one who has no need of food has no need of a body either. Which means that a person has no need of himself; for it is thanks to the body that each of us is a “self”.’ ‘Such,’ I added, ‘are our contributions on behalf of the belly. If Solon or any one else has objections to bring, we will listen.’
‘Of course I have objections,’ replied Solon. ‘I have no [Sidenote: B] wish to be thought a poorer judge than the Egyptians. After cutting open a dead body, they take out the entrails and expose them to the sunlight.
They then throw those parts into the river and proceed to attend to the rest of the body, which is now regarded as purified. Yes, therein in truth lies the pollution of our flesh. It is its Tartarus—like that in Hades—full of “dreadful streams”, a confused medley of wind and fire and of dead things. For while itself lives, nothing that feeds it can be alive. We commit the wrong of murdering animate things and of destroying plants, which can claim to have life through the fact that they feed and grow. I say destroying, because [Sidenote: C] anything that changes from what nature has made it into something else, is destroyed; it must perish utterly in order to become the other’s sustenance. To abstain from eating flesh, as we are told Orpheus did in ancient times, is more a quibble than an avoidance of crime in the matter of food. The only way of avoiding it, and the only way of attaining to justice by a complete purification, is to become self-sufficing and free of external needs. If God has made it impossible for a thing to secure its own preservation without injury to another, He has also endowed it with the principle of injustice in the shape of its own nature. Would it not, therefore, be a good thing, my dear friend, if, when cutting out injustice, we could cut out the belly, the gullet, and the liver, which impart to us no perception [Sidenote: D] of anything noble and no appetite for it, but partly resemble the utensils for cooking butcher’s meat—such as choppers and stew-pans—and partly the apparatus for a bakery—ovens, water-tanks, and kneading-troughs? Indeed, in the case of most [Sidenote: *] people you can see their soul shut up in their body as if in a baker’s mill, and perpetually going round and round at the business of getting food.
Take ourselves, for example. Just now we were neither looking at nor listening to one another, but we all had our heads down, slaving at the business of feeding. But now that the tables have been removed, we have—as you perceive—become free, and with garlands on our heads we are [Sidenote: E] engaged in sociable and leisurely conversation together, because we have arrived at the state of not requiring food. Well then, if the state in which we now find ourselves remains as a permanence all our lives, shall we not be at perpetual leisure to enjoy each other’s society? We shall have no fear of poverty. Nor shall we know the meaning of wealth, since the quest for luxuries is but the immediate consequence and concomitant of the use of necessaries.
‘But, thinks Cleodorus, there must be food so that there may be tables and wine-bowls and sacrifices to Demeter and the Maid. Then let some one else demand that there shall be war and fighting, so that we may have fortifications and arsenals and [Sidenote: F] armouries, and also sacrifices in honour of slaying our hundreds, such as they say are the law in Messenia. Another, I suppose, is aggrieved at the prospect of the healthfulness which would follow. A terrible thing if, because there is no illness, there is no more use in soft bedclothes, and no more sacrificing to Asclepius or the Averting Powers, and if medical skill, with all its drugs and implements, must be put away into inglorious hiding! What is the difference between these arguments and the other?
Food is, in fact, “taken” as a “remedy” for hunger, and all who use food are said to be “taking care” of [Sidenote: 160] themselves and using some “diet”; and this implies that the act is not a pleasant and agreeable performance, but one which Nature renders compulsory.
Certainly one can enumerate more pains than pleasures arising from feeding. Further still; whereas the pleasure affects but a small region of the body, and lasts but a short time, it needs no telling how full we become of ugly and painful experiences through the worry and difficulty of digesting.
Homer had these in view, I suppose, when he used as a proof that the gods do not die the fact that they do not feed: _For they eat not the bread of corn, nor drink they the wine that is ruddy, And therefore blood have they none in their veins, and are called the Immortals._ Food, he gives us to understand, is the necessary means not only [Sidenote: B] for living, but for dying. From it come our diseases, feeding themselves with the feeding of our bodies, which suffer quite as much from repletion as from want. Very often it is an easier business to get together our supply of victuals than to make away with them and get quit of them again when once they are in the body. Just suppose it were a question with the Danaids what sort of life they would live and what they would do if they could get rid of their menial labour at filling the cask. When we raise the question, “Supposing it possible to cease from heaping into this unconscionable flesh all these things from [Sidenote: C] land and sea, what are we going to do?” it is because in our ignorance of noble things we are content with the life which our necessities impose. Well, as those who have been in slavery, when they are emancipated, do for themselves and on their own account what they used formerly to do in the service of their masters, so is it with the soul. As things are, it feeds the body with continual toil and trouble; but let it get quit of its menial service, and it will presumably feed itself in the enjoyment of freedom, and will live with an eye to itself and the truth, with nothing to distract and deter it.’
This, Nicarchus, concluded the discussion as to food.
While Solon was still speaking, Gorgos, Periander’s brother, entered the room. It happened that, in consequence of certain [Sidenote: D] oracles, he had been sent on a mission to Taenarum in charge of a sacrificial embassy. After we had welcomed him, and Periander had taken him to his arms and kissed him, he sat down by his brother on the couch and gave him a private account of some occurrence which appeared to cause Periander various emotions as he listened to it. At one part he was manifestly vexed, at another indignant; often he showed incredulity, and this was followed by amazement. Finally he laughed and said to us, ‘I should like to tell the company the news; but I have [Sidenote: E] scruples about it, because I heard Thales once say that when a thing is probable we should speak of it, but when it is impossible we should say nothing about it.’ At this Bias interposed, ‘Yes, but here is another wise saying of Thales, that “while we should disbelieve our enemies even in matters believable, we should believe our friends even when the thing is unbelievable”. By enemies I presume he meant the wicked and foolish, and by friends the good and wise.’ ‘Very well then,’ said Periander, ‘you must let every one hear it; or rather you must pit the story you have brought us against those new-fangled dithyrambs and overcrow them.’
Gorgos then told us his story.
His sacrificial ceremony had occupied three days, and on the [Sidenote: