Advice About Keeping Well (5-9)

ZEUXIPPUS. If, however, such imperative occasions suddenly confront us when we are overloaded and in no condition for taking part — if, for instance, we receive an invitation from a high official, or guests appear, so that we are constrained by a false sense of shame to join company with men who are in fit condition and to drink with them — then especially, in order to combat shame which works mischief for men [*] (or rather I would call it shamefacedness), we should summon to our defence the words which Creon speaks [*] in the tragedy:

’Twere better, friend, to gain your hatred now Than be soft-hearted and lament anon.

For to be so afraid of being thought ill-bred as to plunge oneself into a pleurisy or brain-fever is proof that one is in very truth ill-bred, possessed of neither sense nor the reason which knows how to consort with men without the wine-glass and the savour of food.[*] For a request to be excused, if characterized by cleverness and wit, is no less agreeable than joining in the round of gaiety; and if a man provides a banquet in the same spirit in which he provides a burnt-offering which it is forbidden to taste, and personally abstains when the wine-cup and the table are before him, at the same time volunteering cheerfully some playful allusion to himself, he will create a pleasanter impression than the man who gets drunk and gormandizes for company. Of the men of earlier times he [*] mentioned Alexander,[*] who, after a prolonged debauch, was ashamed to say no to the challenges of Medius, and abandoned himself to a fresh round of hard drinking, which cost him his life; and of the men of our time he mentioned Regulus the prize-fighter. For when Titus Caesar called him to the bath at daybreak, he came and bathed with him, took but one drink, they say, and died immediately from a stroke of apoplexy.

ZEUXIPPUS. These are the teachings which Glaucus in derision quoted aggressively to us as pedantic. The rest he was not eager to hear, nor we to tell him. But I beg that you will examine each of the several statements.

ZEUXIPPUS. First there is Socrates,[*] who, in urging us to be on our guard against such things to eat as persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, and such things to drink as persuade us to drink when we are not thirsty, did not absolutely forbid the use of these things; but he was instructing us to use them only if we needed them, and to make the pleasure in them serve our necessity, just as our statesmen do who turn to military uses their funds for amusements.[*] For that which is pleasant, in so far as it is a nutritive element, is congenial to our nature, and it is by remaining still hungry that we ought to get enjoyment from the necessary or the pleasant foods; but we should not stir up in ourselves a second and separate set of appetites after we have appeased the usual ones. And here is another consideration. Just as Socrates [*] found dancing a not unpleasant exercise, so the man for whom pastry and sweets serve as a meal and as food suffers less injury. But when a man has satisfied the moderate demands of his nature, and has had his fill, he ought to exercise the very greatest vigilance against helping himself to such things. And in such matters, while we should be on guard against love of pleasure and gluttony, yet we should be no less on guard against vulgarity and love of notoriety. For these latter often help to persuade people to eat something when they are not hungry, and to drink when they are not thirsty,[*] by suggesting utterly sordid and cheap conceits — that it is absurd not to take advantage of the presence of some rare and expensive thing, as, for example, sow’s udder,[*] Italian mushrooms, Samian cake, or snow in Egypt. For things of this sort do indeed often induce people to use what is renowned and rare, since they are led on by empty repute as by an attractive savour, and compel their body to do its share, although it feels no need, so that they may have a tale to tell to others, and may be envied for their enjoyment of things so hard to obtain and so uncommon. Quite similar is their behaviour toward notorious women. There are times when they repose in quiet with their own wives who are both lovely and loving, but when they have paid money to a Phryne or a Laïs, although their body is in sorry state and is inclined to shirk its task, they rouse it forthwith to action, and call in licentiousness to minister to pleasure, all because of empty repute. In fact, Phryne herself, in her advancing years, said that she got a better price for her remnants because of her repute.

ZEUXIPPUS. It is a great marvel if we get off unscathed, when we concede to the body only as much of pleasures as Nature in her need finds a place for, but still more so when we battle with it vigorously to thwart its appetites, and keep putting them off, and finally consent to some negotiation with such as will not be denied, or, as Plato [*] says, yield when the body bites and strains. But when the case is reversed, and the desires descend from the mind to the body and force it to be subservient to the mind’s emotions, and to join in their excitements, there is no way to prevent their leaving as a residue the most violent and serious injuries as the aftermath of feeble and evanescent pleasures. Least of all ought the body to be stirred to pleasures by the mind’s desire, since such an origin is unnatural. Just as tickling the arm-pits so affects the mind as to produce laughter which is not natural, or even mild or happy, but convulsive and harsh, so whatsoever pleasures the body achieves through being prodded and disturbed by the mind are deranging and disturbing and foreign to Nature. Whenever, then, someone of those rare and notorious means of enjoyment is afforded us, we ought to take more pride in abstinence than in enjoyment, remembering that just as Simonides [*] used to say that he had never been sorry for having kept silent, but many a time for having spoken, so we have never been sorry either for having put a dainty to one side, or for having drunk water instead of Falernian wine, but the opposite; not only ought Nature not to be forced, but if anything of this sort is offered her even when she has need of it, the appetite ought to be often diverted from it towards the plain and familiar food for the sake of habituation and training.

If one must needs do wrong,

are the words of the Theban,[*] who is not correct in saying, far best it were

To do it for a kingdom’s sake.

But we can improve on this by saying that if we must needs seek repute in such matters as food and drink, far best it were by continence for the sake of health. Nevertheless stinginess and greediness constrain some persons, who repress and reduce their desires in their own homes, to stuff themselves and enjoy themselves with expensive things at others’ houses as though they were engaged in ruthless foraging in an enemy’s country; then they go away much indisposed, and for the next day they have an attack of indigestion to pay for their insatiable appetite. So Crates,[*] thinking that luxury and extravagance were as much to blame as anything for the growth of civil discords and the rule of despots in states, humorously advised:

Do not, by always making our fare more ample than lentils, Throw us all into discord.

And let everybody exhort himself not to make his fare always more ample than lentils, and by all means not to proceed beyond cress and olives to croquettes and fish, and by overeating throw his body into discord, that is to say, into derangements and diarrhoeas. For the inexpensive things keep the appetite to its natural limits of moderation, but the arts of the chefs and their trained helpers, and, in the words of the comic poet,[*]

These knavish dainties and these complex foods,

are constantly advancing and enlarging the bounds of enjoyment, and altering our ideas of what is good for us. I do not know how it is that, while we loathe and detest women who contrive philters and magic to use upon their husbands, we entrust our food and provisions to hirelings and slaves to be all but bewitched and drugged. If the saying of Arcesilaus [*] addressed to the adulterous and licentious appears too bitter, to the effect that it makes no difference whether a man practises lewdness in the front parlour or in the back hall, yet it is not without its application to our subject. For in very truth, what difference does it make whether a man employ aphrodisiacs to stir and excite licentiousness for the purposes of pleasure, or whether he stimulate his taste by odours and sauces to require, like the itch, continual scratchings and ticklings?

ZEUXIPPUS. At some other time, then, it may be that we shall have to speak against pleasures, and show what an intrinsic beauty and dignity belongs to continence; but the present discourse is on the side of many pleasures and great. For diseases do not take from us and spoil for us so many of our enterprises or hopes or travels or pastimes as they do of our pleasures. Hence contempt for health is least profitable for those who make pleasure their chief aim. For infirmities allow many persons to be philosophers, or actually even generals or kings, but the pleasures and enjoyments of the body in some cases do not come to life at all in time of disease, and those that come to life yield but a brief part of what they properly should, and even that is not pure, but contaminated with much that is foreign, and marked, as it were, by the beatings of surge and storm. For it is not true that In well-gorged bodies Love resides,[*] but rather in serenity and calmness of the flesh does love find its end in pleasure, as also do eating and drinking; and health affords to pleasures, as calm weather to the halcyons,[*] a safe and lovely nesting and hatching of their young. Prodicus seems to have put the matter very neatly in saying that fire is the best of sauces [*]; but one might more truly speak of health as being the most divine and agreeable sauce. For boiled, baked, or fried foods afford no proper pleasure or even gratification to those who are suffering from disease, debauch, or nausea, while a clean and unspoiled appetite makes everything, to a sound body, pleasant and eagerly craved, as Homer has said,[*] — that is, agreeable.

ZEUXIPPUS. As Demades used to say that the Athenians, who were for making war in season and out of season, never voted for peace save when wearing black, so we never give a thought to a plain and restrained way of living except when using enemas and poultices. But when we find ourselves in this plight we try hard to stifle the thought of our wrongdoings, setting ourselves against their remembrance, and, as is the way of most people who object to this or that air or this or that locality as insalubrious when they say that they dread travelling, we exclude our intemperance and self-indulgence from the cause of our illness. Nay, we should recall how Lysimachus [*] among the Getae was constrained by thirst to surrender himself and the army with him as prisoners of war, and afterwards as he drank cold water exclaimed, My God, for what a brief pleasure have I thrown away great prosperity! And in the same way we ought in our attacks of illness to remember that for a cold drink, an ill-timed bath, or a social party, we have spoiled many of our pleasures and have ruined many an honourable enterprise and delightful recreation. For the sting caused by such reflections keeps the memory raw, so that, like a scar that remains when the body is in health, it makes us more circumspect about our way of living. For the healthy body will not, to any immoderate extent, breed desires that are vehement, intractable, unwonted, and hard to dispossess; nay, we can boldly and confidently oppose the appetites which would fain go beyond all bounds and assault our enjoyments, knowing that their whining and whimpering is a trivial and childish manifestation, and that later, when the table is removed, they will cease repining and make no complaint nor feel themselves aggrieved, but, on the contrary, untainted and cheerful rather than dulled and nauseated by over-indulgence, await the morrow. The remark which Timotheus [*] made, the day after he had dined with Plato at the Academy on the simple fare of the scholar, is in point here: Those who dine with Plato, he said, get on pleasantly the next day also. And it is reported that Alexander said [*] when he discharged the chefs of Ada that he had better ones always to take with him — his night marches for breakfast, and for dinner his frugal breakfast.