Plutarch's Rules for the Preservation of Health (20-21)

ZEUXIPPUS. The Lydians are reported in a famine to have spent one day in eating, and the next in sports and drollery. But a lover of learning and a friend to the Muses, when at any time he is forced to sup later than ordinary, will not be so much a slave to his belly as to lay aside a geographical scheme when it is before him, or his book, or his lyre; but strenuously turning himself, and taking his mind off from eating, he will in the Muses’ name drive away all such desires, as so many Harpies, from his table. Will not the Scythian in the midst ’of his cups oftentimes handle his bow and twang the string, thereby rousing up himself from that drunkenness in which he was immersed? Will a Greek be afraid, because he is laughed at, by books and letters gently to loosen and unbend any blind and obstinate desire? The young men in Menander, when they were drinking, were trepanned by a bawd, which brought in to them a company of handsome and richly attired women; but every one, as he said,

Cast down his eyes and fell to junketing, —

not one daring to look upon them. Lovers of learning have many fair and pleasant diversions, if they can no other way keep in their canine and brutish appetites when they see the table spread. The bawling of such fellows as anoint wrestlers, and the opinion of pedagogues that it hinders our nourishment and dulls one’s head to discourse of learning at table, are indeed of some force then, when we are called upon to solve a fallacy like the Indus or to dispute about the Kyrieuon at a feast. For though the pith of the palm-tree is very sweet, yet they say it will cause the headache. To discourse of logic at meals is not indeed a very delicious banquet, is rather troublesome, and pains one’s head; but if there be any who will not give us leave to discourse philosophically or ask any question or read any thing at table, though it be of those things which are not only decent and profitable but also pleasantly merry, we will desire them not to trouble us, but to talk in this style to the athletes in the Xvstum and the Palaestra, who have laid aside their books and are wont to spend their whole time in jeers and scurrilous jests, being, as Aristo wittily expresses it, smooth and hard, like the pillars in the gymnasium. But we must obey our physicians, who advise us to keep some interval between supper and sleep, and not to heap up together a great deal of victuals in our stomachs and so shorten our breath (lest we presently by crude and fermenting aliment overcharge our digestion), but rather to take some space and breathing-time before we sleep. As those who have a mind to exercise themselves after supper do not do it by running or wrestling, but rather by gentle exercise, such as walking or dancing; so when we intend to exercise our minds after supper, we are not to do it with any thing of business or care, or with those sophistical disputes which bring us into a vain-glorious and violent contention. But there are many questions in natural philosophy which are easy to discuss and to decide; there are many disquisitions which relate to manners, which please the mind (as Homer expresses it) and do no way discompose it. Questions in history and poetry have been by some ingeniously called a second course to a learned man and a scholar. There are discourses which are no way troublesome; and, besides, fables may be told. Nay, it is easier to discourse of the pipe and lyre, or hear them discoursed of, than it is to hear either of them played on. The quantity of time allowed for this exercise is till our meat be gently settled within us, so that our digestion may have power enough to master it.

ZEUXIPPUS. Aristotle is of opinion that to walk after supper stirs up our natural heat; but to sleep, if it be soon after, chokes it. Others again say that rest aids digestion, and that motion disturbs it. Hence some walk immediately after supper; others choose rather to keep themselves still. But that man seems to obtain the design of both, who cherishes and keeps his body quiet, not immediately suffering his mind to become heavy and idle, but (as has been said) gently distributing and lightening his spirits by either hearing or speaking some pleasant thing, such as will neither molest nor oppress him.