The Banquet of the Seven Wise Men (11-15)

Mnesiphilus the Athenian, a friend and favorite of Solon’s, said: O Periander, our discourse, as our wine, ought to be distributed not according to our power or priority, but freely and equally, as in a popular state; for what hath been already discoursed concerning kingdoms and empires signifies little to us who live in a democracy. Wherefore I judge it convenient that every one of you beginning with Solon, should freely and impartially declare his sense of a popular state. The motion pleased all the company; then saith Solon: My friend Mnesiphilus, you heard, together with the rest of this good company, my opinion concerning republics; but since you are willing to hear it again, I hold that city or state happy and most likely to remain democratic, in which those that are not personally injured are yet as forward to question and correct wrongdoers as that person who is more immediately wronged. Bias added, Where all fear the law as they fear a tyrant. Thirdly, Thales said, Where the citizens are neither too rich nor too poor. Fourthly, Anacharsis said, Where,

though in all other respects they are equal, yet virtuous men are advanced and vicious persons degraded. Fifthly, Cleobulus said, Where the rulers fear reproof and shame more than the law. Sixthly, Pittacus said, Where bad men are prohibited from ruling, and good men from not ruling. Chilo, pausing a little while, determined that the best and most durable state was where the subject minded the law most and the orators least. Periander concluded with his opinion, that all of them would best approve that democracy which came next and was likest to an arisocracy.

When they had ended this discourse, I begged they would condescend to direct me how to govern a house; for they were few who had cities and kingdoms to govern, compared with those who had houses and families to manage. Esop laughed and said: I hope you except Anacharsis out of your number; for having no house, he glories because he can be contented with a chariot only, as they say the sun is whirled about from one end of the heavens to the other in his chariot. Therefore, saith Anacharsis, he alone, or he principally, is most free among the Gods, and ever at his own liberty and dispose. He governs all, and is governed and subject to none, but he rides and reigns; and you know not how magnificent and capacious his chariot is; if you did, you would not thus floutingly compare it with our Scythian chariots. For you seem in my apprehension to call these coverings made of wood and mud houses, as if you should call the shell and not the living creature a snail. Therefore you laughed when Solon told you how, when he viewed Croesus’s palace and found it richly and gloriously furnished, he yet could not yield he lived happily until he had tried the inward and invisible state of his mind; for a man’s felicity consists not in the outward and visible favors and blessings of Fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind. And you seem to have forgot your own fable of the fox,

who, contending with the leopard as to which was beset with more colors and spots, and having referred the matter in controversy to the arbitration of an umpire, desired him to consider not so much the outside as the inside; for, saith he, I have more various and different fetches and tricks in my mind than he has marks or spots in his body. You regard only the handiwork of carpenters and masons and stone-cutters, and call this a house; not what one hath within, his children, his wife, his friends and attendants, with whom if a man lived in an emmet’s bed or a bird’s nest, enjoying in common the ordinary comforts of life, this man may be affirmed to live a happy and a fortunate life.

This is the answer I purpose to return Esop, quoth Anacharsis, and I tender it to Diocles as my share in this discourse; only let the rest give in their opinions, if they please. Solon thought that house most happy where the estate was got without injustice, kept without distrust, and spent without repentance. Bias said, That house is happy where the master does freely and voluntarily at home what the law compels him to do abroad. Thales held that house most happy where the master had most leisure and respite from business. Cleobulus said, That in which the master is more beloved than feared. Pittacus said, That is most happy where superfluities are not required and necessaries are not wanting. Chilo added, That house is most happy where the master rules as a monarch in his kingdom. And he proceeded, When a certain Lacedaemonian desired Lycurgus to establish a democracy in the city, Go you, friend, replied he, and try the experiment first in your own house.

I am satisfied, quoth Chersias, and since we are fallen upon our old discourse of housekeeping, which of the company can remember what remains to be said thereof? There remains, if I mistake not, to show what that measure is which may content any man. Cleobulus answered: The law has prescribed a measure for wise men; but as touching fools, I will tell you a story I once heard my mother relate to my brother. On a certain time the moon begged of her mother a coat that would fit her. How can that be done, quoth the mother, for sometimes you are full, sometimes the one-half of you seems lost and perished, sometimes only a pair of horns appear. So, my Chersias, to the desires of a foolish immoderate man no certain measure can be fitted; for, according to the ebbings and flowings of his lust and appetite, and the frequent or seldom casualties that befall him, accordingly his necessities ebb or flow, not unlike Esop’s dog, who, being pinched and ready to starve with cold in winter, was of mind to build

himself a house; but when summer came on, he lay all along upon the ground, and stretching himself in the sun thought himself monstrous big, and thought it a needless thing and besides no small piece of work to build him a house proportionable to that bulk and bigness. And do you not observe, O Chersias, continues he, many poor men,— how one while they pinch their bellies, upon what short commons they live, how sparing and niggardly and miserable they are; and another while you may observe the same men as distrustful and covetous withal, as if the plenty of city and country, the riches of king and kingdom were not sufficient to preserve them from want and beggary.

When Chersias had concluded this discourse, Cleodemus began thus: We see you that are wise men possessing these outward goods after an unequal manner. Good sweet sir, answered Cleobulus, the law weaver-like hath distributed to every man a fitting, decent, adequate portion, and in your profession your reason does what the law does here,—when you feed, or diet, or physic your patient, you give not an equal quantity to all, but what you judge to be convenient for each in his circumstances. Ardalus enquires: I pray what law compels our friend and Solon’s host, Epimenides, to abstain from all other victuals, and to content himself with a little composition of his own, which the Greeks call ἄλιμος (hunger-relieving)? This he takes into his mouth and chews, and eats neither dinner nor supper. This instance obliged the whole company to be a little while silent, until Thales in a jesting way replied, that Epimenides did very wisely, for hereby he saved the trouble and charge of grinding and boiling his food, as Pittacus did. I myself sojourning at Lesbos overheard my landlady, as she was very busy at her hand-mill, singing as she used to do at her work, Grind mill; grind mill; for even Pittacus, the prince of great Mitylene, grinds. [*] Quoth Solon

Ardalus, I wonder you have not read the law of Epimenides’s frugality in Hesiod’s writings, who prescribes him and others this spare diet; for he was the person that gratified Epimenides with the seeds of this nutriment, when he directed him to enquire how great benefit a man might receive by mallows and asphodel.[*] Do you believe, said Periander, that Hesiod meant this literally; or rather that, being himself a great admirer of parsimony, he hereby intended to exhort men to use a mean and spare diet, as most healthful and pleasant? For the chewing of mallows is very wholesome, and the stalk of asphodel is very luscious; but this expeller of hunger and thirst I take to be rather physic than natural food, consisting of honey and I know not what barbarian cheese, and of many and costly seeds fetched from foreign parts. If to make up this composition so many ingredients were requisite, and so difficult to come by and so expensive, Hesiod might as well have kept his breath to cool his pottage, and never blessed the world with the discovery. And yet I admire how your host, when he went to perform the great purification for the Delians not long since, could overlook the monuments and patterns of the first aliment which the people brought into the temple,—and, among other cheap fruits such as grow of themselves, the mallows and the asphodel; the usefulness and innocency whereof Hesiod seemed in his work to magnify. Not only that, quoth Anacharsis, but he affirms both plants to be great restoratives. You are in the right, quoth Cleodemus; for it is evident Hesiod was no ordinary physician, who could discourse so learnedly and judiciously of diet, of the nature of wines, and of the virtue of waters and baths, and of women, the proper times for procreation, and the site and position of infants in the womb; insomuch, that (as I take it) Esop deserves much more the name of Hesiod’s scholar and disciple than Epimenides, whose great and excellent wisdom the fable of the nightingale and hawk demonstrates. But I would gladly hear Solon’s opinion in this matter; for having sojourned long at Athens and being familiarly acquainted with Epimenides, it is more than probable he might learn of him the grounds upon which he accustomed himself to so spare a diet.

To what purpose, said Solon, should I trouble him or myself to make enquiry in a matter so plain? For if it be a blessing next to the greatest to need little victuals, then it is the greatest felicity to need none at all. If I may have leave to deliver my opinion, quoth Cleodemus, I must profess myself of a different judgment, especially now we sit at table; for as soon as the meat is taken away, we have removed what belongs to those Gods that are the patrons of friendship and hospitality. As upon the removal of the earth, quoth Thales, there must needs follow an universal confusion of all things, so in forbidding men meat, there must needs follow the dispersion and dissolution of the family, the sacred fire, the cups, the feasts and entertainments, which are the principal and most innocent diversions of mankind; and so all the comforts of society are at end. For to men of business some recreation is necessary, and the preparation and use of victuals conduces much thereunto. Again, to be without victuals would tend to the destruction of husbandry, for want whereof the earth would soon be overgrown with weeds, and through the sloth of men overflowed with waters. And together with this, all arts would fail which are supported and encouraged hereby; nay, more, take away hospitality and the use of victuals, and the worship and honor of the Gods will sink and perish; the sun will have but small and the moon yet smaller reverence, if they afford men only light and heat. And who will build an altar or offer sacrifice to Jupiter Pluvius, or to Ceres the patroness of husbandmen, or to Neptune the preserver of plants and trees? Or how can

Bacchus be any longer termed the donor of all good things, if men make no further use of the good things he gives? What shall men sacrifice? What first-fruits shall they offer? In short, the subversion and confusion of the greatest blessings attend this opinion. Promiscuously and indefatigably to pursue all sorts of pleasures I own to be brutish, and to avoid all with a suitable aversion equally blockish; let the mind then freely enjoy such pleasures as are agree able to its nature and temper. But for the body, there is certainly no pleasure more harmless and commendable and fitting than that which springs from a plentiful table,— which is granted by all men; for, placing this in the mid die, men converse with one another and share in the provision. As to the pleasures of the bed, men use these in the dark, reputing the use thereof no less shameful and beastly than the total disuse of the pleasures of the table.

Cleodemus having finished this long harangue, I began to this effect. You omit one thing, my friend, how they that decry food decry sleep too, and they that declaim against sleep declaim against dreams in the same breath, and so destroy the primitive and ancient way of divination. Add to this, that our whole life will be of one form and fashion, and our soul enclosed in a body to no purpose; many and those the principal parts thereof are naturally so formed and fashioned as to be organs of nutriment; so the tongue, the teeth, the stomach, and the liver, whereof none are idle, none flamed for other use. so that whosoever hath no need of nutriment has no need of his body; that is, in other words, no man hath any need of himself, for every man hath a body of his own. This I have thought fit to offer in vindication of our bellies; if Solon or any other has any thing to object to what I have said, I am willing to hear him.