Beasts are rational (5-9)

ODYSSEUS. Bless me, Gryllus, you must once have been a very clever sophist,[*] one may judge, since even as things are, and speaking from your swinishness, you can attack the subject with such fervent ardour. But why have you failed to discuss temperance, the next in order?

GRYLLUS. Because I thought that you would first wish to take exception to what I have said. But you are eager to hear about temperance since you are the husband of a model of chastity and believe that you yourself have given a proof of self-control by rejecting the embraces of Circe. And in this you are no more continent than any of the beasts; for neither do they desire to consort with their betters, but pursue both pleasure and love with mates of like species. So it is no wonder that, like the Mendesian[*] goat in Egypt which, when shut up with many beautiful women, is said not to be eager to consort with them, but is far more excited about nannies, you likewise are contented with the kind of love that is familiar to you and, being a mortal, are not eager to sleep with a goddess. As for the chastity of Penelope, the cawing of countless crows will pour laughter and contempt upon it; for every crow, if her mate dies, remains a widow, not merely for a short time, but for nine generations of men.[*] It follows that your fair Penelope is nine times inferior in chastity to any crow you please.

GRYLLUS. Now since you are not unaware that I am a sophist, let me marshal my arguments in some order by defining temperance and analysing the desires according to their kinds. Temperance,[*] then, is a curtailment and an ordering of the desires that eliminate those that are extraneous or superfluous and discipline in modest and timely fashion those that are essential.[*] You can, of course, observe countless differences in the desires[*]⋯ and the desire to eat and drink is at once natural and essential, while the pleasures of love, which, though they find their origin in nature, yet may be forgone and discarded without much inconvenience, have been called natural, but not essential. But there are desires of another kind, neither essential nor natural, that are imported in a deluge from without as a result of your inane illusions and because you lack true culture. So great is their multitude that the natural desires are, every one of them, all but overwhelmed, as though an alien rabble were overpowering the native citizenry. But beasts have souls completely inaccessible and closed to these adventitious passions and live their lives as free from empty illusions as though they dwelt far from the sea.[*] They fall short in the matter of delicate and luxurious living, but solidly protect their sobriety and the better regulation of their desires since those that dwell within them are neither numerous nor alien.

Certainly there was a time when I myself, no less than you now, was dazzled by gold and held it to be an incomparable possession; so likewise I was caught by the lure of silver and ivory and the man who had most property of this sort seemed to me to be a blissful favourite of the gods, whether he was a Phrygian or a Carian, one more villainous than Dolon[*] or more unfortunate than Priam.[*] In that situation, constantly activated[*] by these desires, I reaped no joy or pleasure from the other things of life, which I had sufficiently and to spare. I grumbled at my life, finding myself destitute of the most important things and a loser in the lottery of fortune. This is the reason why, as I recall, when I saw you once in Crete tricked out in holiday attire, it was not your intellect or your virtue that I envied, but the softness of the elegantly woven garment and the beautiful wool of your purple cloak that I admired and gaped at (the clasp, I believe, was of gold and had some frivolity worked on it in exquisitely fine intaglio). I followed you about as enchanted as a woman. But now I am rid and purified of all those empty illusions.[*] I have no eyes for gold and silver and can pass them by just like any common stone; and as for your fine robes and tapestries, I swear there’s nothing sweeter for me to rest in when I’m full than deep, soft mud.[*] None, then, of such adventitious desires has a place in our souls; our life for the most part is controlled by the essential desires and pleasures. As for those that are non-essential, but merely natural, we resort to them without either irregularity or excess.

GRYLLUS. Let us, in fact, first describe these pleasures. Our pleasure in fragrant substances, those that by their nature stimulate our sense of smell, besides the fact that our enjoyment of this is simple and costs nothing, also contributes to utility by providing a way for us to tell good food from bad. For the tongue is said to be, and is, a judge of what is sweet or bitter or sour, when liquid flavours combine and fuse with the organ of taste; but our sense of smell, even before we taste, is a judge that can much more critically distinguish the quality of each article of food than any royal taster[*] in the world. It admits what is proper, rejects what is alien, and will not let it touch or give pain to the taste, but informs on and denounces what is bad before any harm is done. And in other respects smell is no nuisance to us, as it is to you, forcing you to collect and mix together incense of one kind or another and cinnamon[*] and nard[*] and malobathrum[*] and Arabian aromatic reeds,[*] with the aid of a formidable dyer’s or witch’s art, of the sort to which you give the name of unguentation, thus buying at a great price an effeminate, emasculating luxury which has absolutely no real use. Yet, though such is its nature, it has depraved not only every woman, but lately the greater part of men as well, so that they refuse to sleep even with their own wives unless they come to bed reeking with myrrh and scented powders.[*] But sows attract boars and nannies bucks and other female creatures their consorts by means of their own special odours; scented, as they are, with pure dew and grassy meadows, they are attracted to the nuptial union by mutual affection.[*] The females are not coy and do not cloak their desires with deceits or trickeries or denials; nor do the males, driven on by the sting of mad lust, purchase the act of procreation by money or toil or servitude. No! Both parties celebrate at the proper time a love without deceit or hire, a love which in the season of spring[*] awakens, like the burgeoning of plants and trees, the desire of animals, and then immediately extinguishes it. Neither does the female continue to receive the male after she has conceived, nor does the male attempt her.[*] So slight and feeble is the regard we have for pleasure: our whole concern is with Nature. Whence it comes about that to this very day the desires of beasts have encompassed no homosexual mating.[*] But you have a fair amount of such trafficking among your high and mighty nobility, to say nothing of the baser sort. Agamemnon[*] came to Boeotia hunting for Argynnus, who tried to elude him, and slandering the sea and winds[*]⋯ then he gave his noble self a noble bath in Lake Copaïs to drown his passion there and get rid of his desire. Just so Heracles,[*] pursuing a beardless lad, lagged behind the other heroes[*] and deserted the expedition. On the Rotunda of Ptoian Apollo[*] one of your men secretly inscribed FAIR IS ACHILLES[*] - when Achilles already had a son. And I hear that the inscription is still in place.[*] But a cock that mounts another for the lack of a female is burned alive because some prophet or seer declares that such an event is an important and terrible omen. On this basis even men themselves acknowledge that beasts have a better claim to temperance and the non-violation of nature in their pleasures. Not even Nature, with Law for her ally, can keep within bounds the unchastened vice of your hearts; but as though swept by the current of their lusts beyond the barrier at many points, men do such deeds as wantonly outrage Nature, upset her order, and confuse her distinctions. For men have, in fact, attempted to consort with goats[*] and sows and mares, and women have gone mad with lust for male beasts. From such unions your Minotaurs[*] and Aegipans,[*] and, I suppose, your Sphinxes[*] and Centaurs[*] have arisen. Yet it is through hunger that dogs have occasionally eaten a man; and birds have tasted of human flesh through necessity; but no beast has ever attempted a human body for lustful reasons.[*] But the beasts I have mentioned and many others have been victims of the violent and lawless lusts of man.

GRYLLUS. Though men are so vile and incontinent where the desires I have spoken of are concerned, they can be proved to be even more so in the case of essential desires, being here far inferior to animals in temperance.[*] These are the desires for food and drink, in which we beasts always take our pleasure along with some sort of utility; whereas you, in your pursuit of pleasure rather than natural nourishment, are punished by many serious ailments which, welling up from one single source, the surfeit of your bodies, fill you with all manner of flatulence that is difficult to purge.[*] In the first place each species of animal has one single food proper to it, grass or some root or fruit. Those that are carnivorous resort to no other kind of nourishment, nor do they deprive those weaker than themselves of sustenance; but the lion lets the deer, and the wolf lets the sheep, feed in its natural pasture. But man in his pleasures is led astray by gluttony to everything edible[*]; he tries and tastes everything as if he had not yet come to recognize what is suitable and proper for him; alone of all creatures he is omnivorous.[*]

In the first place his eating of flesh is caused by no lack of means or methods,[*] for he can always in season harvest and garner and gather in such a succession of plants and grains as will all but tire him out with their abundance; but driven on by luxurious desires and satiety with merely essential nourishment, he pursues illicit food, made unclean by the slaughter of beasts; and he does this in a much more cruel way than the most savage beasts of prey. Blood and gore and raw flesh are the proper diet of kite and wolf and snake; to man they are an appetizer.[*] Then, too, man makes use of every kind of food and does not, like beasts, abstain from most kinds and consequently make war on a few only that he must have for food. In a word, nothing that flies or swims or moves on land has escaped your so-called civilized and hospitable tables.

GRYLLUS. Well, then. It is admitted that you use animals as appetizers to sweeten your fare.[*] Why, therefore[*] ⋯ Animal intelligence, on the contrary, allows no room for useless and pointless arts; and in the case of essential ones, we do not make one man with constant study cling to one department of knowledge and rivet him jealously to that; nor do we receive our arts as alien products or pay to be taught them. Our intelligence produces them on the spot unaided, as its own congenital and legitimate skills. I have heard that in Egypt[*] everyone is a physician; and in the case of beasts each one is not only his own specialist in medicine, but also in the providing of food, in warfare and hunting as well as in self-defence and music, in so far as any kind of animal has a natural gift for it. From whom have we swine learned, when we are sick, to resort to rivers to catch crabs? Who taught tortoises to devour marjoram after eating the snake?[*] And who instructed Cretan goats,[*] when they are pierced by an arrow, to look for dittany, after eating which the arrowhead falls out? For if you speak the truth and say that Nature is their teacher, you are elevating the intelligence of animals to the most sovereign and wisest of first principles. If you do not think that it should be called either reason or intelligence, it is high time for you to cast about for some fairer and even more honourable term to describe it, since certainly the faculty that it brings to bear in action is better and more remarkable.[*] It is no uninstructed or untrained faculty, but rather self-taught and self-sufficient - and not for lack of strength. It is just because of the health and completeness of its native virtue that it is indifferent to the contributions to its intelligence supplied by the lore of others. Such animals, at any rate, as man for amusement or easy living induces to accept instruction and training have understanding to grasp what they are taught even when it goes contrary to their physical endowment, so superior are their mental powers. I say nothing of puppies that are trained as hunters, or colts schooled to keep time in their gait,[*] or crows that are taught to talk, or dogs, to jump through revolving hoops. In the theatres horses and steers go through an exact routine in which they lie down or dance or hold a precarious pose or perform movements not at all easy even for men[*]; and they remember what they have been taught, these exhibitions of docility which are not in the least useful for anything else. If you are doubtful that we can learn arts, then let me tell you that we can even teach them. When partridges[*] are making their escape, they accustom their fledglings to hide by falling on their backs and holding a lump of earth over themselves with their claws. You can observe storks on the roof, the adults showing the art of flying to the young as they make their trial flights.[*] Nightingales[*] set the example for their young to sing; while nestlings that are caught young and brought up by human care are poorer singers, as though they had left the care of their teacher too early.[*]⋯ and since I have entered into this new body of mine, I marvel at those arguments by which the sophists[*] brought me to consider all creatures except man irrational and senseless.