When steeds with sounding hoof, to win
The prize, shall run amain;
And at the tomb of mighty Jove
Their chariots break in twain.
For this reply he was infinitely commended and won the tripod. Pray
tell me, quoth Cleodemus, what difference there is between these
riddles and those of Eumetis, which she frames and invents to recreate
herself with as much pleasure as other virgins make nets and girdles?
They may be fit to offer and puzzle women withal; but for men to beat
their brains to find out their mystery would be mighty ridiculous.
Eumetis looked like one that had a great mind to reply; but her modesty
would not permit her, for her face was filled with blushes. But Esop in
her vindication asked: Is it not much more ridiculous that all present
cannot resolve the riddle she propounded to us before supper? This was
as follows:—
A man I saw, who by his fire
Did set a piece of brass
Fast to a man, so that it seemed
To him it welded was.
Can you tell me, said he, how to construe this, and what the sense of
it may be? No, said Cleodemus, nor do I care to know what it means. And
yet, quoth Esop, no man understands this thing better and practises
it more judiciously and successfully than yourself. If you deny it, I
have my witnesses ready; for there are your cupping-glasses. Cleodemus
laughed outright; for of all the physicians in his time, none used
cupping-glasses like him, he being a person that by his frequent and
fortunate application thereof brought them first into request in the
world.
11. 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 wrong-doers 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 aristocracy.
12. 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.
13. When they had all given in their opinions upon this point, Eumetis
and Melissa withdrew. Then Periander called for a large bowl full of
wine, and drank to Chilo; and Chilo likewise drank to Bias. Ardalus
then standing up called to Esop, and said: Will you not hand the cup
to your friends at this end of the table, when you behold those
persons there swilling up all that good liquor, and imparting none to
us here, as if the cup were that of Bathycles. But this cup, quoth
Esop, is no public cup, it hath stood so long by Solon’s trenchard.
Then Pittacus called to Mnesiphilus: Why, saith he, does not Solon
drink, but act in contradiction to his own verses?—
I love that ruby God, whose blessings flow
In tides, to recreate my thirsty maw;
Venus I court, the Muses I adore,
Who give us wine and pleasures evermore.
Anacharsis subjoined: He fears your severe law, my friend Pittacus,
wherein you decreed the drunkard a double punishment. You seem, said
Pittacus, a little to fear the penalty, who have adventured heretofore,
and now again before my face, to break that law and to demand a crown
for the reward of your debauch. Why not, quoth Anacharsis, when there
is a reward promised to the hardest drinker? Why should I not demand
my reward, having drunk down all my fellows?—or inform me of any other
end men drive at in drinking much wine, but to be drunk. Pittacus
laughed at this reply, and Esop told them this fable: The wolf, seeing
a parcel of shepherds in their booth feeding upon a lamb, approaching
near them,—What a bustle and noise and uproar would you have made,
saith he, if I had but done what you do! Chilo said: Esop hath very
justly revenged himself upon us, who awhile ago stopped his mouth; now
he observes how we prevented Mnesiphilus’s discourse, when the question
was put why Solon did not drink up his wine.
Mnesiphilus then spake to this effect: I know this to be the opinion
of Solon, that in every art and faculty, divine and human, the work
which is done is more desired than the instrument wherewith it is done,
and the end than the means conducing to that end; as, for instance,
a weaver thinks a cloak or coat more properly his work than the
ordering of his shuttles or the divers motions of his beams. A smith
minds the soldering of his irons and the sharpening of the axe more
than those little things preparatory to these main matters, as the
kindling of the coals and getting ready the stone-dust. Yet farther,
a carpenter would justly blame us, if we should affirm it is not his
work to build houses or ships but to bore holes or to make mortar; and
the Muses would be implacably incensed with him that should say their
business is only to make harps, pipes, and such musical instruments,
not the institution and correction of manners and the government of
those men’s passions who are lovers of singing and masters of music.
And agreeably copulation is not the work of Venus, nor is drunkenness
that of Bacchus; but love and friendship, affection and familiarity,
which are begot and improved by the means of these. Solon terms these
works divine, and he professes he loves and now prosecutes them in
his declining years as vigorously as ever in his youthful days. That
mutual love between man and wife is the work of Venus, the greatness
of the pleasure affecting their bodies mixes and melts their very
souls; divers others, having little or no acquaintance before, have yet
contracted a firm and lasting friendship over a glass of wine, which
like fire softened and melted their tempers, and disposed them for a
happy union. But in such a company, and of such men as Periander hath
invited, there is no need of can and chalice, but the Muses themselves
throwing a subject of discourse among you, as it were a sober cup,
wherein is contained much of delight and drollery and seriousness
too, do hereby provoke, nourish, and increase friendship among you,
suffering the can to rest quietly upon the bowl, contrary to the rule
which Hesiod[2] gives for those who have more skill for carousing than
for discoursing,
Though all the rest with stated rules we bound,
Unmix’d, unmeasured, are thy goblets crown’d:[3]
for it was the old Greek way, as Homer here tells us, to drink one to
another in course and order. So Ajax gave a share of his meat to his
next neighbor.
When Mnesiphilus had discoursed after this manner, in comes Chersias
the poet, whom Periander had lately pardoned and received into favor
upon Chilo’s mediation. Saith Chersias: Does not Jupiter distribute
to the Gods their proportion and dividend sparingly and severally, as
Agamemnon did to his commanders when his guests drank to one another?
If, O Chersias, quoth Cleodemus, as you narrate, certain doves bring
him his ambrosia every meal, flying with a world of hardship through
the rocks called _Planctae_ (or _wandering_), can you blame
him for his sparingness and frugality and dealing out to his guests by
measure?
14. 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.”[4] 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.[5] 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.
15. 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 agreeable 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 middle, 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 framed 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.
16. Yea, doubtless, replies Solon, or we may be reputed more
injudicious than the Egyptians. For when any person dies among them,
they open him and show him so dissected to the sun; his guts they throw
into the river, to the remaining parts they allow a decent burial, for
they think the body now pure and clean; and to speak truly, they are
the foulest parts of the body, and like that lower hell crammed with
dead carcasses and at the same time flowing with offensive rivers, such
as flame with fire and are disturbed with tempests. No live creature
feeds upon another living creature, but we first take away their lives,
and in that action we do them great wrong; forasmuch as whatsoever
is transmuted and turned into another loseth the nature which it had
before, and is corrupted that it may become nourishment to the others.
Now the very plants have life in them,—that is clear and manifest, for
we perceive they grow and spread. But to abstain from eating flesh (as
they say Orpheus of old did) is more a pretence than a real avoiding
of an injury proceeding from the just use of meat. One way there is,
and but one way, whereby a man may avoid offence, namely by being
contented with his own, not coveting what belongs to his neighbor. But
if a man’s circumstances be such and so hard that he cannot subsist
without wronging another man, the fault is God’s, not his. The case
being such with some persons, I would fain learn if it be not advisable
to destroy, at the same time with injustice, these instruments of
injustice, the belly, stomach, and liver, which have no sense of
justice or appetite to honesty, and therefore may be fitly compared to
your cook’s implements, his knives and his caldrons, or to a baker’s
chimney and bins and kneading-tubs. Verily one may observe the souls of
some men confined to their bodies, as to a house of correction, barely
to do the drudgery and to serve the necessities thereof. It was our own
case but even now. While we minded our meat and our bellies, we had
neither eyes to see nor ears to hear; but now the table is taken away,
we are free to discourse among ourselves and to enjoy one another;
and now our bellies are full, we have nothing else to do or care for.
And if this condition and state wherein we at present are would last
our whole life, we having no wants to fear nor riches to covet (for a
desire of superfluities attends a desire of necessaries), would not our
lives be much more comfortable and life itself much more desirable?
Yea, but Cleodemus stiffly maintains the necessity of eating and
drinking, else we shall want tables and cups, and shall not be able
to sacrifice to Ceres and Proserpina. By a parity of reason there
is a necessity there should be contentions and wars, that men may
have bulwarks and citadels and fortifications by land, fleets and
navies abroad at sea, and that having slain hundreds, we may offer
sacrifices (called Hecatomphonia) after the Messenian manner. By this
reason we shall find men grudging their own health, for (they will
say) there will be no need of down or feather beds unless they are
sick; and so those healing Gods, and particularly Esculapius, will be
vast sufferers, for they will infallibly lose so many fat and rich
sacrifices yearly. Nay, the art of chirurgery will perish, and all
those ingenious instruments that have been invented for the cure of
man will lie by useless and insignificant. And what great difference
is there between this and that? For meat is a medicine against hunger,
and such as keep a regular diet are said to cure themselves,—I mean
such as use meat not for wantonness but of necessity. For it is plain,
the prejudices we receive by feeding far surmount the pleasures. And
the pleasure of eating fills a very little place in our bodies and very
little time. But why should I trouble you or myself with a catalogue of
the many vexations which attend that man who is necessitated to provide
for a family, and the many difficulties which distract him in his
undertaking? For my part, I verily believe Homer had an eye to this
very thing, when, to prove the immortality of the Gods, he made use of
this very argument, that they were such because they used no victuals;
For not the bread of man their life sustains,
Nor wine’s inflaming juice supplies their veins;[6]
intimating meat to be the cause of death as well as the means of
sustaining and supporting life. From hence proceed divers fatal
distempers caused much more by fulness than by fasting; and to digest
what we have eaten proves frequently a harder matter than to provide
and procure what we eat. And when we solicitously enquire beforehand
what we should do or how we should employ ourselves if we had not such
care and business to take up our time, this is as if Danaus’s daughters
should trouble their heads to know what they should do if they had no
sieves to fill with water. We drudge and toil for necessaries, for want
of better and nobler business. As slaves then who have gained their
freedom do now and then those drudgeries and discharge those servile
employments and offices for their own benefit which they undertook
heretofore for their masters’ advantage, so the mind of man, which at
present is enslaved to the body and the service thereof, when once it
becomes free from this slavery, will take care of itself, and spend its
time in contemplation of truth without distraction or disturbance. Such
were our discourses upon this head, O Nicarchus.
17. And before Solon had fully finished, in came Gorvias, Periander’s
brother, who was just returned from Taenarum, whither he had been sent
by the advice of the oracle to sacrifice to Neptune and to conduct
a deputation. Upon his entrance we welcomed him home; and Periander
having among the rest saluted him, Gorgias sat by him upon a bed, and
privately whispered something to his brother which we could not hear.
Periander by his various gestures and motions discovered different
affections; sometimes he seemed sad and melancholic, by and by
disturbed and angry; frequently he looked as doubtful and distrustful
men use to do; awhile after he lifts up his eyes as is usual with men
in a maze. At last recovering himself, saith he, I have a mind to
impart to you the contents of this embassy; but I scarce dare do it,
remembering Thales’s aphorism, how things impossible or incredible
are to be concealed and only things credible and probable are to be
related. Bias answered, I crave leave to explain Thales’s saying, We
may distrust enemies, even though they speak things credible, and trust
friends, even though they relate things incredible; and I suppose by
enemies he meant vicious men and foolish, and by friends, wise and good
men. Then, brother Gorgias, quoth Periander, I pray relate the whole
story particularly.