De tuenda sanitate praecepta

Plutarch

Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. II. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1928 (printing).

ZEUXIPPUS. The Lydians, they say, [*](Herodotus, i. 94.) in a time of famine, alternately spent one day in regaling themselves with food, and the next in jollity and games of chance. But in the case of a scholarly and cultivated man, on an occasion which requires a later dinner than usual, a mathematical problem on hand, or some pamphlet or musical instrument, will not permit him to be harried by his belly; on the contrary, he will steadily turn away and transfer his thoughts from the table to these other things, and scare away his appetites, like Harpies, by means of the Muses. Does not the Scythian,[*](Cf. Plutarch, Life of Demetrius, chap. xix. (p. 897 C).) while he is drinking, ofttimes put his hand to his bow, and twang the string, thus summoning back his senses which are being unstrung by the liquor; and shall a Greek man be afraid of those who deride him when by letters and books he endeavours quietly to ease and relax an unfeeling

and inexorable desire? When the young men described by Menander [*](From an unknown play; cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p 183, No. 607. Cf. also Plutarch, Moralia, 706 B.) were, as they were drinking, insidiously beset by the pimp, who introduced some handsome and high-priced concubines, each one of them (as he says),

Bent down his head and munched his own dessert,

being on his guard and afraid to look at them. But scholars have many fair and pleasant outlooks and diversions, if so be they can in no other way keep under control the canine and bestial element in their appetites when at table. The utterances of athletic trainers and the talk of teachers of gymnastics, who assert on every occasion that scholarly conversation at dinner spoils the food and makes the head heavy, are to be feared only when we propose to solve the Indian problem or to discuss determinants [*](These are both thought to be logical fallacies of the type of Achilles and the tortoise, or the Liar. Cf. also Moralia, 1070 C.) during dinner. The leaf-bud at the top of the date-palm is sweet, but they say that it brings on a violent headache [*](Cf. Xenophon, Anabasis, ii. 3. 15.); and an exercise in logic is by no means a sweet morsel [*](From Pindar, Frag. 124 (ed. Christ).) to top off a dinner, but, on the contrary, it is quite likely to bring on a headache, and is extremely fatiguing as well. But if they will not allow us to start any other inquiry or scholarly discussion,[*](Cf.Moralia 612 F, where this topic is treated more fully.) or to read while at dinner any of those things which, besides being beautiful and useful, contain also the element of pleasurable allurement and sweetness, we shall bid them not to bother us, but to take themselves off, and in the training grounds and buildings to engage in such talk with the athletes, whom they have torn from their books,

and by accustoming them to spend the whole day in jesting and scurrility, have, as the clever Ariston said, made them as glossy and blockish as the pillars in a gymnasium. But as for ourselves, we shall follow the advice of the physicians who recommend always to let some time intervene between dinner and sleep, and not, after jumbling our victuals into our body and oppressing our spirit, to hinder our digestion at once with the food that is still unassimilated and fermenting, but rather to provide for it some respite and relaxation; just as those who think it is the right thing to keep their bodies moving after dinner do not do this by means of foot-races and strenuous boxing and wrestling, but by gentle walking and decorous dancing, so we shall hold that we ought not to distract our minds after dinner either with business or cares or pseudo-learned disputations, which have as their goal an ostentatious or stirring rivalry. But many of the problems of natural science are light and enticing, and there are many stories which contain ethical considerations and the soul’s satisfaction, as Homer has phrased this, and nothing repellent. The spending of time over questions of history and poetry some persons, not unpleasingly, have called a second repast [*](Cf.Moralia 672 E.) for men of scholarship and culture. There are also inoffensive stories and fables, and it is less onerous to exchange opinions about a flute and a lyre than to listen to the sound of the lyre and the

flute itself. The length of time for this is such as the digestion needs to assert itself and gain the upper hand over the food as it is gradually absorbed and begins to agree with us.

ZEUXIPPUS. Aristotle holds [*](Frag. 224 (233 in Rose’s edition).)that walking about on the part of those who have just dined revives the bodily warmth, while sleep, if they go to sleep at once, smothers it; but others hold that quiet improves the digestive faculties, while movement disturbs the processes of assimilation; and this has persuaded some to walk about immediately after dinner, and others to remain quiet. In view of the two opinions a man might appear properly to attain both results who after dinner keeps his body warm and quiet, and does not let his mind sink at once into sleep and idleness, but, as has been previously suggested, [*](Supra 130 A-E.) lightly diverts and enlivens his spirits by talking himself and listening to another on one of the numerous topics which are agreeable and not acrimonious or depressing.

ZEUXIPPUS. The use of emetics and cathartics, abominable comforts for an overloaded stomach, [*](Plato, Critias, p. 115 B. ) ought never, except under the stress of great necessity, to be inaugurated, as is the way of most people, who fill up their bodies for the sake of emptying them, and then empty them for the sake of filling them up again, thus transgressing against nature, and are vexed no less at their fullness than at their emptiness — or, better, they are utterly depressed over their fullness, as being a hindrance to enjoyment, but set about bringing on emptiness with the idea of making room always for pleasures. The harmfulness in all this is manifest; for both procedures give rise to disorders and convulsive movements in the

body. What is peculiarly bad in the use of an emetic is that it increases and fosters an insatiate greediness. For the feelings of hunger become rough and turbulent, like rivers that are interrupted in their course, and they gulp the food down violently, always ravening and resembling not appetites that need victuals, but inflammations that need medicines and poultices. For this reason the pleasures that lay hold upon such persons are swift in their action and imperfect, and attended by much palpitation and agitation while being experienced, and these are succeeded by distensions and sharp pains in the passages, and retention of gases, which cannot wait for the natural movements, but stay in the upper part of the body as in water-logged ships which require the jettisoning of their cargo, not merely of their surplus. The violent disturbances lower down in the bowels resulting from medication, by decomposing and liquefying the existing contents, increase rather than relieve the overcrowding. Just imagine that anybody, feeling much troubled at the crowd of Greeks living in his city, should fill up the city with Arab and Scythian immigrants! Yet it is just this radical mistake that some people make in connexion with the expulsion of the surplus of habitual and familiar foods, when they introduce into the body from the outside Cnidian berries, scammony, or other incongruous and drastic agents, which have more need of being purged away than power of purging our nature. It is best, therefore, by moderate and temperate living to make the body constantly selfsufficient and well adjusted as regards filling the stomach and emptying it.

ZEUXIPPUS. If ever absolute necessity befall us, vomiting

should be induced without medication and a great ado, and without causing any disturbance beyond merely avoiding indigestion by at once allowing the excess to be peacefully ejected. Just as linen cleansed with lye and washing powders wears out faster than that washed in plenty of water, so vomitings with drugs maltreat and ruin the body. If the bowels are getting sluggish, there is no medicine like some sorts of food that afford a mild stimulus to the inclinations and gently dissolve the cause of trouble. Experience with these is familiar to all, and their use is not attended by discomfort. But if it will not yield to these, the drinking of water for several days, or fasting, or an enema, should be tried next rather than disturbing and pernicious dosing to which most people hurriedly resort, after the manner of licentious women who employ drugs and instruments to produce abortion for the sake of the enjoyment of conceiving again.

ZEUXIPPUS. But we need say no more about this class of persons. However, to speak once again of those too exact persons who interject set periods of fasting according to a fixed schedule, they are wrong in teaching their nature to feel a need of restraint when not in need of it, and in making necessary the unnecessary retrenchment at a time which makes demand for what is customarily required. It is better to apply such discipline to the body with a certain freedom, and, if there be no premonitory or suspicious symptoms, to keep, as has been already suggested,[*](Supra, 128 E.) our general mode of life responsive to changes so as to meet whatever may befall it, and not to let it be enslaved or bound to one formula of life, which has trained itself to be guided by certain

seasons, or numbers, or schedules. For it is not safe, nor easy, nor befitting a citizen or a man, but like the life of an oyster or the trunk of a tree — this immutability and forced compliance in the matter of food and abstinence, movement and rest; it is fitting only for men who have reduced and restricted themselves to a retired, idle, solitary, friendless, and inglorious life, far removed from the duties of citizenship. No, said he, it fits not with my opinion. [*](A paraphrase of Homer, Il. ix. 108.)

ZEUXIPPUS. For health is not to be purchased by idleness and inactivity, which are the greatest evils attendant on sickness, and the man who thinks to conserve his health by uselessness and ease does not differ from him who guards his eyes by not seeing, and his voice by not speaking. For a man in good health could not devote himself to any better object than to numerous humane activities. Least of all is it to be assumed that laziness is healthful, if it destroys what health aims at; and it is not true either that inactive people are more healthy. For Xenocrates did not keep in better health than Phocion, nor Theophrastus than Demetrius, and the running away from every activity that smacked of ambition did not help Epicurus and his followers at all to attain their much-talked-of condition of perfect bodily health. But we ought, by attention to other details, to preserve the natural constitution of our bodies, recognizing that every life has room for both disease and health.

ZEUXIPPUS. However, our friend said that to men in public life should be given advice opposite to that which Plato [*](Not extant in Plato’s writings, but a faint suggestion of the idea may be found in Laws, p. 643 B.)

used to give to the young men. For the philosopher, as he took his leave after the exercise, was in the habit of saying, Be sure, my boys, that you store up the lesson of this hour of leisure for some good end. But we would advise those who take part in the government to employ their active labours for good and necessary ends, and not subject their bodies to stress on account of small and paltry matters, as is the way of most people, who make themselves miserable over incidental things, and wear themselves out with loss of sleep, going to this place and that place, and running about, all for no useful or decent purpose, but only from a spirit of insolence, envy, or rivalry against others, or in the pursuit of unprofitable and empty repute. It was in special reference to such people, as I think, that Demolitus said,[*](Mullach, Frag. Philos. Graec. i. p. 342; cf. also Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ii. p. 91.) that, if the body were to enter suit against the soul for cruel and abusive treatment, the soul would not be acquitted. Perhaps, too, there is some truth in what Theophrastus said,[*](This and the preceding quotation are given in greatly amplified form in Fragment i, 2 of De anima (vol. vii. p. 2 of Bernardakis’s edition of the Moralia).) in his metaphorical statement, that the soul pays a high rental to the body. At any rate, the body reaps the fruit of more evils from the soul than the soul from the body, inasmuch as the soul uses the body unreasonably, and the body does not get the care that it deserves. For whenever the soul is occupied with its own emotions, strivings, and concerns, it is prodigal of the body. I do not know what possessed Jason [*](Despot of Pherae; cf. the note supra on 89 C. Cf. also for the sentiment Plutarch, Moralia, 817 F, and Aristotle, Rhetoric, i. 12; also The Epistle to the Romans, iii. 8 and vi. 1.) to say: We must do wrong in small ways for the sake of doing right in large ways. But we, with good reason, would advise the man in public life to be indifferent to small things, and to take his ease and give himself

plenty of rest while attending to them, if, when he comes to honourable and important activities, he wishes to have his body not worn by drudging, nor dull, nor on the point of giving out, but refreshed by quiet, like a ship in the dock; so that when the soul again points the way to needful activities, it May run like weanling colt beside its dam.[*](Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Gr.ii. p. 738, Simonides of Amorgus, No. 5; repeated in Moralia, 84 D, 446 E, 790 F, and in a fragment quoted by Stobaeus, Florilegium, cxv. 18.)

ZEUXIPPUS. Therefore, when circumstances afford us opportunity, we should give ourselves a chance to recuperate, and to this end we should not grudge to our body either sleep or luncheon or ease, which is the mean between indulgence and discomfort,[*](An adumbration of the Aristotelian doctrine that virtue is a mean.) nor observe the sort of limit that most people observe whereby they wear out their body, like steel that is being tempered, by the changes to which they subject it; whenever the body has been strained and oppressed by much hard work, it is once more softened and relaxed immoderately in pleasures, and again, as the next step, while it is still flaccid and relaxed from venery and wine, it is coerced into going to the Forum or to Court or into some business requiring fervent and intense application. Heracleitus, suffering from dropsy, bade his physician to bring on a drought to follow the wet spell;[*](Cf. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, i. pp. 67-68.) but most people are completely in error, inasmuch as, when they are in the midst of exertions, labours, and deprivations, they are most inclined to surrender their bodies to pleasures to be made languid and relaxed, and then, after their pleasures, bending them, as it were, into place, and stretching them tight again.

For Nature does not require any such form of compensation in the case of the body. But, on the other hand, in the soul the licentious and unmannerly element, immediately after undergoing hardships, is carried away, as sailors are, by wantonness to pleasures and enjoyments, and, after the pleasures, it is again coerced to tasks and business; and the result is that it does not allow Nature to attain the composure and calm which she needs most, but deranges and disturbs her because of this irregularity. But people who have sense are least given to proffering pleasures to the body when it is busied with labours. For they have absolutely no need, nor even recollection, of such things, inasmuch as they are keeping their thoughts intent on the good to be accomplished by their activity; and by the joy or earnestness in their souls they completely dwarf their other desires. There is a jocose remark attributed to Epameinondas in regard to a good man who fell ill and died about the time of the battle of Leuctra: Great Heavens! How did he find time to die when there was so much going on? This may be repeated with truth in the case of a man who has in hand some public activity or philosophic meditation: What time has this man now for indigestion or drunkenness or carnal desires? But when such men find themselves again at leisure following upon their activities, they compose and rest their bodies, guarding against and avoiding useless toils, and more especially unnecessary pleasures, on the ground that they are inimical to Nature.

ZEUXIPPUS. I have heard that Tiberius Caesar once said that a man over sixty who holds out his hand to a physician is ridiculous.[*](Cf.Moralia, 794 B; Tacitus, Annals, vi. 46.) To me that seems a pretty

strong statement, but this does seem to be true, that each person ought neither to be unacquainted with the peculiarities of his own pulse (for there are many individual diversities), nor ignorant of any idiosyncrasy which his body has in regard to temperature and dryness,[*](Cf.Moralia, 735 F.) and what things in actual practice have proved to be beneficial or detrimental to it. For the man has no perception regarding himself, and is but a blind and deaf tenant in his own body, who gets his knowledge of these matters from another, and must inquire of his physician whether his health is better in summer or winter, whether he can more easily tolerate liquid or solid foods, and whether his pulse is naturally fast or slow. For it is useful and easy for us to know things of this sort, since we have daily experience and association with them.

ZEUXIPPUS. In regard to food and drink it is expedient to note what kinds are wholesome rather than what are pleasant, and to be better acquainted with those that are good in the stomach rather than in the mouth, and those that do not disturb the digestion rather than those that greatly tickle the palate. For to inquire of a physician what is hard or easy for oneself to digest, and what is constipating or laxative, is no less disgraceful than to inquire what is sweet and what is bitter and what is sour. But nowadays people correct the chefs, being expert at detecting what dish has in it more sweetening or salt or sourness than is proper; but they do not themselves know what, when taken into their own bodies, will be light and painless and beneficial. Therefore, a mistake is not often made in seasoning a soup at their houses, but by their vile and pernicious seasoning of themselves every day they provide a plentiful business

for the physicians. Now such persons do not regard the sweetest soup as the best, but they mix in also bitter and pungent flavourings; on the other hand, they inject into the body numerous cloying pleasures, partly from ignorance, and partly because they do not remember that to whatever is healthful and beneficial nature adds a pleasure which causes neither pain nor repentance. But we must keep in mind both those things that are congenial and suitable to the body, and, conversely, as changes attendant on the season occur and different circumstances arise, we should, in full knowledge of the facts, suitably adjust our mode of living to each.

ZEUXIPPUS. Now as to various difficulties, due to observance of petty detail and to lack of freedom, which most men encounter — men who are engaged in the toilsome business of harvesting and caring for their crops and by sleepless nights and running hither and thither bring to light the latent infirmities of their bodies — there is no good reason to fear that such will be experienced by scholars and men in public life, with reference to whom our discussion has taken its present form; but these must guard against another and more subtle kind of pettiness that inheres in letters and learning, an influence which compels them to be unsparing and careless of their body, so that they oftentimes, when the body is ready to succumb, will not surrender, but will force the mortal to be partner with the immortal, and the earth-born with the celestial, in rivalry and achievement. Then later, to quote the words of the ox to his fellow-servant the camel, who was unwilling to lighten his burden: Well, before long you will be carrying me as well as all this load (as actually

resulted when the ox fell dead).[*](Cf. Aesop’s Fables, No. 125.)And this is just what happens to the mind: if it is unwilling to relax a little and give up to the body in distress and need, a little later a fever or a vertigo attacks it, and it is compelled to give up its books and discussions and studies, and share with the body its sickness and weariness. Plato [*](Timaeus, p. 88 B.) was right, therefore, in advising that there should be no movement of the body without the mind or of the mind without the body, but that we should preserve, as it were, the even balance of a well-matched team; when the body shares most in the work and weariness of the mind we should repay it by giving it the most care and attention, and we should feel that of the good gifts which fair and lovely Health bestows the fairest is the unhampered opportunity to get and to use virtue both in words and in deeds.