Republic

It was indeed, said he, a strange potion for a man in that condition. Not strange, said I, if you reflect that the former Asclepiads made no use of our modern coddling[*](This coddling treatment of disease, which Plato affects to reprobate here, he recommends from the point of view of science in the Timaeus (89 C): διὸ παιδαγωγεῖν δεῖ διαίταις, etc. Cf. Euripides Orestes 883; and even in the Republic 459 C.) medication of diseases before the time of Herodicus. But Herodicus[*](Cf. Protagoras 316 E, Phaedrus 227 D. To be distinguished from his namesake, the brother of Gorgias in Gorgias 448 B. Cf. Cope on Aristotle Rhet. i. 5, Wilamowitz-Kiessling, Phil. Unt. xv. p. 220, Juthner, Philostratus uber Gymnastik, p. 10.) was a trainer and became a valetudinarian, and blended gymnastics and medicine, for the torment first and chiefly of himself and then of many successors. How so? he said. By lingering out his death, said I; for living in perpetual observance of his malady, which was incurable, he was not able to effect a cure, but lived through his days unfit for the business of life, suffering the tortures of the damned if he departed a whit from his fixed regimen, and struggling against death by reason of his science he won the prize of a doting old age.[*](Cf. Macaulay on Mitford’s History of Greece: It (oligarchical government) has a sort of valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the balance of Sanctorius; it takes no exercise; it exposes itself to no accident; it is seized with a hypochondriac alarm at every new sensation; it trembles at every breath; it lets blood for every inflammation; and this, without ever enjoying a day of health or pleasure, drags out its existence to a doting and debilitated old age. That Macaulay here is consciously paraphrasing Plato is apparent from his unfair use of the Platonic passage in his essay on Bacon. Cf. further Euripides Supp. 1109-1113; Seneca on early medicine, Epistles xv. 3 (95) 14 ff., overdoes both Spencer and Macaulay. Cf. Rousseau, Emile, Book I.: Je ne sais point apprendre à vivre à qui ne songe qu’à s’empêcher de mourir; La Rochefoucauld (Max. 282): C’est une ennuyeuse maladie que de conserver sa santé par un trop grand régime.) A noble prize[*](The pun γήρας and γέρας is hardly translatable. Cf. Pherecydes apud Diogenes Laertius i. 119 χθονίῃ δὲ ὄνομα ἐγένετο Γῆ, ἐπειδὴ αὐτῇ Ζὰς γῆν γέρας διδοῖ (vol. i. p. 124 L.C.L.). For the ironical use of καλόν cf. Euripides Cyclops 551, Sappho, fr. 53 (58).) indeed for his science, he said. The appropriate one, said I, for a man who did not know that it was not from ignorance or inacquaintance with this type of medicine that Aesculapius did not discover it to his descendants, but because he knew that for all well-governed peoples there is a work assigned to each man in the city which he must perform, and no one has leisure to be sick[*](Cf. Plutarch, De sanitate tuenda 23, Sophocles, fr. 88. 11 (?), Lucian, Nigrinus 22, differently; Hotspur’s, Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick?) and doctor himself all his days. And this we absurdly enough perceive in the case of a craftsman, but don’t see in the case of the rich and so-called fortunate. How so? he said. A carpenter, said I, when he is sick expects his physician to give him a drug which will operate as an emetic on the disease, or to get rid of it by purging[*](For ἢ κάτω cf. Chaucer, Ne upward purgative ne downward laxative.) or the use of cautery or the knife. But if anyone prescribes for him a long course of treatment with swathings[*](Cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Acharnians 439.) about the head and their accompaniments, he hastily says that he has no leisure to be sick and that such a life of preoccupation with his illess and neglect of the work that lies before him isn’t worth living. And thereupon he bids farewell to that kind of physician, enters upon his customary way of life, regains his health, and lives attending to his affairs—or, if his body is not equal to strain, he dies and is freed from all his troubles.[*](This alone marks the humor of the whole passage, which Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon seems to miss. Cf. Aristophanes Acharnians 757;Apology 41 D.) For such a man, he said, that appears to be the right use of medicine.

And is not the reason, I said, that he had a task and that life wasn’t worth acceptance on condition of not doing his work? Obviously, he said. But the rich man, we say, has no such appointed task, the necessity of abstaining from which renders life intolerable. I haven’t heard of any. Why, haven’t you heard that saying of Phocylides,[*](The line of Phocylides is toyed with merely to vary the expression of the thought. Bergk restores it δίζησθαι βιοτήν, ἀρετὴν δ’ ὅταν ᾖ βίος ἤδη, which is Horace’s (Epistles i. 1. 53 f.): Quaerenda pecunia primum est; Virtus post nummos!) that after a man has made his pile he ought to practice virtue? Before, too, I fancy, he said. Let us not quarrel with him on that point, I said, but inform ourselves whether this virtue is something for the rich man to practise, and life is intolerable if he does not, or whether we are to suppose that while valetudinarianism is a hindrance to single-minded attention to carpentry and the other arts, it is no obstacle to the fulfilment of Phocylides’ exhortation. Yes, indeed, he said, this excessive care for the body that goes beyond simple gymnastics[*](In the Gorgias (464 B) ἰατρική is recognized as co-ordinate in the care of the body with γυμναστική. Here, whatever goes beyond the training and care that will preserve the health of a normal body is austerely rejected. Cf. 410 B.) is the greatest of all obstacles. For it is troublesome in household affairs and military service and sedentary offices in the city. And, chief of all, it puts difficulties in the way of any kind of instruction, thinking, or private meditation, forever imagining headaches[*](As Macaulay, Essay on Bacon, puts it: That a valetudinarian . . . who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre’s tales should be treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the Timaeus without a headache, was a notion which the humane spirit of the English schools of wisdom altogether rejected. For the thought cf. Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 12. 6-7.) and dizziness and attributing their origin to philosophy. So that wherever this kind of virtue is practiced[*](Literally virtue is practiced in this way. Cf. 503 D for a similar contrast between mental and other labors. And for the meaning of virtue cf. the Elizabethan: Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds.) and tested it is in every way a hindrance.[*](There is a suggestion of Stoic terminology in Plato’s use of ἐμπόδιος and similar words. Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia i. 2. 4. On the whole passage cf. again Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon, Maximus of Tyre (Duebn.) 10, and the diatribe on modern medicine and valetudinarianism in Edward Carpenter’s Civilization, Its Cause and Cure.) For it makes the man always fancy himself sick and never cease from anguishing about his body. Naturally, he said. Then, shall we not say that it was because Asclepius knew this—that for those who were by nature and course of life sound of body but had some localized disease, that for such, I say, and for this habit he revealed the art of medicine, and, driving out their disease by drugs and surgery, prescribed for them their customary regimen in order not to interfere with their civic duties, but that, when bodies were diseased inwardly and throughout, he did not attempt by diet and by gradual evacuations and infusions to prolong a wretched existence for the man and have him beget in all likelihood similar wretched offspring? But if a man was incapable of living in the established round[*](Cf. Thucydides i. 130.) and order of life, he did not think it worth while to treat him, since such a fellow is of no use either to himself or to the state. A most politic Asclepius you’re telling us of,[*](There is a touch of comedy in the Greek. Cf. Eupolis, fr. 94 Kock ταχὺν λέγεις μέν.) he said.

Obviously, said I, that was his character. And his sons too, don’t you in see that at Troy they approved themselves good fighting-men and practised medicine as I described it? Don’t you remember[*](Cf. the Homeric ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ;) that in the case of Menelaus too from the wound that Pandarus inflicted

They sucked the blood, and soothing simples sprinkled?