“‘In fact, it would not be amiss, I imagine, to compare this whole system of feeding and living to that kind of music and singing which is adapted to the panharmonicum, and composed in every variety of rhythm.’
“‘Undoubtedly it would be a just comparison.’
“‘Is it not true, then, that as in music variety begat dissoluteness in the soul, so here it begets disease in the body, while simplicity in gymnastic [diet] is as productive of health as in music it was productive of temperance?’
“‘Most true.’
“‘But when dissoluteness and diseases abound in a city, are not law courts and surgeries opened in abundance, and do not Law and Physic begin to hold their heads high, when numbers even of well-born persons devote themselves with eagerness to these professions?’
“‘What else can we expect?’
“‘And do you not hold it disgraceful to require medical aid, unless it be for a wound, or an attack of illness incidental to the time of the year—to require it, I mean, owing to our laziness and the life we lead, and to get ourselves so stuffed with humours and wind, like quagmires, as to compel the clever sons of Asklepios to call diseases by such names as flatulence and catarrh?’
“‘To be sure, these are very strange and new-fangled names for disorders.’” (Book III.)
Elsewhere, in a well-known passage (in The Laws), Plato pronounces that the springs of human conduct and moral worth depend principally on diet. “I observe,” says he, “that men’s thoughts and actions are intimately connected with the threefold need and desire (accordingly as they are properly used or abused, virtue or its opposite is the result) of eating, drinking, and sexual love.” He himself was remarkable for the extreme frugality of his living. Like most of his countrymen, he was a great eater of figs; and so much did he affect that frugal repast that he was called, par excellence, the “lover of figs” (φιλόσυκος).