The Greeks, in general, were noted among the Europeans for their abstemiousness; and Antiphanes, the comic poet (in Athenæus), terms them “leaf-eaters” (φυλλοτρῶγες). Amongst the Greeks, the Athenians and Spartans were specially noted for frugal living. That of the latter is proverbial. The comic poets frequently refer, in terms of ridicule, to what seemed to them so unaccountable an indifferentism to the “good things” of life on the part of the witty and refined people of Attica. See the Deipnosophists (dinner-philosophers) of Athenæus (the great repertory of the bon-vivantism of the time), and Plutarch’s Symposiacs.
It has been pointed out by Professor Mahaffy, in his recent work on old Greek life, that slaughter-houses and butchers are seldom, or never, mentioned in Greek literature. “The eating of [flesh] meat,” he observes, “must have been almost confined to sacrificial feasts; for, in ordinary language, butchers’ meat was called victim (ἱερεῖον). The most esteemed, or popular, dishes were madsa, a sort of porridge of wheat or barley; various kinds of bread (see Deipn. iii.); honey, beans, lupines, lettuce and salad, onions and leeks. Olives, dates, and figs formed the usual fruit portion of their meals. In regard to non-vegetable food, fish was the most sought after and preferred to anything else; and the well-known term opson, which so frequently recurs in Greek literature, was specially appropriated to it.
Contemporary with the great master of language was the great master of medicine, Hippokrates, (460–357) who is to his science what Homer is to poetry and Herodotus to history—the first historical founder of the art of healing. He was a native of Kōs, a small island of the S.W. coast of Lesser Asia, the traditional cradle and home of the disciples of Asklepios, or Æsculapius (as he was termed by the Latins), the semi-divine author and patron of medicine. And it may be remarked, in passing, that the College of Asklepiads of Kōs were careful to exercise a despotism as severe and exclusive as that which obtains, for the most part, with the modern orthodox schools.
Amongst a large number of writings of various kinds attributed to Hippokrates is the treatise On Regimen in Acute Diseases (περὶ Διαίτης Ὀξέων), which is generally received as genuine; and On the Healthful Regimen (περὶ Διαίτης Ὑγιεινῆς), which belongs to the same age, though not to the canonical writings of the founder of the school himself. He was the author, real or reputed, of some of the most valuable apophthegms of Greek antiquity. Ars longa—Vita brevis (education is slow; life is short) is the best known, and most often quoted. What is still more to our purpose is his maxim—“Over-drinking is almost as bad as over-eating.” Of all the productions of this most voluminous of writers, his Aphorisms (Ἀφορισμοί), in which these specimens of laconic wisdom are collected, and which consists of some four hundred short practical sentences, are the most popular.
About a century after the death of Plato appeared a popular exposition of the Pythagorean teaching, in hexameters, which is known by the title given to it by Iamblichus—the Golden Verses. “More than half of them,” says Professor Clifford, “consist of a sort of versified ‘Duty to God and my Neighbour,’ except that it is not designed by the rich to be obeyed by the poor; that it lays stress on the laws of health; and that it is just such sensible counsel for the good and right conduct of life as an Englishman might now-a-days give to his son.”
Hierokles, an eminent Neo-Platonist of the fifth century, A.D., gave a course of lectures upon them at Alexandria—which since the time of the Ptolemies had been one of the chief centres of Greek learning and science—and his commentary is sufficiently interesting. Suïdas, the lexicographer, speaks of his matter and style in the highest terms of praise. “He astonished his hearers everywhere,” he tells us, “by the calm, the magnificence, the width of his superlative intellect, and by the sweetness of his speech, full of the most beautiful words and things.” The Alexandrian lecturer quotes the old Pythagorean maxims:
“You shall honour God best by becoming godlike in your thoughts. Whoso giveth God honour as to one that needeth it, that man in his folly hath made himself greater than God. The wise man only is a priest, is a lover of God, is skilful to pray; ... for that man only knows how to worship, who begins by offering himself as the victim, fashions his own soul into a divine image, and furnishes his mind as a temple for the reception of the divine light.”
The following extracts will serve as a specimen of the religious or moral character of the Golden Verses:—