See, too, the elder Pliny, who professes his conviction that “the plainest food is also the most beneficial” (cibus simplex utilissimus), and asserts that it is from his eating that man derives most of his diseases, and from thence that all the drugs and all the arts of physicians abound. (Hist. Nat. xxvi., 28.)
[29] Cf. Pope’s accusation of the gluttony of his species:—
“Of half that live, the butcher and the tomb.”
—Essay on Man.
[30] Compare Juvenal passim, Martial, Athenæus, Plutarch, and Clement of Alexandria.
[31] Ep. cx. Cf. St. Chrysostom (Hom. i. on Coloss. i.) who seems to have borrowed his equally forcible admonition on the same subject from Seneca.
[32] Epistola vii. and De Brevitate Vitæ xiv. As to the effect of the gross diet of the later athletes, Ariston (as quoted by Lipsius) compared them to columns in the gymnasium, at once “sleek and stony”—λιπαροὺς καὶ λιθίνους. Diogenes of Sinope, being asked why the athletes seemed always so void of sense and intelligence, replied, “Because they are made up of ox and swine flesh.” Galen, the great Greek medical writer of the second century of our æra, makes the same remark upon the proverbial stupidity of this class, and adds: “And this is the universal experience of mankind—that a gross stomach does not make a refined mind.” The Greek proverb, “παχεῖα γαστὴρ λεπτὸν οὐ τίκτει νόον,” exactly expresses the same experience.
[33] De Clementiâ i. and ii. The author has been accused of flattering a notorious tyrant. The charge is, however, unjust, since Nero, at the period of the dedication of the treatise to him, had not yet discovered his latent viciousness and cruelty. Like Voltaire, in recent times, Seneca bestowed perhaps unmerited praise, in the hope of flattering the powerful into the practice of justice and virtue.
[34] Cf. the sad experiences of the great Jewish prophet. “The prophets prophesy falsely,” &c.
[35] In the original, “dumb animals” (mutis animalibus)—a term which, it deserves special note, Seneca usually employs, rather than the traditional expressions “beasts” and “brutes.” The term “dumb animals” is not strictly accurate, seeing that almost all terrestrials have the use of voice though it may not be intelligible to human ears. Yet it is, at all events, preferable to the old traditional terms still in general use.