Why do you talk such stuff, why run about
To the Lyceum and the Academy,
To the Odeum's gates, hunting in vain
For all the sophists' nonsense? there's no good in it;
Let us drink, drink, I say. O Sicon, Sicon!
Let us amuse ourselves; while time allows us
To gratify our souls.—Enjoy yourself,
My good friend Manes! nothing is worth more
To you than your own stomach. That's your father;
That only is your mother;—as for virtues,
And embassies, and military commands,
They are but noisy boasts, vain empty dreams.
Fate at its destined hour will come to chill you;
Take all that you can get to eat and drink;
Pericles, Codrus, Cimon, are but dust.
16. But it would be better, says Chrysippus, if the lines inscribed on the tomb of Sardanapalus were altered thus—
Knowing that thou art mortal, feed thy soul
On wise discourse. There is no good in eating.
For I am now no good, who once did eat
All that I could, and sought all kinds of pleasure.
Now what I thought and learnt and heard of wisdom
Is all I now have left; my luxuries
And all my joys have long deserted me.
And Timon says, very beautifully,—
Of all bad things the chief is appetite.
17. But Clearchus, in his essay on Proverbs, says that Terpsion was the tutor of Archestratus, who was also the first person who wrote a book on Gastronomy; and he says that he gave precepts to his pupils as to what they ought to abstain from; and that Terpsion once extemporised the following line about a turtle:—
FISH.
Eat now a turtle, or else leave it alone;
which, however, others read—
Eat now a turtle's flesh, or leave it alone.