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ZEUXIPPUS. This, then, was one of the things ridiculed. The second, I think, concerned the food which you people serve to the sick. For he urged that we should partake of it and taste it from time to time, and get ourselves used to it in time of health, and not abhor and detest such a regimen, like little children, but gradually make it familiar and congenial to our appetites, so that in sickness we may not be disaffected over our fare as if it were so much medicine, and may not show impatience at receiving something simple, unappetising, and savourless. Cf. Moralia, 661 B. For this reason, too, omitting the bath now and then before going to a meal is not a thing to be avoided, nor drinking only water when wine is at hand, nor drinking anything lukewarm in the summer-time when there is snow on the table; and while dismissing once for all time the ostentatious and studied abstinence from such things and the bragging over it, we should silently, by our own selves, habituate the appetite to be obedient to expediency with all serenity, and long beforehand we must rid our soul of its squeamishness in times of sickness about such trifles, and its lamentation thereat, as it deplores how it has been driven away from great and fond pleasures to an ignoble and humiliating way of living.
