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GRYLLUS. Though men are so vile and incontinent where the desires I have spoken of are concerned, they can be proved to be even more so in the case of essential desires, being here far inferior to animals in temperance. Cf. Philo, 47 (p. 122). These are the desires for food and drink, in which we beasts always take our pleasure along with some sort of utility; whereas you, in your pursuit of pleasure rather than natural nourishment, are punished by many serious ailments which, welling up from one single source, the surfeit of your bodies, fill you with all manner of flatulence that is difficult to purge. Cf. Mor. 131 f. In the first place each species of animal has one single food proper to it, grass or some root or fruit. Those that are carnivorous resort to no other kind of nourishment, nor do they deprive those weaker than themselves of sustenance; but the lion lets the deer, and the wolf lets the sheep, feed in its natural pasture. But man in his pleasures is led astray by gluttony to everything edible Cf. 964 f supra; and with the whole passage cf. the impressive proem to the seventh book of Pliny’s Natural History.; he tries and tastes everything as if he had not yet come to recognize what is suitable and proper for him; alone of all creatures he is omnivorous. Man is the only animal liable to the disease of a continuously insatiable appetite. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 283; cf. Philo, 62 (p. 136); Lucan, iv. 373-381; al.
