Book 8
15
Alexis, in his Tutor of Intemperate Men—(as Sotion the Alexandrian says, in his Commentary on the Silli of Timon; for I myself have never met with the play, though I have read more than eight hundred plays of what is called the Middle Comedy, and have made extracts from them, but still I have never fallen in with the Tutor of Intemperate Men, nor do I recollect having seen any mention of it in any regular list of such plays; for Callimachus has not inserted it in his catalogue, nor has Aristophanes, nor even those scholars at Pergamus, who have handed down to us lists of plays,)how— ever, Sotion says that in that play a slave, named Xanthias, was represented as exhorting all his fellow-slaves to a life of luxury, and saying— 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.
