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ZEUXIPPUS. Well has it been said, Choose the life that is best, and constant habit will make it pleasant, A precept of Pythagoras according to Plutarch, Moralia, 466 F, and other writers who quote it; cf. also Moralia, 602 B. and, in particular, it is profitable for a man, experimenting with each several department of life and especially with those which have to do with the practices which affect the body, to inculcate a fixed habit during periods of soundest health, so thus to make these things agreeable, familiar, and congenial to his nature, Cf. Plato, Laws, p. 797 E. bearing in mind how some men feel and act in times of sickness, being angry and fretful when hot water and gruel, or plain bread, is served to them, calling these things abominable and unpleasant, and abominable and hard-hearted also those who would force such things upon them. A bath has proved to be the death of many men who at the outset had not much the matter with them, save only that they could not and would not bear to taste food unless they had first had their bath; of whom Titus the Emperor There are varying accounts regarding the manner of Titus’s death, poisoning or drowning being also alleged. was one, as those who attended him in his illness affirm.
