It was probably the circumstance that this magical interpretation was so commonly attached to food-supply that prevented Greek observers, such as Herodotus and Hippocrates, from pressing home their analysis of the food-quest as an index of the general economic régime. And the same ambiguity envelops also, unfortunately, the next recorded attempt at such analysis. It can hardly be accident that, in the sketch of the ἀναγκαιοτάτη πόλις in the _Republic_,[110] the diet of the citizens is wholly vegetarian, and almost wholly cereal. And when Glaucon interrupts, and asks what has happened to the meat, Socrates wilfully misunderstands his question, and prescribes once more only salt, cheese, and _vegetable_ relishes--olives, and bulbous roots, and wild herbs, with figs, lentils, and beans, myrtle-berries and forest nuts to follow. Glaucon’s comment on this is precise and contemptuous: ‘If you had been planning a city of pigs, Socrates, what other fodder than this would you have given them?’ And on being pressed for an alternative, he stipulates expressly for the _customary_ food of civilized men, ‘and meat dishes such as people have nowadays.’ It is entirely in keeping with all this,[111] that ὄψα recur further on, along with tables, chairs, and unguents, as signs of a corrupted state; that hunters and cooks appear among the ministers of luxury; and swineherds last of all, for the pig alone among cattle gives neither milk or cheese, but is useful only for meat diet. Here three distinct lines of argument are inextricably confused. In the first place, we have seen already that it was the regular Greek belief that man began existence as a forest animal, living on the hazel-nuts and acorns characteristic of the Balkan and Anatolian regions; and only acquired the knowledge of corn, wine, and oil by special providence, and at a later time: in this sense, therefore, Socrates is proposing a return to primitive diet. In the second place, the diet which he suggests is the only one possible for people who should try to live a life independent and at the same time inoffensive. But, thirdly, this diet is precisely that which a fourth-century doctor would have been expected to prescribe for a patient τρυφῶντὶ καὶ φλεγμαίνοντι. But there is enough of common motive in all three considerations, to make it clear that even one of the least anthropological among his pupils could represent Socrates as starting from a conception of man and his place in the world which is precisely that of a fifth-century physicist.[112]