Then the continuous excess causes heartburn from the food previously 6 consumed, and inflames the constant craving for some new stimulant. So, though they protect the banqueting hall with draperies and windows, and seek by roaring fires to banish winter’s colds, none the less the languishing appetite, exhausted by its own heat, yearns for something new to revive it. Just as we sprinkle cold water on people who have lost consciousness through a fainting fit, in order to bring them back to their senses; so the internal organs, numbed through excess, are past feeling, unless they are smitten by the parching, as it were, of more violent cold. Hence it is, I say, that not content even with 7 snow, they call for ice, as if the stimulant were the more certain from its solidity, and melt it with repeated douches of water. The ice, too, is not taken from the surface, but, that it may have greater virtue and more lasting cold, it is dug out of the depths of the pile. Thus it is not even of uniform price; but water actually has its hawkers and--alas the day!--a varying price. The Lacedaemonians once banished the perfumers from their city, ordering them to quit the country with all speed, because they were wasting the oil supply. What would they have done, I wonder, if they had seen cold stores for preserving snow 8 and such an army of beasts employed in carting water, whose colour and flavour are often all spoiled by the straw in which it is kept? Good heavens! how easy a thing it is to quench the thirst of health! But what feeling can jaws retain that are deadened and numbed by scalding food? These epicures can have nothing cold enough, neither can they have anything hot enough. Mushrooms taken from the fire and hastily dipped in their special sauce are crammed down the throat 9 almost boiling, and the heat has to be allayed by draughts chilled in snow. One may see, I tell you, slender youths, rigged out in cloaks and mufflers, pale and sickly, not merely sipping the snow, but actually eating it, throwing little pieces of it into their glasses to prevent them from getting warm during the intervals of drinking. Do you call that honest thirst? It is fever, the more acute too as it cannot be 10 detected by the pulse or the wonted heat that overspreads the skin. The very heart is dried up by that incurable malady, luxury, whose habitual weakness and unsteadiness are turned into endurance and obstinacy. Don’t you know that habit dulls the force of everything? The snow in which you are now, so to speak, swimming[71] has through custom and the daily slavery of the stomach come to occupy the place of water. You must now search for something colder still; for a stimulant that is habitual is no stimulant at all. [71] Which you now use in your baths. BOOK V WHICH TREATS OF WINDS AND ATMOSPHERIC MOVEMENT IN GENERAL I