will you find altar or sacrifice to Zeus of the Rain, Demeter of the Plough, or Poseidon the Fosterer of Plants? How can Dionysus be Boon-Giver, if we need nothing that he gives? What sacrifice or libation shall we make? What offering of firstfruits? All this means the overthrow and confounding of our most important interests. Though to cling to every pleasure in every case is to be a madman, to avoid every pleasure in every case is to be a block. By all means let the soul have [Sidenote: F] other pleasures of a superior kind to enjoy; the body can find no pleasure more right and proper than that derived from taking food. All the world recognizes the fact, for this pleasure people take openly, sharing with each other in the table and the banquet, whereas their amorous pleasure is screened by night and all the darkness possible. To share that pleasure with others is considered as shameless and brutelike as it is not to share in the case of the table.’ Here, as Cleodorus paused for a moment, I joined in: ‘And is there not another point—that in discarding food we also [Sidenote: 159] discard sleep? If there is no sleep, there is no dreaming either, and we lose our most important means of divination. Moreover, life will be all alike, and there will be practically no purpose in wearing a body round our soul. Most of its parts, and the most important, are provided as instruments to feeding—the tongue, teeth, stomach, and liver. None of them is without its work, and none has other business to attend to. Consequently any one who has no need of food has no need of a body either. Which means that a person has no need of himself; for it is thanks to the body that each of us is a “self”.’ ‘Such,’ I added, ‘are our contributions on behalf of the belly. If Solon or any one else has objections to bring, we will listen.’