‘But, thinks Cleodorus, there must be food so that there may be tables and wine-bowls and sacrifices to Demeter and the Maid. Then let some one else demand that there shall be war and fighting, so that we may have fortifications and arsenals and [Sidenote: F] armouries, and also sacrifices in honour of slaying our hundreds, such as they say are the law in Messenia. Another, I suppose, is aggrieved at the prospect of the healthfulness which would follow. A terrible thing if, because there is no illness, there is no more use in soft bedclothes, and no more sacrificing to Asclepius or the Averting Powers, and if medical skill, with all its drugs and implements, must be put away into inglorious hiding! What is the difference between these arguments and the other? Food is, in fact, “taken” as a “remedy” for hunger, and all who use food are said to be “taking care” of [Sidenote: 160] themselves and using some “diet”; and this implies that the act is not a pleasant and agreeable performance, but one which Nature renders compulsory. Certainly one can enumerate more pains than pleasures arising from feeding. Further still; whereas the pleasure affects but a small region of the body, and lasts but a short time, it needs no telling how full we become of ugly and painful experiences through the worry and difficulty of digesting. Homer had these in view, I suppose, when he used as a proof that the gods do not die the fact that they do not feed: _For they eat not the bread of corn, nor drink they the wine that is ruddy, And therefore blood have they none in their veins, and are called the Immortals._ Food, he gives us to understand, is the necessary means not only [Sidenote: B] for living, but for dying. From it come our diseases, feeding themselves with the feeding of our bodies, which suffer quite as much from repletion as from want. Very often it is an easier business to get together our supply of victuals than to make away with them and get quit of them again when once they are in the body. Just suppose it were a question with the Danaids what sort of life they would live and what they would do if they could get rid of their menial labour at filling the cask. When we raise the question, “Supposing it possible to cease from heaping into this unconscionable flesh all these things from [Sidenote: C] land and sea, what are we going to do?” it is because in our ignorance of noble things we are content with the life which our necessities impose. Well, as those who have been in slavery, when they are emancipated, do for themselves and on their own account what they used formerly to do in the service of their masters, so is it with the soul. As things are, it feeds the body with continual toil and trouble; but let it get quit of its menial service, and it will presumably feed itself in the enjoyment of freedom, and will live with an eye to itself and the truth, with nothing to distract and deter it.’