Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/748

728 mountains, and repeatedly cut his way through the ranks of his would-be captors with the arm of a Hercules.

The philosophers of antiquity prided themselves on their frugal habits, which ranked next to godliness in their estimation, as expressed in the famous aphorism, "God needs nothing, and he is next to Him who can do with next to nothing"—whose material needs are the smallest. Primitive habits are certainly favorable to independence, especially in a genial climate, where a man is above the fear of tyranny and all social obligations, who like Shamyl can subsist on the spontaneous gifts of his mother Earth. "Do you know," Cyrus asked the ambassador of a luxurious potentate, "how invincible men are who can live on herbs and acorns?" If the Saracens had persisted in the simplicity of their fathers, the nineteenth century might see Moorish kingdoms in southern Europe, and Arabian science and fruit-gardens in the place of deserts and monkish besottedness. Cato needed no prophetic inspiration to predict the downfall of a city where a small fish could fetch a higher price than a fattened ox.

Lycurgus, the Spartan, makes the diet of his countrymen the subject of careful legislation, but seems to have feared excesses in quality rather than in quantity: as long as the black soup and other national dishes remained orthodox in regard to the prescribed simple ingredients, free indulgence of the most exacting appetites was not only permitted but encouraged. At the philosophic reunions of the Lyceum the bill of fare permitted a choice between dried figs and honey-water in addition to the wheat-bread, which could not be refused, and Greece was the model of early Roman institutions in this as well as in other respects. Fruit and bread-cakes, spiced with Attic salt and music, entertained the friends of Plato at those suppers of the gods of three or four hours, which Aristotle preferred to so many years on the throne of Persia; but the very next generation witnessed the drunken riots of Babylon and the general introduction of Persian manners and luxuries.

The ancients undoubtedly were our superiors in hygienic insight, but among the many judicious restrictions of their dietary regimens there are some that we must attribute to prejudice or leave utterly unaccounted for. The Mosaic interdiction of rabbit-flesh, wild swan, and finless fishes has been very learnedly explained as a necessary consequence of general laws, which had to include those animals for the sake of consistency; but what on earth or below earth could induce Pythagoras, the great philosopher, to prohibit the use of beans—nay, even denounce any contact with the shell, the leaves, or the roots of the poor plant as a dreadful pollution? Such was the stigma he had attached to the violation of this rule, we are told, that a body of soldiers from Magna Græcia, who all belonged to the Pythagorean sect, permitted themselves to be cut to pieces or captured rather than save themselves by crossing a bean-field!