ue.

Yes, indeed, I replied, and equally incompatible with the management of
a house, an army, or an office of state; and, what is most important of
all, irreconcilable with any kind of study or thought or
self-reflection--there is a constant suspicion that headache and
giddiness are to be ascribed to philosophy, and hence all practising or
making trial of virtue in the higher sense is absolutely stopped; for a
man is always fancying that he is being made ill, and is in constant
anxiety about the state of his body.

Yes, likely enough.

And therefore our politic Asclepius may be supposed to have exhibited
the power of his art only to persons who, being generally of healthy
constitution and habits of life, had a definite ailment; such as these
he cured by purges and operations, and bade them live as usual, herein
consulting the interests of the State; but bodies which disease had
penetrated through and through he would not have attempted to cure by
gradual processes of evacuation and infusion: he did not want to
lengthen out good-for-nothing lives, or to have weak fathers begetting
weaker sons;--if a man was not able to live in the ordinary way he had
no business to cure him; for such a cure would have been of no use
either to himself, or to the State.

Then, he said, you regard Asclepius as a statesman.

Clearly; and his character is further illustrated by his sons. Note
that they were heroes in the days of old and practised the medicines of
which I am speaking at the siege of Troy: You will remember how, when
Pandarus wounded Menelaus, they

Sucked the blood out of the wound, and sprinkled soothing remedies,

but they never prescribed what the patient was afterwards to eat or
drink in the case of Menelaus, any more than in the case of Eurypylus;
the remedies, as they conceived, were enough to heal any man who before
he was wounded was healthy and regular in habits; and even though he
did happen to drink a posset of Pramnian wine, he might get well all
the same. But they would have nothing to do with unhealthy and
intemperate subjects, whose lives were of no use either to themselves
or others; the art of medicine was not designed for their good, and
though they were as rich as Midas, the sons of Asclepius would have
declined to attend them.

They were very acute persons, those sons of Asclepius.

Naturally so, I replied. Nevertheless, the tragedians and Pindar
disobeying our behests, although they ac