ite he should be, is equally benevolent to all. Now let us,
following Sospis (for he fairly leads the way), keep close to our
subject, the palm-tree, which affords us sufficient scope for our
discourse. The Babylonians celebrate this tree, as being useful to them
three hundred and sixty several ways. But to us Greeks it is of very
little use, but its lack of fruit makes it appropriate for contenders in
the games. For being the fairest, greatest, and best proportioned of
all sorts of trees, it bears no fruit amongst us; but by reason of its
strong nature it exhausts all its nourishment (like an athlete) upon its
body, and so has very little, and that very bad, left for seed. Besides
all this, it hath something peculiar, which cannot be attributed to any
other tree. The branch of a palm, if you put a weight upon it, doth not
yield and bend downwards, but turns the contrary way as if it resisted
the pressing force. The like is to be observed in these exercises.
For those who, through weakness or cowardice, yield to them, their
adversaries oppress; but those who stoutly endure the encounter have not
only their bodies, but their minds too, strengthened and increased.

QUESTION V. WHY THOSE THAT SAIL UPON THE NILE TAKE UP THE WATER THEY ARE
TO USE BEFORE DAY.

One demanded a reason why the sailors take up the water for their
occasions out of the river Nile by night, and not by day. Some thought
they feared the sun, which heating the liquid would make it more liable
to putrefaction. For everything that is warmed becomes more easy to be
changed, having already suffered when its natural quality was remitted.
And cold constipating the parts seems to preserve everything in its
natural state, and water especially. For that the cold of water is
naturally constringent is evident from snow, which keeps flesh from
corrupting a long time. And heat, as it destroys the proper quality
of other things, so of honey, for it being boiled is itself corrupted,
though when raw it preserves other bodies from corruption. And that this
is the cause, I have a very considerable evidence from standing pools;
for in winter they are as wholesome as other water, but in summer they
grow bad and noxious. Therefore the night seeming in some measure to
resemble the winter, and the day the summer, they think the water that
is taken up at night is less subject to be vitiated and changed.

To these seemingly probable reasons another was added, which confirm