ounted dainties; for
instance, mead and swine's belly. Heretofore too, as I have heard, they
hated the brain of animals so much, that they detested the very name of
it; as when Homer says, "I esteem him at a brain's worth." And even now
we know some old men, not bearing to taste cucumber, melon, orange, or
pepper. Now by these meats and drinks it is probable that the juices
of our bodies are much altered, and their temperature changed, new
qualities arising from this new sort of diet. And the change of order
in our feeding having a great influence on the alteration of our bodies,
the cold courses, as they were called formerly, consisting of oysters,
polyps, salads, and the like, being (in Plato's phrase) transferred
"from tail to mouth," now make the first course, whereas they were
formerly the last. Besides, the glass which we usually take before
supper is very considerable in this case; for the ancients never drank
so much as water before they ate, but now we drink freely before we
sit down, and fall to our meat with a full and heated body, using sharp
sauces and pickles to provoke appetite, and then we fall greedily on the
other meat. But nothing conduceth more to alterations and new diseases
in the body than our different baths; for here the flesh, like iron
in the fire, grows soft and loose, and is presently constipated and
hardened by the cold. For, in my opinion, if any of the last age had
looked into our baths, he might have justly said,

There burning Phlegethon meets Acheron.

For they used such mild gentle baths, that Alexander the Great being
feverish slept in one. And the Gauls' wives carry their pots of pulse to
eat with their children whilst they are in the bath. But our baths now
inflame, vellicate, and distress; and the air which we draw is a mixture
of air and water, disturbs the whole body, tosses and displaces
every atom, till we quench the fiery particles and allay their heat.
Therefore, Diogenianus, you see that this account requires no new
strange causes, no intermundane spaces; but the single alteration of our
diet is enough to raise new diseases and abolish old.

QUESTION X. WHY WE GIVE LEAST CREDIT TO DREAMS IN AUTUMN.

FLORUS, PLUTARCH, PLUTARCH'S SONS, FAVORINUS.

Florus reading Aristotle's physical problems, which were brought to him
to Thermopylae, was himself (as philosophical wits used to be) filled
with a great many doubts, and communicated them to others; thereby
confirmin