[404c]
feast them on
fish,1 nor on boiled meat, but only on roast, which is what soldiers
could most easily procure. For everywhere, one may say, it is of easier
provision to use the bare fire than to convey pots and pans2 along.”
“Indeed it is.” “Neither, as I believe, does
Homer ever make mention of sweet meats. Is not that something which all men
in training understand—that if one is to keep his body in good
condition he must abstain from such things altogether?”
“They are right,”
1 Homer's ignoring of fish diet, except in stress of starvation, has been much and idly discussed both in antiquity and by modern scholars. Modern pseudo-science has even inferred from this passage that Plato placed a “taboo” on fish, though they are at the sea-side on the Hellespont, which Homer calls “fish-teeming,”Iliad ix. 360.
2 Cf. Green, History of English People, Book II. chap. ii., an old description of the Scotch army: “They have therefore no occasion for pots and pans, for they dress the flesh of the catlle in their skins after they have flayed them,” etc. But cf. Athenaeus, i. 8-9 (vol. i. p. 36 L.C.L.), Diogenes Laertius viii. 13ὥστε εὐπορίστους αὐτοῖς εἶναι τὰς τροφάς.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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