[406b]
gymnastics and medicine, for the torment first and
chiefly of himself and then of many successors.” “How
so?” he said. “By lingering out his death,”
said I; “for living in perpetual observance of his malady, which
was incurable, he was not able to effect a cure, but lived through his days
unfit for the business of life, suffering the tortures of the damned if he
departed a whit from his fixed regimen, and struggling against death by
reason of his science he won the prize of a doting old age.1” “A noble prize2 indeed for his
science,” he said.
1 Cf. Macaulay on Mitford's History of Greece: “It (oligarchical government) has a sort of valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the balance of Sanctorius; it takes no exercise; it exposes itself to no accident; it is seized with a hypochondriac alarm at every new sensation; it trembles at every breath; it lets blood for every inflammation; and this, without ever enjoying a day of health or pleasure, drags out its existence to a doting and debilitated old age.” That Macaulay here is consciously paraphrasing Plato is apparent from his unfair use of the Platonic passage in his essay on Bacon. Cf. further Euripides Supp. 1109-1113; Seneca on early medicine, Epistles xv. 3 (95) 14 ff., overdoes both Spencer and Macaulay. Cf. Rousseau, Emile, Book I.: “Je ne sais point apprendre a vivre a qui ne songe qu'a s'empecher de mourir;” La Rochefoucauld (Max. 282): “C'est une ennuyeuse maladie que de conserver sa sante par un trop grand regime.”
2 The pun γήρας and γέρας is hardly translatable. Cf. Pherecydes apudDiogenes Laertius i. 119χθονίῃ δὲ ὄνομα ἐγένετο Γῆ, ἐπειδὴ αὐτῇ Ζὰς γῆν γέρας διδοῖ(vol. i. p. 124 L.C.L.). For the ironical use of καλόν cf. Euripides Cyclops 551, Sappho, fr. 53 (58).
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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