A baker, a cook and a retailer
SocratesSo when I say that these same things hold for the soul as well, at times you seem to me to learn what I am saying, and you agree as one who knows what I am saying. But a little later you come along saying that there have been people in the city who were fine and good citizens, and when I ask who they are, you seem to me to put forward people of just the same kind in politics—as if, when I asked about gymnastics which of those who care for bodies have been or are good, you told me in all seriousness: Thearion the baker, Mithaecus who wrote on Sicilian cookery, and Sarambus the wine-seller—that these have shown themselves wonderful at caring for bodies, one preparing wonderful loaves, another cooked dishes, another wine. So perhaps you would be indignant if I said to you, “My man, you understand nothing about gymnastics. The people you name for me are servants and those who cater for desires, people who understand nothing fine and good about them; people who, as things may turn out, will stuff and fatten people’s bodies and, praised by them all the while, ruin their original flesh as well. The others, in their turn, through inexperience, will not blame those who entertained them as responsible for their diseases and for the loss of their original flesh; but those who happen to be with them at the time, giving them some advice—when the surfeit of those earlier days does come to them, bringing disease a good while later, since it came about without what is wholesome—these they will blame and censure and do some evil to, if they can, while those earlier ones, the ones responsible for the evils, they will extol.”