The habit and style of living to which he subjected his soul and body
was one which under ordinary circumstances[5] would enable any one
adopting it to look existence cheerily in the face and to pass his
days serenely: it would certainly entail no difficulties as regards
expense. So frugal was it that a man must work little indeed who could
not earn the quantum which contented Socrates. Of food he took just
enough to make eating a pleasure--the appetite he brought to it was
sauce sufficient; while as to drinks, seeing that he only drank when
thirsty, any draught refreshed.[6] If he accepted an invitation to
dinner, he had no difficulty in avoiding the common snare of over-
indulgence, and his advice to people who could not equally control
their appetite was to avoid taking what would allure them to eat if
not hungry or to drink if not thirsty.[7] Such things are ruinous to
the constitution, he said, bad for stomachs, brains, and soul alike;
or as he used to put it, with a touch of sarcasm,[8] "It must have
been by feasting men on so many dainty dishes that Circe produced her
pigs; only Odysseus through his continency and the 'promptings[9] of
Hermes' abstained from touching them immoderately, and by the same
token did not turn into a swine." So much for this topic, which he
touched thus lightly and yet seriously.

[5] {ei me ti daimonion eie}, "save under some divinely-ordained
calamity." Cf. "Cyrop." I. vi. 18; "Symp." viii. 43.

[6] See "Ages." ix; Cic. "Tusc." v. 34, 97; "de Fin." ii. 28, 90.

[7] Cf. Plut. "Mor." 128 D; Clement, "Paedag." 2. 173, 33; "Strom." 2,
492, 24; Aelian, "N. A." 8, 9.