ESSAYS 327 



whose soldiers, he says, have no fish, though they live by the shores of the 

 Hellespont, and are not allowed any boiled meats but only roast, which are most 

 convenient, as not involving the carrying about with the army of pots and pans. 

 If the passage be not wholly ironical, as the quoting of Homer suggests, Plato 

 would appear to approve of this diet as the best or, at least, good and simple for 

 soldiers under military training ; but the passage proves nothing whatever with 

 regard to the Greece of his day, and the omission of these meats in the passage, 

 in which he builds up and "fodders" his State, becomes the more curious and 

 striking, for his citizens are to be soldiers. Again, in primitive times, we are told 

 in a passage of Book VI. of the Laws, animals were not even tasted, as, for instance, 

 the flesh of the cow, but only cakes and fruits dipped in honey. 1 I do not, how- 

 ever, conclude that in Classical Platonic times men ate daily of the flesh of the 

 cow. Nor can anything, I think, be inferred from such passages as that in the 

 Republic about Polydamas, the pancratiast, and his eating ra /3deia Kpea or beef. 2 

 Indeed, we may fairly conclude that the diet of Platonic times contained little beef 

 and mutton ; of later times even less. The supply of such foods could, in truth, 

 be recruited by importation ; but we have, as I presume, neither evidence nor 

 prima facie reason to suppose that such importation took place. 



I come now to a kindred point. I understand my friend Mr. Maurice Thomp- 

 son, who is probably the best living authority, to hold (1) that, while Greece in the 

 Homeric poems would appear to be well-wooded and forested, by the beginning of 

 the fourth century B.C. the problem of deforestation had become a very serious 

 question ; (2) that Attica, for instance, in Platonic times was not very far removed 

 from what it is at the present moment in the matter of timber and trees. 3 I think 

 there may have been more trees in Attica than perhaps Mr. Thompson suggests. 

 Plato, for instance, mentions yews and myrtles in a passage already referred to ; 

 there was a plane-tree by the Ilissus. 4 But the process of deforestation was never 

 to our knowledge arrested. And deforestation, Mr. Thompson points out, would 

 involve and imply denudation. 



So much, then, by way of evidence. What conclusion is to be drawn from 

 these facts ? That cancer was familiar in a country very largely denuded of trees, 

 among a people that mainly subsisted on what we may call a vegetarian diet. 

 The later the date we assign to the relevant Hippocratic writings, the more pro- 

 nounced were the deforestation and the consequent shortage of pasture and herds. 

 It would, therefore, appear from this evidence that grave suspicion, to say the 

 least, has been thrown on the supposed universal connection of cancer either 

 (1) with the prevalence of trees or (2) with the eating of mutton and beef. 5 



1 782 c. 



3 Bk. I. 338 c. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that Polydamas was a 

 Thessalian ; and Thessaly was regarded in the other Greek States as much on 

 a level with Macedon — half-Hellenic but semi -barbarian. 



3 For details I refer the reader to his very instructive paper on " Deforestation 

 in Ancient Greece" in the Proceedings of the University of Durham Philosophical 

 Society, vol. v. part 2 (191 2-1 3). He assumes what I try to show here on the 

 subject of diet in Plato : " Flocks and herds are common in Homer, and Homeric 

 food supplies are a striking contrast to the meagre vegetarian diet of Plato's 

 Republic" 



4 Rep. II. 372^; Ph&drus, 229a. 



5 I may add that I shall be greatly obliged if readers of Science PROGRESS 

 can throw further light on the evidence given. It would also be instructive to 

 know to what extent cancer is prevalent in Greece and especially in Attica to-day, 

 and whether those olive-trees, for which Athens and Attica have ever been famous, 

 exhibit an analogous disease. 



