i84 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



war, lived in fuch a way, as muO: have made their lives much fhort- 

 er, than when they were in the natural ftate, eating fo much flefh 

 as they diJ, drinking fo much wine, and ufmg their female capr-ves 

 {o freely ; yet a death by difeafe was fo very rare among them, that 

 it was thought to be a miracle, or to happen by the particular aCl: of 

 a God ; for the men were faid to die by the darts of Apollo, and the 

 women by thofe of Diana ; and he mentions one illand, where, it 

 feems, the people were more temperate, and lived more in the 

 natural way : And there, he fays, nobody died of difeafe, but 

 only of old age ; and even then fo eafily, that, he fays, they were 

 killed with the gentle darts (this is the epithet he gives them,) of the 

 deities above mentioned t« Even as late as the days of Plato, it ap- 

 pears that the difeafcs of which men died, were, for the greater 

 part, violent, acute difeafes, fuch as we know ftrong bodies are liable 

 to ; and there were, I am perfuaded, few men at that time, who were 

 years a-dving, as we are, of chronical difeafes. Such difeafes, however, 

 were then known : But Plato thinks it is an abufe of the medical art, to 

 apply it to the lengthening out the miferable lives, or, rather, as he 

 fays, the long deaths of fuch patients; and he names the firft phyfician 

 who, having himfelf a bad habit of body, applied his art to prolong 

 a life which he had better been quit of J. The Spartans, when at 

 any time a weak, delicate infant was born among them, which cer- 

 tainly happened very rarely, (but fometimes Nature will err, that is, 

 will go out of her ordinary courfe), did not rear it, but put it out 

 of the world in good time. 



There is one thing among us, that muft add very much to the 

 difeafes and weaknefTes of the better fort of people, and that is the 



indolence 



• Odyff. O' Verf. 402. 



t Lib. ii. De Repiiblica, p. 405. et feq. Edit. Serrani. The whole pafTage is 

 very well worth the reading. He tells us, there, among other things worthy of no- 

 tice, that, in the heroic age, when the bodies of men were in a good habit, that 

 part of phyfic which is called Diaetetic, was not known ; and, accordingly, we fee 

 Machaon, hlmfclf a phyfician, drinking wine immediately after he was wounded. 



