376 PLINY'S NATURAL HTSTOET. [Book XXIX. 



more at length on the befitting occasion. I will show you the 

 results of my own experience at Athens, and that, while it is a 

 good plan to dip into their literature, 33 it is not worth while to 

 make a thorough acquaintance with it. They are a most iniqui- 

 tous and intractable race, and you may take my word as the word 

 of a prophet, when I tell you, that whenever that nation shall 

 bestow itsliterature upon Rome it will mar everything; and that 

 all the sooner, if it sends its physicians among us. They have 

 conspired among themselves to murder all barbarians with their 

 medicine ; a profession which they exercise for lucre, in order 

 that they may win our confidence, 34 and dispatch us all the 

 more easily. They are in the common habit, too, of calling us 

 barbarians, and stigmatize us beyond all other nations, by 

 giving us the abominable appellation of Opici. 35 I forbid you 

 to have anything to do with physicians." 



CHAP. 8. EVILS ATTENDANT UPON THE PRACTICE OP MEDICINE. 



Cato, who wrote to this effect, died in his eighty-fifth year, 

 in the year of the City 605 ; so that no one is to suppose that 

 he had not sufficient time to form his experience, either with 

 reference to the duration of the republic, or the length of his 

 own life. Well then are we to conclude that he has stamped 

 ' with condemnation a thing that in itself is most useful ? Far 

 from it, by Hercules ! for he subjoins an account of the medical 

 prescriptions, by the aid of which he had ensured to himself 

 and to his wife a ripe old age; prescriptions 36 upon which we are 

 now about to enlarge. He asserts also that he has a book of 

 recipes in his possession, by the aid of which he treats the 

 maladies of his son, his servants, and his friends ; a book from 

 which we have extracted the various prescriptions according to 

 the several maladies for which they are employed. 



It was not the thing itself that the ancients condemned, but 

 it was the art as then practised, and they were shocked, more 

 particularly, that man should pay so dear for the enjoyment of 

 life. For this reason it was, they say, that the Temple of 



" Illorum literas inspicere." 



34 On the principle that that which costs money must be worth having. 

 15 The Opici or Osci were an ancient tribe of Italy, settled in Campania, 

 Latium, and Samnium. From their uncivilized habits the name was long 



ng 

 d- 

 . 

 36 Marked by their supereminent absurdity, as Fee remarks. 



used as a reproachful epithet, equivalent to our words " bumpkin," " clo 

 hopper," or " chawbacon." 



