xin DEGRADING LUXURY 189 



the constant craving for some new stimulant. So, 

 though they protect the banqueting hall with 

 draperies and windows, and seek by roaring fires 

 to banish winter's colds, none the less the lan- 

 guishing appetite, exhausted by its own heat, 

 yearns for something new to revive it. Just as we 

 sprinkle cold water on people who have lost con- 

 sciousness through a fainting fit, in order to bring 

 them back to their senses ; so the internal organs, 

 numbed through excess, are past feeling, unless 

 they are smitten by the parching, as it were, of 

 more violent cold. Hence it is, I say, that not 7 

 content even with snow, they call for ice, as if the 

 stimulant were the more certain from its solidity, 

 and melt it with repeated douches of water. The 

 ice, too, is not taken from the surface, but, that it 

 may have greater virtue and more lasting cold, it 

 is dug out of the depths of the pile. Thus it is 

 not even of uniform price ; but water actually 

 has its hawkers and alas the day ! a varying 

 price. The Lacedaemonians once banished the 

 perfumers from their city, ordering them to quit 

 the country with all speed, because they were 

 wasting the oil supply. What would they have 8 

 done, I wonder, if they had seen cold stores for 

 preserving snow and such an army of beasts 

 employed in carting water, whose colour and 

 flavour are often all spoiled by the straw in which 

 it is kept ? 



Good heavens ! how easy a thing it is to 

 quench the thirst of health ! But what feeling can 

 jaws retain that are deadened and numbed by 

 scalding food? These epicures can have nothing 

 cold enough, neither can they have anything hot 

 enough. Mushrooms taken from the fire and hastily 9 



