376 
plint's natueal history. 
[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, 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 Eome 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,^* 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.^^ I forbid you 
to have anything to do with physicians." 
CHAP. 8. — EVILS ATTENDANT UPON THE PRACTICE OF 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^^ 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 
33 Illorum literas inspicere." 
2^ On the principle that that which costs money must be worth having. 
25 The Opici or Osci were an ancient tribe of Italy, settled in Campania, 
Latium, and Samnium. From their uncivilized habits the name was long 
used as a reproachful epithet, equivalent to our words bumpkin,'' "clod- 
hopper," or " chawbacon." 
36 Marked by their supereminent absurdity, as Fee remarks. 
