Note 28 — V. SENECA. DIED 65 A.D.
Reading edition
Ep. xxv. Lipsius here quotes Lucan “still more a philosopher than a poet”:—
“Discite quam parvo liceat producere vitam, Et quantum natura petat. . . Satis est populis fluviusque Ceresque.”
“Learn by how little life may he sustained, and how much nature requires. The gifts of Ceres and water are sufficient nourishment for all peoples.”—(Pharsalia.)
Also Euripides:—
“Ἐπεὶ τί δεῖ βροτοῖσι . . . . . . . πλὴν δύοιν μόνον, Δημητρὸς ἀκτῆς, πώματος θ’ ὑδρηχόου, Ἃπερ πάρεστι καὶ πέφυχ’ ἡμᾶς τρέφειν· Ὧν οὐκ ἀπαρκεῖ πλησμονή· τρυφῇ γέ τοι Ἄλλων ἐδεστῶν μηχανὰς θηρεύομεν.”
Which may be translated:—
“Since what need mortals, save twain things alone, Crush’d grain (heaven’s gift), and streaming water-draught? Food nigh at hand, and nature’s aliment— Of which no glut contents us. Pampered taste Hunts out device of other eatables.”
(Fragment of lost drama of Euripides, preserved in Athenæus iv. and in Gellius vii.)
See, too, the elder Pliny, who professes his conviction that “the plainest food is also the most beneficial” (cibus simplex utilissimus), and asserts that it is from his eating that man derives most of his diseases, and from thence that all the drugs and all the arts of physicians abound. (Hist. Nat. xxvi., 28.)