Nutrition

Use in the book

The speaker whose theory Socrates reports calls the opposite nourishment for its opposite. The examples include dry and wet, cold and hot, bitter and sweet, sharp and blunt, the empty seeking filling and the full emptying.

The noun makes the proposed attraction between opposites vivid by imagining one as supplying what the other needs. It is part of the theory under examination, not a final claim that every opposition is nourishing. Friendship and enmity soon provide the counterexample that breaks the unrestricted rule.

Places to read

1. 215eτροφὴν γὰρ εἶναι τὸ ἐναντίον τῷ ἐναντίῳ — For the opposite is nourishment for its opposite.

Use in the book

The concluding Timaeus extract explains the division of food by fire accompanying the oscillation of breath. Particles pass from the belly into the vessels, and blood provides nourishment to the flesh and the whole body. Each part receives what replaces its losses. The embryological report likewise makes nourishment central to development, though its local mechanism and condition of the offspring are different.

Places to read

1. I.60.1.16Food is divided and distributed in association with breathing.
2. I.60.1.18Blood replenishes the body’s losses.
3. I.42.13.1Nourishment is a condition of development in the womb.

Translation in this edition

“Food” and “nourishment” follow the immediate emphasis. The account is not recast as a description of modern blood circulation.

Use in the book

Aëtius explains nourishment by the settling in of what is akin, growth by the presence of heat, and wasting by failure of both. This distinguishes nutrition from enlargement rather than treating them as synonyms. The account can be compared with plant uptake at A702, where plants draw suitable water and differentiated materials from nourishing ground. Aelian's A662 report identifies fresh water within the sea as nourishing fish, again making the character of the received material important. These examples support a pattern of bodily maintenance through fitting material, but not a complete modern theory of assimilation. The key word oikeion is itself uncertain: Diels suggests that the reading might be “moist” instead. If that conjecture were accepted, the explicit emphasis would shift from kinship or suitability to a particular material quality. Both the general interpretive appeal and the textual vulnerability of the affinity principle deserve attention.

Places to read

1. A 77 (testimony)Aëtius. Distinguishes nourishment through the settling of the akin from growth through heat.
2. A 70 (testimony)2Plutarch, Table Talk; Aëtius. Describe plant uptake of suitable water and materials from soil.
3. A 66 (testimony)2Aelian, On the Nature of Animals. Attributes fish nourishment to sweet water within the sea.

Translation in this edition

The apparatus proposes hygrou, “moist,” for oikeiou. The printed translation retains affinity, but a lexicon should not build an unqualified universal doctrine on this disputed word alone.