According to different control of the
humors, differences in ideas arise also, as we represented under
the first Trope. For this reason there is certainly a great
difference among men in the choice and avoidance of external
things. The Indians delight in different things from our own
people, and the enjoyment of different things is a sign that
different ideas are received of the external objects. We differ 81
in personal peculiarities, as some digest beef better than
the little fish from rocky places, and some are affected with
purging by the weak wine of Lesbos. There was, they say, an old
woman in Attica who could drink thirty drachmas of hemlock
without danger, and Lysis took four drachmas of opium unhurt,
and Demophon, Alexander's table waiter, shivered when he was 82
in the sun or in a hot bath, and felt warm in the shade;
Athenagoras also, from Argos, did not suffer harm if stung by
scorpions and venomous spiders; the so-called Psylli were not
injured when bitten by snakes or by the aspis, and the
Tentyrites among the Egyptians are not harmed by the crocodiles
around them; those also of the Ethiopians who live on the 83
Hydaspes river, opposite Meroe, eat scorpions and serpents, and
similar things without danger; Rufinus in Chalcis could drink
hellebore without vomiting or purging, and he enjoyed and
digested it as something to which he was accustomed; Chrysermos,
the Herophilian, ran the risk of stomach-ache if he ever took 84
pepper, and Soterichus, the surgeon, was seized by purging if he
perceived the odor of roasting shad; Andron, the Argive, was so
free from thirst that he could travel even through the waterless
Libya without looking for a drink; Tiberius, the emperor, saw in
the dark, and Aristotle tells the story of a certain Thracian,
who thought that he saw the figure of a man always going before
him as a guide.
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