Letter 186

186. To Antipater, the governor

How noble a thing philosophy is — in other respects, and in this too, that she does not even allow her foster-children to be cured at great expense; for with her one and the same thing is both a relish and enough for health. For I have learned that you restored your failing appetite with cabbages pickled in vinegar — cabbages which formerly I used to find distasteful, both on account of the proverb, and because they were a reminder of the poverty in which I was reared.

But now I think I shall both bring myself round to another mind and laugh at the proverb, seeing that the cabbage is so good a nurse, since it has brought our governor back to vigour. And henceforth I shall consider nothing comparable to it — not the Homeric lotus, no, nor even that ambrosia, whatever it may have been, which feeds the dwellers on Olympus.