Abstract

This article investigates the role that Plato attributes to medicine in the process of decadence of a political community. In particular, the philosopher condemns the diet therapy that was fashionable among the rich people, as he considers it incompatible with a life placed at the service of the community, which must be the life of every citizen. Plato summarizes the negative characteristics of modern medicine in the figure of Herodicus of Selimbria, who, he explains, lived to old age thanks to this «discovery». In opposition to this degeneration, the philosopher proposes the recovery of traditional medicine, based on surgical or pharmacological interventions.