[Note] that the ancients used to say that nothing of what [exists] by nature is in vain.[1] But [they said that] the figures of syllogisms do not exist by nature; it is not necessary to say that these are useful, but that such [figures] arise because something useful which is external happens in addition. But syllogisms are not in accordance with nature for us like food and beverage. For their standards -- customs, laws, and public pursuits -- are different, both each [of them] and depending on the person individually. At any rate it is possible to change these things and, if someone wanted it, to change towards the most opposite lifestyle. Hence to some people not even the things that appear by nature to be harmful foods and destructive drugs seemed to be grievous to those who administer them. Indeed they maintain that the Attic woman consumes hemlock as [if it were] vegetables,[2] and that the Pontic beast, which that Mithridates once was,[3] when drinking a noble cup of a noxious drug, was not destroyed (due to the fact that [his] body was strengthened,[4] just like iron by the dipping)[5] because of the antidotes that he frequently consumed; the loathsome man had suspicions of all human beings, starting from his [own] children, as if people were plotting against himself alone because of his fine tyranny.