Deipnosophistae

Now it was not the fashion among the Lacedæmonians to practise the system of pledging healths at their banquets, nor to salute one another with mutual greetings and caresses at their feasts. And Critias shows us this in his Elegies:—

1. And this is an old fashion, well establish'd,
2. And sanction'd by the laws of noble Sparta,
3. That all should drink from one well-fill'd cup;
4. And that no healths should then be drunk to anyone,
5. Naming the tender object: also that
6. The cup should not go round towards the right.
7. The Lydian goblets . . . .
8. * * * *
9. And to drink healths with skill and well-turn'd phrase,
10. Naming the person whom one means to pledge.
11. For, after draughts like this, the tongue gets loose,
12. And turns to most unseemly conversation;
13. They make the body weak; they throw a mist
14. Over the eyes; and make forgetfulness
15. Eat recollection out of the full heart.
16. The mind no longer stands on solid ground;
17. The slaves are all corrupted by licentiousness,
18. And sad extravagance eats up the house.
19. But those wise youths whom Lacedæmon breeds
20. Drink only what may stimulate their souls
21. To deeds of daring in th' adventurous war,
22. And rouse the tongue to wit and moderate mirth.
23. Such draughts are wholesome both for mind and body,
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24. And not injurious to the pocket either:
25. Good, too, for deeds of love; authors of sleep,
26. That wholesome harbour after toil and care:
27. Good, too, for health-that best of goddesses
28. Who mortal man befriend: and likewise good
29. For piety's best neigbour temperance.

And presently afterwards he goes on—

1. For fierce, immoderate draughts of heady wine
2. Give momentary pleasure, but engender
3. A long-enduring pain which follows it.
4. But men at Sparta love a mode of life
5. Which is more equal; they but eat and drink
6. That which is wholesome, so that they may be
7. Fit to endure hard pains, and do great deeds.
8. Nor have they stated days in all the year
9. When it is lawful to indulge too much.

And a man who is always ready for wine is called φίλοινος.. But he is called φιλοπότης who is always ready to drink anything; and he is called φιλοκωθωνιστὴς who drinks to the degree of drunkenness. And of all heroes, the greatest drinker is Nestor, who lived three times as long as other men; for he evidently used to stick to his wine more closely than other people, and even than Agamemnon himself, whom Achilles upbraids as a man given to much drinking. But Nestor, even when a most important battle was impending, could not keep away from drinking. Accordingly Homer says—

1. But not the genial feast or flowing bowl
2. Could charm the cares of Nestor's watchful soul.

And he is the only hero whose drinking-cup he has described, as he has the shield of Achilles; for he went to the war with his goblet just as he did with that shield, the fame of which Hector says had reached to heaven. And a man would not be very wrong who called that cup of his the Goblet of Mars, like the Cæneus of Antiphanes, in which it is said—

1. The hero stood and brandish'd Mars's cup,
2. Like great Timotheus, and his polish'd spear.

And indeed it was on account of his fondness for drinking that Nestor, in the games instituted in honour of Patroclus, received a drinking-cup as a present from Achilles; not but what Achilles also gave a cup to the competitor who was defeated: for victory does not commonly attend hard drinkers, on account of their usual inactivity; or perhaps it is owing to their thirst that boxers usually fail, from being fatigued with holding out their hands too long. But Eumelus receives a breastplate after having run a course with great danger, and having been torn, the breastplate being a serviceable piece of defensive armour.

But there is nothing more covetous than thirst; on which account the poet has called Argos thirsty, or rather causing great thirst, as having been much desired on account of the length of time the person of whom he is speaking had been absent from it. For thirst engenders in all men a violent desire for abundant enjoyment; on which account Sophocles says—

1. Though you were to unfold unnumber'd treasures
2. Of wisdom to a thirsty man, you'd find
3. You pleased him less than if you gave him drink.

And Archilochus says—

1. I wish to fight with you, as much as e'er
2. A thirsty man desired to quench his thirst.

And one of the tragic poets has said—

1. I bid you check your hand which thirsts for blood.

And Anacreon says—

1. For you are kind to every stranger,
2. So let me drink and quench my thirst.

And Xenophon, in the third book of his Cyropædia, represents Cyrus as speaking in this manner:—

I thirst to gratify you.

And Plato, in his Polity, says—

But if, as I imagine, any city which is governed by a democracy, thirsting for its liberty, should have evil-disposed cupbearers to wait upon it, and should be intoxicated to an improper degree with unmixed wine . . . .

Proteas the Macedonian was also a very great drinker, as Ephippus tells us in his treatise on the Funeral of Alexander and Hephæstion: and he had an admirable constitution, and he had practised drinking to a great degree. Accordingly, Alexander, having once asked for a cup containing two choes, and having drank from it, pledged Proteas; and he, having taken it, and having sung the praises of the king a great deal, drank it in such a manner as to be applauded by every one. And presently Proteas asked for the same cup again, and again he drank and pledged the king. And Alexander, having taken the cup, drank it off in a princely manner, but he could not stand it, but leaned back on the

pillow, letting the cup fall from his hands; and after this he fell sick and died, Bacchus, as it is said, being angry with him because he had besieged his native city of Thebes. And Alexander drank a great deal too, so that he once, after a drunken bout, slept without interruption two days and two nights. And this is shown in his Journals, which were compiled by Eumenes the Cardian, and Diodotus the Erythræan. But Menander, in his Flatterer, says—

1. A. My good friend, Struthias, I thrice have drunk
2. A golden cup in Cappadocia,
3. Containing ten full cotylæ of wine.
4. St. Why, then you drank more than king Alexander.
5. A. At all events not less, I swear by Pallas.
6. St. A wondrous feat.

But Nicobule, or whoever it was who wrote the books attributed to her, says that

Alexander, once supping with Medeus the Thessalian, when there were twenty people present at the party, pledged every one of the guests, receiving a similar pledge from all of them, and then, rising up from the party, he presently went off to sleep.

And Callisthenes the Sophist, as Lynceus the Samian says in his Commentaries, and Aristobulus and Chares in their Histories, when in a banquet given by Alexander, a cup of unmixed wine came to him, rejected it; and when some one said to him, Why do you not drink? I do not wish, said he, after having drunk the cup of Alexander, to stand in need of the cup of Aesculapius."

But Darius, who destroyed the Magi, had an inscription written on his tomb,—

I was able to drink a great deal of wine, and to bear it well.

And Ctesias says, that among the Indians it is not lawful for the king to get drunk; but among the Persians it is permitted to the king to get drunk one day in the year,—the day, namely, on which they sacrifice to Mithras. And Duris writes thus, with respect to this circumstance, in the seventh book of his Histories:—"The king gets drunk and dances the Persian dance on that festival only which is celebrated by the Persians in honour of Mithras; but no one else does so in all Asia; but all abstain during this day from dancing at all. For the Persians learn to dance as they learn to ride; and they think that the motion originated by this sort of exercise contains in it a good kind of practice tending to the strength of the body. But Alexander used to get so drunk, as Carystius of Pergamus relates in his Historic Commentaries, that he used even to celebrate banquets in a chariot drawn by asses; and the Persian kings too, says he, did the same thing. And perhaps it was owing to this that he had so little inclination for amatory pleasures; for Aristotle, in his Problems of Natural History, says, that the powers of men who drink to any great excess are much weakened. And Hieronymus, in his Letters, says, that Theophrastus says, that Alexander was not much of a man for women; and accordingly, when Olympias had given him Callixene, a Thessalian courtesan, for a mistress, who was a most beautiful woman, (and all this was done with the consent of Philip, for they were afraid that he was quite impotent,) she was constantly obliged to ask him herself to do his duty by her.

And Philip, the father of Alexander, was a man very fond of drinking, as Theopompus relates in the twenty-sixth book of his History. And in another part of his History he writes,

Philip was a man of violent temper and fond of courting dangers, partly by nature, and partly too from drinking; for he was a very hard drinker, and very often he would attack the enemy while he was drunk.

And in his fifty-third book, speaking of the things that took place at Chæronea, and relating how he invited to supper the ambassadors of the Athenians who were present there, he says, "But Philip, when they had gone away, immediately sent for some of his companions, and bade the slaves summon the female flute-players, and Aristonicus the harp-player, and Durion the flute-player, and all the rest who were accustomed to drink with him; for Philip always took people of that sort about with him, and he had also invented for himself many instruments for banquets and drinking parties; for being very fond of drinking and a man intemperate in his manners, he used to keep a good many buffoons an musicians and professed jesters about him. And when he had spent the whole night in drinking, and had got very drunk and violent, he then dismissed all the rest, and when it was day-break proceeded in a riotous manner to the ambssadors of the Athenians. And Carystius in his Historical Commentaries says, that Philip, when he intended to get drunk, spoke in this way:

Now we may drink; for it is quite sufficient if Antipater is sober.

And once, when he was playing at dice, and some one told him that Antipater was coming, he hesitated a moment, and then thrust the board under the couch.

And Theopompus gives a regular catalogue of men fond of drinking and addicted to drunkenness; and among them he mentions the younger Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, whose eyes were a good deal injured by wine. And Aristotle, in his Polity of the Syracusans, says that he sometimes was drunk for three months at a time together, owing to which he had got somewhat weak in the eyes. And Theophrastus says that his companions also, who were flatterers of the supreme power, pretended not to see well, and to be led by the hand by Dionysius, and not to be able to see the meat that was served up before them, nor the cups of wine, on which account they got the name of Dionysiocolaces, or flatterers of Dionysius Nysæus also, who was tyrant of Syracuse, drank a great deal, and so did Apollocrates; and these men were the sons of the former Dionysius, as Theopompus tells us in the fortieth and forty-first books of his History; and he writes thus about Nysæus:

Nysæus, who was afterwards tyrant of Syracuse, when he was taken for the purpose of being put to death, and knew that he had only a few months to live, spent them wholly in eating and drinking.

And in his thirty-ninth book he says:

Apollocrates, the son of Dionysius the tyrant, was an intemperate man, and addicted to drinking; and some of his flatterers worked upon him so as to alienate him as much as possible from his father.

And he says that Hipparinus, the son of Dionysius, who behaved like a tyrant when drunk, was put to death. And about Nyssus he writes as follows:

Nysæus, the son of the elder Dionysius, having made himself master of Syracuse, got a four-horse chariot, and put on an embroidered robe, and devoted himself to gluttony and hard drinking, and to insulting boys and ravishing women, and to all other acts which are consistent with such conduct. And he passed his life in this manner.

And in his forty-fifth book the same historian, speaking of Timolaus the Theban, says:

For though there have been a great many men who have been intemperate in their daily life, and in their drinking, I do not believe that there has ever been any one who was concerned in state affairs, more intemperate, or a greater glutton, or a more complete slave to his pleasures than Timolaus, whom I

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have mentioned.

And in his twenty-third book, speaking of Charidemus of Oreum, whom the Athenians made a citizen, he says:

For it was notorious that he spent every day in the greatest intemperance, and in such a manner that he was always drinking and getting drunk, and endeavoring to seduce free-born women; and he carried his intemperance to such a height that he ventured to beg a young boy, who was very beautiful and elegant, from the senate of the Olynthians, who had happened to be taken prisoner in the company of Derdas the Macedonian.

A man of the name of Arcadion, too, was a very great drinker, (but it is uncertain whether this is the same man who was at enmity with Philip,) as the epigram shows which Polemo has preserved in his treatise on the Inscriptions existing in different Cities—

1. This is the monument of that great drinker,
2. Arcadion; and his two loving sons,
3. Dorcon and Charmylus, have placed it here,
4. At this the entrance of his native city:
5. And know, traveller, the man did die
6. From drinking strong wine in too large a cup.

And the inscription over some man of the name of Erasixenus says that he also drank a great deal.

1. Twice was this cup, full of the strongest wine,
2. Drain'd by the thirsty Erasixenus,
3. And then in turn it carried him away.

Alcetas the Macedonian also used to drink a great deal, as Aristos the Salaminian relates; and so did Diotimus the Athenian: and he was the man who was surnamed the Funnel. For he put a funnel into his mouth, and would then drink without ceasing while the wine was being poured into it, according to the account of Polemo. And it has been already mentioned that Cleomenes the Lacedæmonian was a great drinker of unmixed wine; and that in consequence of his drunkenness he cut himself to pieces with a sword, is related by Herodotus. And Alcæus the poet also was very fond of drinking, as I have already mentioned. And Baton of Sinope, in his essay on Ion the poet, says that Ion was a man fond of drinking and amorous to excess; and he himself, too, in his Elegies, confesses that he loved Chrysilla the Corinthian, the daughter of Teleas, with whom Teleclides, in his Hesiods, says that the Olympian[*](This was a name given to Pericles by Aristophanes, Acharn. 531.) Pericles also was in love. And Xenarchus the Rhodian, on account of the excessive way in which he used to drink, was surnamed

The Nine-gallon Cask;

and Euphorion the Epic poet mentions him in his Chiliades.