De Ebrietate

for it is a peculiar characteristic of the man who is devoted to the passions, to think created and perishable things beautiful, because he is enveloped in night and dense darkness, as to the knowledge of imperishable things. On which account he embraces drunkenness as the beginning of all pleasures, and its minister the cup-bearer.

Now there are three companions of and servants of the intemperate and incontinent soul, the chief baker, the chief cook, and the chief butler, whom the admirable Moses mentions in these words, "And Pharaoh was angry with the two eunuchs, with the chief butler, and with the chief baker, and he put them in prison with the chief cook;" and the chief cook is eunuch; for he says in another place, [*](Genesis xl. 20.)

and again, they sold Joseph to Pharaoh’s eunuch, the chief cook; [*](Genesis xxxvii. 36. ) and why is it that the aforesaid offices are absolutely committed to one who is neither man nor woman? Is it because men are by nature calculated to sow seed, and woman to receive it, and that the meeting of the two together is the cause of the generation, and also of the duration of all animals? But it belongs to an unproductive and barren soil, or one may rather say to one which has been made a eunuch, to delight in costly meats and drinks, and in superfluous extravagant preparations of delicacies, since it is unable in reality either to scatter the masculine seeds of virtue, or to receive and nourish them after they have been shed upon it; but, like a rough and stony field, only to destroy those things which ought to have lived for ever.

And it is laid down as a doctrine of the most general applicability and usefulness, that every author of pleasure is unproductive of wisdom, being neither male nor female, because it is incompetent either to give or to receive the seeds which have a tendency to incorruptibility, but is able only to study the most disgraceful habits of life, to destroy what ought to be indestructible, and to extinguish the torches of wisdom, which ought to be enduring and inextinguishable.