De Somniis (lib. i-ii)

I say therefore to him whose occupation is to gratify one description of gluttony, the fondness for drinking, namely to the chief butler, "Why are you labouring hard, O unhappy man? For you think that you are preparing pleasant things to give delight, but in reality you are kindling a flame of folly and intemperance, and contributing great and abundant quantities of fuel to it."

But perhaps he may reply, do not blame me precipitately before you have considered my case; I was appointed to pour out wine, not indeed for a man who was endowed with temperance, and piety, and all the other virtues, but for a violent, and intemperate, and unjust master, one who was very proud in his impiety, and who dared once to say, "I do not know the Lord;" [*](Exodus v. 2. ) so that I very naturally studied what would afford him gratification:

and do not wonder that God is delighted with one thing, and the mind which is hostile to God, namely Pharaoh, with the contrary. Who then is the chief butler of God? The priest who offers libations to him, the truly great high priest, who, having received a draught of everlasting graces, offers himself in return, pouring in an entire libation full of unmixed wine. You see that there are differences between butlers in proportion to the differences existing between those whom they are waiting on;

on this account I, the butler of Pharaoh, who exerts his stiff-necked, and in all respects intemperate reason, in the direction of indulgences of his passions, am a eunuch, having had all the generative parts of my soul removed, and being compelled to migrate from the apartments of the men, and am a fugitive also from the women’s chambers, inasmuch as I am neither male nor female; nor am I able to disseminate seed nor to receive it, being of an ambiguous nature, neither one thing nor the other; a mere false coin of human money, destitute of immortality, which is from time to time kept alive by the constant succession of children and offspring: being also excluded from the assembly and sacred meeting of the people, for it is expressly forbidden that any one who has suffered any injury or mutilation such as I have should enter in thereto. [*](Deuteronomy xxiii. 1. )

But the high priest of whom we are speaking is a perfect man, the husband of a virgin (a most extraordinary [*](Exodus v. 2. ) [*](Deuteronomy xxiii. 1. )

some of which are overseers and superintendents of the affairs of nature, such as Eleazar and Ithamar; others are ministers of the worship of God, earnestly occupied in kindling and burning up the flame of heaven; for, as they are always uttering discourses relating to holiness, they cause it to shine, bringing forth the most divine kind of piety like fire from a flint;

and the being who is at the same time the guide and father of those men is no insignificant part of the sacred assembly, but he is rather the person without whom the duly convened assembly of the parts of the soul could never be collected together at all; he is the president, the chairman, the creator of it, who, without the aid of any other being, is able by himself alone to consider and to do everything.

He, when taken in conjunction with others, is insignificant in point of number, but when he is looked at by himself he becomes numerous; he is a tribunal, an entire council, the whole people, a complete multitude, the entire race of mankind, or rather, if one is to speak the real truth, he is a sort of nature bordering on God, inferior indeed to him, but superior to man;

"for when," the scripture says, "the high priest goes into the Holy of Holies he will not be a man." [*](Leviticus xvi. 17. ) What then will he be if he is not a man? Will he be God? I would not venture to say that (for the chief prophet, Moses, did receive the inheritance of this name while he was still in Egypt, being called "the god of Pharaoh;") [*](Exodus vu. 1. ) nor again is he man, but he touches both these extremities as if he touched both the feet and the head.

So now one kind of vine, which has been assigned as the portion of cheerfulness, and the intoxication which arises from it, namely unmingled goodness of counsel, and the cup-bearer too who drew the wine from the divine goblet, which God himself has filled with virtues up to the lip, has been explained;

but the other kind, that of folly, and grief, and drunkenness, is also already depicted in a fashion but in another character, by other expressions which are used in the [*]( Genesis xviii. 11. ) [*](Leviticus xvi. 17. ) [*](Exodus vu. 1. )

You see here what great effects are produced by the drunkenness of folly: bitterness, an evil disposition, exceeding gall, excessive anger, implacability, a biting and treacherous disposition. The lawgiver most emphatically asserts the branch of the vine of folly to be in Sodom; and the name Sodom, being interpreted, means "blindness," or "barrenness;" since folly is a thing which is blind, and also barren of all good things; though, nevertheless, some people have been so greatly influenced by it as to measure, and weigh, and count everything with reference to themselves alone.

Gomorrah, being interpreted, means "measure;" but Moses conceived that God was the standard of weight, and measure, and number, in the universe, but he had not the same opinion of the human mind. And he shows this in the following passage, where he says, "There shall not be in thy sack one weight, and another weight, a great and a small; there shall not be in thy house one measure, and another measure, a great and a small;

thy weight shall be a true and just one." [*](Deuteronomy xxv. 13. ) But a true and just measure is, to conceive that it is the only just God alone who measures and weighs everything, and who has circumscribed the nature of the universe with numbers, and limitations, and boundaries. But it is unjust and false to imagine that these things are regulated in accordance with the human mind.

But the eunuch and chief butler of Pharaoh, having beheld the plant generative of folly, namely, the vine, adds besides to his delineation there stocks, that he may signify the three extremities of error according to the three different times; for a root is equivalent to extremity.

When, therefore, folly has overshadowed and occupied the whole soul, and when it has left no portion of it unoccupied or free, it not only compels it to commit such errors as are remediable, but such also as are irremediable.

Now those which admit of a remedy are set down as the easiest and the first; but those which are irremediable are altogether terrible, and are the last of all, being so far [*](Deuteronomy xxxii. 32. ) [*](Deuteronomy xxv. 13. )

And as, in my notions, wisdom begins to benefit a man in small matters, and ends at last in the absolute perfection of all well-doing, so, in the same manner folly, constraining the soul from above and leading it away from instruction by small degrees, establishes it at last at a long distance from right reason, and finally leads it to the extreme point, and utterly overthrows it.

And the dream showed that after the roots appeared the vine flourished and put forth shoots and bore fruit; for, says the chief butler, "It was flourishing and bearing shoots, around which were bunches of grapes." [*](Genesis xL 10. ) The foolish man is accustomed to display barrenness, and never to put forth even leaves, and, in fact, to be withered all his life;

for what could be a greater evil than folly flourishing and bearing fruit? But, says he, "the cup of Pharaoh," the vessel which is the receptacle of folly and drunkenness, and of the ceaseless intoxication of life, "is in my hand;" an expression equivalent to saying, depends upon my administration, and endeavours, and powers; for without my contrivances, the passion will not proceed rightly by its own efforts;