The Essays, vol 9 | Page 8

. . . Consequitur gravitas membrorum, praepediuntur Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens, Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt."
["When the power of wine has penetrated us, a heaviness of the limbs follows, the legs of the tottering person are impeded; the tongue grows torpid, the mind is dimmed, the eyes swim; noise, hiccup, and quarrels arise.--"Lucretius, i. 3, 475.]
The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and government of himself. And 'tis said amongst other things upon this subject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top whatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond measure, vents the most inward secrets:
"Tu sapientum Curas et arcanum jocoso Consilium retegis Lyaeo."
["Thou disclosest to the merry Lyacus the cares and secret counsel of the wise."--Horace, Od., xxi. 1, 114.]
[Lyacus, a name given to Bacchus.]
Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to him his full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets. And yet, Augustus, committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than Tiberias did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we know they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain to carry both the one and the other drunk out of the Senate:
"Hesterno inflatum venas ut semper, Lyaeo."
["Their veins full, as usual, of yesterday's wine." --Virgil, Egl., vi. 15.]
And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber, though he would often be drunk, as to Cassius, who drank nothing but water.
[As to which Cassius pleasantly said: "What, shall I bear a tyrant, I who cannot bear wine?"]
We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post, remember the word, and keep to their ranks:
"Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus."
["Nor is a victory easily obtained over men so drunk, they can scarce speak or stand."--Juvenal, Sat., xv. 47.]
I could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and dead a degree of drunkenness had I not read in history that Attalus having, to put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same Pausanias, who upon the very same occasion afterwards killed Philip of Macedon, a king who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient testimony of his education in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to such a pitch that he could after abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet, to the muleteers and servants of the basest office in the house. And I have been further told by a lady whom I highly honour and esteem, that near Bordeaux and about Castres where she lives, a country woman, a widow of chaste repute, perceiving in herself the first symptoms of breeding, innocently told her neighbours that if she had a husband she should think herself with child; but the causes of suspicion every day more and more increasing, and at last growing up to a manifest proof, the poor woman was reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in her parish church, that whoever had done that deed and would frankly confess it, she did not only promise to forgive, but moreover to marry him, if he liked the motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her in the quality of a labourer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared that he had one holiday found her, having taken too much of the bottle, so fast asleep by the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could conveniently do his business without waking her; and they yet live together man and wife.
It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writings even of several philosophers speak very tenderly of it, and even amongst the Stoics there are some who advise folks to give themselves sometimes the liberty to drink, nay, to drunkenness, to refresh the soul:
"Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine, magnum Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt."
["In this trial of power formerly they relate that the great Socrates deserved the palm."--Cornet. Gallus, Ep., i. 47.]
That censor and reprover of others, Cato, was reproached that he was a hard drinker:
"Narratur et prisci Catonis Saepe mero caluisse virtus."
["And of old Cato it is said, that his courage was often warmed with wine."--Horace, Od., xxi. 3, 11.--Cato the Elder.]
Cyrus, that so renowned king, amongst the other qualities by which he claimed to be preferred before his brother Artaxerxes, urged this excellence, that he could drink a great deal more than he. And in the best governed nations this trial of skill in drinking is very much in use. I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that lest the digestive