Pentheus[1], king of Thebes, endeavoured to extirpate entirely the custom of getting drunk; but he did not find his account in it, for he was very ill-treated by his subjects for his pains.
Lycurgus[2], king of Thrace, commanded all the vines of the country to be cut up; for which he was justly punished by Bacchus. He also made laws against drunkenness, which one may reckon amongst the bad ones that he instituted. As,
I. The using women in common.
II. The nudity of young women in certain solemn festivals.
“Pittacus[3], one of the wise men of Greece, commanded, that he who committed a fault when he was drunk, should suffer a double punishment. And amongst the laws of Solon, there was one, which condemned to death the chief magistrate if he got drunk. Amongst the Indians, who only just touch wine in the ceremonies of their sacrifices, the law commands, that the woman who killed one of their kings, should get drunk, and marry his successor.”
[4]The Athenians had also very severe laws against those that should get drunk; but one may say, these laws resembled those of Draco, which were written rather with blood than ink.
We come now to the Turks. Sir Paul Ricaut[5] tells us several particulars on this head. Amurath, says he, resolved, in the year 1634, to forbid entirely the use of wine. He put out a severe edict, which commanded all the houses where they sold wine to be razed, the barrels wherever they should be found to be staved, and the wine to be let out into the streets. And that he might truly be satisfied his orders were obeyed, he frequently disguised himself, and walked in that manner about the city; and when he found any one carrying wine, he sent him to prison, and had him bastinadoed almost to death. One day he met in the streets a poor deaf man, who not hearing the noise usually made at the approach of the sultan, did not soon enough avoid a prince whose presence was so fatal. This negligence cost him his life. He was strangled by order of the grand seignior, who commanded his body to be cast into the street. But this great severity did not last long, and all things returned to their former condition.
However, matters took again another turn under the reign of Mahomet the IVth. who, in 1670, resolved to forbid all the soldiery the use of wine. The terrible seditions that liquor had formerly raised were remembered, and especially that which happened under Mahomet the Third, who saw his seraglio forced by a great multitude of soldiers full of wine, and whose fury he could not free himself from, but by sacrificing his principal favourites. An edict was published, to prohibit entirely the use of wine, and to command all those who had any in their houses, to send it out of town. The same extended all over the empire. The sultan condemned to death those who should violate this decree, in which he spoke of wine as of a liquor infernal, invented by the devil to destroy the souls of men, to disturb their reason, and put states into combustion. This was rigorously put in execution, and to that extremity, that it cost the ambassador of England, and the christian merchants of Constantinople, great solicitations, and large sums of money, to get leave to make only as much wine as would suffice for their own families. At Smyrna, the officers of the grand seignior had not the same indulgence for the christians, who were one whole year without wine; and it was with great difficulty they got leave to import it from the isles of the Archipelago, and other places not comprised in that prohibition; for this prohibition reached only those places where there were mosques. Besides all this, they made every Friday sermons stuffed full of declamations against those who should drink it. In short, this edict was so severe, that wine seemed to be banished for ever the states of the grand seignior. But in about a year’s time its severity was somewhat remitted. The ambassadors, and other christians, had leave to make wine within themselves; and about a year after that, the indulgence for wine was general, the taverns were opened, and at this day that liquor is as common as it was before.
[a.] Horace, Satire I.ii.24.
[1.] Sphinx. Theol. p. 669.