Socrates, whom the oracle declared the wisest man of Greece, was, in like manner, a very great drinker. M. Charpentier, in his Life, tells us, That though he did not love to drink, yet when he was forced to it, no one could come up to him; and that he had this wonderful happiness, as not afterwards to find himself incommoded by it.
Cato, that hero of stoicism, got drunk sometimes, in order to relax his mind, fatigued with the cares of public employment. These are the very words of Seneca, Cato vino laxabat animum curis publicis fatigatum. And the same author says elsewhere, that “People reproached Cato with drunkenness, but that reproach was rather an honour to him than otherwise.” Catoni ebrietas objecta est, et facilius efficiet quisquis objecerit honestum quam turpem Catonem. Horace gives us the same idea of the great Cato, in these words:—
“Narratur et prisci Catonis
Sæpe mero caluisse virtus.”[1a]
Tradition tells, that oftentimes with wine,
Ev’n Cato’s virtue moisten’d, shone divine.
If one knew the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis no otherwise than by his apophthegms against wine and drunkenness, one would take him for the soberest man in the world, but we know very well that his theory varied very much upon this point, and no way agreed with his practice. One day above the rest, having got drunk at an entertainment given by Lybis, brother to Pittacus, he demanded the prize that was to be given to the greatest drinker. With which action, when he was afterwards reproached, he replied, “Can a man better signalize himself in battle than by glorious wounds? and at table, than with that gaiety you call drunkenness? Did not Homer, the wisest of your poets, make not only Agamemnon drunk, but Jupiter too, and made nectar flow in full goblets at the table of the Gods[2]?” Ælian[3] also tells us, that this philosopher drank largely at Periander’s feasts, and alleged for an excuse, That to drink a great deal was essential to the Scythians.
Plato, another hero of antiquity, not only permitted, but commanded, that people should get drunk at some certain times. To prove what I say, one has no more to do than to read his laws.
Seneca, who was so severe a philosopher, at least his rigid precepts would make one think him so, thought it no harm now and then to get drunk, and ranges drunkenness amongst the means he prescribes to maintain the strength and vigour of the mind. I have quoted what he says in this respect in the first and second chapter of this work.
The philosopher Arcesilaus, who lived about the 120th Olympiad, might be reckoned amongst those who loved wine, since he died by drinking too much of it unmixed. A greater, and more convincing proof of his sincere love to the creature could not be given.