This pagan Solomon, having to choose from among several very distinguished candidates who offered themselves for the quæstorship, preferred the least known, because he had drunk a whole pitcher of wine, which the prince himself had condescended to fill.[XXVII_7]
Intoxication, with the Greeks, was noted as belonging to low company, if we are to judge by certain personages whom Æschylus and Sophocles did not fear to bring on the stage, and who struck each other with vases—a thing which the modern theatre has judiciously banished.[XXVII_8] Homer is more reserved; for Achilles, after copious libations, only threw a neat’s foot at Ulysses’ head,[XXVII_9] which probably was not of much consequence.
The fact is, that the ancients did not at all profess the same principles that we do respecting intemperance. Hippocrates himself, advised men to seek mirth now and then in wine;[XXVII_10] Seneca recommends us to drown cares and fatigue in it;[XXVII_11] and Musæus decorates with crowns of flowers the foreheads of the sages who, sitting by the side of Plato at all new banquets, should find in continual drunkenness the sweetest reward for their virtues.[XXVII_12] A singular bliss, which only reason in delirium could have imagined.
We have spoken of the delicious beverage which was so costly a seduction to choice epicureans, who took merit to themselves for not resisting it; for this reason, it was necessary to invent vessels worthy of containing it; and art, encouraged by luxury, produced those magnificent vases of which ostentatious antiquity has only left us a faint idea.
The cups of the Homeric times were all of equal capacity; one of them was offered to each guest, but several were offered to persons of high distinction.[XXVII_13]
The Greeks thought much of their cups; for them they were sacred relics from father to son, and were only used on certain solemnities. Thus Œdipus delivers the most frightful imprecation against his son Polynices, who had presented, at a common repast, the cup of his ancestors.[XXVII_14] That of Nestor was so large that a young man could hardly carry it; as to him, he lifted it up without the slightest difficulty.[XXVII_15]
The Athenians drank from cups in the shape of horns.[XXVII_16] Wax vases were sufficient for the Spaniards.[XXVII_17] The Gaul who had thrown down an Urus (wild ox) took its horns, decorated them with silver and gold rings, and made his guests drink out of them.[XXVII_18] Often the skull of an enemy, killed in single combat, was transformed into a cup of honour, and reminded a Gallic family of the memorable action of a valiant ancestor.[XXVII_19]
The first cups of the Romans were made of horns, or of the earthenware of Samos.[XXVII_20] Those conquerors of the world had not yet enervated their manly courage with the luxurious spoils of conquered nations. Afterwards, some very simple ones were made of beech-wood[XXVII_21] or elder;[XXVII_22] these possessed a marvellous property which they ought to have always preserved—the wine only escaped from them, and they retained the water which had been mixed with it.[XXVII_23]
But Rome, already tired of its austere simplicity, and its disdain for the Greek cups of glass and crystal, soon began to desire something finer. Those magnificent chalices, master-pieces of patience and skill, in which gold and silver were amalgamated with a more brittle material,[XXVII_24] were soon in much request, and appeared worthy of their renown.