CHAPTER II MORE FRIGHTFUL EXAMPLES
Eating and drinking the only work of the monks — Nunc est bibendum — An apology for Herodotus — A jovial pope — Good quarters in Provence — Intemperance of holy men — A tippling bishop — Alexander the Great — “Lovely Thais sits beside thee” — A big flare-up — Awful end of Alec — Cambyses always shot straight — Darius the strong-of-head — Philip drunk and Philip sober — Dionysius gets blind — Tiberius loved the bowl — So did Flavius Vobiscus, the diplomatist — Bluff King Hal — The Merry Monarch and the Lord Mayor — Dear old Pepys — A Mansion House wine-list — Minimum allowance of sack — A slump in brandy — A church-tavern — Dean Aldrich — The Romans at supper — “The tippling philosophers.”
Not even popes, saints, or bishops were exempt from accusations of loving the juice of the grape, or of the apple, too well. We read in the adages of Erasmus that it was a proverb amongst the Germans that the lives of the monks consisted in nothing but eating and drinking. One H. Stephens says on this subject, in his apology for Herodotus:—
“But to return to these proverbs, theological wine, and the abbot’s, or prelate’s, table. I say {12} that without these one could never rightly understand the beautiful passage of Horace:—
Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
Pulsanda tellus; nunc Saliaribus
Ornare pulvinar Deorum
Tempus erat dapibus sodales,
nor this other:—
Absumet haeres Caecuba dignior