could not himself abstain from drinking, owing to which he was wounded and slain while still having hold of the goblet.

[[17]]He represents the Greeks also as drinking hard when sailing away from Troy, and on that account quarrelling with one another, and in consequence perishing. And he relates that Æneas, the most eminent of the Trojans for wisdom, was led away by the manner in which he had talked, and bragged, and made promises to the Trojans, while engaged in drinking, so as to encounter the mighty Achilles, and was nearly killed. And Agamemnon says somewhere about drunkenness—

Disastrous folly led me thus astray,
Or wine's excess, or madness sent from Jove:

placing madness and drunkenness in the same boat. And Dioscorides, too, the pupil of Isocrates, quoted these verses with the same object, saying, "And Achilles, when reproaching Agamemnon, addresses him—

Tyrant, with sense and courage quell'd by wine."

This was the way in which the sophist of Thessalia argued, from whence came the term, a Sicilian proverb, and Athenæus is, perhaps, playing on the proverb.

19. As to the meals the heroes took in Homer, there was first of all breakfast, which he calls ἄριστον, which he mentions once in the Odyssey,

Ulysses and the swineherd, noble man,
First lit the fire, and breakfast then began.[17:1]

And once in the Iliad,

Then quickly they prepared to break their fast.[17:2]