Drinking is a cure for woe.
And other poets call wine—
Fruit of the field, which makes the heart to leap.
And the king of all poets introduces Ulysses saying—
Let generous food supplies of strength produce,
Let rising spirits flow from sprightly juice,
Let their warm heads with scenes of battle glow,[65:1]
and so on.
11. It is in consequence of wine that both comedy and tragedy were discovered in Icarium, a village of Attica; and it was at the time of the grape harvest that these inventions were first introduced, from which comedy was at first called τρυγῳδία.
Euripides, in the Bacchæ, says that Bacchus
Gave men the wine which every grief dispels;
Where wine is not, there Venus never dwells,
Nor any other thing which men hold dear.
And Astydamas says that Bacchus