The monarch's crown, he laughs to scorn.
III, xxi, 17.
"To total abstainers," he says, "heaven makes all things hard" (I, xviii, 3); so let us drink, but drink with moderate wisdom, leave quarrelsomeness in our cups to barbarous Scythians, to brute Centaurs and Lapithae: let riot never profane our worship of the kindly god. We must again remember that they did not drink wine neat, as we do, but always mixed with water. Come, he says to his slave as they sit down, quench the fire of the wine from the spring which babbles by (II, xi, 19). The common mixture was two of water to one of wine; sometimes nine of water to three of wine, the Muses to the Graces; very rarely nine of wine to three of water.
Who the uneven Muses loves,
Will fire his dizzy brain with three times three.
Three once told the Grace approves;
She with her two bright sisters, gay and free,
Hates lawless strife, loves decent glee.
III, xix, 11.