§ 1. Many things have been said by the wise, and many by the temperate, in favor of sobriety against intemperance. But drunkenness, though rebuked in gatherings and even at banquets, rules; and it is much easier to praise virtue than to follow it. Therefore I shall speak about temperance to those who seek dishes and wine. I shall also speak to the Germans, that is, to my own fatherland. Although this vice reigns most widely among them, one must nevertheless not despair of a remedy, since many princes and magnates have brought their courts back to moderation and continence.
They say that certain men asked Charles V to prohibit revels and drinking bouts, but that he replied with a laugh that this would be just as if he prohibited thefts among the Spaniards. One must not judge that the emperor spoke in this way out of despair of reformation, but in order to remind men who sharply censured the vices of another nation of their domestic evils. And so I too shall admonish them concerning these things; for the time will come when so great an evil will either be removed by the diligence of princes or oppressed by barbarian servitude.
Germany has always acknowledged this evil as its own, and therefore has carried very many laws against it, even in public diets and assemblies. I shall review the more recent ones.
In the year 1500, at the Diet of Augsburg under Emperor Maximilian, the following was decreed concerning compulsory drinking: “And although, by the consent of the electors, princes, and other estates, it was established and enacted at the last diet concerning compulsory drinking and drinking bouts that the magistrates of all provinces and places where that custom of drinking was not so ancient should apply themselves to the matter, so that it might be abolished, prevented, and gravely
punished, we have nevertheless understood that this constitution of ours and of the Empire has thus far been little observed, but that the said abuse and intemperance is growing stronger and increasing everywhere in all the provinces from day to day. Therefore, since it is so much more necessary that this evil be met with greater care and vehemence than has formerly been done, we prescribe and command each and every elector, prince, and other estate, of whatever dignity, condition, or province they may be, unless they wish to incur the righteous indignation of Our Majesty and fall from favor, that they severely prohibit drinking bouts of this kind everywhere in their electorates, principalities, provinces, dominions, and territories, punish them with a grave penalty, and execute this command with every zeal.”
§ 2. But in the year 1512, at Cologne, an even graver penalty was decreed.
§ 3. “Likewise, although drinking bouts have very gravely been prohibited rather often at previous diets, this has nevertheless thus far been little observed and put into execution—indeed, it has been neglected by those who ought to have maintained and enforced the command—and because, above all, from this imitation in drinking a larger draught of wine arises drunkenness, and from drunkenness frequent blasphemies, homicides, and innumerable other evils, so that those drinkers cast themselves into a present danger to honor, reputation, the salvation of the soul, reason, life, and fortunes, let each of the magistrates of all the provinces, highest and lowest, ecclesiastical and secular, reform that vice first in themselves and then in their subjects, and prohibit everyone from that lust for drinking under the gravest penalties.
“And if any of the nobility are unwilling to restrain themselves from it, let us, the electors also, the princes both ecclesiastical and secular, and every magistrate avoid them, dismiss them from courts, and remove them from offices and duties; and let none either of the princes or of the other lords admit those dismissed for this cause into his service. But let men of lower condition and lot be subjected to corporal penalties for the same fault. But if any magistrate has been negligent toward his subjects in watching over, enforcing, and executing this command of ours, then let the fiscal officer of Our Imperial Majesty summon those subjects who have transgressed before our Imperial Chamber, so that the deserved penalties may be exacted from them. But wherever that depraved custom of drinking, handed down from ancestors, has already taken root, let the magistrates give diligent effort to its abolition.”
O happy fatherland, if those amphorae and Maximins are exterminated from courts, churches, and cities, and punished.
In the year 1548, at Augsburg, the following was decreed by Charles V with the consent of the Empire:
“Since, as daily experience teaches, God is most gravely offended by drunkenness—for various vices, evils, and injuries spring from it—and at previous diets it was established concerning drinking bouts and contests of cups and wine that, in order to remove and abolish drinking bouts, the magistrate should punish severely those guilty of that crime; nevertheless constitutions of this kind have thus far been little observed and put into execution. Rather, that depraved custom of drinking has grown and spread more broadly everywhere from day to day, having driven deeper roots. From it have followed blasphemies, robberies, homicides, adulteries, and gravest offenses of that kind.
“It is added that, through drunkenness, secrets which deservedly ought to be concealed are repeatedly revealed. These vices render the Germans—whose valor was known long ago and greatly praised—exceedingly contemptible among foreign nations. It has likewise often happened in war that, on this occasion, grave dissensions, seditions, and rebellions have arisen among the soldiers themselves, and disobedience toward commanders and military magistrates has sprung up. From this the dearness of provisions is also increased; honorable banquets and social gatherings, for which the Germans were formerly especially commended, are abolished, diminished, and avoided. This is to say nothing of the fact that the vice of drinking is the fountain of every evil and exceedingly pernicious to the eternal salvation, honor, favor, reason, longer life, and bodily strength of human beings.
“Therefore, having considered these things, we command each and every elector and prince, both ecclesiastical and secular, and the other estates of whatever dignity, condition, or province they may be, that they themselves abstain altogether from drinking bouts, both so that they may shine before their subjects by example and so that they may have so much greater power to exact due penalties from transgressors. In their courts let them command courtiers, and in princely dominions, provinces, territories, and domains their subjects, under grave penalty, to abstain from every drinking bout, by whatever manner, words, or form it is instituted or may be devised for institution; and let them diligently enforce this command. Especially, let them also command heads of households diligently to admonish their whole household—children, male servants, and maidservants—to abstain altogether from oaths, blasphemies against God, his most holy mother, and the other saints, and from drinking, as we too prescribe severely here and will to have diligently observed.
“We also will that magistrates give this business to their parish priests and preachers, so that on every Sunday they may set it before the people and command them to abstain from drinking, enumerating for this purpose the vices which are generated from it. For this it will be necessary that a catalogue of them be furnished to the priests by the magistrates.”
In the year 1570, at Speyer, Maximilian established the following concerning the military order, §48:
“Since, to our sorrow, the matter has come to such a point that among the Germans, especially those in military service, the detestable and bestial custom of drinking is the principal exercise—from which grave disgrace, dishonor, infamy, danger, and contempt threaten the whole nation, and above all because victories are consequently rarer and the outcomes of war often more unfortunate—let it be severely commanded to the master of cavalry, military magistrates, as also to lords, nobles, and knights, by force of this military constitution, that they restrain themselves from continual and perpetual drunkenness, but especially that they do not permit it to their attendants and servants.” And §49 admonishes thus:
“But if any one or more military magistrates, having been accused, shall have been discovered to be so given to the bestial and detestable vice of gorging himself that he by no means performs his duty according to necessity, let him be removed from office by the military prefect or his commander, and let it be entrusted to men more sober. Nor is it lawful for anyone, whoever he may be, to oppose himself, aid that man, or defend him, by force of the present constitution and the obedience owed to it.” And §50:
“Likewise, by the military prefect, the commanders, and the equestrian court, in all offenses which were committed in drunkenness by lords, nobles, or soldiers, of whatever condition or lot they may be, and which come to be punished, let drunkenness in no way be accepted or admitted as an excuse or a mitigation of penalties. Indeed, let offenses of this kind be fined and punished the more severely and gravely, even with twice as much.” And §51:
“He who, through drunkenness, has neglected a hostile danger, being stupefied by sleep or in some other manner, shall pay for the negligence with his head.” And §52:
“Each and every soldier, foot soldier, and other man occupied in the service of the cavalry who shall have been discovered to have drunk in the manner of beasts and to be so drunk that he is without power over himself and his reason shall be led directly to prison and bound with iron, nor shall he be released without the will of the commanders or master of cavalry. In addition, it shall be lawful and right to punish such men according to the gravity and confession of the offense, and to summon and drag before the equestrian court those who have opposed themselves to this proceeding.” Finally, §78:
“Therefore, anyone who has been discovered in the watches after drinking, or drunk, so that according to the necessity of the matter he cannot keep watch and give the true and proper password, shall be punished according to the judgment and sentence of the military prefect, the commanders, or the equestrian court.”
I therefore bring these laws forward at the beginning so that I may meet the objection of those who judge that one must despair of Germany and deny that sobriety can be restored. Emperors and princes have good hope; I add that they are also able to apply a remedy, if they will.
§ 4. The Africans, according to Augustine’s testimony, were prone to drunkenness, but in his church there was nevertheless so great a care for sobriety that Augustine deservedly says in Sermon 231 On Time: “Although, with Christ’s favor, dearest brothers, I believe that you dread the evil of drunkenness as a pit of hell, and that not only do you yourselves not wish to drink beyond measure, but do not adjure or compel others to take more than is fitting, nevertheless it cannot happen that there are not some negligent persons who are unwilling to be sober. You who always offer sober banquets, do not take it as an injury to us that it is necessary for us to rebuke certain drunkards.
“For since, dearest brothers, the evil of drunkenness is a grave vice and hateful to God, it has been admitted into custom by many throughout the whole world to such an extent that by those who are unwilling to know God’s precepts it is now neither thought nor believed to be a sin. This goes so far that at their banquets they ridicule those who are able to drink less, and through inimical friendship are not ashamed to adjure men to take more drink than is fitting. For to the man who compels another to make himself drunk by drinking more than is necessary, it would be a lesser evil if he wounded the other’s flesh with a sword than if he killed his soul through drunkenness.
“And because our bodies are earthly, just as, if rain is excessively heavy and prolonged, the earth is flooded and dissolved into mud, so that no cultivation can take place in it, so too our flesh, when it has been made drunk by more abundant drink, will be able neither to receive spiritual cultivation nor to bring forth the necessary fruits of the soul. And therefore, just as all men desire their fields to receive sufficient rain so that they may both be able to exercise cultivation and rejoice in an abundance of fruits, so too in the field of the body they ought to drink only as much as is fitting, lest through excessive drunkenness the earth of the body itself, as though turned into a marsh, be able to generate worms and serpents of vices rather than bring forth fruits of good works.
“For all drunkards are such as marshes appear to be. Your Charity is not ignorant of what is born in marshes: all that is born there is recognized as having no fruit. Serpents and bloodsuckers are born there; frogs and diverse kinds of worms are born there, which can generate horror rather than supply anything profitable for sustenance. Those plants or trees which are accustomed to be born either in the marshes themselves or around their banks appear to have no usefulness, to such a degree that every year they are consumed by fire. See: what is born from drunkenness is prepared for fire.”
Why do we either write books or preach in churches or debate in academies concerning these things? The belly has no ears; but the ears of drunkards also lack hearing, and their head lacks a brain. Nevertheless one must not yield to vices but go against them. Thus the wise men and prophets acted formerly. Nor must the anger of drunkards be feared, because very soon they will rot away.
They cry, “Be ashamed, and let there be shame upon you! Why are you unable to drink as much as we?” For they say that those men are not men. And see the misery of drunkards: those who lie in the sewer of drunkenness say that they are men, and they say that those who stand honorably and soberly are not men. They lie prostrate and are men; the others stand upright and are not men?
Therefore, since the drunk are outside their own power and, because they lack reason, are incapable of admonition, let us admonish the sober to restrain them.
§ 5. First, the law of the great king upon whom every kingdom depends was given to everyone. You see the foundations of the German laws in the decrees of God and the oracles of the Most High, and you see that Germany’s princes and leading men are not ignorant of their own evils, but either love them or are too weak to remove them. But let us look upon the divine laws, and measure our commonwealth and morals by them.
Leviticus 10:8: “And the Lord said to Aaron: You and your sons shall not drink wine or anything capable of making drunk when you enter the tabernacle of the testimony, lest you die; because it is an everlasting command throughout your generations.” Let drunkenness not approach ceremonies destined to perish; to have tasted wine at all is held to be an offense requiring expiation. How shall Christians drink the cup of the Lord while still belching from drunkenness?
Proverbs 20:1: “Wine is a luxurious thing and drunkenness tumultuous; whoever delights in these will not be wise.” And 21:17: “He who loves feasts will be in poverty; he who loves wine and rich foods will not be enriched.” And 23:1: “When you sit to eat with a prince, attend diligently to the things which have been placed before your face, and set a knife at your throat, if nevertheless you have your soul in your power. Do not desire his foods, in which is the bread of falsehood.”
And 31:4: “Do not give wine to kings, O Lemuel, do not give wine to kings, because there is no secret where drunkenness reigns, lest perhaps they drink and forget judgments and alter the cause of the children of the poor.”
Ecclesiasticus 19:1: “A drunken workman will not become rich, and he who despises small things will fall little by little. Wine and women cause the wise to apostatize and will reprove the prudent.” And 31:12: “You have sat at a great table; do not open your jaws over it first.” And verse 17: “Do not be compressed at a banquet.” Chapter 37:32: “Do not be greedy at every feast.”
Isaiah 5:11: “Woe to you who rise in the morning to pursue drunkenness and to drink until evening, so that you may grow hot with wine. The cithara and lyre and timbrel and pipe and wine are in your banquets, and you do not look upon the work of the Lord or consider the works of his hands.” And verse 22: “Woe to you who are powerful at drinking wine and strong men at mixing drunkenness.” And 22:12: “And the Lord God of hosts shall call on that day to weeping and lamentation, to baldness and the girdle of sackcloth; and behold joy and gladness, killing calves and slaughtering rams, eating flesh and drinking wine: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die,” and so forth. And 28:7: “But these also did not know because of wine, and wandered because of drunkenness. Priest and prophet did not know because of drunkenness; they were swallowed by wine, wandered in drunkenness, did not know the seer, and were ignorant of judgment.” And 56:12: “Come, let us take wine and be filled with drunkenness; and as it is today, so shall it be tomorrow and much more.”
Ezekiel 16:49: “Behold, this was the iniquity of Sodom your sister: pride, fullness of bread, abundance, and the idleness of her and her daughters; and they did not extend a hand to the needy and poor.”
Daniel 5:2: “Therefore, being now drunken, he commanded that the vessels of gold and silver which Nebuchadnezzar his father had carried away from the temple which was in Jerusalem be brought, so that the king, his nobles, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them.”
Hosea 4:11: “Fornication and wine and drunkenness take away the heart.”
Joel 1:5: “Awake, drunkards, and weep and howl, all you who drink wine in sweetness, because it has perished from your mouth.”
Micah 2:11: “Would that I were not a man having the spirit, and that I spoke falsehood instead: I shall drip down wine and drunkenness for you, and this shall be the people upon whom it is dripped.”
Romans 13:13: “As in the day, let us walk honorably, not in revels and drunkenness, not in beds and unchastities, not in contention and rivalry.”
1 Corinthians 10:6: “But these things were done as a figure for us, so that we should not be desirous of evil things as they also desired.” And 15:32: “If according to man I fought with beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me if the dead do not rise? Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.”
Galatians 5:19: “But the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornication, uncleanness,” and so forth; “drunkennesses and things similar to these, which I foretell to you, as I have foretold, that those who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.”
Ephesians 5:18: “And do not be drunk with wine, in which is luxury.”
1 Thessalonians 5:6: “Let us keep watch and be sober; for those who sleep, sleep by night, and those who are drunk are drunk by night. But we who belong to the day, let us be sober.” 1 Timothy 3:2: “Therefore a bishop ought to be irreproachable, the husband of one wife,” and so forth; “not given to wine, not a striker,” and so forth.
1 Peter 4:3: “For the past time is sufficient for accomplishing the will of the gentiles, for those who walked in luxuries, desires, drunkennesses, revels, drinking bouts, and unlawful worships of idols.” Hebrews 12:16: “Lest there be any fornicator or profane person, like Esau, who for one meal sold his birthright.”
§ 6. I have long remembered that my business is with those men who measure everything by their own advantages, not by the integrity of the commonwealth but by reason of state, as they themselves are accustomed to speak. And so I must also say this: a commonwealth in which drunkenness rules cannot stand for long. For drunkenness is both hostile to God and contrary to the order by which alone the commonwealth stands.
For what region was there which, although it embraced drunkenness, did not condemn it? What region did not perish through it unless it corrected it early? Lacedaemon, that harsh but brief guardian of virtues, ruled while sober and served while drunk. When Leotychidas was asked why they avoided drunkenness by a severe law, he replied, “Lest others deliberate for us.” For a drunkard, like a ward, is in another’s hand. Solon punished an offense of drunkenness with death. Pittacus visited one who offended while drunk with a double penalty. The laws of Germany in a certain manner imitate this, for they establish a graver penalty for the offenses of drunkards. In Spain, if anyone is a drunkard, he is deprived of the honor of giving testimony; in Italy he is held up to mockery and regarded as in a certain manner infamous. Therefore we possess the testimony of the Creator, the holy fathers, and human laws, together with the consensus of all nations. If anyone resists it, assuredly he must be cast out of every commonwealth as insane and as one contemplating madness.
§ 7. A commonwealth which takes no account of temperance, and which either passes over in silence or incites the drunkenness of its citizens, is cruel. It raises a people weak, diseased, useless for conducting affairs, contemptible to neighbors, and exposed to enemies. For the vinousness of fathers and grandfathers transmits into sons and grandsons arthritis, dropsy, coma, inflammation of the eyes, tremor, epilepsy, and apoplexy, and frequently together with them poverty and want. Sobriety is the cause of health; intemperance brings in a cohort of diseases. Golden are the words of Hippocrates:
Ἄσκησις ὑγιείης, ἀκορίη τροφῆς, ἀοκνίη πόνων.
The exercise of health is slenderness of diet and unwearied endurance of labor. Socrates lived healthy for a very long time at Athens—that is, in the fatherland of luxury and diseases—because he lived soberly. Fortune sets out an ostentatious table; virtue a sparing one. Indeed, even great fortune sets out a sparing one, provided that it is not luxurious. Health requires a sparing table; fever and dropsy are never satiated. Nature is content with few things. As everyone admits, one lives well and healthfully on water. “You have the Nile, and you seek wine?” Pescennius Niger said to a soldier rioting from desire for delicacies.
The old age of Augustus flourished through abstinence and would have been longer if his wicked wife had not hastened it with a poisoned fig. He furnished a dinner of three courses, or most abundantly six, with no excessive expense but the greatest courtesy. Thus Suetonius testifies. What do you hear? Three or six courses on the table of Augustus, the lord of affairs, to whom the Parthians returned the standards and the Indians submitted their kingdoms? What satrap, what citizen furnishes a dinner to a friend in this manner? Constantius too was long-lived; the history of his life teaches the cause. At Caesar’s banquet he forbade a pheasant, a sow’s womb, and an udder to be demanded and brought in, content with the chance food of a munificent soldier.
But the cause why wine and excessive food bring diseases upon the body—so that they rightly call ἰόν, “poison,” τὴν κακίστην τροφήν, “the worst nourishment”—is easily explained by natural philosophers.
§ 8. Whatever is supplied to nature beyond its appetite and powers weighs it down, oppresses it, and weakens it to such a degree that it is turned into poison. It excites an immense struggle and is cast out with convulsion of the breast, nausea, shaking of the head, injury to memory, and the functions of the entrails turned to the contrary.
Wine taken copiously, especially wine that is sweet and spirituous, evaporates upward in great abundance, fills every passage and cavity of the brain, puts reason to sleep, and soon that cloud congeals through cold. With both the passages of breathing and the nerves which administer sensation oppressed, it sometimes threatens immediate death. Thus Alexander the Macedonian died; thus Andebundus, king of England, was carried out from a banquet. Alexander’s drunkenness was always a spectacle; but the funeral rites of Calanus the Indian were set before the entire army as a terror. For a drinking contest was instituted. A talent was promised to the first man, thirty minae to the second, and ten to the third; but it was a bloody contest. Thirty-five men, seized on the very field by sudden cold, shivering, and syncope, breathed out their lives. Six who were carried back to the tents died shortly afterward. Promachus the Macedonian, who merited the talent, died within three days after receiving it. Thus Chares of Mytilene writes concerning Alexander.
But if death does not follow, nevertheless the falling sickness, which is customarily called Herculean, is at hand; for Alcides was subject to it, and not undeservedly, since he bore away the palm among drinkers. They relate that his cup could scarcely be carried by two men. Therefore they called immense mixing bowls Heraclean. All the senses, especially the eyes, are rendered duller; the voice is blunted by drunkenness; color dies away; the breath is corrupted. Ears, lungs, stomach, joints, and intestines have their own vices from a debauch; frenzy also frequently breaks out from it.
What is more miserable than Zeno, who, as a mockery to the peoples, was buried alive first in wine and then in earth? His mind was altogether alienated through drunkenness, with the plebs reproaching him:
“Zeno, rise up; have you drunk again?” When this happened frequently, Ariadne, through hatred of so many vices, ordered him, half alive, to be cast into an imperial tomb and it to be closed with an immense stone. When he returned to himself there and, with immense lamentation and bellowing, wailed, he was neglected through fear of Ariadne and compelled to die. Zonaras, Annal III.
Nor is the end of Michael dissimilar in the same Zonaras. While he was overwhelmed by undiluted wine and oppressed by the deepest sleep, his hands were then cut off so that he could not flee because of drunkenness; a soldier of Basil pierced him through, and by drawing out his entrails with a sword ended his drunkenness and life.
Aristotle briefly explains whence those things arise, Section III, Problem III. He says that drinkers are δυσρίγους, “prone to chills,” and that they are most quickly seized by pain of the sides and other conditions of this kind. For wine brings much moisture and much cold and overcomes natural heat. But wine induces old age and tremor:
Ὢν γὰρ θερμὸς ὁ οἶνος μετὰ τῆς φυσικῆς ὑπαρχούσης θερμότητος, μᾶλλον ἀναλίσκει τὰ ἐν σώματι ὑπάρχοντα ἐφόδια τῷ οἰκείῳ θερμῷ.
For since wine is hot, when joined to the body’s natural heat it more effectively consumes the nourishment in the body belonging to its natural and innate moisture. Hence it happens that among these men some are oppressed inwardly by water, others by a flux, others by another discharge, and very many other disorders of the same belly exercise them. For both the remaining humors remain sharp and unfit, and those liquids which have come from without cannot be thickened because of the weakness of their proper heat. But the heat itself remains weak for this reason: because the matter by which it can still be maintained is weak. So it is with a fire which a reed produces, for because of the weakness of its material it is weaker than a fire furnished by wood.
But Aristotle plainly teaches in Problem XXIII that one’s age is diminished by wine: “Why does one who was previously emaciated and then drank much undiluted wine fall down dead? And why are very many drinkers, although they have in no way emaciated themselves, nevertheless made dry by a large and universal draught of undiluted wine? For this must be investigated, since wine is hot by its own nature, and just as life plainly is maintained by heat, so death occurs by cooling. Is it the case that, as from hemlock, so one must die from undiluted wine, although one’s own heat is thereby gradually extinguished, but by a different manner? For hemlock wastes natural heat by cold. And just as a small fire is extinguished by excessive fire or by the sun, so the body’s inward heat is overcome and extinguished by the heat of wine, if it is excessive.”
Or, if another similitude pleases: just as heated wine, when it is cooled, loses its natural heat and subtlety, because its fiery, airy, and more delicate parts vanish and the baser matter remains, so too the natural moisture, which philosophers call radical moisture, is dissipated and dissolved by excessive adventitious heat. From this tremor and cold of bodies grow strong. Hence drunkards rejoice in the sun.
This having therefore been established, a rightly ordered commonwealth and a political prince ought to remove drunkenness as poisons and hemlock are removed, and to punish offenders by laws. For it makes no difference whether by the cold of hemlock or by the heat of undiluted wine you exhaust the heat implanted in nature and induce a deadly cold. Drunkenness, I believe, kills more slowly but more cruelly, wrenching the unhappy soul away amid a great concurrence of diseases and symptoms. Indeed, Caelius Rhodiginus relates in Book XXVIII, Chapter XXXI, that certain men became mute from drunkenness and, suffering convulsion or spasm, immediately fell down; others, when fever supervened, sought a remedy from the lesser evil.
Thus, therefore, I maintain that the life of many nobles and rich men in Germany could be twice as long if they cultivated sobriety—indeed, healthier and more pleasant. I say of the rich, for drunkenness is more frequent among them, rarer among the poor, and less harmful to bodies hardened and dried by labor. For just as individual bouts of drunkenness diminish vital heat and the vegetative moisture of nature, so too they tear away a part of life and accelerate death. And so the unjust inviter drives men toward death while he serves delightful poisons; and when men “drink health,” as they speak, they subtract years from themselves. You will find many old men nowhere except in the harsher places of Germany, where poverty and lack of wine have taught sobriety. Nor shall I deny that many leading and wealthy men, obedient to the laws of temperance, live moderately amid splendid fortune. But the paucity of these yields to the multitude of the others. From this another evil follows: very many men, their fathers removed by an immature death, are wards; both their estates are dissipated and, with greater harm, their education is neglected.
§ 9. Beginning again from higher principles, I undertake to explain how great a corruption there is in wine and how great a plague to life comes from it. Aristotle says in Book VII, Chapter XVII of the Politics:
Φαίνεται δὴ διά τε τῶν ἄλλων ζώων ἐπισκοποῦσι, καὶ διὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν οἷς ἐπιμελές ἐστιν εἰσάγειν τὴν πολεμικὴν ἕξιν, ἡ τοῦ γάλακτος πλήθουσα τροφὴ ἀσινοτέρα δὲ, διὰ τὰ νοσήματα.
It is plain, if anyone considers other living creatures and the nations which take care to induce a bodily habit fit for war, that an abundant supply of milk is most suited to bodies, yet without wine because of diseases. Therefore Aristotle also prohibits dark wine to nurses, lest vinous and hot milk infect the tender limbs and humors of infants; for as the flavor of the fodder is, so too are the force and property in the milk.
I do not think that wine must be prohibited to women in Germany, although this was provided by laws at Rome and although Egnatius killed his wine-drinking wife with a club and was acquitted of the killing by Romulus. For the region is cold, and its wine is for the most part more diluted than Greek, Italian, and Spanish wine. And so that law of Romulus—“If she shall have drunk wine at home, let them punish her as an adulteress”—was abrogated even at Rome. Nor does that consequence of vices which the ancients connected always exist: that adulteries and poisonings follow the use of wine. For physicians frequently prescribe wine in Germany and the northern regions; and Guevara, a man prudent as well as severe, concedes a little wine to women in his very hot Spain for thickening milk, although it is so diluted that the rawness of the water is corrected rather than any flavor perceived by the tongue.
But let each person judge these matters as he wishes, provided that what I have resolved to conclude from them is introduced into morals, and everyone acknowledges how much harm to bodies exists in the abuse of wine. For if wine drunk by a mother or nurse, subdued by the stomach, tempered with other nourishment, thickened into blood, and then by the most perfect digestion converted into milk exercises such power upon nurslings that it kindles them with an alien heat and renders them epileptic, ecstatic, stupefied, stupid, and diseased, what must be judged if both parents and the grandparents received those vices by inheritance, increased them by intemperance, and transcribed them into their offspring?
§ 10. For the same cause the custom of many who frequently drip wine into infants is also foul—πῦρ ἐπὶ πῦρ ἐπάγοντες, as the Greeks say, adding fire to fire.
Plato prohibits wine from being given to children before their eighteenth year. The Suebi, formerly imitating Plato, according to Caesar in Book IV, did not even permit wine to be imported, lest they become soft. The Bohemians, by contrast, in the age of their great-grandfathers poured noble wines into infants so that they might learn to drain immense cups at court. Roman youths wearing the toga praetexta
abstained from wine. Avicenna altogether denies it to children, for it is just as if one adds fire to fire, and this in weak matter. He concedes it temperately to young men and as much as they can endure to old men. Children’s bodies are porous, loose, and hot; therefore they are most easily inflamed by wine. Their nerves are weak and their brain infirm. Thus Galen too says in his Regimen of Health: “Wine is most hostile to children, because they are excessively inflamed by it and because their nerves and brain cannot resist its violence. It dries vehemently and overturns the state of the mind not only for the present but disturbs it for the whole of life.”
If you bend violently strong wood or a bronze bow, it possesses powers by which it may spring back and restore itself to its straightness. If you bend wax, lead, and tender shoots, they easily follow the hand, but they cannot return whence they were drawn. Thus voluntary madness from drunkenness indeed disturbs robust bodies, hardened arteries, strengthened nerves, a compact and thickened brain, and its strong little membranes in men, and renders them weaker—for wood once bent is never restored altogether to its former integrity, and a bow long bent loses its strength. But if the ardor of Liber falls upon the tender entrails of children, it so dilates, twists, contracts, and dries them that by no art can they recover their natural constitution.
Memorable is the example of a boy of Pergamum who, when thirsty, drank somewhat undiluted wine. He remained awake for a long time; fever followed the wakefulness, frenzy followed the fever, and finally death. “But we do not always see those things.” It is true: wine does not produce the same evils in everyone, but contrary ones—dropsy in one, burning fevers in another, wasting and sleep in some, shouts and songs in others. Chaeremon says in Aristotle’s Problems that wine operates according to the characters of those to whom it applies itself. And so it harms gradually and little by little until it uses up the whole man.
I have heard young men complaining of sleeplessness; I have seen men otherwise strong from whom wine had taken away, if not their mind, certainly their health and vigor of mind. Sleep denied to nature in youth is a certain sign of a short life. Dryness drives away sleep, but wine dries young men especially; that humor, overwhelming tender nature, takes away its sweet and life-giving juice. Just as dry wood is moistened by water yet lacks native and vital sap, and that moisture effects nothing except that it rots more easily, so too are bodies which are washed in wine rather than drink it.
Thus Diotimus the Athenian, whom they jestingly called a chous, because, with a funnel applied, he drank without breathing. There are some so inexperienced in affairs that they judge the natural heat to be restored and increased by the heat of wine with which drunkards grow hot, although experience teaches them that on the following or third day all things grow cold and the limbs tremble. But I speak concerning children. In cold places I would concede them no wine, or little and diluted wine; in hot places none at all. Cast a tender flower into must: you will receive it pale and without sap. No less does the slight flame of Falernian wine burn delicate entrails and hurry them into premature old age more quickly than the beard.
But what need is there of disputation? You may traverse all Europe: in cultivated cities you will find the pale faces of young men, slender bodies, thin little legs; in villages, strong offspring, lively color, muscular upper arms, broad shoulders, robust and masculine supports of the legs, and longevity. But concerning this matter eternal truth is my witness, Ecclesiasticus 37:34: “Because of debauchery many have died, but he who is abstinent will add to life.” Therefore let princes lay it up in their inmost mind that more persons must not perish in peace than in war. For what does it profit the commonwealth that swords are sheathed—or, as Scripture speaks, turned into plowshares—if the aconites of intemperance, if the poisons of wine rage more freely than any wars? Those who neglect these things sin against the health of human beings. “To sin against a human being’s health is the crime of homicide,” says Cassiodorus.
The wretched flee plague and epidemic pestilence, although, if seized by it, they will die without crime. They follow the intemperance of wine and will die with dishonor and eternal destruction. What Augustine said concerning the son of one head of a household in a sermon on chastity—“What does it profit a man to have a son, nourish him, and love him, if he nourishes him for eternal torments?”—I say to the prince: What does it profit a prince to have subjects if all, or a great part, are being prepared for a miserable spectacle and the torments of hell?
§ 11. Enough has been said concerning the evils of the body whose cause is drunkenness; the plague of minds is greater. I am not speaking of the offense against the divine power and of sins, but of impediments to talent, memory, judgment, and alacrity. Drunkenness takes away memory, scatters the senses, and confounds the intellect, as Augustine teaches: “Drunkenness makes a beast out of a man, a weak man out of a strong one, and a fool out of a prudent one.” As Origen and Jerome testify: “Nothing so overwhelms the understanding as feasting and drunkenness.” Cleomenes, when he emulated the ἄμυστιν—the drinking at one draught—of the Spartans, Scythians, and Thracians, was reduced to insanity.
The natural cause of insanity from wine is that it alters the body remarkably, especially by attacking the head and brain. Hence spasm, convulsion, frenzy, stupor, watering of the eyes, tremor, and the disturbance of the brain and its instruments as though of a clock or of strings produce stupidity. Campanian mothers are said to have smeared hedgehog’s blood upon their breasts so that they might rear fierce offspring. But there was neither an abundance of that blood nor such efficacy in it, nor were the Campanians fierce, but luxurious. Caligula’s nurse gave her nursling the blood of a girl torn apart and mangled together with her milk; yet this was not the cause of that cruelty of his by which he afflicted the human race. He took the greatest pleasure from slaughter, intent without satiety upon the spectacle of shed blood, as Dio testifies in Book LIX. But an inhuman nature, education, and drunkenness brought this about, and those were the evils of the times.
Certainly it was not without cause that the Lord said in Hosea 7, “The princes began to rage from wine.” Not without cause did Pythagoras say that three clusters grow upon the vine: the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, the third of insanity. Athenaeus, Book II, Chapter I, relates from Timaeus of Tauromenium that certain young Agrigentines came to such insanity that, while drunk, they thought that they were sailing and, as though a storm had arisen and as if they wished to lighten the ship of its cargoes, threw all the furniture through the windows. When the senate sent officers, they adored them as Tritons and promised victims and sacrifices if they should escape the storm. On the third day they scarcely returned to their mind; the house was called the Trireme. Therefore that temporary insanity, more frequently impressed upon the mind through wine, disturbs the judgment even of men when sober.
Histories relate the most foolish deeds of drunken princes even when they were at their most sober. Sardanapalus entrusted his forces and the care of his kingdom to others. Cambyses, intolerable to everyone and the most foolish of all, afflicted his father’s empire. Bonosus, in his own age the most capacious of drinkers, merited hanging by his imprudence. Marcus Antonius, the most talented of the Romans, conducted very many things effeminately and childishly. Claudius, that stock and mushroom, who, as someone says, was so foolish that he could reign—what of the fact, as Seneca jokes,
that when he saw his own funeral and obsequies, he then first understood that he was dead? That man, I say, held large and continual banquets. Caligula, Gallienus, and Maximinus, by the habit of drinking deeply, fell into the greatest disgraces.
§ 12. But what is the chief point: it is established that princes have overthrown the commonwealth through drunkenness. Alexander the Macedonian, the fortunate robber of Asia, conducted very many things youthfully and foolishly, and no one was more desirous of wine than he. No one would call Caligula sane if he should read even one chapter concerning his deeds in Suetonius; but if that man had lived a few years, he would have squandered the whole empire.
“But, lest I enumerate individual things,” says Suetonius, “he consumed immense resources and all that wealth of Tiberius Caesar, twenty-seven thousand times one hundred thousand sesterces, before a whole year had turned. Therefore, exhausted and needy, he turned his mind to robberies through a various and most exquisitely contrived class of false accusations, auctions, and taxes. He denied that those whose ancestors had obtained Roman citizenship for themselves and their posterity possessed it by right, unless they were sons, for he said that ‘posterity’ ought not to be understood beyond this degree. When the diplomas of the deified Julius and Augustus were produced, he lamented that they were old and obsolete. He charged that census declarations had been wrongly submitted if afterward any increase whatsoever had accrued to them for any cause.
“He rescinded as ungrateful the wills of former chief centurions who, from the beginning of Tiberius’s principate, had left neither him nor himself as heir; likewise, as invalid and empty, the wills of all others whom anyone said had intended, when dying, to leave Caesar as heir. When this fear had been injected, and he was now openly named heir both by strangers among their friends and by parents among their children, he called them mockers because they persisted in living after naming him, and he sent poisoned dainties to many. He moreover took cognizance of such cases after first fixing the amount of money for the completion of which he would sit; only when it had been completed was he roused. And, not patient even of a very little delay, he once condemned more than forty defendants on diverse charges by one sentence, and boasted to Caesonia, when she had awakened from sleep, how much he had accomplished while she took her midday rest.
“Having announced an auction, he put up and sold the remnants of all his spectacles, himself seeking the prices and extending them so far that some men, compelled to buy certain things at an immense price and stripped of their goods, cut their own veins. It is well known that when Aponius Saturninus was sleeping among the benches, Gaius admonished the auctioneer not to pass over a man of praetorian rank who was repeatedly nodding to him by a movement of the head; nor was an end made to the bidding until thirteen gladiators were knocked down to the unwitting man for nine million sesterces.”
Why should I set Nero before you, singing with a lyre among stage-players? And surely nothing was more foolish than he after he began to be drunk.
Tacitus shows how ruinous the gluttony of Vitellius was: “A foul and insatiable lust for feasts. From the city and from Italy the incitements of his gullet were carried in, while the roads from both seas resounded. The leading men of the cities were exhausted by the preparations for banquets. The cities themselves were laid waste. The soldier degenerated from labor and virtue through habituation to pleasures and contempt for his leader.”
And Tranquillus speaks in more words: “Most notorious above the others was the arrival-banquet given to him, at which two thousand of the choicest fish and seven thousand birds are reported to have been set out. He himself surpassed this too at the dedication of a dish which, on account of its immense size, they continually called the shield of Minerva, ἀσπίδα πολιούχου, ‘the shield of the Guardian of the City.’ In this he commingled the livers of parrotfish, the brains of pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of flamingos, and the milt of moray eels sought by ship-captains and triremes from as far as the Carpathian Sea and the strait of Spain. Moreover, as a man not only of profound but also untimely and sordid gluttony, he never restrained himself even at sacrifices or on any journey from chewing, right there among the altars, entrails and grain-cakes almost snatched from the hearth, and, around the cookshops of the roads, smoking dishes or those of the preceding day and half-eaten.”
He whose mind always dwells in dishes thinks nothing lofty, nothing worthy of a prince.
What of Gallienus? When the empire was being assailed by the armies of thirty enemies and tyrants, if at any time he had awakened from drunkenness, he was accustomed to ask: “And what do we have for luncheon? And what pleasures have been prepared? And what sort of dinner will there be tomorrow? What sort of Circensian games?” Thus Trebellius Pollio. Behold the care of a foolish emperor now reduced to the utmost straits. The same Trebellius speaks thus: “And lest his pitiable ingenuity be passed over: in springtime he made bedchambers of roses. He built fortresses out of fruit. He preserved grapes for three years. He presented melons in the depth of winter. He taught how must might be possessed throughout the year. He always supplied green figs and fresh fruit from trees in months foreign to them.”
Was Heliogabalus sane, concerning whom Aelius Lampridius says: “He is reported to have exhibited naval Circensian games in canals filled with wine”? For in comparison with so furious a prodigality, it is not worthy of mention to relate that six hundred ostrich brains were served at one dinner, or that there were swimming-pools full of wine. It was once the height of luxury to give naval Circensian games. This man makes navigable canals out of wine. But whence such insanity? He had arranged matters with Pescennius in such a manner that the latter might attend to the empire while Heliogabalus himself might be free for pleasures.
Therefore immoderation in food and intemperance in drink, which overthrow prudence, the dispenser of all duties, must altogether be avoided. Prudence is not to be demanded from a man who is never sober. Most true is what Seneca says in Epistle LXXXIII: “Vices conceived in wine have force even without wine.” And indeed this is especially true of that vice which is proper to wine: thoughtlessness, stupidity, and insanity. “The use of wine,” says Philo in On Monarchy, “weighs down the soul, blunts the senses, and burdens the body.”
The greatness of princes ought to produce not a license to sin, but a sense of shame.
§ 13. I shall finish with the example of a private man, which Seneca describes thus in Chapter X of the Consolation to Helvia: “Apicius lived in our memory; in that city from which philosophers were once ordered to depart as though they were corrupters of the young, he professed the science of the cookshop and infected the age with his teaching. It is worthwhile to know his end. When he had poured one hundred million sesterces into his kitchen, when he had swallowed up so many distributions of princes and an immense revenue of the Capitol in individual feasts, oppressed by debt he was then for the first time compelled to inspect his accounts. He calculated that ten million sesterces would remain to him; and, as though he would live in extreme hunger if he lived on ten million sesterces, he ended his life with poison. How great was the luxury of the man to whom ten million sesterces was poverty! Go now, and suppose that the measure of money pertains to the matter, not to the mind. Someone feared ten million sesterces and fled by poison from what others seek in prayer. Yet to that man of so depraved a mind his last draught was the most wholesome.”
Drunkenness is therefore the mother of stupidity. Augustine speaks excellently: “If a drunkard swallows wine, he is swallowed by it; he becomes abominable to God, is despised by angels, derided by men, confounded by demons, and trampled upon by everyone. The drunkard confounds nature, loses grace, forfeits glory, and incurs damnation.” How he confounds nature Augustine has already expounded above in Sermon CCXXXI. Within the memory of the ancients no nation was slower or more stupid than the Thracians; the common people could not count beyond four. Their stupor, propagated into their offspring from perpetual drunkenness, was a marvel to others. For the offspring of drunkards is deficient either in body or in mind, and more frequently in both. Nor unjustly, although with great bitterness, did Diogenes say to a young man
who was dazed and ecstatic, ἐκστατικῷ:
Ὁ πατήρ σου μεθύων σε ἔσπειρε.
“Your father begot you when drunk.” I have already intimated the reason why drunkenness obstructs wisdom even when that madness has now subsided. It must now be treated more fully.
§ 14. Those in whom yellow bile predominates are quick in talent; those in whom melancholy predominates are prudent and especially to be employed in public affairs. But the melancholy must be finer and nobler, one which does not have a mixture of stupidity joined to it. It belongs to a prudent man to remember and to understand, or to judge rightly. The seat of memory, imagination, and images is the brain; its temperament both retains past things and serves judgment through the imaginative faculties. If it flows with excessive moisture or is chilled, memory wavers. If it grows hot beyond measure, frenzy is engendered. Memory and judgment, therefore, consist in a mean temperament of the brain.
Pure and uncorrupted air itself is fertile in good talents, such as Attic, Palestinian, and German air. Thicker and more dreg-filled air possesses sluggish talents. You would swear that a Boeotian had been born in thick air. Excessive cold renders talents torpid and as though lethargic, as are the nations of the Lapps toward the north. Excessive heat frequently renders them utterly stupid, such as those of many Ethiopians. Hence, amid the equality of souls, there is so great a diversity of talents that some human beings appear almost to be brute animals to others.
From both considerations it appears how much sobriety contributes to wisdom. For if purity of the air which we draw is necessary to talent, lest by the onset of a more turbid atmosphere the purity of the brain be corrupted and its order disturbed, how much greater is the confusion in the most violent beating of drunkenness, which is so great that it swells the tongue with moisture, weakens the whole body, and casts it down? Next, wine kindles excessive heats, especially in the head itself, the citadel of wisdom; it renders the vital and animal spirits more turbid and dreg-filled. And, what is the chief point, it extinguishes native heat. Therefore men easily forget past things and consult with little sagacity concerning future things. For while the head frequently seethes with wine, that which is delicate and lucid vanishes; the inferior and impure parts remain. Hence we often see veteran counsellors of princes grow torpid amid the very business and be surpassed by the perspicacity and diligence of younger men.
Seneca speaks concerning talents: “Daily the matter has been brought into a worse condition, whether through the luxury of the times—for nothing is so deadly to talents as luxury—or, when the rewards of the most beautiful thing ceased, every contest was transferred to disgraceful things.” But when that stupor also belonged to the parents, it is frequent for men altogether dull and stupid to be born. But, to conclude, I affirm this as observed by all philosophers and physicians: children become slow and stupid through much food, drink, and sleep, and grow more defectively.
§ 15. Two things are customarily objected to me. The first is that some men are capable in drinking and their mind is vigorous in wine. The second is that many men distinguished in talent and prudence deliberate most wisely during intervals of sobriety. As examples of the former they put forward Bonosus, who, while drinking and urinating, invited the enemy’s envoys and made them drunk so that they might disclose secrets; he himself could sustain much wine. They also put forward Cambyses, concerning whom Seneca relates in Book III, Chapter XIV of On Anger:
“Praexaspes, one of his dearest men, admonished him to drink more sparingly, saying that drunkenness was shameful in a king whom the eyes and ears of all followed. To this he said: ‘That you may know how I never lose possession of myself, I shall prove presently that both my eyes and hands remain at their duty after wine.’ He then drank more liberally than at other times, from more capacious cups. When already heavy and drunk, he ordered his reprover’s son to proceed beyond the threshold and to stand with his left hand raised above his head. Then he drew his bow and struck the young man’s very heart—for he had said that he was aiming at it—and, when the breast had been cut open, showed the point adhering in the very heart; and, looking back at the father, asked whether he had a sufficiently sure hand. But he denied that Apollo could have discharged an arrow more surely. May the gods destroy him wickedly—a slave more in soul than in condition. He was the praiser of a thing of which it was excessive merely to have been a spectator. He considered the breast of his son split into two parts and the heart beating beneath the wound an occasion for flattery.”
They recount various examples of the latter marvel, even of men still living. Yet it is not difficult to meet the thoughtless patrons of vinousness. And first, indeed, the examples of two most shameful men, a king and an emperor, ought to have moved them to detestation of so foul a crime. Cambyses remained in possession of himself because his drunkenness from anger was greater than his drunkenness from wine. Indeed, the former shook off the latter. However he acted, he was not only cruel but most foolishly cruel. For he could not, unless insane, have been ignorant that by a deed so cruelly injurious the hatred of all was kindled against him. Therefore, although his right hand did not err, the counsel of his mind was nevertheless the insanity of a most insane mind.
The emperor Bonosus could not become drunk; for he did not drink but poured wine through his body as through a wineskin or channel. Hence, when someone saw him hanged, he said that an amphora was hanging—a jest that was also cast against Maximinus. I come to the other part, which I shall easily carry if my discourse is with the vinous men themselves, not with the eulogists of vinous men. For those who do not preserve moderation in food and drink perceive in fact that the digestion of varied courses is turbulent and unequal. Aristotle says in Problem I that many foods are more easily eaten than digested. They also confess that they have attended more funerals caused by luxury than by old age. They see that Macrobius spoke truly: “Those who frequently become drunk quickly grow old.” Saturnalia, Book VII, Chapter VI. Most true also is what Arnobius says in Book VII: “Wine weakens the sinews of all the virtues.” But how? Because it diminishes wisdom, the bond and framework of all the virtues. It diminishes wisdom because it wrenches the seat of memory, imagination, and the internal senses, confounds the organs, and displaces them from their natural constitution.
But let us consider the matter itself. Those wise and talented drinkers prepared a name for themselves before they began to wear away their talent; now they retain it because they are talkative, because they prevail in experience, because they know precedents. But if new and difficult matters are proposed, if the battle-line of an adversary assails them, if there is need of much meditation, reading, and comparison of laws, then at length it will appear how much sagacity and understanding Bacchus has struck away with his thyrsus. Then they will say:
The bottom is turned in our wine-jars, and our opinion in us.
Let those talented and prudent men, after the ample drinking-parties of some years, be recalled to the academies and preside over disputations; let obscure and difficult matters be vigorously argued: they will seriously deplore their loss. Although even now they frequently pay the penalty, for to this day those very men do things which are prudently corrected by younger men. This is bitter and almost insulting, but sometimes necessary. For:
Πολὺς γὰρ οἶνος πολλὰ ἁμαρτάνειν ποιεῖ.
With much wine many errors are committed.
Themistocles passed a prodigal, criminal, and voluptuous youth with such wickedness and contumacy
that he is said to have driven his mother to hang herself; but afterward he was the pillar of Greece. He was a man of great talent and a great spirit. But he had not yet buried his talent altogether, and amid a scarcity of good and brave men he suddenly shone forth. Yet he did not long maintain that position, for he conducted many things wickedly and foolishly. For what sort of plan was it to burn the whole fleet of victorious Greece in order that he might procure the empire for the Athenians alone? What else was this but to expose his unarmed fatherland to the barbarians? For Greece would not have fought on behalf of allies so treacherous.
Next, he himself is witness to how prudently he exercised command. “That boy,” he says, “commands the Greeks: for what he wishes, his mother wishes; what his mother wishes, I wish; what I wish, all the Greeks wish.” Behold the wisdom of a drunken leader, who could govern neither his son nor his wife—not even his agents; for he was overwhelmed by great debt. What wonder that this man fled his fatherland? Let them therefore cease boasting of the prudence of drunkards in political affairs. I can name men who, removed from affairs by premature delirium, passed an inglorious old age; others who altogether lost all authority. There remains an example full of ill will, but because it is fruitful in truth and has not been noted by many, it must be brought forward; for a man ought to hear his own vices, whether they delight him or are objects of hatred.
§ 16. Germany is divided into three parts, if you regard temperance. The first part is laborious, a hardener of sons and a drinker of water, in which the use of beer is rare and that of wine most rare. The second part abounds in wine and delicacies; in it the rich especially are drunken and rear their sons delicately. The third part is intermediate, akin to the virtues of the first and the vices of the second. All these parts, however, are not widely separated in place but in morals. Among them I have now observed many things over several years, and I appeal to all to whom old age has conferred experience. I was able to note what I shall say all the more conveniently because for twenty-four years the young in diverse colleges and academies were known to me, and I noted differences of talents.
First, in cultivated cities abounding in wine and given to delicacies, I have observed that many children of the wealthy and the magnates are little sound in mind and that some are altogether foolish; and this evil has been spread widely through many distinguished families. The natural cause is the drinking of mothers while they carry a child and while they nurse. For many at that time guzzle not only Rhenish wines but Spanish, Cretan, and dark wines, and force them upon their tender children. The most cunning appetite for wines invents the claim that this contributes to health, firmness, and the fostering of heat; but however useful this may be to mothers, undiluted wine is certainly poison to the talents of their children.
In this matter civic matrons offend more than noblewomen who are accustomed to dwell in fortresses, both because the discipline of nobility is more severe than that of luxurious cities—for they are accustomed to rear their children for labors and warfare and to habituate them to ordinary food—and because in cities there is not only an abundance of such things, but they are customarily given as gifts by relatives. Women and children do not easily abstain from delicacies. Therefore I judge that some law for restraining female appetite must be introduced in cities, and I demand the skill of physicians by which the health of mothers and offspring may be regulated.
But by what law will you restrain the women Bebrias and Ebrias, especially the mistresses of the cellar? What if the husband too is Bebrius Ebrius? The evil is difficult to cure because it is hidden, and when it has appeared the medicine is late; for the son, his mind injured, now carries about the drinking habit of his mother. Nevertheless, let the husband, preacher, and confessor admonish her. Above all, let parents and magistrates devote themselves to making it disgraceful for a daughter of a household to have drunk wine. Indeed, let it be so infamous to be regarded as a female drinker that such women can scarcely hope for an honorable marriage. Finally, let parents and husbands be both a lesson and an example of temperance. Otherwise they will always chatter in the woman’s ear, “Where you are Gaius, there I am Gaia.” A drunken old woman was dragging a drunken old man.
Second, I have observed that children reared delicately and accustomed to sip the last drops of little cups are for the most part talented, lively, and ready in memory until their twelfth or fourteenth year. But when they have left the grammar schools and are now applied to making verses and composing a speech by their own effort, most fail because there is need of reasoning, judgment, labor, and exertion of mind; and they show that the flower of their talent was perishable. When they come to philosophy, they fall in the first contest and either desert their studies altogether or display some title of doctorate purchased in Italy.
There is not one cause, for they waste their age either through negligence or other vices. But I am speaking of those who lack neither instruction nor labor, but whose talent, after it had built up great expectation in childhood, suddenly eludes the hope of everyone. The cause is that, while tender, because of the softness of the brain they quickly impress upon their memory things heard, for figures are easily impressed upon soft things. Therefore, since their study is occupied almost entirely with memorizing lessons and retaining the explanation of words, and since they are also by nature hot and lively for contests and literary exercises, from this they are called talented, but falsely. For they are stupid and slow, but their slowness is covered by age, ease of memory, and inborn alacrity. Nor is this astonishing, since, under the name of childhood and ingenuous simplicity, the stupidity of their children deceives the parents for some years.
“But many also possess precocious wisdom. They act dexterously and speak as men.” It is plainly so; and that very precocious maturity, if it is from wine, is a sign of a talent that will not endure. Those fruits which anticipate their season, hurried to maturity by the external heat of furnaces, are not only very short-lived but also exhaust their own stock. For while alien heat digests their rawness, it also drinks up their vital parts. Death, therefore, always begrudges precocious talents; or, if they have always matured beforehand, they very quickly decay.
But why does the wine of grandfathers and parents, and much more wine poured into a tender age, make children precocious; why, if taken moderately by men, does it sharpen wisdom, but, if copiously, blunt it? The cause must be deduced from the principles of nature. The minds of children are deficient in wisdom for this reason: the brain, filled with much moisture, is least fit for the acts of wisdom. That raw moisture is dissipated more quickly in some and more slowly in others, but it must be digested naturally, not violently. If the extraordinary heat of wine approaches, all those things are quickly dissipated, but, as I have said, not without injury to nature. For adventitious heat, consuming vital moisture and heat, accelerates old age; thus when they are men in age, they are infested by the chill and delirium of old men.
A moderate amount of wine sharpens the spirits and firm nerves of men, because with its slight heat it cannot harm strong things, yet it rouses and takes away their torpor. We plainly discern the same thing in plants. The warmth of a nearby fire and of furnaces ripens the sap, forces it to swell into buds and to break out into flowers; but that same heat immediately plucks away the beauty of the opened flower, so that, when it has begun to be looked at, it quickly withers. For
the swelling and germination were contrary to nature. Thus, therefore, stands the rationale of vinousness in the commonwealth, and this is the outcome of children delicately reared. Although parents perceive these things, they nevertheless drag them to banquets and utterly corrupt with delicacies those who ought altogether to abstain from wine and to be fed sparingly, so that their extraordinary heat might be moderated for procuring longevity and talent. But I shall treat these things more fully when I discuss education. For we see many parents so stupid that they marvel that their sons are bad when they themselves have taught them nothing good. Vice has no need of a teacher; it is enough not to be restrained, enough for leisure to be granted and pleasures permitted.
§ 17. A third consequence follows from these things: the sons and posterity of the rich, for the most part burdened with another’s money, are reduced to want. Sometimes, indeed, this happens by an unforeseen evil, and they are worthy of compassion. For the most part they cast themselves into the perils of poverty and are deservedly exposed to reproaches. The cause is the habit of delicacies, ignorance of household management, and flight from labor.
I see that the wealthiest men of the cities are those who come from some laborious region or whose parents and grandfathers immigrated. For they brought temperance and frugality with them, are devoted to labors, and rear their children severely. Therefore they easily preserve and increase their estate while the others dissolve in luxury. Nor is this all; that education extends itself more widely. In provinces and cities devoted to wine and luxury, I see that parish priests, schoolmasters, and scribes of towns are almost all newcomers—not because the people of those places disdain these offices, for very many of them are poor and live wretchedly, but because talents and industrious labor are lacking. Yet if they disdain those offices, do they also spurn greater ones?
Look in the cities at the colleges of canons, the principal preachers, doctors, and prelates, and count those who have been raised from delicate little flowers to those honors: you will find few; frost struck down most of them in flower. Review the courts of princes: you will understand that the chief places in prudence and counsel are conceded to those whose adolescence was exercised by labors and temperance, whom their native land did not corrupt. This is all the more astonishing because the recommendations of others have very great force in churches, in the commonwealth, and at court, yet we see men of lesser means, and frequently foreigners, preferred. The reason is that, when it comes to the matter itself, learned, industrious, untiring, and laborious men are sought, such as none of those whose childhood was corrupted by delicacies is—or if there is any such man, there is scarcely one in each court.
§ 18. I have spoken concerning the avoidance of drunkenness. But I shall add one thing which can, and indeed ought, to be adapted to other matters, but which in this cause is dangerous to princes. For I am thoroughly persuaded that many princes and magistrates have been eternally condemned both because of other sins of their subjects and because of drunkenness. I shall set forth my opinion briefly with this declaration: if even one sound-minded man out of a thousand doctors contradicts it, I shall absolve the magistrate from danger.
First. It is undoubted that care for the salvation of subjects, the divine glory, and the removal of scandals is incumbent upon the magistrate.
Second. It is also certain that drunkenness is a sin, that immense evils arise from it, and that good things are impeded.
Third. From this I conclude by an evident consequence that the prince is bound by the grave command of the eternal Majesty to remove this sin also from the commonwealth, and that unless he attempts this and inquires into ways and means, he cannot be saved, because the blood of all the souls is required from his hand. Indeed, he offends most gravely if his court is filled with vomit and filth.
Fourth. The obligation of all consuls, senators, and others who are in power is the same. For they ought to resist evil.
Fifth. Magistrates in Germany can easily remove drunkenness without tumult, without protest, and without fear of a greater evil. Therefore those who permit it can use no excuse, especially since they are also bound by imperial law.
Sixth. A few laws will complete the whole matter.
The first law: Let the prince and senate be sober, as well as the ministers of princes.
The second: Let him who recommends a counsellor, courtier, satrap, or quaestor to a prince first consider this, lest that man be a drunkard.
The third: Let affairs not be entrusted to a drunkard at court; if he persists, let him be dismissed.
The fourth: Let drunkards not be admitted to the chapters of collegiate churches; let those already admitted be corrected by canonical penalties.
The fifth: Let the drunkenness of citizens be corrected by deprivation of honors and then by a fine, or even by deprivation of the power of giving testimony.
The sixth: Let the masters of taverns—that is, workshops of drunkenness—be punished by a great monetary penalty if they do not report a drunken man to the magistrate.
The seventh: Let the guests and bridegrooms pay for the drunkenness of weddings.
The eighth: Let sumptuary laws be seriously defended.
Those laws are most just, and no one except either a demon or an attendant of a demon can intercede against them. For intemperance takes away health, talent, peace, resources, and fame, and brings in a cohort of innumerable evils. Therefore, although a good man is sometimes captured by wine, no one except a man infamous for vinousness can patronize it. This is especially so since pagan and drunken Rome detested Marcus Antonius more because he wrote a volume in defense of drunkenness than because he utterly gave himself to pleasure. For they judged thus: a drunken man sins against himself alone, and even if he should also give offense by his example, that would pertain to a few years; but the shamelessness of a teaching by which so great an evil was taught would do harm to all ages.
§ 19. Wretched is the condition of Germany. A region fertile in wine kills more men with its own good than die by the sword; and I dare to say that it expends more wine upon the deaths of human beings than upon health and delight. How many crowds of poor people could be preserved and refreshed by that wine with which you kill your friends? When these things are done, do we marvel that vines perish by cold, their flower by rain, and that frost corrupts grapes already growing yellow? The insanity of drinkers and the fury of drunkards burns the shoots with bitter frost, strikes down the flower, and scatters the clusters with hail.
For why do most men ask an abundance of wine from God? Is it not that they may pour wine through their body and destroy themselves? Is it not more merciful not to give a sword to madmen or wine to drunkards? Therefore let us abandon the morals of the nations and follow Christian temperance. They acted in one manner; the Lord willed that we should act in another. Tertullian describes for us the fury of drunkards and the honorableness of temperance in Chapter XXXIX of the Apology:
“For you assail our modest suppers, besides as infamous for crime, also as prodigal. Doubtless Diogenes’ saying concerning the Megarians was spoken of us: ‘The Megarians dine as though they were going to die the next day, but build as though they were never going to die.’ But who more easily sees a mote in another’s eye than a beam in his own? The air grows sour with so many tribes, curiae, and decuries belching. When the Salii are to dine, a creditor will be necessary. An accountant will calculate the expense of the tithes offered to Hercules and of sacred banquets. Let selections of cooks be announced for the Apaturia, the Dionysia, and the Attic mysteries. At the smoke of the Serapic supper the firemen will be roused. It is only concerning the dining-room of the Christians that reconsideration is undertaken.
“Our supper shows the reason for itself by its name. For it is called ἀγάπη, that which among the Greeks is affection. By however great expenses it is established, it is gain to make an expense in the name of piety, since we also assist the poor with that refreshment—not in the manner in which among you parasites aspire to the glory of an enslaved freedom, hired by their belly to be fattened amid insults, but in the manner in which with God there is greater consideration of the lowly. If the cause of the banquet is honorable, estimate the remainder of its order from the cause of its discipline. Since it comes from a duty of religion, it admits nothing base, nothing immodest.
“Men do not recline before prayer to God is tasted first. As much is eaten as the hungry take; as much is drunk as is useful to the chaste. They are so satiated as men who remember that even through the night they must adore God; they converse as men who know that the Lord hears. After water for the hands and lights, each person, as he is able, is called forth into the midst to sing to God either from the Holy Scriptures or from his own talent. From this it is proved how he has drunk. Prayer likewise dissolves the banquet. From there they depart not into bands of slayings, nor into companies of roving, nor into outbreaks of wantonness, but to the same care of modesty and chastity, as men who have dined not so much upon a supper as upon discipline.”