Ebrietatis Encomium Part 18

[Footnote 7: Du Mont. Voyag. t. iii. lit. 5.]

[Footnote 8: Rec. choise d'Hist.]

CHAP. XXVII.

RIGOROUS LAWS AGAINST WINE AND DRUNKENNESS.

It is easy to imagine, that princes who did not love wine themselves, would make very rigorous laws against drunkenness, and fall into that fault which Horace speaks of.

Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria currunt.[a]

But this maxim, _Nullum violentum durabile_, has been verified a great many times, upon this subject of drunkenness, for all the laws made against it have not long subsisted.

Pentheus[1], king of Thebes, endeavoured to extirpate entirely the custom of getting drunk; but he did not find his account in it, for he was very ill-treated by his subjects for his pains.

Lycurgus[2], king of Thrace, commanded all the vines of the country to be cut up; for which he was justly punished by Bacchus. He also made laws against drunkenness, which one may reckon amongst the bad ones that he inst.i.tuted. As,

I. _The using women in common._

II. _The nudity of young women in certain solemn festivals._

"Pittacus[3], one of the wise men of Greece, commanded, that he who committed a fault when he was drunk, should suffer a double punishment.

And amongst the laws of Solon, there was one, which condemned to death the chief magistrate if he got drunk. Amongst the Indians, who only just touch wine in the ceremonies of their sacrifices, the law commands, that the woman who killed one of their kings, should get drunk, and marry his successor."

[4]The Athenians had also very severe laws against those that should get drunk; but one may say, these laws resembled those of Draco, which were written rather with blood than ink.

We come now to the Turks. Sir Paul Ricaut[5] tells us several particulars on this head. Amurath, says he, resolved, in the year 1634, to forbid entirely the use of wine. He put out a severe edict, which commanded all the houses where they sold wine to be razed, the barrels wherever they should be found to be staved, and the wine to be let out into the streets. And that he might truly be satisfied his orders were obeyed, he frequently disguised himself, and walked in that manner about the city; and when he found any one carrying wine, he sent him to prison, and had him bastinadoed almost to death. One day he met in the streets a poor deaf man, who not hearing the noise usually made at the approach of the sultan, did not soon enough avoid a prince whose presence was so fatal. This negligence cost him his life. He was strangled by order of the grand seignior, who commanded his body to be cast into the street. But this great severity did not last long, and all things returned to their former condition.

However, matters took again another turn under the reign of Mahomet the IVth. who, in 1670, resolved to forbid all the soldiery the use of wine.

The terrible seditions that liquor had formerly raised were remembered, and especially that which happened under Mahomet the Third, who saw his seraglio forced by a great mult.i.tude of soldiers full of wine, and whose fury he could not free himself from, but by sacrificing his princ.i.p.al favourites. An edict was published, to prohibit entirely the use of wine, and to command all those who had any in their houses, to send it out of town. The same extended all over the empire. The sultan condemned to death those who should violate this decree, in which he spoke of wine as of a liquor infernal, invented by the devil to destroy the souls of men, to disturb their reason, and put states into combustion. This was rigorously put in execution, and to that extremity, that it cost the amba.s.sador of England, and the christian merchants of Constantinople, great solicitations, and large sums of money, to get leave to make only as much wine as would suffice for their own families. At Smyrna, the officers of the grand seignior had not the same indulgence for the christians, who were one whole year without wine; and it was with great difficulty they got leave to import it from the isles of the Archipelago, and other places not comprised in that prohibition; for this prohibition reached only those places where there were mosques.

Besides all this, they made every Friday sermons stuffed full of declamations against those who should drink it. In short, this edict was so severe, that wine seemed to be banished for ever the states of the grand seignior. But in about a year's time its severity was somewhat remitted. The amba.s.sadors, and other christians, had leave to make wine within themselves; and about a year after that, the indulgence for wine was general, the taverns were opened, and at this day that liquor is as common as it was before.

[[Footnote a: Horace, _Satire_ I.ii.24.]]

[Footnote 1: Sphinx. Theol. p. 669.]

[Footnote 2: Hist. 7 Sap.]

[Footnote 3: Chevreana, t. i. p. 217.]

[Footnote 4: Hist. 7 Sap.]

[Footnote 5: See his Turkish Hist.]

CHAP. XXVIII.

RULES TO BE OBSERVED IN GETTING DRUNK. I. NOT TOO OFTEN. II. IN GOOD COMPANY.

To avoid the disorders that drunkenness might cause, here are some rules that ought to be observed in this important affair of getting drunk; for, according to Pliny, the art of getting drunk has its laws.

Haec ars suis legibus constat.[a]

I. The first, and princ.i.p.al of these, is not to get drunk too often.

This is what Seneca[1] recommends very much. "You must not," says he, "do it often, for fear it grow into a habit; it is but only sometimes you should make your spirits gay in banis.h.i.+ng gloomy sobriety."

And if any person objects, That if one gets drunk sometimes, one shall do it often. I deny the consequence, and say in the words of the philosopher, an axiom held by both universities, that

Ab actu ad habitum non valet consequentia.

II. Second rule. One must not get drunk but in good company. That is to say, with good friends, people of wit, honour, and good humour, and where there is good wine. For example, a man in former times would have done very ill to get drunk with Heliogabalus, whose historian[2]

reports, that after having made his friends drunk, he used to shut them up in an apartment, and at night let loose upon them lions, leopards, and tigers, which always tore to pieces some of them. On the other hand, the best wine in the world will taste very bad in bad company. It is therefore that Martial reproaches one, that he spoiled his good wine with his silly babbling.

------------ Verbis mucida vina facis.[2a]

[[Footnote a: Pliny, _Natural History_ XIV.50 (or XIV.xxviii.146).]]

[Footnote 1: De Tranquillitate.]

[Footnote 2: aelius Lamprid. in Vit. Heliogab.]

[[Footnote 2a: Martial VIII.vi.4.]]

CHAP. XXIX.

THIRD RULE, WITH GOOD WINE.

When one has a mind to get drunk, one should make choice of good wine, and not drink bad, which is prejudicial to health. For example, green wine is very bad; this Guilleaume Cretin[1], a great punster, has expressed in these verses, which, I own, I am not able to put into English:--

"Par ce vin verds Atropos a trop os Des corps humains ruez envers en vers Dont un quidam apre aux pots a propos A fort blame les tours pervers en vers."

Good wine, on the contrary, has very good effects. Erasmus[2] preserved himself from the plague, by drinking a gla.s.s of Burgundy at a proper season.

You see now the efficacy of good wine, which, to be in its perfection, the adepts in the free-schools of Liber Pater say, must have these four properties, and please these four senses:-- the taste by its savour, the smell by its flavour, the sight by its clean and bright colour, and the ear by the fame of the country where it grows. Old wine was looked upon to be the best by the ancients.

A beauty, when advanc'd in age, No more her lovers can engage; But wine, the rare advantage, knows, It pleases more, more old it grows.