Jowett: drunken

Drunkenness

Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul ; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body ; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful : neither do their customers know, with the exception of any trainer or physician who may happen to buy of them. In like manner those who carry about the wares of knowledge, and make the round of the cities, and sell or retail them to any customer who is in want of them, praise them all alike ; though I should not wonder, O my friend, if many of them were really ignorant of their effect upon the soul ; and their customers equally ignorant, unless he who buys of them happens to be a physician of the soul. If, therefore, you have understanding of what is good and evil, you may safely buy knowledge of Protagoras or of any one ; but if not, then, O my friend, pause, and do not hazard your dearest interests at a game of chance. For there is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink : the one you purchase of the wholesale or retail dealer, and carry them away in other vessels, and before you receive them into the body as food, you may deposit them at home and call in any experienced friend who knows what is good to be eaten or drunken, and what not, and how much, and when ; and then the danger of purchasing them is not so great. But you cannot buy the wares of knowledge and carry them away in another vessel ; when you have paid for them you must receive them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefited ; and therefore we should deliberate and take counsel with our elders ; for we are still young — too young to determine such a matter. And now let us go, as we were intending, and hear Protagoras ; and when we have heard what he has to say, we may take counsel of others ; for not only is Protagoras at the house of Callias, but there is Hippias of Elis, and, if I am not mistaken, Prodicus of Ceos, and several other wise men. PROTAGORAS

Euth. I am amused, Socrates  , at your making a distinction between one who is a relation and one who is not a relation ; for surely the pollution is the same in either case, if you knowingly associate with the murderer when you ought to clear yourself and him by proceeding against him. The real question is whether the murdered man has been justly slain. If justly, then your duty is to let the matter alone ; but if unjustly, then even if the murderer lives under the same roof with you and eats at the same table, proceed against him. Now the man who is dead was a poor dependent of mine who worked for us as a field labourer on our farm in Naxos, and one day in a fit of drunken passion he got into a quarrel with one of our domestic servants and slew him. My father bound him hand and foot and threw him into a ditch, and then sent to Athens to ask of a diviner what he should do with him. Meanwhile he never attended to him and took no care about him, for he regarded him as a murderer ; and thought that no great harm would be done even if he did die. Now this was just what happened. For such was the effect of cold and hunger and chains upon him, that before the messenger returned from the diviner, he was dead. And my father and family are angry with me for taking the part of the murderer and prosecuting my father. They say that he did not kill him, and that if he did, dead man was but a murderer, and I ought not to take any notice, for that a son is impious who prosecutes a father. Which shows, Socrates, how little they know what the gods think about piety and impiety. EUTHYPHRO  

When Socrates had done speaking, the company applauded, and Aristophanes was beginning to say something in answer to the allusion which Socrates had made to his own speech, when suddenly there was a great knocking at the door of the house, as of revellers, and the sound of a flute-girl was heard. Agathon told the attendants to go and see who were the intruders. "If they are friends of ours," he said, "invite them in, but if not, say that the drinking is over." A little while afterwards they heard the voice of Alcibiades resounding in the court ; he was in a great state of intoxication and kept roaring and shouting "Where is Agathon ? Lead me to Agathon," and at length, supported by the flute-girl and some of his attendants, he found his way to them. "Hail, friends," he said, appearing at the door crown, with a massive garland of ivy and violets, his head flowing with ribands. "Will you have a very drunken man as a companion of your revels ? Or shall I crown Agathon, which was my intention in coming, and go away ? For I was unable to come yesterday, and therefore I am here to-day, carrying on my head these ribands, that taking them from my own head, I may crown the head of this fairest and wisest of men, as I may be allowed to call him. Will you laugh at me because I am drunk ? Yet I know very well that I am speaking the truth, although you may laugh. But first tell me ; if I come in shall we have the understanding of which I spoke ? Will you drink with me or not ?" SYMPOSIUM  

Well, said Eryximachus, before you appeared we had passed a resolution that each one of us in turn should make a speech in praise of love, and as good a one as he could : the turn was passed round from left to right ; and as all of us have spoken, and you have not spoken but have well drunken, you ought to speak, and then impose upon Socrates any task which you please, and he on his right hand neighbour, and so on. SYMPOSIUM

That is good, Eryximachus, said Alcibiades ; and yet the comparison, of a drunken man’s speech with those of sober men is hardly fair ; and I should like to know, sweet friend, whether you really believe — what Socrates was just now saying ; for I can assure you that the very reverse is the fact, and that if I praise any one but himself in his presence, whether God or man, he will hardly keep his hands off me. SYMPOSIUM

Meg. I admit, Stranger, that your words are well spoken, and I hardly know what to say in answer to you ; but still I think that the Spartan lawgiver was quite right in forbidding pleasure. Of the Cretan laws, I shall leave the defence to my Cnosian friend. But the laws of Sparta, in as far as they relate to pleasure, appear to me to be the best in the world ; for that which leads mankind in general into the wildest pleasure and licence, and every other folly, the law has clean driven out ; and neither in the country nor in towns which are under the control of Sparta, will you find revelries and the many incitements of every kind of pleasure which accompany them ; and any one who meets a drunken and disorderly person, will immediately have him most severely punished, and will not let him off on any pretence, not even at the time of a Dionysiac festival ; although I have remarked that this may happen at your performances "on the cart," as they are called ; and among our Tarentine colonists I have seen the whole city drunk at a Dionysiac festival ; but nothing of the sort happens among us. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Must we not appoint a sober man and a wise to be our master of the revels ? For if the ruler of drinkers be himself young and drunken, and not over-wise, only by some special good fortune will he be saved from doing some great evil. LAWS BOOK I

Ath. Now suppose such associations to be framed in the best way possible in states, and that some one blames the very fact of their existence — he may very likely be right. But if he blames a practice which he only sees very much mismanaged, he shows in the first place that he is not aware of the mismanagement, and also not aware that everything done in this way will turn out to be wrong, because done without the superintendence of a sober ruler. Do you not see that a drunken pilot or a drunken ruler of any sort will ruin ship, chariot, army — anything, in short, of which he has the direction ? LAWS BOOK I

Ath. If, then, drinking and amusement were regulated in this way, would not the companions of our revels be improved ? they would part better friends than they were, and not, as now enemies. Their whole intercourse would be regulated by law and observant of it, and the sober would be the leaders of the drunken. LAWS BOOK II

The betrothal by a father shall be valid in the first degree, that by a grandfather in the second degree, and in the third degree, betrothal by brothers who have the same father ; but if there are none of these alive, the betrothal by a mother shall be valid in like manner ; in cases of unexampled fatality, the next of kin and the guardians shall have authority. What are to be the rites before marriages, or any other sacred acts, relating either to future, present, or past marriages, shall be referred to the interpreters ; and he who follows their advice may be satisfied. Touching the marriage festival, they shall assemble not more than five male and five female friends of both families ; and a like number of members of the family of either sex, and no man shall spend more than his means will allow ; he who is of the richest class may spend a mina — he who is of the second, half a mina, and in the same proportion as the census of each decreases : all men shall praise him who is obedient to the law ; but he who is disobedient shall be punished by the guardians of the law as a man wanting in true taste, and uninstructed in the laws of bridal song. Drunkenness is always improper, except at the festivals of the God who gave wine ; and peculiarly dangerous, when a man is engaged in the business of marriage ; at such a crisis of their lives a bride and bridegroom ought to have all their wits about them — they ought to take care that their offspring may be born of reasonable beings ; for on what day or night Heaven will give them increase, who can say ? Moreover, they ought not to begetting children when their bodies are dissipated by intoxication, but their offspring should be compact and solid, quiet and compounded properly ; whereas the drunkard is all abroad in all his actions, and beside himself both in body and soul. Wherefore, also, the drunken man is bad and unsteady in sowing the seed of increase, and is likely to beget offspring who will be unstable and untrustworthy, and cannot be expected to walk straight either in body or mind. Hence during the whole year and all his life long, and especially while he is begetting children, ought to take care and not intentionally do what is injurious to health, or what involves insolence and wrong ; for he cannot help leaving the impression of himself on the souls and bodies of his offspring, and he begets children in every way inferior. And especially on the day and night of marriage should a man abstain from such things. For the beginning, which is also a God dwelling in man, preserves all things, if it meet with proper respect from each individual. He who marries is further to consider that one of the two houses in the lot is the nest and nursery of his young, and there he is to marry and make a home for himself and bring up his children, going away from his father and mother. For in friendships there must be some degree of desire, in order to cement and bind together diversities of character ; but excessive intercourse not having the desire which is created by time, insensibly dissolves friendships from a feeling of satiety ; wherefore a man and his wife shall leave to his and her father and mother their own dwelling-places, and themselves go as to a colony and dwell there, and visit and be visited by their parents ; and they shall beget and bring up children, handing on the torch of life from one generation to another, and worshipping the Gods according to law for ever. LAWS BOOK VI

Ath. Enough of wrestling ; we will now proceed to speak of other movements of the body. Such motion may be in general called dancing, and is of two kinds : one of nobler figures, imitating the honourable, the other of the more ignoble figures, imitating the mean ; and of both these there are two further subdivisions. Of the serious, one kind is of those engaged in war and vehement action, and is the exercise of a noble person and a manly heart ; the other exhibits a temperate soul in the enjoyment of prosperity and modest pleasures, and may be truly called and is the dance of peace. The warrior dance is different from the peaceful one, and may be rightly termed Pyrrhic ; this imitates the modes of avoiding blows and missiles by dropping or giving way, or springing aside, or rising up or falling down ; also the opposite postures which are those of action, as, for example, the imitation of archery and the hurling of javelins, and of all sorts of blows. And when the imitation is of brave bodies and souls, and the action is direct and muscular, giving for the most part a straight movement to the limbs of the body — that, I say, is the true sort ; but the opposite is not right. In the dance of peace what we have to consider is whether a man bears himself naturally and gracefully, and after the manner of men who duly conform to the law. But before proceeding I must distinguish the dancing about which there is any doubt, from that about which there is no doubt. Which is the doubtful kind, and how are the two to be distinguished ? There are dances of the Bacchic sort, both those in which, as they say, they imitate drunken men, and which are named after the Nymphs, and Pan, and Silenuses, and Satyrs ; and also those in which purifications are made or mysteries celebrated — all this sort of dancing cannot be rightly defined as having either a peaceful or a warlike character, or indeed as having any meaning whatever and may, I think, be most truly described as distinct from the warlike dance, and distinct from the peaceful, and not suited for a city at all. There let it lie ; and so leaving it to lie, we will proceed to the dances of war and peace, for with these we are undoubtedly concerned. Now the unwarlike muse, which honours in dance the Gods and the sons of the Gods, is entirely associated with the consciousness of prosperity ; this class may be subdivided into two lesser classes, of which one is expressive of an escape from some labour or danger into good, and has greater pleasures, the other expressive of preservation and increase of former good, in which the pleasure is less exciting ; — in all these cases, every man when the pleasure is greater, moves his body more, and less when the pleasure is less ; and, again, if he be more orderly and has learned courage from discipline he waves less, but if he be a coward, and has no training or self-control, he makes greater and more violent movements, and in general when he is speaking or singing he is not altogether able to keep his body still ; and so out of the imitation of words in gestures the whole art of dancing has arisen. And in these various kinds of imitation one man moves in an orderly, another in a disorderly manner ; and as the ancients may be observed to have given many names which are according to nature and deserving of praise, so there is an excellent one which they have given to the dances of men who in their times of prosperity are moderate in their pleasures — the giver of names, whoever he was, assigned to them a very true, and poetical, and rational name, when he called them Emmeleiai, or dances of order, thus establishing two kinds of dances of the nobler sort, the dance of war which he called the Pyrrhic, and the dance of peace which he called Emmeleia, or the dance of order ; giving to each their appropriate and becoming name. These things the legislator should indicate in general outline, and the guardian of the law should enquire into them and search them out, combining dancing with music, and assigning to the several sacrificial feasts that which is suitable to them ; and when he has consecrated all of them in due order, he shall for the future change nothing, whether of dance or song. Thenceforward the city and the citizens shall continue to have the same pleasures, themselves being as far as possible alike, and shall live well and happily. LAWS BOOK VII

Further, I said, has not a drunken man also the spirit of a tyrant ? THE REPUBLIC   BOOK IX

And the tyrannical man in the true sense of the word comes into being when, either under the influence of nature or habit, or both, he becomes drunken, lustful, passionate ? O my friend, is not that so ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK IX