Book 10
55
On which account, that divinest of writers, Plato, lays down admirable laws in his second book—That boys, till they are eighteen years of age, should absolutely never taste wine at all; for that it is not well to heap fire on fire: that men up to thirty years of age may drink wine in moderation; and that the young man should wholly abstain from much wine and from drunkenness. But that a man, when he arrives at forty years of age, may feast in large banquets, and invoke the other gods, and especially Bacchus, to the feasts and amusements of the older men; since he it is who has given men this means of indulgence, as an ally against the austerity of old age, for which wine was the best medicine; so that, owing to it, we grow young again, and forget our moroseness. And then he proceeds to say—But there is a report and story told that this god was once deprived of his mind and senses by his mother-in-law, Juno; on which account he sent Bacchic frenzy, and all sorts of frantic rage, among men, out of revenge for the treatment which he had experienced; on which account also he gave wine to men.
