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Again, every self-respecting and orderly man would, I think, avoid drunkenness. For while, according to some, anger lives next door to madness,Cf. Antiphanes, Frag. 295 (Kock, Com. Att. Frag., ii. p. 128): λύπη μανίας ὁμότοιχος εἶναί μοι δοκεῖ. drunkenness lives in the same house with it; or rather, drunkenness is madness, shorter in duration, but more culpable, because the will also is involved in it.Cf. Seneca, Epistulae Morales, lxxxiii. 18. And there is no fault so generally ascribed to drunkenness as that of intemperate and unlimited speech. For wine, says the Poet,Homer, Od., xiv. 463-466; Cf. Moralia, 645 a; Athenaeus, v. 179 e-f. Urges a man to sing, though he be wise, And stirs to merry laughter and the dance. And what is here so very dreadful? Singing and laughing and dancing? Nothing so far- But it lets slip some word better unsaidCf.De Vita et Poesi Homeri, 149 (Bernardakis, vol. vii. p. 421).: this is where the dreadful and dangerous part now comes in. And perhaps the Poet has here resolved the question debated by the philosophers,Cf. Chrysippus, Frag. Mor. 644, 712 (von Arnim, Stoic. Vet. Frag., iii. pp. 163, 179). the difference between being under the influence of wine and being drunk, when he speaks of the former as relaxation, but drunkenness as sheer folly. For what is in a man’s heart when he is sober is on his tongue when he is drunk, as those who are given to proverbs say.Leutsch and Schneidewin, Paroemiographi Graeci, i. p. 313; ii. pp. 219, 687. Nüchtern gedacht, voll gesagt. Therefore when BiasCf. the similar remark attributed to Demaratus in Moralia, 220 a=b and to Solon in Stobaeus, vol. iii. pp. 685-686 ed. Hense. kept silent at a drinking-bout and was taunted with stupidity by a chatterer, What fool, said he, in his cups can hold his tongue? And when a certain man at Athens was entertaining envoys from the king,Either Ptolemy Soter (Diogenes Laertius, vii. 24) or Antigonus (Stobaeus, iii. p. 680 ed. Hense). at their earnest request he made every effort to gather the philosophers to meet them; and while the rest took part in the general conversation and made their contributions to it, but ZenoFrag. 284 (von Arnim, op. cit., i. p. 64). kept silent, the strangers, pledging him courteously, said, And what are we to tell the king about you, Zeno? Nothing, said he, except that there is an old man at Athens who can hold his tongue at a drinking-party.
