Section 146

XXXVI. (146) Having then learnt this beforehand, the wise man will never of his own accord think fit to enter upon a contest of hard drinking, unless there were great things at stake, such as the safety of his country, or the honour of his parents, or the preservation of his children, or of his nearest relations, or in short, the success and prosperity of some important public or private interest. (147) For he would not take a deadly poison unless the occasion compelled him very strongly to depart from life, as it might urge him to depart from his country. And at all events it is plain, that unmixed wine is a poison, which is the cause, if not of death, at least of madness, and why may we not pronounce madness to be death, since by it the most important thing in us dies, namely, the mind? But it appears to me that a man would without the slightest hesitation choose (if a choice was permitted him), that death which separates and disunites the soul and the body as a lesser evil in preference to that greater oneùthe alienation of the mind. (148) On this account, forsooth, men of old time called skill in the art of making wine madness (mainomeneµ), and called the Bacchae who were carried away under the influence of wine, mad women (Mainades), since wine is the cause of madness and folly to those who indulge in it insatiably.