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 And Theognis says—

I come like wine, the sweetest drink of men,— I am not sober, nor yet very drunk; But he who goes to great excess in drink Is no more master of his mind or senses; Then he talks unintelligible nonsense. Which seems to sober men a shameful thing; But he, when drunk, is not ashamed of anything, E'en though at other times a modest man And gentle-minded. Mind you this, my friend, And don't indulge in drinking to excess, But rise from table ere the wine begins To take effect; nor let your appetite Reduce you to become its daily slave.

But Anacharsis the philosopher, wishing to exhibit the power of the vine to the king of the Scythians, and showing him some of its branches, said that if the Greeks did not prune it every year it would by this time have reached to Scythia.

33. But those men do not act wisely who represent and describe Bacchus in their statues or pictures, and who also lead him through the middle of the market-place on a waggon, as if he were drunk; for, by so doing, they show the beholders that wine is stronger than the god. And I do not think that even a good and wise man could stand this. And if they have represented him in this state because he first showed us the use of wine, it is plain that for the same reason they should always represent Ceres as reaping corn or eating bread. And I should say that Æschylus himself erred in this particular; for he was the first person (and not Euripides, as some people say,) who introduced the appearance of drunken people into a tragedy. For in his Cabiri he introduces Jason drunk. But the fact is, that the practices which the tragedian himself used to indulge in, he attributed to his heroes: at all events he used to write his tragedies when he was drunk; on which account Sophocles used to reproach him, and say to him, "O Æschylus, *