, AND OTHERS.

Some said that Alexander did not drink much, but sat long in company,
discoursing with his friends; but Philinus showed this to be an error
from the king's diary, where it was very often registered that such a
day, and sometimes two days together, the king slept after a debauch;
and this course of life made him cold in love, but passionate and angry,
which argues a hot constitution. And some report his sweat was fragrant
and perfumed his clothes; which is another argument of heat, as we see
the hottest and driest climates bear frankincense and cassia; for a
fragrant smell, as Theophrastus thinks, proceeds from a due concoction
of the humors, when the noxious moisture is conquered by the heat. And
it is thought probable, that he took a pique at Calisthenes for avoiding
his table because of the hard drinking, and refusing the great bowl
called Alexander's in his turn, adding, I will not drink of Alexander's
bowl, to stand in need of Aesculapius's. And thus much of Alexander's
drinking.

Story tells us, that Mithridates, the famous enemy of the Romans, among
other trials of skill that he instituted, proposed a reward to the
greatest eater and the stoutest drinker in his kingdom. He won both the
prizes himself; he outdrank every man living, and for his excellency
that way was called Bacchus. But this reason for his surname is a
vain fancy and an idle story; for whilst he was an infant a flash of
lightning burnt his cradle, but did his body no harm, and only left a
little mark on his forehead, which his hair covered when he was grown
a boy; and after he came to be a man, another flash broke into his
bedchambers, and burnt the arrows in a quiver that was hanging under
him; from whence his diviners presaged, that archers and light-armed men
should win him considerable victories in his wars; and the vulgar gave
him this name, because in those many dangers by lightning he bore some
resemblance to the Theban Bacchus.

From hence great drinkers were the subject of our discourse; and the
wrestler Heraclides (or, as the Alexandrians mince it, Heraclus), who
lived but in the last age, was accounted one. He, when he could get
none to hold out with him, invited some to take their morning's draught,
others to dinner, to supper others, and others after, to take a merry
glass of wine; so that as the first went off, the second came, and the
third and fourth company and he all the while without any intermission
took his gl