onceal their present sentiments. Therefore there
is no reason to fear that wine will stir up our affections; for it
never stirs up the bad, unless in the worst men, whose judgment is never
sober. But as Theophrastus used to call the barbers' shops wineless
entertainments; so there is a kind of an uncouth wineless drunkenness
always excited either by anger, malice, emulation, or clownishness in
the souls of the unlearned. Now wine, blunting rather than sharpening
many of these passions, doth not make them sots and foolish, but simple
and ingenuous; not negligent of what is profitable, but desirous of what
is good and honest. Now those that think craft to be cunning, and vanity
or closeness to be wisdom, have reason to think those that over a glass
of wine plainly and ingenuously deliver their opinions to be fools. But,
on the contrary, the ancients called the god the Freer and Loosener, and
thought him considerable in divination; not, as Euripides says, because
he makes men raging mad, but because he looseth and frees the soul from
all base distrustful fear, and puts them in a condition to speak truth
freely to one another.

BOOK VIII.

Those, my Sossius Senecio, who throw philosophy out of entertainments do
worse than those who take away a light. For the candle being removed,
the temperate and sober guests will not become worse than they were
before, being more concerned to reverence than to see one another. But
if dulness and disregard to good learning wait upon the wine, Minerva's
golden lamp itself could not make the entertainment pleasing and
agreeable. For a company to sit silent and only cram themselves is, in
good truth, swinish and almost impossible. But he that permits men to
talk, yet doth not allow set and profitable discourses, is much more
ridiculous than he who thinks that his guests should eat and drink, yet
gives them foul wine, unsavory and nastily prepared meat. For no meat
nor drink which is not prepared as it ought to be is so hurtful and
unpleasant as discourse which is carried round in company
insignificantly and out of season. The philosophers, when they would
give drunkenness a vile name, call it doting by wine. Now doting is to
use vain and trifling discourse; and when such babbling is accompanied
by wine, it usually ends in most disagreeable and rude contumely and
reproach. It is a good custom therefore of our women, who in their
feasts called Agrionia seek after Bacchus as if he were ru