DEMETRIUS. in the war, he fled to Ephesus, with his newly-married bride. And in the second book, the same Polybius relates that Agron, the king of the Illyrians, being delighted at having gained a victory over the haughty Ætolians, being a man much addicted to drinking, and to drunkenness, and banqueting, fell ill of a pleurisy, and died. And the same historian says, in his twenty-ninth book, that Genthion, the king of the Illyrians, on account of his great fondness for drinking, did a great many intemperate things during his life, being incessantly drunk, both night and day; and having murdered Pleuratus, his brother, who was about to marry the daughter of Menunius, he married the damsel himself, and treated his subjects with great cruelty. And he says, in the thirty-third book of his History, that Demetrius, when he fled after having been a hostage at Rome, and became king of the Syrians, became a great drinker, and was drunk the greater part of the day. And he also, in his thirty-second book, says that Orophernes, who was for a short time king of Cappadocia, disregarded all the customs of his country, and introduced the artificial luxury of the Ionians.
55. On which account, that divinest of writers, Plato, lays down admirable laws in his second book—"That boys, till they are eighteen years of age, should absolutely never taste wine at all; for that it is not well to heap fire on fire: that men up to thirty years of age may drink wine in moderation; and that the young man should wholly abstain from much wine and from drunkenness. But that a man, when he arrives at forty years of age, may feast in large banquets, and invoke the other gods, and especially Bacchus, to the feasts and amusements of the older men; since he it is who has given men this means of indulgence, as an ally against the austerity of old age, for which wine was the best medicine; so that, owing to it, we grow young again, and forget our moroseness." And then he proceeds to say—"But there is a report and story told that this god was once deprived of his mind and senses by his mother-in-law, Juno; on which account he sent Bacchic frenzy, and all sorts of frantic rage, among men, out of revenge for the treatment which he had experienced; on which account also he gave wine to men."
56. But Phalæus, in his Epigrams, makes mention of a woman, whose name was Cleo, as having been a very hard drinker—
