their belt. And the Ariæans," says he, "have three hundred thousand slaves whom they call prospelatæ, and who correspond to the Helots; and they get drunk every day, and make large entertainments, and are very intemperate in their eating and drinking. On which account the Celtæ when making war upon them, knowing their intemperance, ordered all the soldiers to prepare as superb a feast as possible in the tent, and to put in the food some medicinal herbs which had the power to gripe and purge the bowels exceedingly. And when this had been done. . . . And so some of them were taken by the Celtæ and put to death, and some threw themselves into the rivers, being unable to endure the pains which they were suffering in their stomachs."
61. Now, after Democritus had uttered all this long uninterrupted discourse, Pontianus said that wine was the metropolis of all these evils; and it was owing to this that drunkenness, and madness, and all sorts of debauchery took place; and that those people who were too much addicted to it were not unappropriately called rowers of cups, by that Dionysius who is surnamed the Brazen, in his Elegies, where he says—
And those who bring their wine in Bacchus' rowing,
Sailors through feasts, and rowers of large cups.
And concerning this class of men, (for it is not extinct,) Alexis, in his Curia, speaking of some one who drunk to excess, says—
This then my son is such in disposition
As you have just beheld him. An Œnopion,
Or Maron, or Capelus, or Timoclees,
For he's a drunkard, nothing more nor less.
And for the other, what can I call him?
A lump of earth, a plough, an earth-born man.
So getting drunk is a bad thing, my good friends; and the same Alexis says, with great cleverness, to those who swallow wine in this way, in his Opora, (and the play is called after a courtesan of that name,)—
Are you then full of such a quantity
Of unmix'd wine, and yet avoid to vomit?
And in his Ring he says—
Is not, then, drunkenness the greatest evil,
And most injurious to the human race?
