Chap. XXVIII Rules to Be Observed in Getting Drunk. I. Not Too Often. II. in Good Company
To avoid the disorders that drunkenness might cause, here are some rules that ought to be observed in this important affair of getting drunk; for, according to Pliny, the art of getting drunk has its laws.
Hæc ars suis legibus constat.a
I. The first, and principal of these, is not to get drunk too often. This is what Seneca1 recommends very much. “You must not,” says he, “do it often, for fear it grow into a habit; it is but only sometimes you should make your spirits gay in banishing gloomy sobriety.”
And if any person objects, That if one gets drunk sometimes, one shall do it often. I deny the consequence, and say in the words of the philosopher, an axiom held by both universities, that Ab actu ad habitum non valet consequentia.
II. Second rule. One must not get drunk but in good company. That is to say, with good friends, people of wit, honour, and good humour, and where there is good wine. For example, a man in former times would have done very ill to get drunk with Heliogabalus, whose historian2 reports, that after having made his friends drunk, he used to shut them up in an apartment, and at night let loose upon them lions, leopards, and tigers, which always tore to pieces some of them. On the other hand, the best wine in the world will taste very bad in bad company. It is therefore that Martial reproaches one, that he spoiled his good wine with his silly babbling.
—————— Verbis mucida vina facis.2a
a. Pliny, Natural History XIV.50 (or XIV.xxviii.146).
1. De Tranquillitate.
2. Ælius Lamprid. in Vit. Heliogab.
2a. Martial VIII.vi.4.