Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 02.pdf/339

DRUNKENNESS AND ITS ANCIENT PUNISHMENT. AMID the great variety of treatment to double the punishment which he would do if which drunkenness was subjected by sober; and Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch the ancients, all lawgivers seem to agree in applauded this as the height of wisdom. treating it as a state of disgrace; and since The Roman censors could expel a senator it is brought on deliberately, it is still more for being drunk, and take away his horse. odious and without excuse. Whatever in Mahomet ordered drunkards to be bastina dividuals may think and say, no nation doed with eighty blows. treats it as meritorious. Yet Darius is said Other nations thought of limiting the to have ordered it to be stated in his epitaph, quantity to be drunk at one time or at one that he could drink a great deal of wine and sitting. The Egyptians put some limit, bear it well, — a virtue which Demosthenes though what it was is not stated. The Spar observed was only the virtue of a sponge. tans had some limit. The Arabians fixed At the Greek festival of Dionysia, it was a the quantity at twelve glasses a man; but crime not to be drunk, — this being a symptom the size of the glass was not, unfortunately, of ingratitude to the god of wine, — and prizes defined by the historians. The Anglo-Saxons were awarded to those who became drunk went no further than to order silver nails to most quickly. And the Roman bacchantes, be fixed on the side of drinking-cups, so decked with garlands of ivy, and amid deaf that each might know his proper measure. ening drums and cymbals, were equally ap And it is 'said that this was done by King plauded; but at length, even the Bacchanalia Edgar, after noticing the drunken habits of were suppressed by a decree of the Senate, the Danes. Lycurgus, of Thrace, went to the root of the matter, by ordering the vines about 186 b. c. Notwithstanding these exceptions, the of to be cut down; and his conduct was imitated, fence of drunkenness was a source of great in 704, by Terbulus, of Bulgaria. The Suevi perplexity to the ancients, who tried nearly prohibited the importation of wine, and the every possible way of dealing with it. If Spartans tried to turn the vice into contempt none succeeded, probably it was because they by systematically making their slaves drunk did not begin early enough, by intercepting once a year, to show their children how fool some of the ways and means by which the ish and contemptible men looked in that insidious vice is incited and propagated. state. Drunkenness was deemed much more Severe treatment was often tried to little vicious in some classes of persons than in effect. The Mosaic law seems to have im others. The ancient Indians held it lawful posed stoning to death, at least if the drunk enness was coupled with any disobedience to kill a king when he was drunk. The of parents. The Locrians, under Zaleucus, Athenians made it a capital offence for a made it a capital offence to drink wine, if it magistrate to be drunk, and Charlemagne was not mixed with water; even an invalid caused a law to be enacted that judges on was not exempted from punishment unless the bench and pleaders should do their busi acting under a physician's order. Pittacus, ness fasting. The Carthaginians prohibited of Mitylenc, made a law that he who, when magistrates, governors, soldiers, and ser drunk, committed an offence .should suffer vants from any drinking.