The Anatomy of Melancholy

When dawn first breathes on us with panting horses, For them red evening lights its late lamps.

So did Petronius, according to Tacitus, and Heliogabalus, according to Lampridius:

He stayed awake all night until the very dawn, And snored the whole day through.

Smyndiris the Sybarite never saw the sun rise or set even once in twenty years. Verres, whom Cicero attacks so fiercely, never went “out of doors, scarcely out of bed” in winter—hardly ever out of bed, always womanising and drinking. So he spent his time, and so do myriads in our day.

They have “training grounds for drinkers,” their schools and meeting places. These Centaurs and Lapiths toss pots and bowls about like balls, invent fresh devices—sausages, anchovies, tobacco, caviar, pickled oysters, herrings, smoked fish and so forth, countless salted foods to increase their appetite—and work out ways to harm themselves by taking antidotes so they can hold their drink better.

When nothing else works, they go out—or are carried out—to empty their stomachs so that they can come back and drink again. They make rules, “mad laws against cheating at drinking,” and boast of their exploits afterwards, crowning whoever gets drunk first, as their drunken predecessors did: “What do I see?”—“Your Pseudolus, drunk and wearing a crown.”

When they die, they will have a wine jug carved on their tombs, like Maron’s old woman. So they glory in vice and justify their wickedness, agreeing with Rabelais, that French Lucian, that drunkenness is better for the body than medicine because there are more old drunkards than old physicians.

They have many such frothy arguments, inviting and encouraging others to follow their example, and loving them dearly for it: no glue like good fellowship. So did Alcibiades in Greece, and Nero, Bonosus and Heliogabalus in Rome—or rather Alegabalus, as he was formerly called, as Ignatius proves from some old coins. Many great men still do the same, as Heresbach observes.

When a prince drinks until his eyes stare, like Bitias in the poet—“eagerly he drained the bowl foaming with wine”—and gets through it successfully, sound trumpets, fife and drums! The spectators will applaud him; the bishop himself, with his chaplain, will stand by and do as much, if Heresbach is not slandering them. “Oh, a draught worthy of a prince!” It was done like a prince.

Our Germans invite all comers with a pail and a bowl. “Like funnels, they drain whole jars; monstrous themselves, they drink still more monstrously from monstrous cups,” making barrels of their bellies. “Incredible to tell,” as one of their own countrymen complains, “how much liquor this utterly immoderate people can hold,” and so on.

How they love a man willing to get drunk, crown him and honour him for it! How they hate someone who will not drink a toast in return—stab him, kill him! An utterly intolerable offence, never to be forgiven. Anyone who will not drink with a man is his mortal enemy, as Münster relates of the Saxons.