The Anatomy of Melancholy

Some of us, as Seneca observes, loathe daylight itself because it is free, and resent the sun’s warmth and the cool breezes because we do not buy them. The air we breathe is so common that we think nothing of it: nothing pleases us unless it is expensive.

If we show ingenuity in anything, it is “for the gullet.” If we study at all, it is “with learned luxury,” to please the palate and satisfy the gut. A cook used to be a lowly servant, as Livy complains, but now he is an important man in demand. Cooking has become an art, a noble science; cooks are gentlemen. “The belly is God.”

They carry their brains in their bellies and their guts in their heads, as Agrippa said in reproaching certain parasites of his day. They rush towards their own destruction like someone running onto a sword’s point: “they eat until they burst.” All day, all night, whatever the physician may say—though immediate danger and deadly diseases stand ready to seize them—they eat until they vomit. “They eat to vomit, and vomit to eat,” says Seneca;

as Dio relates of Vitellius, “he was thought to be nourished by the mere passage of food”: his food passed straight through and out. Or they eat until they burst. “They load their bellies with a slaughter of living creatures,” and scour the whole world like so many slaves, worshippers of the belly, and land serpents. “The whole world is too narrow for their stomachs”: the whole world cannot satisfy their appetite. Sea, land, rivers, lakes and all the rest cannot content their ravenous guts.

To complete the feast, what excessive drinking everywhere! “A drunken old woman dragged along a drunken old man.” How they flock to the tavern, as though “born to consume the fruits of the earth,” born for no purpose but eating and drinking, like Ofellius Bibulus, that famous Roman parasite, “who, while he lived, either drank or pissed.” So many casks for holding wine—indeed, worse than a cask, which spoils wines without being spoiled itself by them. Yet these are fine fellows!

Drunken Silenus was no finer. “What were once vices are now customs.” It is the fashion of our day, an honour. As Chrysostom comments in sermon 30 on Ephesians 5: “Now it has reached the point where refusing to get drunk is treated as effeminate, laughable cowardice.” Things have come to such a pass that anyone unwilling to drink is no gentleman: a milksop, an ill-bred oaf, unfit for any company.

The only true gallant is the man who knocks it back best. Staggering through the streets, reeling and raving no longer disgrace him: they add to his fame and renown. Compare what Epidicus said to his fellow servant Thesprio in the poet: “By Pollux, a disgraceful deed!” one protested; the other replied, “But others have done the same before; it will bring him honour.” It is no fault now: so many fine examples will support a man.

It is a credit to have a strong head and hold one’s liquor. The only contest is who can drink most and get his companion drunk soonest. It is our tradesmen’s “highest good,” their happiness, their life and soul. “They pursue it with such delight,” says Pliny, book 14, chapter 12, “that many recognise no other reward in life.” Their chief comfort is making merry together in an alehouse or tavern, as present-day Muscovites do in their mead inns, and Turks in their coffeehouses, which much resemble our taverns.

They will work hard all day to get drunk at night, and spend “a whole year’s labour,” as Saint Ambrose adds, on a drinking feast. They turn day into night, as Seneca reproaches some people of his time: “They reverse the duties of night and day.” When we get up, they usually go to bed, like people on the opposite side of the earth: