Advice About Keeping Well (19)

ZEUXIPPUS. Of the liquids milk ought not to be used as a beverage but as a food possessing solid and nourishing power. With regard to wine we ought to talk as does Euripides [*] with regard to Love:

May est thou be mine, but moderate be, I pray, yet ne’er abandon me.

For wine is the most beneficial of beverages, the pleasantest of medicines, and the least cloying of appetizing things, provided that there is a happy combination of it with the occasion as well as with water. Water, not only the water that is mixed with [*] the wine, but that which is drunk by itself in the interim between the draughts of the mixture, makes the mixture more innocent. One ought to accustom oneself, therefore, in the course of the daily routine to partake of two or three glasses of water, thus both making the potency of the wine milder, and making the drinking of water habitual with the body, so that, whenever it comes to be in need of water, it may not feel strange towards the drink, and refuse it. For the fact is that some people feel most impelled towards wine when the drink which they most need is water. For after being exposed to the sun, and again when chilled, and after speaking more earnestly and thinking more intently than usual, and, in general, after exertions and strivings, they think they ought to drink wine, feeling that Nature requires for the body some comfort and change after labours. But Nature does not require comfort, if comfort is only a name for self-indulgence, but she does require a change, a change which puts the body in a state midway between pleasure and pain. Therefore in such circumstances there should not only be some reduction in food, but wine should be either altogether eliminated or else partaken of between times very diluted and practically engulfed by the drinking of water. For wine, being truculent and keen, intensifies the disturbances of the body, and exacerbates and irritates the contused parts, which are in need of the comfort and alleviation that water best supplies. For if, in spite of the fact that we are not thirsty, we drink hot water after undergoing exertion, strain, or heat, we are sensible of a relaxing and soothing effect within us; for the aqueous fluid is mild and does not quicken the pulse, whereas that of wine has great impetuosity and a potency that is not kindly or humanely disposed toward recent affections. As for the acerbities and bitterness which some say fasting engenders in the body, if anybody fears them, or if, childlike, he thinks it a dreadful thing not to have a meal served before the fever which he suspects is coming, the drinking of water is a very fitting middle course. In fact we frequently make to Dionysus himself offerings which include no wine, thus habituating ourselves quite properly not to be always looking for strong drink. Minos, too, because of grief, abolished the flute and garland from the sacrifice.[*] Yet we know that a grieving soul is not affected either by garlands or by flute. But no one’s body is so strong that wine, thrust upon it when it is disturbed and feverish, does it no harm.