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Ancient Greek and Roman Explanations for Drunkenness View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Avondale College: ResearchOnline@Avondale Christian Spirituality and Science Issues in the Contemporary World Volume 8 Issue 1 Alcohol and the Christian Faith Article 2 2010 “Daimon Drink”: Ancient Greek and Roman Explanations for Drunkenness Steven W. Thompson Avondale College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://research.avondale.edu.au/css Recommended Citation Thompson, S. W. (2010). “Daimon Drink”: Ancient Greek and Roman explanations for drunkenness. Christian Spirituality and Science, 8(1), 7-24. Retrieved from https://research.avondale.edu.au/css/vol8/ iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Avondale Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science at ResearchOnline@Avondale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Christian Spirituality and Science by an authorized editor of ResearchOnline@Avondale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Thompson: “Daimon Drink” “Daimōn Drink”: Ancient Greek and Roman Explanations for Drunkenness Dr Steve Thompson Emeritus Senior Research Fellow Avondale College hat did ancient Greek and the population, according to current WRoman wine drinkers believe interpretation of surviving literary and was the mechanism, force, or proc- material remains. A “sober” estimate ess which caused their drunkenness? by a recent researcher places per capita Three primary answers to this question consumption of wine by occupants emerge from the extensive ancient of the city of Rome at 100 litres per Greek and Roman literary references person per year.1 A recent estimate to wine and drinking. The first is that for consumption in the Old Testa- drunkenness is caused by some prop- ment world is over three times this erty resident in the drinker, the result amount.2 Neither estimate addresses of a bodily response to wine. This will the crucial question of whether these be designated below as the “human quantities were of diluted or undiluted cause.” The second is that drunkenness wine. Greeks and Romans considered is caused by a property resident in the it civilised to dilute their wine, so this wine itself. This will be designated be- question needs addressing. Of course, low as the “wine cause.” The third of not every Roman or every Israelite these answers, the one most widely en- consumed wine, but many would have countered, was that drunkenness was consumed it on a regular basis. the work of the god of wine, known AmbivAlEnt AttituDES to Greeks as Dionysus and Bacchus. tow ARDS DRunkEnnESS This will be designated as the “divine Abundant ancient testimony to both cause.” The purpose of this paper is the pleasures and pains of drunken- to describe and document these three ness survives in the literature from all explanations of drunkenness within epochs of ancient Greece and Rome.3 the setting of Greco-Roman culture. Pretty well the full range of both Relevant original sources will be cited prosocial and antisocial behaviour at- and translated. tributed to drinking today was already Most persons in ancient Mediterranean observed by Greeks and Romans, and cultures would have experienced, or recorded in their literature.4 The Ro- at least witnessed, drunkenness. Wine man nobleman and naturalist Pliny was widely available in that world, the Elder (23-79 AD) inserted into and was apparently consumed on a his extensive description of wine va- regular basis by a large segment of rieties available in his day a personal 7 Published by ResearchOnline@Avondale, 2010 1 Christian Spirituality and Science, Vol. 8 [2010], Iss. 1, Art. 2 acknowledgment of his ambivalent blinded Lycurgus, then provoked him attitude towards the impact of wine into an insane rampage during which drinking: “we are justified in saying he slaughtered his own family (see that there is nothing else that is more Homer, Iliad book 6.130-140). Shaun useful for strengthening the body, and Hill and John Wilkins, commenting also nothing more detrimental to our in general on recognition by ancient pleasures (voluptatibus perniciosius) if Greeks and Romans of the power of moderation be lacking” (Natural His- wine, comment: “The difficulties of tory 14.6.58 Rackham translation).5 dealing with alcohol are reflected in The Roman poet Horace (65-8 BC), many forms.” They cite the urgings of although not necessarily addressing poets to restraint, and the reciting of drunkenness, was familiar with am- cautionary stories of drunken excess bivalent consequences of drunkenness to heighten the sense of the risk of and drew on it as a metaphor when he drunkenness.8 wrote “delightful is the danger, O Bac- thE “humAn” cAuSE chus, of pursuing the god …” (Car- oF DRunkEnnESS men 3.25.19-20 Bennett translation).6 The human cause of drunkenness Marcus Cornelius Fronto (95-166 assumes a cause residing primarily AD), in a letter to his former pupil within the person of the wine con- the future Roman emperor Antoninus sumer. This account is familiar to Pius, expressed his view that peoples modern readers because, like today’s and nations would have been better typical scientific account of the proc- off had grapes, the main source of ess of intoxication, it employed the drunkenness in the ancient world, not models of human anatomy, physiology been available: “It had surely been the and body chemistry available at the benefit of many a race and nation had time to account for drunkenness. The the vine been extirpated from the face most widely-attested of these ancient of the earth.” (On Eloquence, 1 Haines models drew on the complex interac- translation).7 Fronto here drew on the tion of three sets of variables operant well-known myth of the encounter within human bodies—hot and cold, between the wine god Dionysus and wet and dry, and the porosity of bodies mythical primal human Lycurgus, the and their penetrability by particles of first person to personally encounter various sizes—to account for drunk- wine and drunkenness. After sobering enness, both as process and as state. up from the encounter, he set about In the words of the greatest medical removing all grape vines to prevent authority of the Imperial Roman era, a repeat of his unwelcome discovery. Galen (129-199 AD), “the bodies of all His task brought him into an encounter creatures are under the control of the with Dionysus, which turned into trag- opposing pairs of hot and cold, wet and edy when Dionysus by divine power dry.” Hot, he added, dominated these 8 https://research.avondale.edu.au/css/vol8/iss1/2 2 Thompson: “Daimon Drink” variables as the main force governing cal issues, probably reflecting the main the function of organisms (On the areas of curriculum at the Lyceum. Natural Faculties 3.110-111 Brock Most of nearly 900 “paragraphs” open translation).9 Galen gave credit for this with a question probably designed to view to Theophrastus, Aristotle’s suc- prompt a class or tutorial discussion: cessor at the Lyceum in Athens. “Why …?” It is followed immediately by a follow-on question: “Is it because A succinct statement of the human …?” Within these “paragraphs” the cause for drunkenness is found in modern reader can expect to find a a fragment of a comedy attributed range of received assumptions about, to the Greek playwright Menander inferences from, and statements of, (342-292 BC): “it is not the quantity the shared worldview of generations drunk, but the physis (“nature” in the of lecturers in Aristotle’s Lyceum. sense of “character”) of the drinker Book 3 of Physical Problems is titled that causes drunkenness” (fragment “Concerning Wine Consumption and Kock no. 627).10 The primary ancient Drunkenness”.11 The topic resur- literary source for the human cause faces briefly in book 30 “Concerning of drunkenness is what can be loosely Thought, Intelligence and Wisdom”.12 described as the largest collection of This source maintains a consistently “university” lecture notes to survive human physiological explanation of from the ancient world, known col- drunkenness, although the physiol- lectively as Physika Problemata, ogy reflects ancient Greek anatomical “Physical Problems”, and attributed by understanding. It also probably reflects several ancient authorities to Aristotle the views and approaches to the expla- (384-322 BC). There is widespread nation of physical phenomena familiar doubt he was directly responsible for to educated Greeks and Romans. them, and current scholarly opinion views the Physical Problems as the The core variable in organisms called product of several generations of on to explain drunkenness was the disputations conducted by lecturers widely accepted hot-and-cold vari- and students in the Lyceum founded able noted above, understood to be by Aristotle in Athens, an institution central to a range of life processes. devoted to preserving its founder’s The relation of body heat to drunken- methods of careful observation and ness was stated in definite terms: “For deduction. They were probably com- drunkenness occurs when the heat is piled during the two centuries follow- in the region about the head” (872b ing Aristotle’s death, and sometimes 30-31 Hett translation). This notion designated pseudo-Aristotelian. The of a heated head is repeated in 873a2 38 books of Physical Problems range and 874b11. Further on the reader widely across the fields of physics, encounters the declaration “both wine biology, medicine and social and ethi- and life seem to belong by nature 9 Published by ResearchOnline@Avondale, 2010 3 Christian Spirituality and Science, Vol. 8 [2010], Iss. 1, Art. 2 to the hot …” (874a38-874b1 Hett penetrability by various sized parti- translation). Drunkenness became cles. The widespread acceptance of life threatening when the heat of wine this porosity and penetration variable “overcame” natural body heat (see among later Greeks and Romans with 871b23-24, 875a18-21).
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