272 PLINY 1 8 FATUEAL HISTORY. [Book XIV. 



throat. And how many a man has met his death in this fashion ! 

 Indeed, it has become quite a common proverb, that " in wine 65 

 there is truth." 



Should he, however, fortunately escape all these dangers, 

 the drunkard never beholds the rising sun, by which his life 

 of drinking is made all the shorter. From wine, too, comes 

 that pallid hue, 56 those drooping eyelids, those sore eyes, those 

 tremulous hands, unable to hold with steadiness the over- 

 flowing vessel, condign punishment in the shape of sleep agi- 

 tated by Furies during the restless night, and, the supreme 

 reward of inebriety, those dreams of monstrous lustfulness and 

 of forbidden delights. Then on the next day there is the breath 

 reeking of the wine-cask, and a nearly total obliviousness of 

 everything, from the annihilation of the powers of the memory. 

 And this, too, is what they call " seizing the moments of life!' r67 

 whereas, in reality, while other men lose the day that has gone 

 before, the drinker has already lost the one that is to come. 



They first began, in the reign of Tiberius Claudius, some 

 forty years ago, to drink fasting, and to take whets of wine 

 before meals ; an outlandish 68 fashion, however, and only pa- 

 tronized by physicians who wished to recommend themselves 

 by the introduction of some novelty or other. 



It is in the exercise of their drinking powers that the Par- 

 thians look for their share of fame, and it was in this that 

 Alcibiades among the Greeks earned his great repute. Among 

 ourselves, too, Novellius Torquatus of Mediolanum, a man 

 who held all the honours of the state from the prefecture to the 

 pro-consulate, could drink off three congii 69 at a single draught, 

 a feat from which he obtained the surname of "Tricon- 

 gius :" this he did before the eyes of the Emperor Tiberius, 

 and to his extreme surprise and astonishment, a man who in 

 his old age was very morose, 70 and indeed very cruel in gene- 

 ral ; though in his younger days he himself had been too 

 much addicted to wine. Indeed it was owing to that recom- 

 mendation that it was generally thought that L. Piso was 



G5 it j n y [ no Veritas," 



00 Fee remarks that this is one proof that the wine of the ancients was 

 essentially different in its nature from ours. In our day wine gives any- 

 thing but a "pallid" hue. 



67 " Rapere vitam." 6S See B. xxiii. c. 23. 



69 Three gallons and three pints ! ! There must have been some jugglery 

 in this performance. 



70 Probably towards those guilty of excesses in wine. 



