BOOK XIV. XXVIII. 142-146 



sore eyes, shaky hands that spill the contents of 

 vessels when they are full, and the condign punish- 

 ment of haunted sleep and restless nights, and the 

 crowning reward of drunkenness, monstrous hcen- 

 tiousness and dehght in iniquity. Next day the 

 ])reath reeks of the wine-cask, and everything is for- 

 gotten — the memory is dead. This is what they call 

 * snatching hfe as it comes ! ' when, whereas other 

 men daily lose their yesterdays, these people lose 

 to-morrow also. Forty years ago, during the rulc of stonesof 

 the Emperor Tiberius, the fashion set in of drinking '^^*^'- 

 on an empty stomach and preceding meals with a 

 draught of wine — yet another result of foreign 

 methods and of the doctors' poUcy of perpetually 

 advertising themselves by some novelty. This is 

 the kind of prowess by which the Parthians seek fame 

 and Alcibiades won his reputation in Greece, and to 

 which among ourselves NoveUius Torquatus of Milan 

 even owed his surname ^ — a man who held the offices 

 of state from praetor right up to deputy consul — by 

 tossing off 2j gallons at one draught, which was 

 actually the origin of his sumame ; * this was shown 

 ofF as a sort of mystery before the Emperor Tiberius 

 in his old age, when he had become very strict 

 and indeed cruel, though for the matter of that his 

 own earlier years had been somewhat incHned to 

 strong drink, and it was beheved that what recom- 

 mendcd Lucius Piso to Tiberius for selection as 

 custodian of the city '^ was that he had kept on 

 carousing for two days and two nights without a 

 break, at Tiberius's own house after he had become 

 Emperor. And it was said that Drusus Caesar 

 took after his father Tiberius in nothing more than 

 in this. Torquatus had the unusual distinction — as 



voL. IV. K 281 



