272 
pliny's is^atueal history. 
[Book XIY. 
throat. And how many a man has met his death in this fashion I 
Indeed, it has become quite a common proverb, that in wine^^ 
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. Prom wine, too, comes 
that pallid hue,^^ 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!''^' 
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 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^^ 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,^^ 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 
65 it yjijQ Veritas.'' 
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. 
Eapere vitam." See B. xxiii. c. 23. 
69 Three gallons and three pints ! ! There must have been some jugglery 
in this performance. 
Probably towards those guilty of excesses in wine. 
