It is the final week of the university semester. Lecturers have been sapped, library shelves have been ransacked, campus lawns bear the scars of countless feet trekking between buildings and a few dedicated students trudge off to their final classes for the week. For students and lecturers alike, there is a mixed sense of pride, relief and achievement in finishing their courses. Many students will spend time celebrating and drinking with friends before sobering up to face their impending exams, and many will celebrate again after exams and well into the Christmas period. So, here is a blog for those students who are so inclined. A well-meaning, amusing but salutary warning against excess and its after-effects from the seasoned revellers of the classical world. It comes with kind humour and my best wishes to all students for the exam period, a happy end to another teaching semester, and a festive but safe holiday period:
A portrait of The Drunkard, written by Lyco of Troas (c. 300-225BCE):
‘Satiated with too much food and drink from a former day, at noon he is with difficulty awakened drunk, first with eyes wet with wine, blinded with moisture, heavy, unable to look at the light steadily; exhausted because his veins are filled with wine rather than blood, he cannot raise himself; at last, leaning on two servants, languid, tired from lying in bed, clothed in a tunic but without a mantle and wearing slippers, his head bound in a little cloak to keep off the cold, his head bent, eyelids lowered, face pale, he is raised from the couch in his bed chamber and is dragged to another in the dining room.
There, a few daily guests await him, summoned by the same desire. Here indeed as a petty chief, with what he has left of his mind and sense, he hastens to proffer the cup; he challenges to drink, he incites just as if he were in battle and surmounting or striking most of the enemy, thinking the greatest share of the victory his own. Meanwhile he proceeds to mock time in drinking; his eyes, weeping wine, make mists about him; the drunk scarcely recognise the drunk. One man without cause provokes his neighbour to a quarrel; another, surrendering to sleep, is kept awake by force; a third gets ready to quarrel; the doorman restrains a fourth from corrupting the company with a desire to go home; he beats him, forbids him to leave, pointing out the master’s injunction. Meanwhile a boy supports another fellow, abusively pushed out of the door reeling, and leads him away, the man dragging his mantle through the mire. At last left alone in the dining room, our man cannot put the cup down before sleep overcomes him as he drinks; the cup slips from his shaky hand as he collapses.’
Source for text:
Lyco of Troas (c. 300-225BCE) ‘The Drunkard’ quoted by Rutilius Lupus, Schemata Lexeos (On Figures of Thought and Style), translated by Boyce (B. Boyce, The Theophrastan Character in England to 1642, London, Frank Cass & Co., 1967, pp.22-23).
Header image:
Terracotta jug depicting a drunken old woman clasping a wine jug: Roman, early third century CE, made of African red slipware. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts.
Link to source:
Aesop's Fox: A Classics Blog 