The Instructor 2.2.19–2.3.39

“Use a little wine,” the apostle says to Timothy, who drank only water, “for the sake of your stomach,” very rightly offering a suitable astringent remedy to a sick and flabby body, and prescribing it in small amount, lest the remedy should unawares, by its quantity, need other treatment. The natural, sober, and necessary drink for the thirsty is water. This, streaming down from the flinty rock, the Lord supplied to the Hebrews of old as their one drink of self-control; and those still wandering needed above all to be sober. Afterward the holy vine sprouted the prophetic cluster. This is a sign to those who have been instructed and led from wandering into rest: the great cluster, the Word, crushed for us, the Word wishing “the blood of the grape” to be mixed with water, as his blood is mixed with salvation. The blood of the Lord is twofold: one is fleshly, by which we have been redeemed from corruption; the other spiritual, that is, by which we have been anointed.

And this is to drink the blood of Jesus: to partake of the Lord's incorruption. The Spirit is the strength of the Word, as blood is of flesh. Correspondingly, then, wine is mixed with water, and the Spirit with the human being; the mixture nourishes to faith, and the Spirit leads to incorruption; and the mingling of both again, of the drink and of the Word, is called Eucharist, a praised and beautiful grace; those who partake of it in faith are sanctified in body and soul, since the Father's will mystically mingles the divine mixture, the human being, with Spirit and Word. For truly the Spirit is joined to the soul, which is carried by him, and the flesh to the Word, for whose sake “the Word became flesh.” I admire, then, those who have chosen an austere life and long for water, the medicine of self-control, fleeing as far as possible from wine as from the threat of fire. It is right that boys and girls should for the most part keep away from this medicine; for it is not suitable to pour on a seething age the hottest of liquids, wine, like channeling fire onto fire. From it wild impulses, burning desires, and a fiery character are kindled; and the young, heated from within, become rash toward their appetites, so that their harm is plainly shown through the body, the members of desire ripening sooner than is fitting. When wine boils up, breasts and private parts swell and are shamelessly aroused, proclaiming already an image of sexual immorality; the body is compelled to inflame the wound of the soul, and shameless pulses pursue curiosity, calling the orderly person to lawlessness.

Thereupon the new wine of youth overflows the bounds of modesty. We must try, as far as possible, to quench the impulses of the young, taking away the fuel, the threatening Bacchic element, and pouring on the antidote to the boiling, which will restrain the soul already smoldering, check the swelling members, and put to sleep the irritation of desire already stirred. Grown men, when they take a midday meal, if a midday meal suits them, should eat only bread and abstain from drink altogether, so that their superfluous moisture may be absorbed and sponged up by dry food. For constant spitting, blowing the nose, and hurrying to relieve oneself are a sign of incontinence, when the fluids overflow in the body from immoderate intake.

If thirst comes on, let them relieve it with a little water; for it is not fitting to fill oneself unrestrainedly with water either, lest the food be washed through instead of being ground down for digestion, the food being assigned to the body's mass and very little of it passing out in excretion. And in any case it is fitting for those occupied with divine concerns not to be heavy with wine; for “neat wine,” as the comic poet says, “compels one to think little,” to say nothing of self-control. Toward evening, at supper time, wine may be used, when we are no longer occupied with the more sober readings. Then the air too becomes colder than in the day, so that we need to nourish the failing natural warmth with heat from outside; but here too with a little wine, for we must not go on to the bowls of outrage. Those who are already past their prime may be allowed to partake of drink more cheerfully, harmlessly rekindling with the medicine of the vine the chill of age, withering as it were with time; for the appetites of the old are not, for the most part, still tossed by the shipwrecks of drunkenness. Anchored, as it were, by reason and by time, they bear more easily the storm of desires that rushes down from drunkenness; and perhaps they may even be permitted some jesting at feasts. But for them too let the limit of drinking be the point at which they keep their reasoning unshaken, their memory active, and their body unmoved and unshaken by wine; those skilled in these matters call this state “slightly tipsy.” It is good, then, to stop beforehand, for fear of slipping.

A certain Artorius, in his book On Long Life, as I remember, thinks that one should drink only enough to moisten the food, so that we may obtain a longer life. It is fitting, then, for some to take wine as a treatment, only for health, and for others for relaxation and cheer. For wine first makes the drinker more gracious to himself than before, and gentle to his fellow drinkers, milder to his servants, and more agreeable to his friends; but when abused, it repays the outrage. Being warm and having sweet juices, when mixed in due measure, it melts by its heat the sticky residues, and tempers the sharp and bad humors with its fragrance. So it was well said: “Wine drunk in sufficiency was created from the beginning as the gladness of the soul and heart.” It is best to mix wine with as much water as possible, so that it may be blunted against drunkenness [and not be sought like water], and not be poured in like water through love of wine. For both are God's works, and the mixing of both, water and wine, contributes to health in this way, because life consists of the necessary and the useful.

(… of the necessary and the useful.) With the necessary, water, then, as much as possible, some of the useful should be mixed. But with immoderate wine the tongue is hampered, the lips are loosened, the eyes turn aside, the sight swimming, as it were, in the abundance of moisture; and, forced into error, they think everything is going round in a circle, and cannot count distant things as single: “And indeed I seem to see two suns,” said the old Theban when drunk. For sight, moved by the heat of the wine, imagines the one substance many times over. It makes no difference whether the eye or the object seen is moved; for the eye suffers the same from both, being unable, because of the tossing, to grasp its object exactly. And the feet are carried off as by a current, and hiccups, vomiting, and delirium come reveling in. For “every man flushed with wine,” according to tragedy, “is overcome by anger and empty of mind, and, pouring out much talk in vain, he is wont to hear unwillingly the evil he spoke willingly.” And before tragedy, Wisdom cried out: “Wine drunk in excess multiplies provocation and every fall.”

So most people say that at drinking parties one should relax and put off serious matters until the morning. But I think it right to bring in the Word then above all, to share the feast and to instruct the love of wine, lest the feast slip unawares into drunkenness. For as no one in his right mind would think of closing his eyes before going to sleep, so no one could rightly wish the Word to be absent from the banquet, nor would one do well to put him to sleep before our actions. Indeed the Word will never be able to leave his own, not even when we sleep; for he must be called to our sleep too. For wisdom, being perfect knowledge of divine and human things, embracing the whole, becomes, insofar as it oversees the flock of humankind, an art of living, and so it is present everywhere as long as we live, always fulfilling its proper work, a good life. But the ill-starred who drive self-control away from their feasts think the disorder of banquets a blessed life; for them life is nothing but revelry, hangover, baths, neat wine, chamber pots, idleness, drinking.

One can see some of them half-drunk, staggering, with garlands around their necks like wine jars, spitting neat wine at one another in the name of loving toasts; and others full of last night's excess, unwashed, pale, their faces livid, and still, on top of yesterday's drunkenness, drawing up another drunkenness in the morning. It is good, friends, it is good, having observed this ridiculous and pitiable picture from as far away as possible, to shape ourselves for the better, fearing lest we too somehow become a similar spectacle and laughingstock to others. So it has been well said: “As the furnace tests the temper of steel by dipping, so wine tests the heart of the proud in drunkenness.”

Drunkenness is the immoderate use of neat wine; drunken misbehavior is the disorder that comes from that use; and crapulence (kraipalē) is the discomfort and nausea after drunkenness, named from the shaking of the head (kara pallein). Divine Wisdom, viewing this life, if it should be called life, which is idle, stirred up for luxuries and excited by the love of wine, commands her children: “Do not be a wine-bibber, nor stretch yourself out at banquets and meat-buying; for every drunkard and whoremonger will become poor, and every sleepy one will be clothed in rags.” For everyone is sleepy who is not awake to wisdom but is plunged into sleep by drunkenness. And the drunkard, it says, will be clothed in rags; he will be put to shame by his drunkenness before those who see him. For the rents are the sinner's holes, the tears in the fleshly fabric, bored through by love of pleasure, through which the shame within the soul is seen, the sin; because of which the fabric, torn on every side and rotting into many desires, torn away from salvation, will not easily be saved. So, most admonishingly, it adds: “Who has woe? Who has tumult? Who has judgment? Who has unpleasant talk? Who has wounds without cause?” You see the lover of wine entirely in rags, who overlooks the Word himself and has given himself up to drunkenness, all the things with which Scripture threatened him. And again it adds to the threat: “Whose eyes are livid? Is it not those who linger over wine? Is it not those who track down where drinking parties are held?” Here it shows the lover of drink as already dead to the Word, through the livid eyes, a sign that appears on the dead, announcing to him death in the Lord; for forgetfulness of what leads to true

life slides toward corruption. Rightly, then, the Instructor, caring for our salvation, forbids most strictly: “Do not drink wine to drunkenness.” Why, you will ask? “Because,” it says, “your mouth will then speak crooked things, and you will lie as in the heart of the sea, and like a pilot in a great storm.” Poetry, having benefited from this, says: “And wine, which has might equal to fire, when it comes upon men, surges as the north or south wind surges the Libyan sea, and reveals all hidden things, a speaker of wrong words; wine is a slip for the drunken, wine a deceiver of the soul,” and so on. Do you see the danger of shipwreck? The heart is flooded by much drinking; and he likened the mass of wine-bibbing to the threat of the sea, in which the body, sunk like a ship, has gone down into a deep of disorder, buried under the huge waves of wine; while the pilot, the human mind, is carried around by the surge as drunkenness prevails, and, tossing at sea, grows dizzy in the darkness of the storm, missing the harbor of truth, until, striking hidden rocks, it runs itself aground and is destroyed in pleasures.

Rightly, then, the apostle also commands: “Do not get drunk with wine, in which there is much profligacy (asōtia),” hinting through “profligacy” that drunkenness is beyond saving (asōston). For even if he made water into wine at the wedding, he did not permit drunkenness; he gave life to the watery state of mind, † the worker of the law from Adam, filling the whole world with the blood of the vine, the drink of truth, providing the mixture of the old law and the new Word for the fulfilling of the time foreordained for godliness. Scripture, then, called wine the mystic symbol of the holy blood; but reproving the dregs of wine, it says, “Wine is licentious, and drunkenness insolent.” Right reason, then, approves drinking in winter, because of the cold, as much as to keep from shivering, for those who easily shiver; and at other times as treatment for the intestines. For as with food, to keep from hunger, so with drink, to keep from thirst, we must use it, guarding carefully against slipping; for the entry of wine is on the edge of danger. So our soul may be pure, dry, and luminous: “The dry soul is a ray of light, wisest and best.” In this way it is also able to contemplate, and is not soaked through with the vapors of wine, given body like a cloud.

We must not, then, busy ourselves looking for Chian wine if it is absent, or Ariusian when it is not at hand. For thirst is the feeling of a lack, and seeks a suitable remedy to fill it, not a pretentious drink. Wines imported from overseas are for an appetite made flabby by incontinence, the soul being out of its mind about its desires even before drunkenness. Fragrant Thasian, sweet-breathing Lesbian, a sweet Cretan, a pleasant Syracusan, an Egyptian Mendesian, the island Naxian, and another, a flower-scented one, from the land of the Italians: these are many names; but for a self-controlled drinker there is one wine, the tillage of one God. Why is not the local wine enough to satisfy desire? Unless they will also import water, as foolish kings do, the Choaspes water [the Choaspes being a river so called in India, whose water is finest for drinking], bringing water along with them, as they do their friends. Here too the Holy Spirit pronounces the rich in their luxury wretched, crying out through Amos: “Those who drink strained wine,” it says, “and lie on ivory couches,” and the other things that follow, which he added as a reproach.

We must take special care for decorum (the myth says that Athena, whoever she was, out of concern for herself threw away the delight of the flute because of the unseemliness of her face), so as to drink with an undistorted face, not gulping it down to the full, nor, while drinking, forcing our eyes into indecency, draining it at one draught from incontinence; nor pouring it over our beard or soaking our clothes, the drink being poured in all at once, all but washing and drenching our faces in the bowls. For the gurgling, as the drink rushes violently down, drawn in with much breath as if poured into an earthen jar, the throat sounding with the torrent of swallowing, is shameful, and the sight of incontinence unseemly; and besides, heavy drinking is a harmful practice for the one who indulges in it. Do not hurry to your harm, you there. Your drink is not being snatched away; it has been given to you and waits for you. Do not strive to burst yourself by drinking greedily; your thirst is filled even if you drink more slowly, gaining decorum as the drink is taken decorously in portions; for time does not take away what incontinence snatches ahead. “Do not act the man in wine,” it says, “for wine has ruined many.”

“The Scythians, Celts, Iberians, and Thracians, all warlike races, give themselves most to drunkenness, and think it a fine and happy practice.” But let us, the peaceful race, feasting for enjoyment and not for outrage, drink sober toasts of friendship, so that friendships may truly be shown to deserve the name. How do you think the Lord drank, when he became man for our sake? As shamelessly as we do? Not with refinement? Not decorously? Not thoughtfully? For you know well that he himself partook of wine; for he too was man. And he blessed the wine, saying: “Take, drink; this is my blood,” the blood of the vine. He speaks figuratively of the Word, “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins,” as a holy stream of gladness. And that the one who drinks must be self-controlled, he showed clearly by what he taught at feasts; for he did not teach while drunk. That what he blessed was wine, he showed again when he said to the disciples: “I will not drink of this fruit of the vine until I drink it with you in the kingdom of my Father.” And that what the Lord drank was wine, he himself says again of himself, reproaching the hardness of heart of the Jews: “For the Son of Man came,” he says, “and they say, Behold, a glutton and a drunkard,

a friend of tax collectors.” Let this be said by us in passing against the so-called Encratites. Women, affecting decorum, so as not to split their lips by spreading them on wide cups and widening their mouths, drink indecently from alabaster vessels with very narrow mouths, throwing back their heads and baring their necks, not decorously, it seems to me; and stretching the throat as they swallow, they gulp, as if exposing to their fellow drinkers whatever they can; and, bringing up manly belches, or rather slavish ones, they give themselves airs in their wantonness. No noise is proper to a rational man, still less to a woman, for whom even the consciousness of what she is brings shame. “A drunken woman,” it says, “is great wrath,” as if a woman mad for wine were the anger of God. Why? Because “she does not cover her shame.” For a woman is quickly drawn into disorder if she but gives her will over to pleasures. We have not forbidden drinking from alabaster vessels; but we cut off the pretension of drinking only from these, advising them to use without attachment whatever comes to hand, checking their appetites from afar before they slip. The drawing in of air that bursts out in a belch should be let out quietly. In no way should women be allowed to show themselves with any part of the body uncovered, lest both fall: the men, provoked to gaze, and the women, drawing the men's eyes to themselves. We must always behave decorously, as if the Lord were present, lest the apostle be angry with us too, as with the Corinthians, and say: “When you come together it is not to eat the Lord's supper.”

It seems to me that the one called “headless” by the astrologers, counted before the planet †, with its head sunk into its breast, hints at gourmands, pleasure-lovers, and those ready for drunkenness. For in these too the reasoning part is seated not in the head but in the entrails, enslaved to the passions, desire and anger. So, just as Elpenor, falling from drunkenness, “broke his neck,” so their brain, dizzy with drunkenness, falls from above onto the liver and the heart, that is, onto love of pleasure and anger, a greater fall than the one the sons of the poets say Hephaestus was thrown down from heaven to the ground by Zeus. “Distress of sleeplessness,” it says, “and cholera and colic are with the insatiable man.” That is why Noah's drunkenness was written down, so that we might guard as much as possible against drunkenness, having a clear and written image of the fall, because of which those who covered the shame of drunkenness were blessed by the Lord. Most briefly, then, Scripture has summed up everything in one saying: “Wine enough for a well-instructed man; and he will rest on his bed.”

The use of cups made of silver and gold, and of others set with stones, is to be rejected, a mere deception of the eye. For if one pours a warm mixture into them, the vessels get hot and are painful to hold; and if one pours in a cold one, the material imparts its quality, spoiling the mixture, and the rich drink is harmful. Away, then, with Thericlean cups and Antigonids, canthari and labronii and lepastae, and countless kinds of drinking vessels, and wine coolers and wine jugs besides. “For gold and silver, in a word, both privately and publicly, are an envied possession,” exceeding need, rare to acquire, hard to keep, and unsuitable for use. And the elaborate vanity of engravers on glass, more ready to break because of the art, teaching us to fear and to drink at the same time, must be banished from our good order. Silver couches and basins, saucers, plates, and dishes, and besides silver and gold vessels, some for serving food, others for other uses which I am ashamed even to name; tripods worked of “well-split cedar,” citron wood, ebony, and ivory; couches with silver feet and inlaid with ivory, folding doors studded with gold and adorned with tortoise shell; purple coverlets and others of hard-to-get colors, proofs of tasteless luxury, treacherous advantages of envy and effeminacy: all these must be dismissed, having no worth worthy of pursuit. “For the time has been shortened,” as the apostle says.

… it remains that we not be made ridiculous, as some are seen in processions, outwardly made up to look impressively solemn, but wretched within. Making this more precise, he adds: “From now on let those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who buy as though they had no possessions.” If this is said of marriage, of which God says, “Multiply,” how much more, do you think, must tastelessness be banished by the Lord's authority? That is why the Lord says, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come, follow me.” Follow God stripped of pretension, stripped of perishable pomp, possessing what is yours, the only good that cannot be taken away: faith in God, confession of him who suffered, and kindness toward human beings, the most precious possession. I also accept Plato, who legislates plainly “that one should not have wealth of silver or gold,” nor any useless vessel that is not moderate and suited to necessary use, so that the same thing may serve for many purposes, and the acquisition of many possessions be removed. Very beautifully the divine Scripture says somewhere, addressing the self-loving and pretentious: “Where are the rulers of the nations, and those who lord it over the beasts of the earth, who sport with the birds of the air, who hoard silver and gold, in which men trusted, and there is no end of their getting; who work silver and gold and are anxious?

There is no finding out of their works; they have vanished and gone down to Hades.” This is the reward of tastelessness. For if in farming we need a mattock and a plow, no one would forge a silver pickaxe or a golden sickle, but we use for tillage the workable material, not the costly; what prevents those who can see the likeness from having the same mind about household vessels? Let need, not costliness, be their measure. What? Tell me: does the table knife not cut unless it has silver studs or an ivory handle? Or must we forge Indian steel for a portion of meat, as if calling in an ally? What then? If the washbasin is earthenware, will it not receive the water from washing the hands? Or the foot-basin the water from the feet? Will the table with feet made of ivory be indignant at carrying a penny loaf? Nor will the lamp give its light because it is the work of a potter, not of a goldsmith? I say that the pallet gives no worse rest than the ivory couch, and that the goatskin rug is quite sufficient as a covering, so that there is no need of purple or scarlet coverlets; yet frugality is condemned through the folly of luxury, the author of evils.

See how great this error is, how great the love of display. The Lord ate from a cheap bowl, made his disciples recline on the grass on the ground, and washed their feet, girded with a towel, the unpretentious God and Lord of all, not bringing a silver foot-basin down from heaven. He asked the Samaritan woman for a drink as she drew it up from the well in an earthenware vessel, not seeking royal gold, but teaching us to quench thirst simply; for he set need as his aim, not ignorant display. He ate and drank at feasts, not digging up metals from the earth, nor using vessels of silver and gold, that is, reeking of rust, such as [the rust] the pretentious material gives off. In general, food, clothing, vessels, and everything else in the house, in a word, must be in keeping with the Christian's way of life, suited appropriately to the person, the age, the occupation, and the occasion. For being servants of one God, our possessions and the furnishings with them must show the tokens of one good life, and each person, by undivided faith, this single-minded way of life, must make what follows appear consistent and in harmony with the one disposition. What we acquire without difficulty, use easily, praise, keep readily, and share easily, is better. Useful things are better, and cheaper things surely better than costly ones.

In general, wealth that is not rightly steered is a citadel of vice; eyeing it covetously, the many would never enter the kingdom of heaven, sick as they are about worldly things and living arrogantly because of their luxuries. Those who hasten to salvation must understand beforehand that all creation is ours for use, and possession for the sake of self-sufficiency, which one could obtain even from a few things. Vain are those who, from insatiability, rejoice in their treasures: “He who gathers wages,” it says, “has gathered into a bag with holes.” This is the one who gathers and shuts up the grain and becomes poorer, who shares with no one. It is a mockery and a broad laugh that men should have silver urinals and glass chamber pots brought to them, as they bring in their counselors, and that these foolishly rich women should make the receptacles of their excrement of gold, so that, being rich, they cannot even relieve themselves without pretension. I would have wished that throughout their whole life they judged gold worthy of dung. As it is, love of money has been found to be the citadel of vice, which the apostle says is the root of all evils, “by craving which some have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.” The best wealth is poverty of desires, and true greatness of mind is not to be proud of wealth but to despise it. To boast of vessels is quite shameful; for it is not right to be eager any longer about things anyone who wishes can buy in the market. But wisdom is not bought with earthly coin nor in the market; it is sold in heaven, and sold for true coin, the incorruptible Word, the royal gold.