previous next

But do not you be afraid to drink; nor will you be in [p. 706] any danger of falling on your hinder parts; for the people who drink what Simonides calls—
Wine, the brave router of all melancholy,
can never suffer such a mischance as that. But as Aristotle says, in his book on Drunkenness, they who have drunk beer, which they call πῖνος, fall on their backs. For he says, “But there is a peculiarity in the effects of the drink made from barley, which they call πῖνος, for they who get drunk on other intoxicating liquors fall on all parts of their body; they fall on the left side, on the right side, on their faces, and on their backs. But it is only those who get drunk on beer who fall on their backs, and lie with their faces upwards.” But the wine which is made of barley is by some called βρύτος, as Sophocles says, in his Triptolemus—
And not to drink the earthy beer (βρύτον).
And Archilochus says—
And she did vomit wine as any Thracian
Might vomit beer (βρύτον), and played the wanton stooping.
And Aeschylus, also, mentions this drink, in his Lycurgus—
And after this he drank his beer (βρύτον), and much
And loudly bragg'd in that most valiant house.
But Hellanicus, in his Origins, says that beer is made also out of roots, and he writes thus:—“But they drink beer (βρύτον) made of roots, as the Thracians drink it made of barley.” And Hecatæus, in the second book of his Description of the World, speaking of the Egyptians, and saying that they are great bread-eaters, adds, “They bruise barley so as to make a drink of it.” And, in his Voyage round Europe, he says that “the Pæonians drink beer made of barley, and a liquor called παραβίη, made of millet and conyza. And they anoint themselves,” adds he, “with oil made of milk.” And this is enough to say on these topics.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (Kaibel)
load focus Greek (Charles Burton Gulick, 1927)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: