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[32]

If possible avoid drinking-parties altogether,1 but if ever occasion arises when you must be present, rise and take your leave before you become intoxicated;2 for when the mind is impaired by wine it is like chariots which have lost their drivers; for just as these plunge along in wild disorder when they miss the hands which should guide them, so the soul stumbles again and again when the intellect is impaired.3

Cultivate the thoughts of an immortal by being lofty of soul, but of a mortal by enjoying in due measure the good things which you possess.4

1 For drinking-parties in Athens see Isocrates' picture in Isoc. 15.286-7.

2 Theognis gives the same advice, Theog. 484 ff.

3 This recalls the figure of the charioteer and the two horses in Plat. Phaedrus 247a-c. There is an exact parallel in Libanius, xii. 40.

4 Cf. Isoc. 1.9

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