Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
"Use a little wine," he says to Timothy, who drank water, "on account of your stomach" — so speaks the apostle, most excellently prescribing a fitting astringent remedy for a body that is unwell and waterlogged, but allowing it only in a small amount, lest the remedy, taken in excess, itself come to require further treatment. Water, then, is the natural and sober drink that is necessary for those who thirst. This is what the Lord supplied as the single drink of self-control to the ancient Hebrews, flowing from the hewn rock, for it was above all necessary for those still wandering to remain sober. Then afterward the holy vine put forth its prophetic cluster. This is a sign to those who have been trained by their guide to rest from their wandering — the great cluster, the Word who was pressed on our behalf, willing that the blood of the grape be mixed with water, just as his own blood is mixed for salvation. Now the blood of the Lord is twofold: the one is fleshly, by which we have been redeemed from corruption; the other is spiritual, that is, that with which we have been anointed. And this is what it means to drink the blood of Jesus — to partake of the Lord's incorruption; and the strength of the Word is the Spirit, as blood is the strength of flesh. Accordingly, wine is blended in due proportion with water, and the Spirit is joined together with man; and the first — this blend — brings gladness toward faith, while the second — the Spirit — conducts us toward incorruption; and the combination of the two once more, of drink and of the Word, is called Eucharist, a grace praised and beautiful, by partaking of which in faith men are sanctified in both body and soul, the Father's will mystically blending man together with Spirit and Word into this divine mixture. For in truth the Spirit is united to the soul that is borne along by it, and the flesh to the Word, for whose sake "the Word became flesh." I admire, then, those who have chosen an austere life and who long after water, the medicine of self-control, fleeing wine as far as possible, as one flees the threat of fire.
It is fitting, then, that boys and girls should for the most part abstain from this drug; for it is not suitable to pour the hottest of liquids, wine, into an age already boiling, as though conducting fire into fire, from which wild impulses and inflamed desires and a fiery temper are kindled, and the young, warmed within, become impetuous toward their appetites, so that the harm done to them is proven openly through the body, the members of desire ripening sooner than is fitting. At any rate they grow shamelessly excited, as wine seethes within them, and breasts and members swell, already proclaiming an image of fornication and forcing the body to inflame the wound of the soul; and shameless throbbings pursue wanton curiosity, summoning the modest youth into transgression. From this point the new wine of that age already oversteps the bounds of modesty. So far as one is able, one ought to labor at damping down the urges stirring in the young, removing the kindling — the Bacchic fuel of that threat — and pouring in instead the antidote to this ferment, which will restrain the soul already smoldering and hold in check the swelling members and lull to rest the excitement of an appetite already stirring.
Those in the prime of life who partake of a midday meal — for whom a midday meal is suitable — after tasting only bread should abstain entirely from drink, so that dry eating may absorb and wring out their excess moisture. For constant spitting and blowing the nose and hastening to relieve oneself are signs of intemperance, arising from the excessive intake of fluids overflowing the body. And if thirst should still arise, let them treat the condition with water, not much of it; for it is not fitting to indulge freely even in water, lest the food be washed out rather than smoothed down for digestion, with the food itself settling into bulk and only a little passing off in excretion. It is also fitting, for other reasons, not to be weighed down with wine when engaged in thoughts of God; for "unmixed wine," as the comic poet says, "compels little thinking," and perhaps not even self-control. But toward evening, around the hour of dinner, one may make use of wine, since we are then no longer occupied with the more sober kind of reading. At that hour the surrounding air turns colder than it was in daylight, so that the ebbing bodily warmth must be sustained by heat brought in from outside — but here too with only a little wine; for one must not proceed as far as the bowls of drunken excess.
To those already past their prime one may allow a more cheerful share of drink, rekindling harmlessly with the medicine of the vine the chilled portion of their age, which is as it were withering with time; for the appetites of the elderly no longer, for the most part, swell toward the shipwrecks of drunkenness; anchored as they are, so to speak, by reason and by time, they bear more easily the storm of desires that drunkenness stirs up, and to them perhaps some pleasantry is permitted at their feasts. But even for these there should be a limit to drinking, up to the point where they preserve their reasoning unshaken, their memory active, and their body unswayed and unshaken by wine — this state those skilled in such matters call "scarcely touched." It is good, then, to stop short in good time, for fear of slipping.
A certain Artorius, in his work On Long Life — for I remember it — thinks one ought to go no further than moistening one's food, so that our years might thereby be lengthened. It is proper, accordingly, that some make use of wine as a form of therapy for health alone, while others take it for relaxation and cheer. For wine, first of all, makes the drinker more gracious to himself than before, and gentler to his fellow drinkers, milder to his servants, and more agreeable to his friends — though when abused it repays with insolence; for being warm and possessing pleasant humors, when mixed harmoniously it dissolves the sticky residues by its heat, and blends the sharp and bad humors with its fragrances. Well indeed has it been said: "Wine has been created from the beginning to be the exultation of soul and heart, when drunk in due measure." Best of all is to dilute wine with the greatest possible measure of water, neither chasing after it as though it were itself water, nor dulling oneself toward drunkenness, nor pouring it out like water from a craving for drink; for each — water and wine alike — is a work of God, and for this reason the blending of the two is conducive to health, since life is composed of both the necessary and the useful. To the necessary — water — as much as possible should be mixed in, along with the useful. But with unmixed wine the tongue is hindered, the lips grow slack, the eyes wander, as though the sight were swimming under the abundance of moisture, and men, forced into falsehood, imagine that everything is spinning in a circle, and cannot count distant objects as they actually are; indeed, "I seem to see two suns," said the drunken old Theban; for the sight, disturbed by the heat of the wine, imagines the substance repeatedly multiplied beyond the one; and it makes no difference whether it is the sight that is disturbed or the thing seen, for the sight suffers the same either way, unable through its dizziness to grasp accurately the nature of what lies before it. And their steps are swept along as if by a current, and hiccups and vomiting and ravings come crowding in as well.
For every man made drunk, as the tragedy says, is overcome by anger and emptied of mind, and loves to pour out much talk, unwillingly hearing afterward what he willingly said in his folly. And even before that tragedy, wisdom itself cried out: "Wine, drunk in abundance, in irritation and in every kind of fall, multiplies."
For this reason most people say that at drinking parties one should relax and put off serious matters until dawn. But I hold that it is then above all that reason should be brought in as a fellow guest at the feast, to train the excess of wine, lest the good cheer slip unnoticed into drunkenness; for just as no one in his right mind would think fit to close his eyes before going to sleep, so no one in sound mind would truly desire that reason keep away from the table, nor would anyone act well by lulling it to sleep before his deeds are finished. Indeed reason will never be able to withdraw from what is proper to it, not even when we sleep; for even to sleep we must be summoned by it. For wisdom, being perfect knowledge of things divine and human, embracing the whole, becomes, in that respect in which it oversees the human flock, an art concerned with life, and in this way it is present throughout our whole life, always accomplishing its own proper work, the good life. But those wretched people who drive away self-control from their feasting consider a life of blessed happiness to consist in the disorder of their banquets, whose living is nothing but revelry, drunken headache, bathhouses, unmixed wine, chamber pots, idleness, and drinking. One may see some of them half-drunk, stumbling, wearing garlands around their necks like wine jars, pouring unmixed wine into one another in the name of friendship, and others full of the aftereffects of drink, unwashed, pale, their faces livid, and even while still suffering yesterday's drunkenness drawing up another bout of it again at dawn. It is good, friends, it is good to learn, from as far off as possible, to recognize this image — ridiculous and pitiable at once — and to shape ourselves for the better, fearing lest we too somehow become a similar spectacle and a laughingstock to others. Well has it been said: "As the furnace tests the temper of steel in the dipping, so wine tests the heart of the arrogant in drunkenness." Drunkenness, then, is the more violent use of unmixed wine; drunken misbehavior is the disorder that arises from such use; and hangover is the resulting distress and unpleasantness after drunkenness, named from the throbbing of the head. This life — if it deserves to be called life — being idle and stirred up around pleasures and agitated around drunkenness, divine wisdom, watching it with suspicion, warns her own children: "Be not a wine-drinker, nor stretch yourself out for shared feasts, for the buying of meat; for every drunkard and fornicator will come to poverty, and every sleepy man will be clothed in rags." For everyone is "sleepy" who is not awake unto wisdom, but is submerged by drunkenness into sleep. And the drunkard, it says, will be clothed in rags; he will be shamed by his drunkenness before those who observe him. For the holes of the sinner are the torn places of his fleshly garment, bored through by love of pleasure, through which the shame within the soul is seen from outside — the sin on account of which the torn garment cannot easily be saved, being dragged apart on every side and rotting away into many desires, torn off from salvation. To this it most fittingly adds: "To whom is woe? To whom is uproar? To whom is judgment? To whom are unpleasant quarrels? To whom are pointless bruises?" See how the lover of wine is wholly torn apart, one who disregards reason itself and has surrendered himself to drunkenness, subject to all that scripture has threatened him with; and again it adds to the threat: "Whose eyes are livid? Is it not those who linger long over wine? Is it not those who track down where drinking parties are held?" Here it declares the wine-lover already dead, by his very words, through his livid eyes, which is a sign that appears also on the dead, proclaiming to him death in the Lord's reckoning; for forgetfulness of the things that tend toward true life inclines a man toward corruption. Fittingly, then, the Tutor most sternly forbids it, caring for our salvation: "Do not drink wine to drunkenness." Why, you will ask? "Because," it says, "then your mouth will speak crooked things, and you will lie as though in the heart of the sea, and like a helmsman amid a great swell." From here poetry too, having profited from this, says: wine, which has a force equal to fire, whenever it comes upon men, surges like the Libyan sea under the north wind or the south, and reveals all that was hidden, given to error; wine is a slipping-place for the drunk, wine is a deceiver of the soul, and so on. Do you perceive the peril of a wreck at sea? The heart is swamped on every side by drinking to excess, and the abundance of drunkenness is likened to the threat of the sea, in which the body, submerged like a ship, has sunk into the depth of disorder, buried under the great waves of wine, while the helmsman — the human mind — is carried about by the swell as drunkenness overwhelms it, and, tossed at sea, grows dizzy in the darkness of the storm, having missed the harbor of truth, until, falling upon hidden rocks, it runs itself aground and is destroyed among pleasures.
Fittingly, then, the apostle too commands: "Do not be drunk with wine, in which is much dissoluteness," hinting at the ruinousness of drunkenness through the word dissoluteness. For even though he made water into wine at the wedding, he did not permit drunkenness, but gave life to the watered-down state of the mind — [the corrupted] working of the law from Adam — filling the whole world with the blood of the vine, truth's own drink, that blending of the ancient law together with the new Word, granting it for the fulfillment of the time already reconciled beforehand through the worship of God. Scripture, then, has named wine as a mystical symbol of holy blood, and censuring the staleness that comes from wine it says, "wine is licentious, and drunkenness is insolent." It is pleasing, then, to right reason, in winter, on account of the cold, to drink up to the point of not shivering, for those prone to chill, and at other seasons for the sake of caring for the internal organs. For just as food is to be used for the sake of not being hungry, so drink is to be used for the sake of not being thirsty, guarding carefully against the slippery slope; for the intrusion of wine is treacherous. In this way our soul too would remain pure and dry and luminous, for "a dry soul is a most wise and excellent radiance." In this state it is also capable of vision, and it is not made damp and given bodily form, cloud-like, by the vapors rising from wine.
One need not, then, fret over Dean wine in its absence, nor over Ariousian wine when none is close by. For thirst arises from a deficiency of some kind, and it looks for a remedy suited to relieving it, not some ostentatious drink. But when the appetite is waterlogged through intemperance, it produces voyages overseas in search of wine, the soul already deranged in its desires even before the drunkenness itself. For Thasian, the fragrant, and Lesbian, the sweet-scented, and a certain sweet Cretan, and pleasant Syracusan, and a certain Mendesian from Egypt, and Naxian from the island, and still another flower-scented vintage out of Italian soil — such are the numerous titles; but for the self-controlled companion at table there is one wine, the produce of one God. For why should the local wine not suffice to satisfy the desire? Unless indeed men bring along their water too, as the foolish kings did — the Choaspes, a river so called in India, whose water is the finest for drinking — bringing along the water of the Choaspes just as they bring along their friends. The Holy Spirit, too, through Amos, pronounces the rich unhappy here as well, for their luxury, crying out: "Those who drink strained wine, and lie upon ivory couches," and all that follows in the way of reproach that it heaped upon them.
One must take especial care for propriety of bearing (and indeed the myth says that Athena, when she once existed, taking forethought for herself, threw away the flute, delightful though it was, on account of the unseemliness of its appearance), so as to drink with an undistorted face, not gulping to the full nor forcing the eyes into unseemliness for the sake of drinking, dragging it down without a breath through lack of self-control, nor pouring it about the chin or drenching the clothing, the drink being poured in all at once, all but washing and rinsing their own face in the cups. For indeed the gurgling of the drink borne violently along, drawn in together with a great rush of breath, as if it were being decanted into a clay jug, while the throat resounds because of the headlong gulping, makes for a disgraceful sight and an unbecoming show of lack of self-mastery, and besides, the habit of loving drink brings harm to whoever gives himself over to it. Do not hasten toward harm, my friend. Your drink is not being snatched from you; it has been given to you and it waits for you. Do not be eager to burst yourself, drawing it in with wide-open mouth; your thirst will be filled even if you drink more slowly, having taken on orderliness, the drink being portioned out in an orderly manner; for time does not take away what intemperance snatches beforehand. "In wine," it says, "do not play the man, for wine has made many worthless."
"Drunkenness is practiced most of all by the Scythians and the Celts and the Iberians and the Thracians, all of these being warlike races, and they have come to regard it as a fine and blessed practice to pursue." But we, a peaceable race, feasting for enjoyment and not for insolence, let us drink our loving-cups soberly, so that in truth they may be shown, in a manner proper to the name, to be tokens of love. How do you suppose the Lord drank, when for our sake he became man? So shamelessly as we do? Not rather with refinement? Not with orderliness? Not with due reckoning? For understand well: he also shared in wine, since he too had become a man; and he even pronounced a blessing over the wine, saying, "Take, drink — this is my blood," the vine's own blood, picturing in the words "poured out on behalf of many, unto the forgiveness of sins" the mystic stream of gladness. And that whoever drinks ought to be self-controlled, he made plain through what he taught during those meals, for he did not teach as one who was drunk. And that the thing he blessed was in fact wine, he showed once more, telling those who followed him: "From now on I will not taste this vine's fruit until, together with you, I drink it anew in my Father's realm." But that wine was truly what the Lord drank, he himself states again about himself, chiding the stubborn hearts of the Jews: "The Son of Man arrived," he says, "and people claim, Look, a man given to gluttony and fond of wine, a companion of toll-collectors." Let this much be jestingly said by us also against those called Encratites.
But the women, laying claim, forsooth, to propriety, so that they may not, by pouring the drink out over broad-brimmed cups, have their lips torn as the mouth is stretched wide, drink instead unseemly from flasks quite narrow at the mouth, tilting back their heads, baring their necks — not decorously, to my mind — and stretching their throat as they swallow, gulp it down, as though stripping themselves bare before their fellow-drinkers of whatever they are capable of, and drawing forth belches fit for men, or rather fit for slaves, they preen themselves further and grow wanton; for no noise is fitting for a rational man, and still less for a woman, for whom even the mere knowledge in herself of who she is brings shame alone. "A drunken woman," it says, "is a great wrath," as it were the anger of god, a woman maddened with wine. Why? Because "she does not conceal her own unseemliness." For a woman is quickly dragged down into disorder, if only she gives herself over in purpose to pleasures. And we have not forbidden drinking from flasks; but we cut off the practice of drinking only from these as ostentatious, counseling that whatever is at hand be used without attachment, checking beforehand, from far off and from above, the appetites that are sliding downward. As for the breath that rises up toward a belch, it is to be let pass quietly. But under no circumstances is it to be permitted to women to be seen baring any part of the body, lest both parties stumble — the men being incited to gaze intently, and the women drawing the eyes of the men upon themselves. And we must at all times conduct ourselves with order as though the Lord were present, lest perhaps to us also, as to the Corinthians, the apostle in his displeasure should say: "When you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat."
It seems to me that the headless figure spoken of by the mathematicians, the one reckoned before the wandering star, with the head sunk down into the breast, hints darkly at gluttons and pleasure-lovers and those ready for drunkenness. For indeed in these men too the reasoning faculty is seated not in the head but in the inward parts, enslaved to the passions of desire and anger. So that in the manner in which Elpenor "broke his neckbones," falling down through drunkenness, in just this way the mind of these men, made dizzy from above by drunkenness, falls down upon the liver and the heart — that is, upon the love of pleasure and upon anger — a fall greater than that which the sons of the poets say Hephaestus suffered, cast down from heaven to earth by Zeus. "The toil of sleeplessness," it says, "and cholera and griping pain go with an insatiable man." For this reason indeed the drunkenness of Noah has been recorded in writing, so that we might guard against drunkenness as much as possible, having before us a plain and written image of the transgression, on account of which those who covered over the unseemliness of the drunkenness are blessed by the Lord. Most concisely, then, having taken in the whole matter, Scripture has said everything in a single saying: "Wine is sufficient for an educated man, and he will find rest upon his bed."
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