Moral Letters to Lucilius

”To this man, however, no one will commit secrets, which he might blab out through wine.” This is false. For that first syllogism includes him who is drunk, not him who is going to be. For you will grant that there is a very great difference between a drunk man and a drunkard. It can be both that he who is drunk is so then for the first time and does not have this vice, and that he who is a drunkard is often free from drunkenness. Therefore, I understand that which is accustomed to be signified by that word, especially since it is set down by a man who professes precision and examines words. Add to this that, if Zeno meant this and wanted us to understand it, he sought room for deception by the ambiguity of the word, which ought not to be done where truth is sought.

​But indeed, let him have meant this; what follows is false, that to one who is accustomed to get drunk, a secret conversation is not committed. For consider to how many soldiers, not always sober, both general and tribune and centurion have entrusted things to be kept silent. Concerning that murder of Gaius Caesar—I mean him who held the republic after defeating Pompey—Tillius Cimber was trusted as much as Gaius Cassius. Cassius drank water all his life; Tillius Cimber was both excessive in wine and a brawler. On this matter he himself spoke: “Shall I,” he said, “bear anyone, I who cannot bear wine?”

​Now let each name for himself those to whom he knows both wine is badly entrusted and speech is well; yet I will relate one example that occurs to me, lest it be lost. For life must be equipped with illustrious examples. Let us not always flee to ancient ones.

​Lucius Piso, the guardian of the city, was drunk from the moment he first became so. He spent the greater part of the night in banquet; he slept until almost the sixth hour; this was his morning. Yet he administered his duty, in which the protection of the city was contained, most diligently. To him both the deified Augustus gave secret commands, when he put him in charge of Thrace, which he thoroughly subdued, and Tiberius when setting out for Campania, when he left many things in the city that were both suspected and hated.

​I think, because Piso’s drunkenness had turned out well for him, he afterwards made Cossus prefect of the city, a man serious, moderate, but drowned and soaked in wine, so much so that sometimes he was carried out from the senate, into which he had come from a banquet, overcome by an sleep from which he could not be awakened. To him, however, Tiberius wrote many things with his own hand, which he did not judge should be committed even to his own ministers. No secret, either private or public, slipped from Cossus.

​Therefore, let us remove those declamations from our midst: “The mind, bound by drunkenness, is not in its own power. Just as jars themselves are burst by must, and the force of heat ejects to the top whatever lies at the bottom; so when wine boils up, whatever lies hidden at the bottom is brought up and comes out into the open. Those loaded with unmixed wine, just as they do not retain food when wine overflows, so not even a secret. They pour out equally what is their own and what is another’s.”

​But although this is accustomed to happen, so also is that accustomed to happen, namely, that we deliberate on necessary matters with those whom we know drink quite willingly. Therefore, this is false, which is put forward by way of defense, that to him who is accustomed to get drunk, a secret is not given. How much better is it openly to accuse drunkenness and expose its vices, which even a tolerable man would avoid, let alone a perfect and wise man, for whom it is enough to quench his thirst, who, even if sometimes a cheerfulness produced for another’s sake and prolonged further has encouraged him, nevertheless stops short of drunkenness.

​For about that other matter we shall see, whether the mind of a wise man is disturbed by too much wine and does things customary for drunkards; in the meantime, if you want to conclude this, that a good man ought not to get drunk, why do you act with syllogisms? Say how shameful it is to pour into oneself more than one can hold and not to know the measure of one’s own stomach, how many things drunk men do, at which sober men would blush, and that drunkenness is nothing other than voluntary madness. Extend that state of a drunk man to several days; will you have any doubt about madness?