or not drinking, wine at all, but of intoxication. Are we to follow the
custom of the Scythians, and Persians, and Carthaginians, and Celts, and
Iberians, and Thracians, who are all warlike nations, or that of your
countrymen, for they, as you say, altogether abstain? But the Scythians
and Thracians, both men and women, drink unmixed wine, which they pour
on their garments, and this they think a happy and glorious institution.
The Persians, again, are much given to other practices of luxury which
you reject, but they have more moderation in them than the Thracians and
Scythians.

MEGILLUS: O best of men, we have only to take arms into our hands, and
we send all these nations flying before us.

ATHENIAN: Nay, my good friend, do not say that; there have been, as
there always will be, flights and pursuits of which no account can be
given, and therefore we cannot say that victory or defeat in battle
affords more than a doubtful proof of the goodness or badness of
institutions. For when the greater states conquer and enslave the
lesser, as the Syracusans have done the Locrians, who appear to be the
best-governed people in their part of the world, or as the Athenians
have done the Ceans (and there are ten thousand other instances of the
same sort of thing), all this is not to the point; let us endeavour
rather to form a conclusion about each institution in itself and say
nothing, at present, of victories and defeats. Let us only say that such
and such a custom is honourable, and another not. And first permit me to
tell you how good and bad are to be estimated in reference to these very
matters.

MEGILLUS: How do you mean?

ATHENIAN: All those who are ready at a moment's notice to praise or
censure any practice which is matter of discussion, seem to me to
proceed in a wrong way. Let me give you an illustration of what I
mean:--You may suppose a person to be praising wheat as a good kind
of food, whereupon another person instantly blames wheat, without ever
enquiring into its effect or use, or in what way, or to whom, or with
what, or in what state and how, wheat is to be given. And that is just
what we are doing in this discussion. At the very mention of the word
intoxication, one side is ready with their praises and the other with
their censures; which is absurd. For either side adduce their witnesses
and approvers, and some of us think that we speak with authority because
we have many witnesses; and others because they s