על הנטיעה ל״וConcerning Noah's Work as a Planter 36
א׳
1[146] Having learned this beforehand he will never think fit voluntarily to engage in a drinking-contest, unless the matters at issue are of great moment, a fatherland’s deliverance, respect for parents, children’s safety or that of the persons of those very near and dear, or, in a word, a putting on a right footing of private and public concerns.
ב׳
2[147] No more would a wise man take a deadly poison, unless the crisis were such as absolutely to compel him to depart from life as though he were leaving his country. And strong drink is a poison bringing about not death indeed but madness. And yet why should we not call madness death, seeing that by it mind dies, the noblest part of us? Nay it appears to me that, were a choice offered, a man would be likely to choose without hesitation the death that separates and dissolves the union of soul and body, in preference to that of going out of one’s senses, feeling that he was choosing the lighter in place of the heavier.
ג׳
3[148] It was for this reason that the earliest inhabitants of the world called the inventor of the culture of the vine Maenoles and the Bacchants whom its frenzy seized Maenads, since wine is the cause of madness and loss of sound sense in those who imbibe it over freely.
