על השיכרות נ״בOn Drunkenness 52
א׳
1For what use can he find in listening to holy words, who can beget no offspring of wisdom, when the knife has cut away the power of faith, and the store of truths which might best profit human life he cannot keep in his charge?
ב׳
2[214] Now mankind, as we have seen, has three caterers, the baker, the cup-bearer and the cook. This is natural enough since we desire the use and enjoyment of these three things, bread, flesh and drink. But some desire only the bare necessities, the use of which is needed to keep life from being unhealthy and sordid; while others seek them in luxurious forms, which excite the cravings of the appetite, and in extravagant quantities, which oppress and overload the receptacles of the body, and often produce grave disorders of every kind.
ג׳
3[215] The first of these classes who are not specialists in pleasure or voluptuousness or passion are like the ordinary public in a city who live an inoffensive and innocuous life, who have few wants and therefore do not require versatile and highly-skilled artists to serve them, but only those who attempt no more than a plain and simple form of service, just cooks, cup-bearers and bakers.
ד׳
4[216] But the second class, holding that pleasant living is sovereignty and kingship, and judging all things great and small by this standard, consider it their due to employ chief cooks, chief butlers, chief bakers, that is those who have worked up to a high pitch of refinement the arts which they severally profess.
ה׳
5[217] Milk cakes, honey cakes, numberless other kinds of bakemeats in the greatest possible variety, elaborately calculated to beguile the eye as well as the palate, not only with diversities of material, but also by the way in which the constituents are proportioned and the shapes in which they appear, engage the care and attention of the master-hands in confectionery.
ו׳
6[218] As for wine, whether it is such as is quickly digested and leaves no headache, whether on the other hand it has a fine bouquet and fragrance, whether it needs a small or great dilution to fit it for a fierce and heated carousal or a mild and quiet festivity, these and all such questions are the study of chief butlers, who have reached the very summit of their art.
ז׳
7[219] Again, the skilful dressing and preparation of fishes, birds and the like, and the flavouring of other savoury dishes, is a task readily accomplished by highly scientific professionals, whose constant drill and practice in catering for the life, which all its voluptuous luxury cannot make worth living, has given them the ingenuity to invent hundreds of other delicacies besides those which they have seen and heard of.