I love finding inspiring stories about alcohol. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of inebriates running (or driving) rampant across America or the world, wreaking havoc on unsuspecting (or perhaps also drunken) neighbors, or destroying lives and families. But I'm all in favor of appropriate use of social elixirs to smooth out the rough edges of life.
Apparently, I'm not the only one and this idea is as old as civilization. In the New York Times the other day, an item was published in one of their blogs by a teacher whose students asked about the abundance of drinking in Homer's The Odyssey. Of course, Greeks weren't the only folks enjoying the fruit of the vine back then. It was common to drink alcoholic beverages, as the Times piece notes.
But Homer and others of his era also demonstrated that alcohol should be used in moderation — let me refine that: alcohol should be enjoyed, but used in moderation. Okay, maybe I'm editorializing a little about what Homer meant.
But I love the way the writer concluded his piece:
I wasn’t quite satisfied, and the question continued to bother me until, days later, I found a passage in “The Odyssey” that succinctly captures the complexity of the Greek attitude towards alcohol. Odysseus is speaking to a sympathetic swineherd, and though he is in disguise, the words have the unmistakable ring of honesty:
[I]t is the wine that leads me on, the wild wine
that sets the wisest man to sing at the top of his lungs,
laugh like a fool – it drives the man to dancing...it even
tempts him to blurt out stories better never told.
After two decades away from home, there must have been so much to say, so many bottled-up tales of friends lost and battles won. Somebody get the poor guy another round.
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