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Show How the ancients regarded and punished it. The offence of drunkenness was a source, of great perplexity among the ancients, who tried every possible way of dealing with it. If none succeeded, probably it was because they did not begin early enough, by intercepting some of the ways and means by which the insidious vice in?cited and propagated. Severe treatment was often tried to little effect. The ?[inetiau?], and or ?[Zalcoeus], made it a capital offence to drink wine if it was not mixed with water; even an invalid was not exempted from punishment unless by order of a physician. Pittacus of ?[Wuylene] made a law that he who when drunk committed an offence should suffer double the punishment which he would do when sober and Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch applauded him in the height of wisdom. The Roman censors could expel a senator for being drunk and take away his home. Mabornet ordered drunkards to be ?[?*rindoed] with eighty blows. Other ?[dalions] thought of ?[limiting] the quantity to be drunk at one time or at one sitting. The Egyptians put the ?? ?[ending]what is not stated. ?[? Spartans] ?[unreadable]. The Arabians ?[fixed] the quantity at twelve glasses a man, but the size of the glasses was unfortunately not clearly defined by the historians. The Anglo Saxons went no further than to order silver nails to be fixed on the side of drinking cups so that each might know the proper measure. And it is said that this was done by King Edger after noticing the drunken habits of the ?[Dance, Dante]. Lycurgus of Thrace went to the root of the matter by ordering the vines to be cut down. And his conduct was imitated in 504 by ?[Terhulus of Edgaram]. The ?[Snevl] prohibited wine to be imported; now the Spartans tried to turn the vice into contempt by systematically making their slaves drunk once a year to show their children how foolish and contemptible men looked in that state. Drunkenness was deemed much more vicious in some classes of persons than in others. The ancient Indians held it lawful to kill a King when he was drunk. The Athenians made it a capital offence for a magistrate to be drunk; and Charlemagne initiated this by a law that judges on the bench and ?[pleaders] should do their business ?[fasting]. The Carthaginians prohibited magistrates, governors, soldiers and servants from any drinking. The Scots in the second century made it a capital offence for magistrates to be drunk, and Constantine II of Scotland, in 601, extended a like punishment to young people. Again, ?[some laws] have absolutely prohibited wine from being drunk by women; the Mas?lians so do ?[e?ct]. The Romans did the same, and extended the prohibition to young men under thirty or forty-five. And the wife's relations could scourge the wife for offending and the husband himself might scourge her to death.-Exhange. |