Wine, bread and olive oil, still the main ingredients of the Mediterranean diet, were to be distinguished from the foods provided through hunting, fishing or gathering as they were the result of agriculture and technology. Indeed, wine, along with bread and olives (especially olive oil), was not only the basic and necessary aspects of the traditional Greek diet but was considered part of the divine – a gift from the gods – and accordingly took on a sacred place in Greek life elevated as part of religious and cerebral cultural life. Eating and drinking in his context had become part of civilised society and culture. The exact translation of the Greek word symposion is ‘to drink together.’ In classical Greece, the symposion was an occasion when a group of men and male youths eat and drink together, according to strict nutritional, religious and cultural rules, while they entertain, talk and discuss philosophical issues. Wine has not been the subject of serious philosophical appreciation in the modern context until very recently, even though it has had an intimate association with philosophy since its institutionalisation in classical Greece under Socrates and Plato. (Nietzsche, ‘ An Attempt at Self-Criticism’) What should it be called? As a philologist and man of words, I baptised it, taking some liberties – for who knew the correct name of the Antichrist? – after the name of a Greek god: I called it the Dionysian. ( attributed to Dionysus, in a surviving fragment of the lost play by Euboulos)Īnd so, my instinct at that time turned itself against morality in this questionable book, as an instinct affirming life, and invented for itself a fundamentally different doctrine and a totally opposite way of evaluating life, something purely artistic and anti-Christian. The fourth krater is not mine anymore – it belongs to bad behaviour the fifth is for shouting the sixth is for rudeness and insults the seventh is for fights the eighth is for breaking the furniture the ninth is for depression the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. Triumph of Bacchus (Nicolaes Moeyaert, 1624)įor sensible men, I prepare only three kraters: one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep.
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