Drinking-Moderation Tips from the Old Greeks:

- To drink only when it's night. (said of the Pythagoreans by Jamblichos: Vita Pythagorae)

- To always be able to still find your way home unaided [for soldiers: even in the dark]. (Xenophon: The State of the Lacedaimonians. Some say that the Spartans didn't drink at all, some cite famous Spartan drunkards, some say they each had their own cup to that they held on and didn't let it go around, some say their convivia were so dull that they had to call on the services of Athenian MCs to liven them up, some say-Plutarch I believe- that the Spartans drank water out of red-coloured kothon-cups that gave them the illusion of drinking wine, he maybe also says that they made some of their Helots drunk to show their children how ridiculous one behaves when inebriated; some say he's doing the obituary mambo, and some say he's hanging on the wall- perhaps this yarn's the only thing that holds this man together, some say he was never here at all.)

-Plato: Nomoi (Laws): "No one should be allowed to taste wine until they are eighteen; from eighteen to thirty they may take a little; but when they have reached forty years, they may be initiated into the mystery of drinking. Thus they will become softer and more impressible; and when a man's heart is warm within him, he will be more ready to charm himself and others with song." He advises that from the age of 40 a man should indulge himself periodically in order to feel and become young again. As Goethe wrote in his West-Eastern Divan: "Youth is drunkenness without wine."