And of all fruits physicians use the vinous as the greatest coolers, as pomegranates and apples.
Besides, do they not make wine by mixing honey with rain-water or snow; for the cold, because those two qualities are near akin, if it prevails, changes the luscious into a poignant taste?
And did not the ancients of all the creeping beasts consecrate the snake to Bacchus, and of all the plants the ivy, because they were of a cold and frozen nature?
Now, lest any one should think this is a proof of its heat, that if a man takes juice of hemlock, a large dose of wine cures him, I shall, on the contrary affirm that wine and hemlock juice mixed is an incurable poison, and kills him that drinks it presently.

So that we can no more conclude it to be hot because it resists, than to be cold because it assists, the poison.

For cold is the only quality by which hemlock juice works and kills.
QUESTION VI.

WHICH IS THE FITTEST TIME FOR A MAN TO KNOW HIS WIFE?
YOUTHS, ZOPYRUS, OLYMPICHUS, SOCLARUS.
Some young students, that had not gone far in the learning of the ancients, inveighed against Epicurus for bringing in, in his Svmposium, an impertinent and unseemly discourse, about what time was best to lie with a woman; for an old man at supper in the company of youths to talk of such a subject, and dispute whether after or before supper was the most convenient time, argued him to be a very loose and debauched man.
To this some said that Xenophon, after his entertainment was ended, sent all his guests home on horseback, to lie with their wives.

But Zopyrus the physician, a man very well read in Epicurus, said, that they had not duly weighed that piece; for he did not propose that question first, and then discuss that matter on purpose; but after supper he desired the young men to take a walk, and he then discoursed on it, that he might persuade them to continence, and to abate their desires and restrain their appetites; showing them that it was very dangerous at all times, but especially after they had been eating or making merry.