Besides, it is probable that this disturbance into which those that are half drunk are put, when it comes to a pitch, leads to that decay.

For a great quantity being taken inflames the body and consumes the frenzy of the mind; as a mournful song and melancholy music at a funeral raises grief at first and forces tears, but as it continues, by little and little it takes away all dismal apprehensions and consumes our sorrows.

Thus wine, after it hath heated and disturbed, calms the mind again and quiets the frenzy; and when men are dead drunk, their passions are at rest.
QUESTION IX.

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE SAYING: DRINK EITHER FIVE OR THREE, BUT NOT FOUR?
ARISTO, PLUTARCH, PLUTARCH'S FATHER.
When I had said these things Aristo, as his habit was, cried out: A return has been decreed in banquets to a very popular and just standard, which, because it was driven away by unseasonable temperance as if by the act of a tyrant, has long remained in exile.

For just as those trained in the canons of the lyre declare the sesquialter proportion produces the symphony diapente, the double proportion the diapason, the sesquiterte the diatessaron, the slowest of all, so the specialists in Bacchic harmonies have detected three accords between wine and water--Diapente, Diatrion, Diatessaron.