I am not speaking of drinking, or not drinking, wine at all, but of intoxication.

Are we to follow the custom of the Scythians, and Persians, and Carthaginians, and Celts, and Iberians, and Thracians, who are all warlike nations, or that of your countrymen, for they, as you say, altogether abstain?
But the Scythians and Thracians, both men and women, drink unmixed wine, which they pour on their garments, and this they think a happy and glorious institution.
The Persians, again, are much given to other practices of luxury which you reject, but they have more moderation in them than the Thracians and Scythians.
MEGILLUS: O best of men, we have only to take arms into our hands, and we send all these nations flying before us.
ATHENIAN: Nay, my good friend, do not say that; there have been, as there always will be, flights and pursuits of which no account can be given, and therefore we cannot say that victory or defeat in battle affords more than a doubtful proof of the goodness or badness of institutions.

For when the greater states conquer and enslave the lesser, as the Syracusans have done the Locrians, who appear to be the best-governed people in their part of the world, or as the Athenians have done the Ceans (and there are ten thousand other instances of the same sort of thing), all this is not to the point; let us endeavour rather to form a conclusion about each institution in itself and say nothing, at present, of victories and defeats.

Let us only say that such and such a custom is honourable, and another not.

And first permit me to tell you how good and bad are to be estimated in reference to these very matters.
MEGILLUS: How do you mean?
ATHENIAN: All those who are ready at a moment's notice to praise or censure any practice which is matter of discussion, seem to me to proceed in a wrong way.