Drinking habits in ancient Greece were very particular. The Greeks never drank beer, only wine, and they watered it down. Mark Forsyth, author of A Short History of Drunkenness: How, Why, Where and When Humankind has Gotten Merry from the Stone age to the Present, writes that even though the Greeks were usually very snobby about those who dared to be not-Greek, their god of wine, Dionysus, was rumored to be a foreigner. He was supposedly born on Mount Nysa, which was said to be located in Ethiopia or Arabia, or sometimes even India. The myth was that Dionysus traveled to Greece from the East with a group of exotic animals and mythological creatures.
Through mythological history, Dionysus has always been connected to animals, and there are many myths that combine that fact with imbibing. The first of these involved him turning people who don’t believe he is a god into animals. The idea here is that alcohol, if you are not careful, “can turn you into a beast,” writes Forsyth. Another is that the Maenads—women who worshipped Dionysus—would go into the mountains wearing basically nothing and get very drunk while dancing around and ripping animals to shreds. Yet another myth is that Dionysus did not like teetotalers, and so he killed them in especially cruel ways. So though one myth is a reminder that drinking can turn you into a beast, another emphasizes that you should still do it. Plato always said that self-control was like bravery, and the mixture of these myths about Dionysus seems to echo that: You can drink alcohol, but still maintain control.
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