Laudator Temporis Acti

Homer, Odyssey 14.462-466 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

Hear me now, Eumaios and all you other companions.
What I say will be a bit of boasting. The mad wine tells me
to do it. Wine sets even a thoughtful man to singing,
or sets him into softly laughing, sets him to dancing.
Sometimes it tosses out a word that was better unspoken.

κέκλυθι νῦν, Εὔμαιε καὶ ἄλλοι πάντες ἑταῖροι,
εὐξάμενός τι ἔπος ἐρέω· οἶνος γὰρ ἀνώγει
ἠλεός, ὅς τ᾽ ἐφέηκε πολύφρονά περ μάλ᾽ ἀεῖσαι
καί θ᾽ ἁπαλὸν γελάσαι, καί τ᾽ ὀρχήσασθαι ἀνῆκε,        465
καί τι ἔπος προέηκεν ὅ περ τ᾽ ἄρρητον ἄμεινον.

W.B. Stanford on lines 463-466:

O. describes the earlier (the 'merry') stages of intoxication: singing, laughing [ἁπαλὸν is better taken pejoratively as 'feebly', rather than 'gently' with L.-S.-J.], dancing and unrestrained talk. For the disgusting and dangerous next stage see 9, 371-4 and 21, 304. Wine was not a luxury to the Greeks, but a pleasant necessity of life. H. mentions its aroma, taste, colour (always red or dark red in H.), as well as its keeping properties and potency (for references see on 9, 196). Drunkenness was despised (cp. οἰνοβαρής as an abusive word in Il. 1, 225), not pitied. The triple rhyme of -ηκε conceivably may be designed to suggest a drunken jingle here.

Related posts:

• Some Effects of Wine
• Praise of Dionysus
• Wine
• The Power of Wine