One such benefit, he suggests, flows from the power of wine to suspend, temporarily, the effects of age. As men grow less willing to join in the dances and choric songs which are important to the state, so they should drink wine, which will in a manner transport them back to the time of their youth, when they were eager to do such things. The Athenian therefore proposes rules of drinking related to age. Those under 18 should be forbidden to touch wine at all. Those under 30 may be allowed to drink in moderation, but must still avoid intoxication and heavy drinking. But when a man has reached the age of 40,
he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke Dionysus, above all other gods, inviting his presence at the rite (which is also the recreation) of the elders, which he bestowed on mankind as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age, that thereby we men may renew our youth, and that, through forgetfulness of care, the temper of our souls may lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile, even as iron when it has been forged in the fire.
This therapeutic defence of wine-drinking allows the Athenian to dispute the mythological origins of wine. The myths tell us, says the Athenian, that wine was given to men as a punishment to make them mad. But this cannot be true: "our own account, on the contrary, declares that it is as medicine given for the purpose of securing modesty of soul and health and strength of body."
But this Platonic toleration of wine is based on one strict condition: "If . . . this institution is regarded in the light of play, and if anyone that likes is to be allowed to drink whenever he likes and with any companions he likes, and that in conjunction with all sorts of other institutions — then I would refuse to vote for allowing such a State or such an individual ever to indulge in drink." Here, surely, Plato shows his hand. The Laws mounts no true defence of wine-drinking, which — if it is anything — must be a matter of pleasure and freedom. In this ideal Platonic state, the substance which is wine may be permitted to exist, but only on conditions which utterly denature it.
When Nietzsche wrote his brilliant, controversial account of Hellenic culture, The Birth of Tragedy, he framed it as an elegy. The story he told described how the Dionysiac component in Hellenism was driven out by Socratism, and by Socrates's puppet, the dramatist Euripides, who was for Nietzsche "the poet of aesthetic Socratism". For Nietzsche, the immediate result of Socratism (of which Plato was the fervent disciple) was the destruction of Dionysiac drama. In its place was installed the idea that wisdom in its fullest and best form — what the Greeks called sophrosyne — was derivable from dialectic, and hence was teachable. This for Nietzsche was but a pale shadow of the true Dionysiac, which changes us not by convincing us of certain propositions, or by appealing to utilitarian outcomes, but rather by altering our very being directly. In The Laws we see Plato trying to turn wine into a handmaiden of Socratism. History suggests that he failed-and may such attempts to emasculate wine by conscripting it to ostensibly "worthy" purposes always fail. A very happy New Year to you all!
