A tale of five wise men
with moral advice [later to be found in Aesop’s special collection]

Once upon a time, when the world was fresh and young, swarming with dazzlingly white togas and beards reaching ankles laced in leather sandals, five wise men decided not to get drunk.

So as not to delude our patient reader, we feel oblidged to confess, however, that it was only partly true, because the five wise men decided to get drunk with style, which makes all the essential difference.

„Well, gentlemen,“ said Pausanias, „how can we arrange to drink less tonight? To be honest, I still have a terrible hangover from yesterday, and I could really use a break. I daresay most of you could, too, since you were also part of the celebration. So let’s try not to overdo it.”

‚Easier said than done‘ goes the proverb, yet at that point they all agreed not to get drunk that evening; they decided to drink only as much as pleased them, which is a conveniently vague term, indeed.

The five wise men being really wise in their decision to spare their livers further trouble, they all decided in powerful unison on spending the night engaged in the noble art of conversation, which, if in pleasant company, revives the spirit and challenges many a brain still obtuse by the intoxication of the previous night’s not so wise excesses.

„Eryximachus,“ Phaedrus said while sipping his Tequilla sunrise from a glistening mussel, lazily drowsing on a satin cushion, watching the colourful sunset from wide open shutters in the light, warm breeze of evening air, „isn’t it an awful thing! Our poets have composed hymns in honor of just about any god you can think of; but has a single one of them given one moment’s thought to the god of love, ancient and powerful as he is?“

Upon which they all agreed with a serious nod that it certainly was an awful and a shameful thing, running their fingers pensively through the thicket of their beards.

“Now, Phaedrus, in my judgment, is quite right,“ replied Eryximachus with grave composure, „I would like, therefore, to take up a contribution, as it were, on his behalf, and gratify his wish. Besides, I think this a splendid time for all of us here to honor the god. If you agree, we can spend the whole evening in discussion, because I propose that each of us give as good a speech in praise of Love as he is capable of giving.“

Phaedrus, naturally, had to speak first as the one who came up with the splendid idea to restore the God of Love to his rightful and often so grievously neglected dominance.

„The very first god designed was Love,“ Phaedrus began with an acute awareness of his own importance. „There is a certain guidance each person needs for his whole life, if he is to live well; and nothing imparts this guidance—not high kinship, not public honor, not wealth—nothing imparts this guidance as well as Love. What guidance do I mean? I mean a sense of shame at acting shamefully, and a sense of pride in acting well. Without these, nothing fine or great can be accomplished, in public or in private. Why, no one is so base that true Love could not inspire him with courage, and make him as brave as if he’d been born a hero. I say Love is the most ancient of the gods, the most honored, and the most powerful in helping men gain virtue and blessedness, whether they are alive or have passed away.“

After that Pausanias got up, putting his Long Island on the marble table heaped with ambrosia and ripe grapes.

„Although what our friend said was certainly wise, gentlemen, I say the complexity of Love is much wider. Take us, for example. We had a choice between drinking, singing, or having a conversation,“ he began, graciously overlooking the fact that he just laid his liquor aside. „Now, in itself none of these is better than any other: how it comes out depends entirely on how it is performed. If it is done honorably and properly, it turns out to be honorable; if it is done improperly, it is disgraceful. And my point is that exactly this principle applies to being in love: Love is not in himself noble and worthy of praise; that depends on whether the sentiments he produces in us are themselves noble.“

When Pausanias finally came to a pause in his haughty speech, it was Aristophanes’ turn. But he had such a bad case of the hiccups — he’d probably stuffed himself again, though, of course, it could have been anything— that making a speech was totally out of the question. So he turned to the doctor, Eryximachus, who was next in line, and said to him:

“Eryximachus, it’s up to you—as well it should be. Cure me or take my turn.”

“As a matter of fact,” Eryximachus replied, “I shall do both. I shall take your turn—you can speak in my place as soon as you feel better—and I shall also cure you. While I am giving my speech, you should hold your breath for as long as you possibly can.“

After taking this splendid medical advice to heart, Aristophanes suffered series of collapses and fits, ending in near suffocation during the speech of this widely acknowledged MD, who was nevertheless much more skilful philosopher.

„Love is a deity of the greatest importance," Eryximachus began pompously. "He directs everything that occurs, not only in the human domain, but also in that of the gods. The physician’s task is to effect a reconciliation and establish mutual love between the most basic bodily elements. Which are those elements? They are, of course, those that are most opposed to one another, as hot is to cold, bitter to sweet, wet to dry, cases like those,“ he said with an air of a man taking great pride in his renown and seeming medical knowledge, ignoring Aristophanes's cyanotic face. „Medicine, therefore, is guided everywhere by the god of Love, and so are physical education and farming as well. Further, a moment’s reflection suffices to show that the case of poetry and music, too, is precisely the same. For surely there can be no harmony so long as high and low are still discordant; harmony, after all, is consonance, and consonance is a species of agreement. Discordant elements, as long as they are still in discord, cannot come to an agreement, and they therefore cannot produce a harmony. Rhythm, for example, is produced only when fast and slow, though earlier discordant, are brought into agreement with each other. Music, like medicine, creates agreement by producing concord and love between these various opposites. Music is therefore simply the science of the effects of Love on rhythm and harmony.“

And to prove the consonance of his words with reality, he drew out a flute from the folds of his toga and forced out a delightfuly cacophonic little cantata, bringing thus back poor Aristophanes, simultaneously red and blue in face, back to his senses and offering him the space for his speech. His hiccups being successfully oppressed, Aristophanes expressed deep thanks to his great physician for saving his life.

„This, in my humble opinion, is the source of our desire to love each other," began his moving speech. "Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. Each of us, then, is a “matching half” of a human whole, because each was sliced like a flatfish, two out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him.
Everyone would think he’d found out at last what he had always wanted: to come together and melt together with the one he loves, so that one person emerged from two. Why should this be so? It’s because, as I said, we used to be complete wholes in our original nature, and now “Love” is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.“

After wiping the tears away from their wet eyes and swollen eyelids, while stiffling the not-so-manly sobs in their wine-stained beards in which bits of their delicious dinner could still be detected, Socrates got up from his comfortable couch in the atmosphere of general expectation.

However, knowing nothing as he usually did, he had to borrow his speech from the wisdom of Diotima, a wise woman from Mantinea, concluding that the highest and most mysterious rites of Love end with love for the Form of Beauty, which ‘always is and neither comes to be nor passes away, neither waxes nor wanes’, and is ‘not beautiful this way and ugly that way, nor beautiful at one time and ugly at another, nor beautiful in relation to one thing and ugly in relation to another’ but is ‘just what it is to be beautiful’.

By this time most of the men present were bored to death and all liquor had run out long ago as the warm haze of late summer dusk was falling around, plunging everything into shapeless opaqueness and closing their eyes with the veil of heavy drowsiness, until Alcibiades turned up to save the day and shouted from the top of his lungs at the men comfortably outstreched on the satin cushions, covered with the soft blankets of their beards.

„All right, you lousy self-pretentious snobs, let’s end this laughable pseudo-intellectual rambling and let the party begin, for God’s sake!“

And so they did, and lived happily ever after, their cirrhotic livers floating contently in gallons of alcohol.

You know what the moral message of this story is – forget about love and such nonsense.
Drink with wise men.
Drink with style.

[said the hypocrite who can barely force herself to drink a toast out of courtesy]