find that, in their golden age at least, alcohol was used and not abused.
Their strongest drink, we must remember, was natural, unfortified wine, containing no more alcohol than our present clarets
Sleeping Dionysos. (From Greek bas-relief in the Campana Collection.)
and hocks. And yet they never drank it pure; they always added water to it, or rather, added it to water. Some of their wines, the Pramnian and Maronian, for instance, were of such strong flavor as to be mixed in the proportion of one to fifteen or one to twenty parts of water. The average dilution was one to five, or one to four. When the young bloods of Athens had a supper party they would elect a "master of the feast," who sat, crowned with flowers, at the head of the table, and set the pace for the festivities. A very festive youth would sometimes at these occasions order the wine one to three, or even two to three. To drink wine unmixed—well, that was ὲπισκύθισαι, to act like a Scythian, to be a beast and a barbarian.
It is not to be supposed from this that drunkenness was unknown, but in the golden age of Greece it was both uncommon and despised. Drinking with them was different from drinking among other nations; they drank for exhilaration, not for intoxication. This can be recognized at once from the character and position of Dionysos, their god of drink, corresponding to the Roman Bacchus. No drunken debauchee was he. His statues represent him as a laughing, innocent child, as a beautiful, graceful youth, as a finely developed adult, and even as a gentle, refined, full-bearded man, the patron of literature and the drama.
